Artistic License: Booking some publicity

08 February 2009  By Nadine O’Regan

Every so often, I receive a letter, e-mail or call from a disappointed novelist. Their reason for getting in touch is always the same: no publication has printed a review of their latest novel and they want to know why. Is it their publishing house that’s the problem? Maybe it didn’t send out the books? Or maybe it’s their publicist? Or has the media taken a dislike to them? Their novel is about to slip off the shelves into the burial ground of remainder bins - and they’re presiding over its dying breaths, desperately trying to figure out where it all went wrong.

In all the communications I receive, it’s rare that I ever hear from a novelist who is willing to own up to the fact that the problem might not just be with the publishing houses, media or publicists - it might be with them. Whether they like it or not, it’s often the truth. The time has long gone when it was enough for obscure novelists to sit on their hands and wait for others to do their promotional work for them. If novelists want to succeed these days, they need to get active and innovative. If they don’t, they can probably kiss their creative job goodbye.

It’s something that musicians - giant steps ahead of authors, thanks to the near-collapse of their industry structure post-Napster - realised long ago.

Say what you like about Brit-pop starlet Lily Allen, she has the marketplace all figured out. Despite the fact that she is signed to a record company which promotes her albums, Allen pushes her own PR agenda: she blogs, MySpaces and harasses her fellow popstars via often hilariously inappropriate quotes. Lily makes the news, all of the time.

Her contemporaries are nearly as innovative. Bands like The Delays have offered to perform in fans’ houses, while plenty of bands, stuck without record company funding, have persuaded their fans to contribute funds to help them record their albums.

By comparison, authors often seem sleepy about pushing their own agenda. It’s all very after-the-fact: the book has generally already been out for weeks when authors realise that they should have done more to help themselves. While they’re probably unlikely to want to behave like Lily, having a smidgeon of her inventiveness wouldn’t go astray.

In recent times, it has been great to see more innovative approaches come from writers. While Neil Gaiman has a well-regarded blog, Eels main man Mark Everett reads from his memoir at his gigs. Irish writer Peter Murphy’s new novel, John the Revelator, has its own YouTube video, a gloriously kooky affair that lasts just two minutes, but allows you to enter into the world of the eponymous character. Murphy has also spoken about creating an album version of his book, to be set to music performed by Corm Mac Con Iomaire of the Frames, among others.

It’s an intriguing prospect - and it’s probably no coincidence that Murphy is also a journalist. He knows what authors are up against in their efforts to establish themselves. With the recession biting hard and totems of the arts scene falling one by one, it has never been as vital for authors to hawk their wares.

Writing disappointed letters to the likes of me is all well and good, but it’s better to do more - to blog like Lily, stage bizarre-venued live performances like The Delays and connect to the public in whatever way you can. For the sake of your book, it’ll be worth it.

Nadine Oreganos is The Sunday Business Post’s arts correspondent. She presents The Kiosk, Phantom 105.2’s arts and culture show, every Saturday at 11am