publicity

What it Feels Like to Have a Post Go Viral

Posted on by cassiemdrumm

About a week ago I gave BuzzFeed content from one of my assigned books to put in an article. I’ve given BuzzFeed content before and the articles get a couple hundred or a couple thousand views. It might not do a whole lot for book sales, but it looks good to get a spot on a national website that will continue to generate interest. The post went up on BuzzFeed on a Wednesday evening. By the middle of Thursday, I got an email from the writer saying that the post went viral. At that point, there were about 500,000 views on the post, and it was trending in that day’s top articles. I started to get requests from other websites wanting to feature the same content and interview the author of the book. Emails started pouring in asking for images and quotes to use. As I continued to check the original article, it just got more and more popular. The sales rankings on Amazon and B&N went up into the top 100 (from a lowly spot somewhere in the 100,000s). Amazon went out of stock very early, probably because they were not anticipating such widespread sales.

I went home from work on Thursday and people were seeing the article on Facebook and other social media sites. When I would tell my friends about it, they would say that they had seen the article circulating already. Another publicist saw it all over Facebook before I told her about the viral post. On Friday morning, I got an email from the author saying that she didn’t sleep because she was up all night writing answers to interview questions. In another office, publishers were panicking because they would have to reprint the book quickly as our stock was dwindling. I read through the thousands of comments on the article and found that readers thought the post was hilarious (it was a humor book) and they would want to give the book to their friends. The post was continuing to gain speed and went up to 1.7 million views by the time I left work on Friday.

It was an incredibly exhilarating experience to have a post (originating from me) go viral. I’ve only experience something like it one other time, when a celebrity author retweeted a tweet from the company. The tweet gained a lot of traction and the page was gaining followers by the second. But that was nothing compared to this. Requests from major sites were pouring in, all trying to jump on the trend and get their readers to interact with their websites. The visible spike in sales was also very encouraging and actually just pretty amazing. Many times, when there is an article, blog post, or social media post about one of our books, it’s hard to tell whether it made a difference in sales. With this, we can say that it definitely made a difference. All this being said, I will definitely start to think differently about the importance of BuzzFeed articles from now on.

A Note About Book Publicists

Posted on by cassiemdrumm

It’s been a very stressful week for the publicity department. Between excerpt requests, looming fall titles, social media queues, and backlist press, my colleagues and I definitely need a staycation. There are a lot of things that I love about being a publicist. The main thing: I get to talk to people about books and bring attention to the ones that really deserve it. I have fun creating content for social media platforms. Making spreadsheets gives me a rush. Figuring out how to write effective releases and pitches is both a challenge and a joy. But, out of all of those things, there are some really really hard parts to being a publicist. Especially a book publicist.

A lot of people (including those in the industry) don’t seem to really understand what a publicist does, or they don’t appreciate it. There are numerous questions and requests that I receive on a daily basis that I have to redirect to another person or department. Publicists get criticized by many different arms of the publishing world for not doing enough, not doing things correctly, and being difficult to work with. This is probably no one’s fault specifically, but the fault of the industry as a whole for not being wholly educated on all steps of publishing a book. Being in a Master’s in Publishing program has helped me greatly understand the different parts of publishing, what they are each responsible for, and what their motives are. I think that this type of education should be more of a standard in the industry. A whole degree isn’t necessary, but education to at least understand the people who you may have to work with would be helpful.

Publicists also have to face a ton of rejection and, even worse, silence. I’m pitching books to media outlets a couple times a week, and there are a very small percentage of contacts that actually get back to me. I send out e-blasts of letters, advance copies and ARCs, follow up emails, and press releases and usually less than 10% of the pitching that I do actually results in something. There are constant rejection emails and editors saying that something isn’t quite right. I understand why. The market is saturated with too many things to write about and not enough outlets to cover them. You have to have a really standout book in order for places to be interested in talking about them.

Finally, we all have SO many titles that we work on every season. It takes finely tuned organization skills (which is great because I love spreadsheets) and, believe it or not, patience. All of these frustrating and difficult things about my job don’t make me love it less, though. Facing rejection, people not understanding my job, and busyness make me just want to work harder to reach success. The difficulties in my job give me the motivation that I need to reach my ultimate goal. All of the pros and cons aside, that’s probably the best part about my job.

[If you have any questions about what a book publicist does, feel free to ask in the comments!]