Shelf Awareness's own editor-in-chief, John Mutter, opened the evergreen marketing session by mentioning Calvin Trillin's famous estimation that the shelf life of a book is "somewhere between milk and yogurt." In the Internet age and with 24-hour a day news cycles, the more applicable quotation, he said, might be Andy Warhol's comment that "in the future, everyone will have 15 minutes of fame." This is also the age of the long tail," Mutter continued, as he introduced the panel of publicists and marketing experts who are doing things outside the usual publishing marketing and publicity tool kit.
Rachel Chou, chief marketing officer at Open Road Integrated Media, talked about the difference between "planned vs. real-time marketing." With the dramatic shift online, she said, publishers and authors are no longer tied to the customary eight-week out-of-the-publishing gate time limit on publicity.
"The industry talks to itself," pointed out M.J. Rose, thriller writer, founder of Author Buzz and co-founder of Paroozal.com. "They have absolutely no idea what a new book is. They have a whole different trajectory of they discover books." Rose said publishers do "publishing" marketing, where no one lets authors talk. Rose aims to empower authors to engage their readers instead of waiting for readers to find them.
Gretchen Crary, co-founder of February Partners, said her company started out doing straight publicity but is moving more and more into marketing. "We really focus on social media a lot for our authors," she said.
By way of example, she shared how February Partners helps its clients not only set up and maintain personal Facebook pages, but also customize pages for all their books. "Every book should have its own page," she insisted, or it's just a lost opportunity.
Even in this changing industry--or maybe especially in this changing industry--Crary said authors need to be engaged in publicizing and marketing their books. "If you're an author, your book is your business," she said. "Why would you turn that over to someone else?"
Pauline Hubert, president of Book Movement, which has 30,000 book clubs as members, used the site's current top 10 book club book lists to prove how pub date is irrelevant to readers. "They like to have a book earn its stripes," she said. And right there on the list was One Thousand White Women by Jim Fergus, published in 1998. That's what an evergreen title is," she said.--Bridget Kinsella