The Publishing Contrarian

Raise your hands!

Is your anger and resentment so all-consuming that you can talk about nothing to friend and family other than how awful your ex is being toward you, how mistreated and marginalized you were at work, or how loathsome and certifiable your neighbor is? Are you cornering virtual strangers in the supermarket and subjecting them to your indignant tirade, when all they wanted was help getting a can of peas off the top shelf? When you saw Charlie Shanian, Tori Spelling’s ex-husband last week on “The Dr. Keith Ablow Show,” did you scream: BOOK ME!

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It took me just a jacket-read at Book Hampton to understand why Kim Edward’s book, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, became a creeping, then raging bestseller through word of mouth. In fact, even had it been the most poorly written book in the history of publishing, I know it still would have ignited a brushfire in sales.
 
Given the usual routine whereby publishers blast 300 author review copies (ARCs) into outer space, hoping against hope that they’ll somehow land on an interested reviewer’s desk, writers need to write with clever marketing ploys in mind and editors need to capitalize on the ancillary (meaning other than a good plot) elements that authors can weave into a book to make readers eager to buy. Sure, everybody hopes the book is good, but sales don’t have to be completely plot-driven for a book to be successful in monetary, if not literary, terms.  
 
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