Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Bloggers and books

Advertising Age has an article about how Timothy Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Work Week, used conferences and blogosphere to sell his book. Ferriess has not made the usual round of TV appearances, bloggers have generated sufficient buzz to propel his book to 123 on Amazon.

Marcy Wheeler, did one better. Her book, Anatomy of Deceit, grew out of her blog. The company which published it, Vastar Publishing, was created by Jane Hamsher and Markos Moulitsas, especially for the book.

Today’s mail brought a review copy of Outsourced, the international thriller about security contractors by R J Hillhouse. I’ve only read a few pages and I am already transfixed. I predict it will be read with close attention in certain circles.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's like there's a new publicity circuit for books, and it doesn't involve as many airplanes.

I've been watching several books that have done a lot of blog-based promotions, and they seem to be doing pretty well.

Alice said...

I've noticed the same thing. It is a great thing for niche books, books who don't enough appeal for TV, or even enough for the local newspaper's book review, but enough appeal that all the bloggers in that are might be interested.

It's building for movies too. Watch the documentaries use blogs to promote themselves.