Yesterday, in a comment on the Coode St post here, a thoughtful reader commented:
I do miss the days when you would have a novel come out with much less build-up and hype, but the world has changed, hasn’t it? I’m trying to preserve what I can by keeping my knowledge of RIVER to this: “It’s a Kay novel influenced by historical China.”
And you know, in thinking about that, I’ve decided I’m not going to read any reviews at all. I know I’m going to read RIVER at some point. No reviewer’s opinion will change that. Avoiding the hype will be difficult, however…
I started typing a reply in the Comments, but I wonder how many people find these, and his note is worth a discussion.
Matthew, as I have said before, I have intense memories of days when the arrival of a new book by an author I liked was signalled by … the arrival of the book. I’d see it in the library or on the shelves of a bookstore. And the feeling I recall from such moments is intense. Once, with Dorothy Dunnett’s Ringed Castle, I grabbed it out of the ‘new arrivals’ shelf at the library with such ferocity, that people backed away from the crazy teen.
It is hard to imagine a book lover being that oblivious to a forthcoming book today, unless they work at it.
So you are right, the process for this, as for so much else, has changed enormously. For one thing, as I also mentioned earlier, advance orders are important for a book and publishers. They affect print runs, in-house enthusiasm (or the lack of it) and even the final marketing budget. Energy begets energy. A set of strong blog reviews can help create the existence of a major print review somewhere else if the publicists are on the ball.
There is also a vanishingly small window of opportunity for new books these days. Shelf space at a book chain, or highly viisble placement online, are granted – and taken away swiftly if a book isn’t moving. So they are expected to hit the ground running, so to speak.
This means that today the publishers need a book to arrive anticipated, not just build enthusiasm over time after it is released. (Obviously they want the second thing, too, but the first is the newly critical element.) In a sped-up culture, this, too, is now sped up.
With publishers under pressure in so many ways it is understandable that they turn to social media and intense advance marketing to try to make books happen. It creates a lot of chatter and noise, but then on social media maybe that fits. I would feel worse than curmudgeonly if I refused to allow this, or declined to help out. Unless one self-publishes, bringing out a book is a partnership, a collaboration, and I do feel that – with limits that vary from person to person – an author ought to assist his or her publishers.
I’ll give one example. I have been worrying about overexposure in interviews right now. My various publicists tell me this is, well, silly. I have done, and am lined up to do, a great many conversations, either by email or in person, in the next two or three months. I am sure some readers will end up in eye-roll mode as they read or listen to me making the same joke or observation again. (See what I’m doing? I riffed on this two or three posts back here. You are seeing it again!)
But the publicists are adamant that only a small portion of people find an author’s interviews more than one or two times. That multiple venues are critical to reach and exposure. It is analogous to a politician making the same stump speech over and over, to different audiences. If CNN show the same clip every time, he or she will sound appallingly repetitious, but the people in the audience each night may well be hearing it for the first (and only) time.
As I type, I am thinking now about what happens here … if I do alerts on Twitter or Facebook or this journal of a new interview I am contributing to that repetition-factor, unless I have managed to say something quite new — and that turns almost entirely on being asked something new! I think alerts to reviews are different, by the way, by definition, each review is its own opinion, and they aren’t me.
On the other hand, and again my publishers have made this point, a Journal like this, or Twitter followers draw, by self-selection, people with at least some interest in tracking what is going on as a book comes out and responses to it emerge. It would feel kind of eccentric to not share information with people here. I am not averse to occasional eccentricities, as many will know by now, but I try not to be defined by them.
Bottom line, Matthew and I share a wistful nostalgia for days when none of this happened. But nostalgia has its own problems, and it is probably smartest to see this phenomenon – advance discussion of a book-to-come – as simply a part of the world we’ve given ourselves.
There are upsides. I got to make some wonderfully awful (what oxymoron?) puns on #BellLetsTalk day on Twitter.
For authors I enjoy, such as yourself, I often will read multiple interviews on the same topic for the two or three nuggets that vary from conversation to conversation.
Perhaps that’s a suitable challenge: how many kernels can you drop in to entertain the long-term, highly-engaged fans while staying on message to satisfy your publicity team?
For authors I enjoy, such as yourself, I often will read multiple interviews on the same topic for the two or three nuggets that vary from conversation to conversation.
Perhaps that’s a suitable challenge: how many kernels can you drop in to entertain the long-term, highly-engaged fans while staying on message to satisfy your publicity team?
I remember discovering both Tigana and Lions by, as you say, seeing them on the bookstore shelf. I remember the sharp intake of breath, followed by a frantic reaching for the wallet. Those, for me, were also the days when buying a hardcover new release was a real luxury for me. Not only were the books not so deeply discounted back then, but my financial situation was such that spending $40 was something I had to think twice about.
I remember discovering both Tigana and Lions by, as you say, seeing them on the bookstore shelf. I remember the sharp intake of breath, followed by a frantic reaching for the wallet. Those, for me, were also the days when buying a hardcover new release was a real luxury for me. Not only were the books not so deeply discounted back then, but my financial situation was such that spending $40 was something I had to think twice about.
Choice and Control. The C & C Reading Factory. We as consumers now have more choice and the publishers seem to have chosen a different form of control than was exercised in the past.
