Mark Blevis

Before our two daughters were born, we were part of a book club.  More accurately, Andrea was in a book club and I attended the meetings with her (because the meetings were pot-luck meals of cuisine related to the theme or backdrop of the book).  It was during this time that Andrea told me in an impassioned way about shocking events I believed to involve friends of hers.  It turns out she was talking about characters in a book and the events she described, while unusual, came with such detail and resonated so much that it seemed hard to believe Andrea hadn’t observed all the activity first hand.

Books have the ability to involve readers in the story in a way that no other media can.  With the exception of storytelling, books are the original hot (and niche) media and remain strong to this day; whether fictional stories to which we can relate, non-fiction books that spread original ideas or children’s books that open young minds to amazing possibilities and creative ways of thinking.  It is this unique and important role they play that has made the discussion about books and their future a recurring theme of late and the subject of a growing number of conferences and forums including today’s BookCamp Toronto.

In my session, The Carrot Seed: A new model for book, author and publisher promotion, I will be exploring some of the creative ways books have been promoted and how communities have formed around books and their creators.  While the focus of my session is on ways to raise awareness of books, the underlying message of my session is that the publishing industry’s greatest challenge isn’t the technology through which books will be made available, but the continued development of talent that will attract new audiences, keep growing literacy levels and inspire readers of all backgrounds.  Without that foundation, the entire book industry will fall down.

My session draws on three assumptions (while there are more, I’m focusing on three):

• books have always been recommended by trust agents
• review space in traditional media is shrinking
• economics demands that publicists do more with less and book creators are now an integral part of the promotion strategy

I’ll be highlighting a number of promotional approaches that I feel are particularly interesting and I will share some dos and don’ts to help the publishing industry work with book bloggers and podcasters.

Here are some of the specific campaigns that I will reference in my session:

• The Graveyard Book and its video tour (Neil Gaiman)
• The Best Laid Plans (Terry Fallis)
• Pow! Right Between the Eyes (Andy Nulman)
• The Softwire (P. J. Haarsma)
• 30 Poets/30 Days (Greg Pincus)
• Rock Stars of Reading documentary series (Just One More Book!!)