The media is dumb these days. It is getting easier and easier to create a shitstorm that people write about.
I first realised this when reading this book by the guy who did PR for American Apparel and Tucker Max:
http://www.ryanholiday.net/welcome-to-tr...nipulator/
If I was writing a book I would follow the examples given in the Ryan Holiday book above.
Come up with some silly story to do with your book. And then get some small site - or small local newspaper to write about it.
Once you have a small fish biting on your bait. You forward the story to a slightly bigger newspaper - pretending to be a reader who is wondering why the newspaper isn't covering this.
Rinse and repeat.
Eventually - you will have the big papers/magazines/sites covering the story that started out as a stunt to get in the local press.
You just keep playing the story up the media chain. Moving up to bigger and bigger media platforms.
I could think of some examples of this - but in fact a link I was going to pass along gives a perfect example of this anyway:
http://www.salon.com/2013/03/15/hey_amaz..._my_money/
This guy ended up with a best seller on Amazon. And all because the cover of his book was a rip off of the design of a Jack Daniels bottle. Which resulted in Jack Daniels sending him an incredibly polite 'cease and desist' order.
The fact that the letter was so polite (despite it being from corporate lawyers) made the situation novel enough to get other sites/newspapers to write about it. Since it was unusual to see such politeness in the type of letter which is usually quite threatening.
As such - the story went 'viral' for a few days - before the media moved on to the next 'viral' story. The thing is that there are hundreds of 'viral' stories each year - providing exposure to alot of things which would otherwise be overlooked. And in alot of cases those 'viral' stories are carefully prepared by the people involved.
Most of the stories in the Daily Mail seem to fit this bill. And to give an example from the Ryan Holiday book above. When marketing the Max Tucker books - he defaced a billboard hoarding advertising the book. He did it himself - and spray painted something like 'Tucker Max is a cheating bastard!' over the poster. This was particularly powerful since the Tucker Max book was a memoir of his drunken antics which often involved screwing lots of women.
He then forwarded the photo (pretending to be a member of the public) to a few sites/local newspapers.
And once the locals started to write about this funny story - the regional papers became interested. And within a few days - the national papers were writing about it.
It seems that the media are only prepared to talk about it - if those around them (or on the rung below them) are talking about it. Indeed - most journalists at the big papers only cover stories which catch their eyes from the local papers and from sites like Jezabel.com
As such - if I was writing a book - I would think about some creative ways to get the media interested in it. With the newspapers, blogs and websites looking for new content 24/7 - they will definitely run with whatever you give them. But only if it ticks the boxes of what they feel their readers might be interested in.
Hell - even '50 Shades Of Grey' benefited from this. A big part of its early success - was the fact that the book was filthy and written by a middle aged English housewife.
That disparity alone provided an angle for writers as they wondered if this revealed something, as yet unsuspected, about the average housewife.
Of course - it soon went through the stratosphere. But that was because everybody started buying and talking about the book - to see why everyone else was buying and talking about the book. That is the pinnacle of successful hype. But - you only get to that kind of level when your success starts to feed back on itself.
The internet is a powerful tool. And anyone can leverage it to create a bigger splash than you could ever imagine. You just have to give yourself permission to start thinking creatively (and a little cynically).
This is probably a silly example. But I was thinking about reading 'Enjoy The Decline' by Aaron Clarey. So - if I was looking for a way to market that book - I would say that any profit from the book will be donated to the US government in order to pay off the national debt.
It is the type of media fodder which would get gobbled up. And the publicity you get from such a stunt would be worth it as opposed to having a book sell in small numbers and be forgotten about.
To finish. Nicholson Baker is a great writer. But even he only became famous when it was reported that his novel 'Vox' had being given as a gift from Bill Clinton to Monica Lewinsky.
It is all about creating a wave of interest and surfing it to the shore. And I never realised this until reading the Ryan Holiday book mentioned above.
Indeed - if I was writing a book. These days I would figure out the marketing strategy first. And them makes sure the book I am going to write would work well for such a strategy. The importance of a good 'angle' is so important that it needs to become a part of your thinking when deciding what book to write in the first place.
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