NYT: The dirty little secrets of book tours, and why book writers need blogs

There’s an intriguing little story in the New York Times about writers and booksellers reaching out to bloggers. It notes the increasing websmarts that book publishers and authors are demonstrating in various ways.

Click on the link to see it all. Here are some highlights:

Bloggers have written about books since, well, the beginning of blogging. But a blog book tour usually requires an author or publicist to take the initiative, reaching out to bloggers as if they were booksellers and asking them to be the host for a writer’s online visit. Sometimes bloggers invite authors on their own. In an age of budget-conscious publishers and readers who are as likely to discover books from a Google search as from browsing at a bookstore, the blog book tour makes sense. Although a few high-profile authors have had their books sent to bloggers — James Patterson recently promoted a young-adult book this way — most of the authors are lesser-known and less likely to be reviewed in the mainstream press.

But the results can be impressive. When Frank Portman, the frontman for the band the Mr. T Experience, published “King Dork” in 2006, he teamed up with Andrew Krucoff, a popular blogger, who created a video “trailer” about the book’s main character, an alienated boy who dreams up imaginary bands, and asked Mr. Portman questions for a Q. and A. These files were posted on Web sites like Gawker, Largehearted Boy and BrooklynVegan, along with a recording of Mr. Portman reading from the book and performing songs he had written for it. The goal, Mr. Portman said, was to generate “links and Google-ability.”

He achieved that and more. Tantalized by the Internet attention, USA Today wrote about Mr. Portman and “Late Show With David Letterman” auditioned him as a guest (he wasn’t picked).

“If I had to choose, I’d rather have an author promote themselves online,” said Felicia Sullivan, the senior online marketing manager of Collins, an imprint of HarperCollins, who maintains that the Internet exposes authors to a broader audience than most bookstore readings.

“You can reach at least a few hundred people on a blog, and save time, money and the fear of being a loser when no one shows up to your reading.”

Very interesting. Here’s more:

Initially slow to embrace the Internet, the publishing industry has made up for lost time. It is the rare author who doesn’t have a Web site or MySpace presence. In June Simon & Schuster introduced BookVideoTV, which broadcasts short videos of authors. Another venture introduced in July, Booktour.com, lets authors post information about their books and tour dates (real and virtual). The site was founded by Chris Anderson, the editor in chief of Wired and the author of “The Long Tail”; Adam Goldstein, a 19-year-old sophomore at M.I.T.; and Kevin Smokler, a publishing expert credited with creating the first blog book tour.

That was for “Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers” by the science writer Mary Roach, in 2003. Since then, Mr. Smokler said, “It’s become de rigueur for public relations to include blogs and online media as part of regular touring.”

Many publishing houses have now hired Web-savvy publicists or outside blog tour “producers.” Some blog tour producers say they have, from time to time, paid bloggers to review an author’s book as part of a tour. Bloggers may or may not reveal this detail. Producers also say they may try to dissuade bloggers who want to post a negative review. But in general, negativity is hard to find on a blog book tour. Gushiness — on the part of authors, bloggers and readers — is not.

Let’s just stop here and note that we despise suck-up, sell-out bloggers.

More:

Although authors say that the virtual tours generate traffic for their Web sites and that they have seen their online sales increase, it is difficult to tell how much blog book tours increase sales.

“I haven’t been following that or charting it in a quantitative way,” said Dave Weich, director of marketing and development at Powell’s Books, a bookseller in Portland, Ore., with a strong Internet presence, adding that he would notice only if a single blog sent a significant amount of traffic to Powell’s Web site over a defined period of time.

But then, the dirty little secret of real-life author tours, he said, is that “most of the people who go to events don’t buy books.”