Promoting The Symposion

Author: * Kallistos Alexandros - 6 Posts on this thread out of 5,716 Posts sitewide.
Date: Jan 20, 2007 - 09:29

I must be too cynical to believe that any of the authors who agree to participate in the AW Symposion do so for altruistic reasons. They do The Symposion for the same reason they do those dreadful book tours, to sell books. When you sign the publication contract, part of the fine print is the amount of time to be spent alone in dreary hotel rooms showing up at backwater bookstores hustling your book. There is no way out of it and only an author with enormous prestige can get away with not doing it. Both Tom Holland and Robin Lane Fox are still doing guest appearances and book signings in England.

For this reason, I have thought for some time that it might be more effective to contact the author’s publisher as well the author. The publishers may see an opportunity for sales in Ancient Worlds and persuade the author better than we could.

Our published amount of members is formidable even though you and I know that it is not at all true. It is listed in the tens of thousands and that sounds to any publisher like a good market even though a careful audit would show that the number of participating members is no more than 200 at very best. This should provide some leverage in dealing with publishers.

Many authors include the name of the individual editor with whom they have worked at the publishing house in the credits for their book. this would be a natural contact name at the publisher’s address and should be used whenever possible. This person is not only our best contact, but also the author’s representative in the publishing firm.

There is a great advantage in requesting on line interviews other than personal appearances; it obviously requires less of the author’s time and far less effort. There is no expenditure involved and yet the number of prospective sales is similar. The draw back is that the interview does not take place at the point of sale and for this reason it should be stressed that there will be a link to an on line purchase point for the book. We have probably sold a great many books through our Amazon links on AW. I know I bought 2 of Tom Holland’s books solely because of his appearance on our site. I suspect others did as well.

In RL these guest appearances are of great value due to the local publicity they engender not only for the author and publisher, but also for the host. I personally, have sent out what seems like an endless stream of hundreds of press releases for similar events in the fine art gallery business and know that they are very effective. I don’t know how this is done on the web, but I suspect that a press release to publications such as Archaeology Magazine could garner some more national publicity for Ancient Worlds.

An AW team concentrating on off site publicity would seem to me to be worth investigating. How many of us came to Ancient Worlds through a small mention in Archaeology Magazine. Imagine if we could use the appearance on line of a well known historical author to engender more print media coverage.

There appears to be here, an opportunity for an all around win win situation in which Authors, publishers, editors, and Ancient Worlds benefit from guest appearances on our site and this should be pursued. It takes merely some aggressive and creative effort by a few for the benefit of many. I know that this can be accomplished, but only if some of us define our goals, concentrate our efforts, and take some aggressive action.