Book Promotion 2.0

Author Dennis Cass has a funny video on Youtube.com about an author hopelessly trying to get with internet promotion of his work. So smartly depressing that you can only laugh.

Using Sweepstakes in Your Marketing

I've worked on just enough sweepstakes promotions in the past to know they're a pain in the rear. But recently a colleague, Rachel Weingarten, had posted something on a writers' board about having run a contest to promote her own book. Rachel, a marketing and PR pro, got a lot of inquiries from writers who wanted to do the same. She realized that many probably didn't appreciate the legal requirements. Here's a blog post she put together at my request about some of these considerations.

Keeping Quiet About Your Problems

Gawker has had a couple of pieces recently that have been making the rounds on the writers boards. One is about a New Yorker writer looking for donations to pay for rescuing his digital images from a crashed hard drive. The other concerns a writer who allegedly used a pseudonym to keep touting the glories of his own writing to Gawker.

It amazes me the types of habits and predilections a writer will advertise in public. The New Yorker popular music critic has this request for up to $5,000 in donations posted on his home page - and he wasn't going to send individual thanks to the donors, though he's willing to post an "honor roll" of those who got his data life together. How the hell does he think people in the industry, including his bosses, are going to see this? Here's a clue: corporations often do things like running background and credit checks to make sure employees or job applicants aren't going to be tempted to steal or sell off inside company information.

As for promoting via a fake email address, don't writers read news stories about authors getting outed for posting anonymous reviews on their own books? Do such people really not realize that they're not as clever as they think? That many people don't know how to uncover subterfuges unless the perpetrator is unusually skilled in technology?

But before you scoff as these displays, consider what you might be doing without realizing it. Have you ever posted on a writers' board asking whether you could get away with something that might be seen as in an ethical grey area? Ever asked about something that you wouldn't want an editor or client to know? Depending on the discretion of strangers is unwise, and you never know when that editorial client might also have access to the same board.

There's nothing wrong with being ignorant of one thing or another. (If there were, we'd all be in constant trouble.) There's nothing wrong with asking for help or in asking "dumb" questions. And there's no value in pretending to be more than you are, because the truth generally works its way out.

However, there is such a thing as being too forthcoming. You hopefully wouldn't go around telling everyone in sight about your problems in relationships, money, and self-control. Why ever would you do the same for professional weaknesses? Develop relationships with colleagues you can respect, learn which ones you can trust, and ask what you need to ask so you can learn to improve. But don't take out the online equivalent of full page ads showing you dressed in fool's motley. It's a way of building and promoting a questionable reputation ... which isn't smart business.