It’s all about embargo
With the release of the new Harry Potter book Patrick T. Reardon from the Chicago Tribune analyzes what are in general the publishers’ new marketing strategies for these tomes, also mentioning Madonna and her children’s book series. Here’s an excerpt from his article:
Publishers have discovered that, often, the best way to promote a book is to keep it secret – until a predetermined moment when the work is unveiled to the world with great pomp and circumstance.
That’s what Callaway Arts & Entertainment did two years ago when it came out with Madonna‘s first children’s book, “The English Roses.” And it’s what Rodale did last year in publishing Pete Rose’s gambling confession and mea culpa, “My Prison Without Bars.” And what Sentinel tried to do earlier this month with “The Truth About Hillary” by Edward Klein, the former editor of the New York Times Magazine.
The process is called an embargo, and it’s a reversal of the way book publicity usually works. Normally, a publisher does everything possible to grab the eye of a news editor or reporter, including providing advance versions of a book, known as galleys, several months before the publication date.
But, when a book is embargoed, the publisher throws a cloak of invisibility over it.
No one in the news media is supposed to get a look at it or learn details of what’s in it until the laydown date – the day it goes on sale in stores. To get a shipment of the book, store owners frequently have to sign an affidavit promising they won’t start selling it until that prescribed date.
“You want all the people rushing to the store at the same time,” explains Cindy Ratzlaff, vice president of brand marketing at Rodale.
An embargo is almost always an angst-ridden endeavor involving complex and expensive logistical challenges and many sleep-disturbed nights. “You do it when it’s necessary, and you don’t do it if you can help it,” says Ratzlaff.
Yet, in the modern world’s full-court-press, Internet-linked media competition, embargoes are virtually the only way for some books – particularly those by or about political figures, or those containing newsworthy revelations – to arrive at the bookstores without being critically or politically eviscerated or simply talked to death weeks ahead of time.
Source: contracostatimes.com