Simon & Schuster
Web Map to Social Media, Part 7: As Seen on YouTube
November 9, 2007
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by Matthew Patin
There isn't much to say about YouTube that hasn't already been said, but it would be careless to exclude this mammoth of social media from our series. And "mammoth" is no exaggeration: YouTube is big, hairy, and, er, tusk-wielding. Well, at least it's the first of those three, unless we were to explore some extended metaphor. Get this: YouTube has the eighth largest audience on the Internet, pulling in 55 million unique visitors each month, according to Nielsen/Net Ratings. Read: YouTube's no fad. Google doesn't pay $1.65 billion for fads. And fads don't hold this much book marketing and publicity potential.
So, what exactly does YouTube---or at least the technology it employs---mean for book publishing?
Well, duh, book trailers for one. (But that's not all. More later.) In an interview with Publishers Weekly blogger Barbara Vey, Sheila Clover English, CEO of book trailer producer Circle of Seven Production, said she "expect[s] to see book video become a main element in most authors' marketing campaigns." Whether trailers become the "main" element remains to be seen, but there's little doubt that online marketing and publicity efforts---including YouTube and other social media---will become standard in book launches.
This year Simon & Schuster partnered with the New York Film Academy to create the "Reel Reads Book Sizzle Contest," in which 400 students were invited to create a three minute trailer for one of S&S's titles. The contest itself hasn't much to do with YouTube, but another S&S project does: BookVideosTV. BookVideosTV is a channel on YouTube that exhibits book marketing and publicity possibilities other than book trailers. It features author profiles and even some behind-the-scene looks at the book in the developmental stage. It's like VH1's "Behind the Music," but twice as sordid! (No, not really. Not at all.)
So, bottom line, YouTube can be way more than just trailers for books. Even Oprah and Harpo Studios announced this month the launch of the "Oprah on YouTube" channel. Neither the press release nor Oprah's welcome video mentioned Oprah's Book Club specifically, but who knows? Perhaps the juggernaut that is Oprah's Book Club will eventually find a second home on YouTube.
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Beltway Books: CIA to Plame: Don't Publicize Public Record
August 8, 2007
by Aaron Hierholzer
A federal judge ruled last week that Valerie Plame cannot reveal the dates of her employ at the CIA in her upcoming autobiography Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House. Plame and Simon & Schuster filed suit against the agency when the CIA Publications Review Board decided that the memoir was fine--except for those dates. Thing is, the dates had already been widely reported and published in the Congressional Record (and are on Wikipedia). Judge Barbara Jones says, however, she was swayed to bar the dates from the book by a letter from the CIA. What did it say? Even S&S and Plame don't know, since that letter was classified.
The publisher hasn't said whether it will appeal the ruling, but the book seems to still be on track. You can already order it on Amazon! (Current user tags: "neocon garbage" (4), "glorified excrement" (5), and the succinct "Evil" (3).) Plame's looking fetching on the cover, but the lack of classic spy imagery is disappointing.
Related books:
- Plame's less hot husband Joseph Wilson wrote a door stopping account of the leak (The Politics of Truth, Carroll & Graf, $16.95) that was well-reviewed, but failed to reach sales of hotcake proportions,
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