Logically, there were less marks to hit, which individually had a wider market share. I suppose this allowed a book to be marketed in discerning dribbles, whereas now the sluice gates of information are more or less opened wide to allow the “galaxy” of contributors from pro, semi-pro, amateur, fan, groupie, to the glitterati of the litterati to disseminate their views.
The control now seems to be more about when to release the hounds to stoke up a conflagoration of anticipation. This is the worrisome nature of the sameness & repetition to me.
That is, the expected mushroom cloud of tidbits is used more often than not to overwhelm and obliterate a sense of the true nature of something. The hope seems to be that people and products on display can suck up the majority of the oxygen available to them in their short half-life.
A product or person that “has legs” is the surprise rather than the aim. This is all pervasive and stems from what I believe to be the sink-hole of such strategy……this is now a rant which I suppose I could delete, but I mean very much what i’ve said.
George
P.S – The first newly released book of Mr. Kay’s I bought was The Lions of Al-Rassan. The vivid sense-memory that title conjures is thrilling for me, mostly because I can remember acutely how UNKNOWN that title felt when it came from the bookseller’s mouth. That made me so happy. I didn’t know what world this was but I couldn’t wait to visit. I can’t stop smiling now…….
Wow! Thank you for the extended and insightful reply, Mr. Kay!
You’re right to point out that acceptance is the favorable action here. I might be too young to say this (25 years), but while I can understand and respect the need for current marketing and distribution trends, I’m not liking it too much. The speed and immediacy of it all can just feel overwhelming at times.
Don’t get me wrong; your partnership with Penguin is exceptional, and they do a fantastic job with publicizing your work. The Journal here is delightful as well. Do please keep sharing what you feel is important. I particularly enjoyed reading about the ball in Toronto (even though envy pricks me once or twice as I sit here in Houston, Texas).
In the end: If these are the methods that experts say will spread the joy of your fiction to the most people, have at it, I say.
I believe you said at one point (it might have been last year’s reddit AMA) that your writing is like a discovery process. I’ve found that reading is more enjoyable for me when it’s a discovery, as well. The less I know about the story, the better.
Thanks again.
Wow! Thank you for the extended and insightful reply, Mr. Kay!
You’re right to point out that acceptance is the favorable action here. I might be too young to say this (25 years), but while I can understand and respect the need for current marketing and distribution trends, I’m not liking it too much. The speed and immediacy of it all can just feel overwhelming at times.
Don’t get me wrong; your partnership with Penguin is exceptional, and they do a fantastic job with publicizing your work. The Journal here is delightful as well. Do please keep sharing what you feel is important. I particularly enjoyed reading about the ball in Toronto (even though envy pricks me once or twice as I sit here in Houston, Texas).
In the end: If these are the methods that experts say will spread the joy of your fiction to the most people, have at it, I say.
I believe you said at one point (it might have been last year’s reddit AMA) that your writing is like a discovery process. I’ve found that reading is more enjoyable for me when it’s a discovery, as well. The less I know about the story, the better.
Thanks again.
Some smart and sensitive comments here, mirroring my own complex feelings about the process. I think choice and control is apt: we all can decide what we want to know about an upcoming book, and can avoid as much or as little as we choose. I am, for example, hyper-vigilant about trying to warn readers as to even ‘spoilers by nuance’.
What is harder to remain in the dark about is the ARRIVAL of a new book, akin to the film industry’s trailers. I think this is the core idea. Given, as I said in this post, that books have a much smaller window of time to start selling before they disappear from bookstores, and that pre-orders are more and more significant, it is difficult for the industry to sustain a model of ‘eventually it’ll get noticed’.
This is NOT the same point as an author having (or not having) a successful backlist of titles that sticks around for years. And it is sadly true that this aspect of the business, too, is dwindling. I count myself incredibly lucky that the older books pretty much stay in print, but it is not a model that today’s culture encourages at all.
So all of this does, indeed, work to take away the serendipitous, exciting discovery that a new book by a favourite writer is suddenly out. That fits, pretty much, with most of our culture. Word of mouth is sped up, too, and has shifted online.
Some smart and sensitive comments here, mirroring my own complex feelings about the process. I think choice and control is apt: we all can decide what we want to know about an upcoming book, and can avoid as much or as little as we choose. I am, for example, hyper-vigilant about trying to warn readers as to even ‘spoilers by nuance’.
What is harder to remain in the dark about is the ARRIVAL of a new book, akin to the film industry’s trailers. I think this is the core idea. Given, as I said in this post, that books have a much smaller window of time to start selling before they disappear from bookstores, and that pre-orders are more and more significant, it is difficult for the industry to sustain a model of ‘eventually it’ll get noticed’.
This is NOT the same point as an author having (or not having) a successful backlist of titles that sticks around for years. And it is sadly true that this aspect of the business, too, is dwindling. I count myself incredibly lucky that the older books pretty much stay in print, but it is not a model that today’s culture encourages at all.
So all of this does, indeed, work to take away the serendipitous, exciting discovery that a new book by a favourite writer is suddenly out. That fits, pretty much, with most of our culture. Word of mouth is sped up, too, and has shifted online.