My firm was just hired to promote the newest novel from Joseph Finder. We’ll conduct a radio tour to promote the late June publication—a spy thriller. We’ve promoted his books a number of times. What surprises me is how many people have never heard of him, although when I first started promoting him, I didn’t know of him either.
It’s interesting that someone as successful as he has been—five New York Times best-sellers with four million copies in print—can be under the radar. Then again, in a country of 310 million, it’s easy for the vast majority to not recognize best-selling authors, movie stars, politicians, Grammy-winning musicians, or leaders in major fields and industries. There is simply too much to keep track of. Plus, the top people in their given area of expertise, may “only” have tens of millions of fans—or just a few million, still leaving 250+ million people who don’t know anything about the Joseph Finders of the world.
What surprises me is if something can break through, like a Harry Potter book, and gets lots of publicity, ad support, and praise from fans, how come it doesn’t go all the way, and get into the hands of practically everyone? Is it getting to the point that our society’s interests are so varied that we can’t get the majority to like the same thing or know about the same things?
Social media may be contributing to this, to a degree. We’re fragmented. Few national discussions or centralized platforms exist. Instead, we have people tweeting and blogging to a core group of self-selected followers and we have, literally, millions of public discussions going on simultaneously but nothing to unite us. And yet it is probably social media that affords us the best chance to rally the masses to focus on specific issues, people, events, or even books.
I know that we’ll schedule a great radio tour for Joseph Finder. We’ll get him a few dozen interviews with top-tier markets and inform millions of listeners about him. Now we just need to reach the other 300 million people.
Random thought: 51% of Americans age 12 and older have profiles on Facebook, up from 8% in 2008, according to a recent Arbitron/Edison Research survey. What can you conclude from that? I’m surprised to see 49% don’t have profiles, but then again, why does this study include pre-teens? Does a kid really need a Facebook page?
I also thought about seniors who still may not be as active online as others, as well as illiterates, people who can’t afford a computer, and those who don’t speak English well. Really, that 51% number is probably more like 80% of the people who are active and contributing to society. What’s most interesting is how in just a few short years the majority of the country lives on one social networking site. That’s a lot of power and potential there, but how are we harnessing it to market books and to make the world a better place?
Also, Google is king of the search marketing industry. Over 2 million searches take place using Google every minute, according to the New York Times.
Brian Feinblum is the chief marketing officer of Planned Television Arts (rebranded as Media Connect), the nation’s largest and oldest book promotions firm. Brian has worked in the promoting industry since 1989 and has worked with clients of varied professions such as magician David Copperfield and best-selling author Og Mandino.
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