the Business book publicity blog from Cave Henricks Communications

A “Shouts & Murmurs” piece in The New Yorker this week has me torn about an appropriate response to the recent upheavals in the publishing world.

Have you read it? Does it make you want to laugh or cry?

It’s hard not to laugh at Ellis Weiner‘s tongue-in-cheek portrayal of some poor “intern to replace the promotion department” trying to make hay for a book by unleashing a pile of jargon on some unsuspecting soul – blasting him with a wacky pre-packaged social media plan to end all social media plans. Facebook? Don’t worry – he was signed up for Facebook by his editor when his book contract was signed last year. “You currently have 421 Friends, 17 Pending Requests, 8 Pokes, 5 Winks, and 3 Proposals of ‘Marriage.’” Funnier still is the idea that a publisher will network together its authors and have them read one another’s work in their respective hometowns, saving their publisher the time and expense of flying them around on a book tour. I literally howled at the suggestion that a cookbook author, a mystery writer and an expert in Moorish architecture would make an appropriate network to “cross promote” their works. Surely when in the kitchen cooking couscous one would be hit with a sudden desire to sink into the couch with a thriller – or perhaps that are supposed to read the thriller while en route to the site with Moorish architecture?

The pragmatists will argue that the answer is in front of us – we move to where the coverage is. But before you get too quick and fast with your email pitch, consider this little diatribe from someone on the receiving end.

Ouch. Some poor blogger publicly unleashed his frustration when a publicist did not respond politely or quietly when the blogger tried to pull himself off the mass email list. I feel bad for both of them.

My solution? I think we all need to pull together a bit – I think we need to start talking to one another again. As in really talking, not online and not via email and not in voice mail messages. Would it really be unreasonable for bloggers, journalists and publicists to devote, say, one hour a month, or a week, on the phone to talk with each other about what’s working, and just as important, what’s not?

I am going to join the half that laugh at The New Yorker column, but I’d like to use the laughter to keep the lines of communication open. As the ultimate optimist, I feel really certain that the media world is still interested in cutting-edge work and opinion in their particular area of expertise. And that books and authors can still serve as excellent sources.

I’ll go you one further, I’m going to say that our job in public relations is to ignore the template approach that might have worked on previous book campaigns and to concentrate much more closely on what the author we are working with brings to the mix. The world of the template campaign is over. The era of a ultra-customized approach for each author and each book has barely begun. Honestly, I can hardly wait.