Karma Bennett, a publicist for Ulysses Press, asks:
“My company is publishing a compilation of zombie stories. It will be direct-to-trade-paperback, so I can’t get reviews in the leading periodicals that review fiction since it isn’t coming out in hardback.
“Some, but not all, of the stories have never been printed before. The editor is not local and, although the compilation does include some of fiction’s biggest names—Steven King, Clive Barker, Harlan Ellison, H.P. Lovecraft, Richard Matheson, Christopher Fowler, Robert E. Howard and Joe Hill—I don’t think they will be responsive to interview queries.
“We are only just starting to venture into releasing fiction and I’m not sure how to go about this. I can’t get reviews. I can’t get interviews. But the topic is zombies which are so popular now because of movies like World War Z, 28 Days Later, and the film version of Pride and Prejudice, and Zombies.
“Can your Hounds suggest ideas for publicity?”
You might try LibraryThing.com Early Reviewers program.
http://www.librarything.com/er/list
Good Luck!
What I would suggest doing is what Universal Studios did when it first announced the upcoming Harry Potter “theme park within a theme park” — go to the bloggers. Science fiction, and zombies in particular, is something that people are very passionate about, and getting reviews from a niche (but popular) science fiction or zombie blog may have the same effect as being reviewed by a periodical, if not more so, for your potential reader.
Your audience is a unique one, and you should treat it as such. A targeted Internet campaign will probably be much more effective for this particular book launch than a traditional method. Tweet about the release date to sci-fi experts on Twitter, send advance copies for review to the bloggers and create ad campaigns on Facebook for users with the word “zombie” in their profile. (Or perhaps advertise on the “Zombies” game app on [and off] Facebook.)
Best of luck, and I look forward to seeing your upcoming book.
We are becoming such a video world and YouTube is becoming so powerful that I would recommend reading excerpts from some of the stories on to video and publishing them on line. At the end of the video send the view to a website for more information or how they can buy the books, also put the text in the description area to attract google. I checked with Istockphoto.com and there are lots of zombie images to add to the video or have someone dress up, etc.. You could even serialize some of the stories.
thanks, bruce
hi.
i wrote a zombie book once. it sold well. it’s called zombie haiku. i made a zombie haiku commercial video with some friends, put that sucker up on youtube, and it quickly got over 100,000 views. not sure if it directly helped sales, but really doubt it hurt it. however, there is a book that sounds EXACTLY like your book, the living dead, which did really good in sales. the person who put the book together went to zombie conventions and horror conventions to help promote it. good luck.
ryan
There are many zombie fan sites that include forums out there. Try googling either “zombie lore” or zombie sites” to find them. Zombie fans tend to stay in contact with others intheir ilk. So, if you send them an announcement about the book, including the authors, they will order copies. You might also try collaborating with some small presses that sell zombie literature — they can advertise your book to their following if you’ll help them with some of theirs.
Feathered Quill Book Reviews will review books for a modest fee. Check them out at http://featheredquill.com/.
Zombie stories would be a fit for horror and possibly sci-fi or fantasy fans, so take the pitch to the genre.
Do a little Googling and locate an active forum/blog or two that allow signatures. Post some excerpt/teasers on those sites. You can also use social networking mediums like Face Book the same way.
Though presentation is important, if you market the wrong audience it’s worthless.
I love zombie story’s why don’t you try adverting on some zombie forums. Or zombie lover sites.
Karma,
What type of interviews are you seeking? In print or online?
I agree with a few comments above, you should seek genre specific blogs and many blog reviews will review for no fee. You could even run a contest.
You should also attempt to gain some basic Q&A style interviews from some of the authors and schedule a virtual book tour.
Good luck!
You need to find the bloggers who are into fantasy and into zombies. Lots of the major bloggers have quite a following and you will be able to get word on the street fairly easily.
Check out this list of blogs. Lots of them are potential reviewers for your work, especially since it is a collection with such important names.
http://otter.covblogs.com/archives/2009/08/sffh-reviewer-database-2nd-edition.html
Completely agree with John. Reviews are definately the way to go when promoting books.
I think it would be a good idea to use kids that are obsessed with zombies and zombie apocalypses as the main idea.