Tallfellow Press Blog

Buried Beneath Web Pages

Anyone else feel overwhelmed by the task of tracking book discussions on the internet?  If so, here are a few places where you can drop in and see, at a glance, what books are getting attention from bloggers and why:

• Technorati Tag: Books
• Del.icio.us Tag: Books
• Furl Tag: Books

We'll add these to our sidebar too. Any others we should know about?

The Grandfather Thing Hits 20,000 on Amazon!

Wow, I just checked on The Grandfather Thing, and its rank is 20,694 on Amazon.

In publishing parlance, that really rocks. Anything under 40,000 is considered awfully good. This new status could be due to the fact that we excerpted a chapter on the GrandTimes web site for seniors. I'll keep checking in to see if it stays there more than a few days.

While checking the site, I realized that I recently bought 2 of the books that are currently in the Top 25 -- Collapse, by Jared Diamond, which is a 600+ page history/sociology/anthropology book, and French Women Don't Get Fat, which is a diet book.

I first found out about Collapse in The New Yorker, and a couple weeks later, a friend of a friend mentioned hearing Diamond give an interview on NPR. So in this situation, the publicists really worked the intellectual in-crowd, focusing on the "environmental impact" and "how we can learn from history and not repeat it" angle. Diamond's book -- which I haven't started reading yet -- apparently contains moralistic undertones about how we should be giving more thought to long-range land and resource management so that we too don't vanish from the planet.

This book is everywhere you look -- on the radio, in major market magazines, in newspapers -- and I think the key to its success is its alarmist p.o.v. Even the most subtle suggestion that society may self-destruct is one that taps into common fears, fears people will spend $25 in an attempt to ameloriate.

French Women Don't Get Fat first entered my awareness around Christmas, when I was feeling especially chubby. I spotted a feature article in the lifestyle section of the Hartford Courant. I made my mother read it, and then we become obsessed with finding the book.

Diet books are always popular, especially if you can offer a refreshing approach that involves little to no effort on the part of the dieter. This book is unique because it offers promises of chocolate and champagne without exercise. Somehow by the end of the process you should end up looking like Juliette Binoche. Hell, this book doesn't even need a publicity campaign. The word of mouth should be, and probably is, ferocious.

To recap. If you want to sell a lot of books:

1) Pick a controversial topic, then figure out how to tie it into current political policy later;

2) Promise the impossible.

Covert Iterations

This blog post came up on my AOL start page today.

I've never seen a more blatant example of covert book marketing. This recent convert to genre literature is going to chronicle the details of her new interest starting tomorrow. I won't be surprised if all of the books she's read are put out by the same publisher -- an up-and-coming romance imprint or independent press, quite possibly specializing in chick lit. (A phrase which I keep mistaking for "Chiclet," as in gum, in casual conversation.)

I'll monitor this and see what happens next...

Enter Your Keyword Here.

Hurray! Tallfellow has opened a Google AdWords account. For the next month we're running three text ads for 2 of our books, at a modest budget. We'll see how it works in driving traffic to our site and drawing attention to Great Failures of the Extremely Successful and It's Summer. Fingers are crossed... Wish us luck!

The Ways of the Web Are Mighty Weird

There's a site called Technorati that is widely known in geek circles to accurately track one's "popularity" on the internet. This means you type in your URL and bite your nails until the results arrive, declaring you a total loser (in which case the error message reads "Ouch! 0 sites have linked to you."), a blazing winner, or, in most cases, a mediocre success.

Technorati monitors books. Its gauge is called Book Talk and it tracks who's talking about what book on the internet today.

Today the top two most widely-discussed books are (drum roll):

David Sedaris's new collection, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim

AND

Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex, new to paperback.

What I'm wondering is whether there are any thematic through-lines connecting Sedaris and Eugenides to our authors, all of whom deserve a few sales, and some of whom demand outright notoriety. If we can siphon away even a sixteeth of their fan base, we'll be sitting pretty.

So let's try.

David Sedaris is a very, very funny man who thanks to NPR exposure finds himself uproariously popular among overeducated folks like myself who read widely but still enjoy fart jokes.

Maybe, just maybe, people will feel the same way about our own Steve Young once he catches on. Steve and David share a similar sardonic streak. Both write for magazines. Both have been fired from a host of jobs. And here's the clincher: David's sister wrote for and starred in "Strangers With Candy," a show about a drug-using prostitute going back to high school, while Steve wrote for "Boy Meets World," about a milk-drinking kid befriending his principal. As you can see, these people are clearly related.

I'll concede that these sensibilities could not be more opposite if they tried, but at least they reside on the same continuum. We could catch the same web traffic, because in theory there exists a lone web surfer who admires any and all TV series about high school. Such a person may stumble upon this blog while researching guidance counselor episodes and come upon this entry. This same person may then buy Steve Young's book, or at least wonder aloud at the striking similarities between him, Amy Sedaris (co-author of Wigfield) and David Sedaris.

Ding!

Our online store should start smoking at any second.

Now, on to Jeffrey Eugenides.

Eugenides is not very funny, but he has written quite extensively about high school (see The Virgin Suicides). What causes a problem for me is his creepy obsession with sex and repression.

Now, our authors are much more wholesome (see Saul Turteltaub's The Grandfather Thing and The Sibling Thing) and a lot more humorous. Saul pretty much sticks to funny anecdotes and witty observations about family life.

However, although readers of Middlesex (like me) may be moody and confused, it's possible that sharp, funny, and gentle books like The Grandfather Thing may serve as a bracing tonic capable of reminding these gloomy types (like me) that there's more to life than death, inbreeding and the Pulitzer Prize. (Sigh.)

Is it obvious what I'm doing here, folks? We all want a piece of the pie. Publishing is a tough business.

Though I have no doubt that people are discussing these two authors (both Greek-American, by the way! I wonder how they feel about "Troy"), I have to add that Technorati is not comprehensive. My average Google search for my own site reveals a smattering of links and trackbacks that this uber-crawler has failed to recognize.

So the bottom line is, yes, shamelessly grab traffic where you can, but don't cede dominion to any one source. I, for one, am hoping the little blogs and clusters of discerning readers will win out for us in the end. In the meantime...

[Deep exhale.]

Here I am, Technorati. Come and find me.