End of the book tour?
Maxine Clarke
Tuesday, 21 October 2008 14:04 UTC
Via Bookbrunch:
Publishers are abandoning book tours in favour of podcasts and suchlike, the Christian Science Monitor notes. A method of promoting books invented by – depending on whose account you read – Jacqueline Susann or Jane Friedman is going out of fashion. Among the examples:
Man Booker Prize-winner Ian McEwan opted not to take his 10th novel, On Chesil Beach, on the road this past summer. In his place, a short film was screened by bookstores in 54 US cities.
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Replies
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Yes, I’m (or rather my blog!) is taking part in Tania Hershman’s virtual book tour in the next few weeks, which has been organised by her publisher, Salt. She is going to be interviewed by one different blogger a week, and that way travels the world without moving from her desk. Maybe not quite the same scale as McEwan, but maybe the principle is the same!
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I think it’s one of those regular things like the regular announcement of the death of the book itself. At one end of the spectrum, I notice that Neil Gaiman seems to be having no trouble still selling out book tours. At the other end, ordinary writers (like me) never had them anyway (though I am going to be taking Plymouth by storm in February!)
It’s perhaps only literary types whose fame exceed their audience size who are likely to lose the opportunity.
I think virtual book tours are great, but their only real similarity is the name, they’re a totally different exercise, more like the old technique of getting articles out to magazines to coincide with a book’s publication.
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On the plus side, I guess virtual book tours can get to far more places than real-world ones. But on the other side I think the excitement of a real-live author you can smell and touch (as it were) still wins out over a mere recording or transmission.
Perhaps this will not always be the case as we become more accustomed to virtual presence supplanting real presence – perhaps a generational change will occur.
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Indeed: there is always the virtual book-signing, pioneered by Margaret Atwood, to go with the virtual tour. Is that a substitute for the real thing, I wonder?
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