thoughtsignals

Authors and book publishers are using quickly recorded audio books to whip up publicity for book sales, sometimes releasing the audio versions before the print version.

Because audiobooks are so fast, inexpensive and easy to record, the dynamic seems to be changing, with publishers looking to the audio format to fuel interest in paper books that aren’t quite ready for the printing press.

And with the ubiquity of iPods, that interest can be generated quickly: recordings need not be pressed onto CDs and packaged, but can quickly be uploaded to iTunes. Sometimes these recordings will be made with well-known authors whose next release isn’t quite ready for bookstores, and other times with newcomers like Ms. Fogarty whose work has gained a following another way.

Ms. Fogarty said that when she was first contacted by Ms. Winfrey’s show, she thought, “I’m going on ‘Oprah.’ Gosh, I wish my book were done.”

Fogarty is the source of the online Grammar Girl podcasts, which can be found here. Two fairly obvious observations about this:

1. Technology changes everything.

2. It’s a good thing that publishers are focused on marketing, rather than on silly things like whining about the disappearance of newspaper book sections.

Link.

Mediapost writer Karl Greenberg has put a stake in the heart of a buzz campaign for a riding lawnmower. Maybe.

“I torpedoed a buzz campaign. I feel really awful about it. Especially since it’s a good campaign.

…

You see, my story — the one I wrote about the fictional grass and the fictional blogs about the grass — shows up on the very top of the list of results you get when you type in … the name of that fictional grass. “

Well, actually his story isn’t appearing at the top of the search results for Google any more. This morning it’s No. 4; No. 3 is another blog post about the incident, and the top two are links to sites that are actually part of the campaign.

You can see the search results here.