Does Pretty Mean More Promo From Publishers?

You know, everywhere I go lately, I’m hearing about s Diana Peterfreund’s debut novel, Secret Society Girl. I like Diana’s online personality, but I don’t really get the hype re the book, mostly due to the fact that as a Brit, I don’t understand the concept of secret societies within universities. There certainly weren’t any such societies at my uni, or at least no bugger told me about them.

Every time I surf over to Diana’s site, she has a new tale about radio interviews, major newspaper reviews, sponsorship deals, ad campaigns etc, etc. You name it, she’s done it.

Currently on her blog, she has a vid of her latest (or maybe it was her first) tv interview. Talk about impressive.

Every time I see a new marketing initiative for SSG, I marvel at the amount of effort, that has gone into promoting this book. I also want to know, how much of that was engineered by Diana herself, and how much was organised by her publishing company.

In the past year, I’ve read an awful lot about how the marketing machine works in Romanceland. Apparently it’s hard work, and a lot of midlist authors have to part with their own money to push their books.

So, what’s Diana’s secret?

As I watched a very personable Diana being interviewed by some bint reporter, the answer hits me square in the eye.

She’s a very marketable product.

She’s young, she looks good, she sounds great, she’s articulate (although I do think she looked a little embarrassed when she admitted to having been a covergirl on a very sexy romance book heheh) she has all her own teeth, and most importantly, the wench has good hair. If I was an author, I’d probably fly into a jealous rage right about now.

A while ago, there was a discussion on how good an author looks vs how much their publishers promote them. Yeah, yeah, I know it’s the quality of the writing that really counts, yaddah yaddah yaddah, but let’s face it, we live in a world, where looks do matter, and the better looking you are, the more chance you have of being pimped all over the place, and if you’ve written a wickedly good book, well, all the better.

Look at that bint Vishwanathan, of the How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, etc, etc, fame. OK, perhaps a bad example, but you get my drift dontcha? That bint got lauded all over the bloody place, and people were convinced that she’d written a good book, because the media machine told us so.

I’m sure that SSG is probably a fantabulous book, but seriously, would DP be getting this much media air time, if she'd been a 400lb ginger-haired, acne-ridden, hippocrocapig?

I’m just sayin’.