“We can bitch and moan all we want about what our publishers are not doing for us,” says author M.J. Rose, following up on yesterday’s reactions to the NYTBR piece on how authors cope with publicity cycles. “But that won’t help the situation at all.” Rose, who runs author publicity advice on the blog Buzz, Balls, and Hype “because there are over 195,000 books published a year and they can’t all get reviews in the NYTBR,” emailed us to observe that “the more an author can support his or her own title the more empowered he or she is going to feel and the more chances the book has to succeed.”
“Is this the right way for a business to run?” she asks. “Not many people think so. But it is what we’re faced with so we have to be smart about how to make it work for us.” Her advice? “Spend the advance on the book and keep your day job. No one ever said I wish I’d gotten less press and less reviews. If your book fails even after you’ve put your own money behind it, at least you can never wonder what would have happened if you’d helped support your own book and your own career.” Rose has recently launched her own marketing service, Authorbuzz.com, which provides writers with a platform to pitch their books to readers, librarians, and booksellers via online newsletters.