Insta-Promo

I thought this one was fun. Text messaging romance novels in China. There will be changes coming the way that books are handled, promoted, etc, and I wonder if text messages are part of it. Okay, maybe this works in China, but not here. However, even here things are changing. If you look at the success of dearreader.com, who sends out pieces of books in installments, USA Today where they print chapter excerpts, and the NYT summer reading program where they serialize some of the modern classics, perhaps we're returning to the old chapter at a time format. But to be even more effective, it should hook into TV or radio. One of the things that I'll be putting up on my website is an audio clip excerpt because I got my heroine's accent down so well and it became such a part of who she was and I need to share this experience with others (and if doesn't work for you, I don't want to hear about, because I just had too much fun reading aloud to myself).

There was an article in the post about a manuscript that's being shopped around , and the Post chopped it up even before it was published. It'll be interesting to see if it sells or not. It has the "dish" hook going for it, but can that overcome a bad story? If past sales history are any indication, the answer to that is 'yes'.