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Shooting Yourself in the Foot

March 3, 2008 A reviewer recently sent me the following email (edited slightly to remove all identifying information):

> My spies at [publisher] indicated to me that [title] by
> [author] was allegedly fedexed to you yesterday (we have our
> doubts as to whether it actually was) in the hope that we
> could get a review in before its official publication date. 
> I have already read a copy and can knock out a review if
> you want one.  It's a good book, and I don't want to see it
> neglected because [publisher]'s publicity dept is run by a
> bunch of idiots.

I wish I could say I was surprised to see such invective leveled at a publicity team--though this is the first time I've had a reviewer send in such a complaint--but I've heard many authors grouse about shoddy or careless publicists. Some of their concerns are fairly serious, too, like "they didn't submit my book for a major award" or "I said I would be a guest at this convention and they didn't contact dealers to make sure they would be selling my book in the dealers' room." I've heard it suggested that this is mostly a problem with big publishing companies where one overworked publicity team handles everything from bestsellers to chapbooks, but the publisher mentioned above is independent and I've see great publicity work from genre imprints at major mainstream houses, so I don't think that's really the heart of it. I don't know enough about the inner workings of publishing companies to come up with a better theory, though; I might guess that lack of accountability or oversight is an issue, or that poor work by publicists is masked by the zealous self-promotion efforts of authors, but it's very hard to say from out here. I also don't want to discount the great work done by the many zealously dedicated publicists who work tirelessly to promote the books they represent. While lackadaisical publicity is far from unusual, it's also far from universal.

It doesn't surprise me that the reviewer has "spies," and publishers shouldn't be surprised either; everyone knows everyone else, especially in the science fiction and fantasy publishing world. I just hope publishers start paying closer attention. They could even send out anonymous surveys to their authors, asking them to rate the publicists they work with and then promoting the competent ones and dismissing the rest. Maybe the reviewer's complaint is valid or maybe a few bad apples are spoiling that particular barrel, but either way the onus is on the publisher to identify and fix the problem, because a bad relationship between publicists and reviewers is bad news for everyone.

Posted by Rose Fox on March 3, 2008 | Comments (0)