So we got a press release this morning about how the ninth annual “Get Caught Reading Month” has been going on for over a week now, with celebrities like Dylan and Cole Sprouse reminding kids that “reading is a fun brain-feeder and it stays with you for a lifetime,” and this year there’s a new component to the campaign called “Get Caught Listening,” which is all about, according to the press release, “the particular pleasures of books in audio format.” So far, we know “the heart of the campaign will be pre-recorded audio voice-overs of traditional and celebrity authors sharing their passion for audiobooks, complemented by a print campaign of those authors ‘getting caught’ listening to their favorite audio books,” but we probably won’t find out who those authors are until the campaign’s official launch at BookExpo America—a launch that is scheduled to spill over into June’s National Audiobook Month.
Which I thought was some new marketing gimmick, but according to Google it’s been going for a couple years now. Huh. But it’s that “traditional authors” nomenclature that cracks me up, every time. You don’t see this in other creative fields; Scarlett Johansson doesn’t get billed as a “celebrity vocalist,” for example, and you never get an exhibit of “traditional and celebrity painters.”