How Writers Build the Brand
By TONY PERROTTET
Published: April 29, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/books/review/how-writers-build-the-brand.html?src=me&ref=books
As every author knows, writing a book is the easy part these days.
It's when the publication date looms that we have to roll up our
sleeves and tackle the real literary labor: rabid self-promotion. For
weeks beforehand, we are compelled to bombard every friend, relative
and vague acquaintance with creative e-mails and Facebook alerts,
polish up our Web sites with suspiciously youthful author photos, and,
in an orgy of blogs, tweets and YouTube trailers, attempt to inform an
already inundated world of our every reading, signing, review,
interview and (well, one can dream!) TV appearance.
In this era when most writers are expected to do everything but run
the printing presses, self-promotion is so accepted that we hardly
give it a second thought. And yet, whenever I have a new book about to
come out, I have to shake the unpleasant sensation that there is
something unseemly about my own clamor for attention. Peddling my work
like a Viagra salesman still feels at odds with the high calling of
literature.
In such moments of doubt, I look to history for reassurance. It's
always comforting to be reminded that literary whoring — I mean, self-
marketing — has been practiced by the greats.
The most revered of French novelists recognized the need for P.R. "For
artists, the great problem to solve is how to get oneself noticed,"
Balzac observed in "Lost Illusions," his classic novel about literary
life in early 19th-century Paris. As another master, Stendhal,
remarked in his autobiography "Memoirs of an Egotist," "Great success
is not possible without a certain degree of shamelessness, and even of
out-and-out charlatanism." Those words should be on the Authors Guild
coat of arms.
Hemingway set the modern gold standard for inventive self-branding,
burnishing his image with photo ops from safaris, fishing trips and
war zones. But he also posed for beer ads. In 1951, Hem endorsed
Ballantine Ale in a double-page spread in Life magazine, complete with
a shot of him looking manly in his Havana abode. As recounted in
"Hemingway and the Mechanism of Fame," edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli
and Judith S. Baughman, he proudly appeared in ads for Pan Am and
Parker pens, selling his name with the abandon permitted to Jennifer
Lopez or LeBron James today. Other American writers were evidently
inspired. In 1953, John Steinbeck also began shilling for Ballantine,
recommending a chilled brew after a hard day's labor in the fields.
Even Vladimir Nabokov had an eye for self-marketing, subtly suggesting
to photo editors that they feature him as a lepidopterist prancing
about the forests in cap, shorts and long socks. ("Some fascinating
photos might be also taken of me, a burly but agile man, stalking a
rarity or sweeping it into my net from a flowerhead," he enthused.)
Across the pond, the Bloomsbury set regularly posed for fashion shoots
in British Vogue in the 1920s. The frumpy Virginia Woolf even went on
a "Pretty Woman"-style shopping expedition at French couture houses in
London with the magazine's fashion editor in 1925.
But the tradition of self-promotion predates the camera by
millenniums. In 440 B.C. or so, a first-time Greek author named
Herodotus paid for his own book tour around the Aegean. His big break
came during the Olympic Games, when he stood up in the temple of Zeus
and declaimed his "Histories" to the wealthy, influential crowd. In
the 12th century, the clergyman Gerald of Wales organized his own book
party in Oxford, hoping to appeal to college audiences. According to
"The Oxford Book of Oxford," edited by Jan Morris, he invited scholars
to his lodgings, where he plied them with good food and ale for three
days, along with long recitations of his golden prose. But they got
off easy compared with those invited to the "Funeral Supper" of the
18th-century French bon vivant Grimod de la Reynière, held to promote
his opus "Reflections on Pleasure." The guests' curiosity turned to
horror when they found themselves locked in a candlelit hall with a
catafalque for a dining table, and were served an endless meal by
black-robed waiters while Grimod insulted them as an audience watched
from the balcony. When the diners were finally released at 7 a.m.,
they spread word that Grimod was mad — and his book quickly went
through three printings.
Such pioneering gestures pale, however, before the promotional stunts
of the 19th century. In "Crescendo of the Virtuoso: Spectacle, Skill,
and Self-Promotion in Paris During the Age of Revolution," the
historian Paul Metzner notes that new technology led to an explosion
in the number of newspapers in Paris, creating an array of publicity
options. In "Lost Illusions," Balzac observes that it was standard
practice in Paris to bribe editors and critics with cash and lavish
dinners to secure review space, while the city was plastered with loud
posters advertising new releases. In 1887, Guy de Maupassant sent up a
hot-air balloon over the Seine with the name of his latest short
story, "Le Horla," painted on its side. In 1884, Maurice Barrès hired
men to wear sandwich boards promoting his literary review, Les Taches
d'Encre. In 1932, Colette created her own line of cosmetics sold
through a Paris store. (This first venture into literary name-
licensing was, tragically, a flop).
American authors did try to keep up. Walt Whitman notoriously wrote
his own anonymous reviews, which would not be out of place today on
Amazon. "An American bard at last!" he raved in 1855. "Large, proud,
affectionate, eating, drinking and breeding, his costume manly and
free, his face sunburnt and bearded." But nobody could quite match the
creativity of the Europeans. Perhaps the most astonishing P.R. stunt —
one that must inspire awe among authors today — was plotted in Paris
in 1927 by Georges Simenon, the Belgian-born author of the Inspector
Maigret novels. For 100,000 francs, the wildly prolific Simenon agreed
to write an entire novel while suspended in a glass cage outside the
Moulin Rouge nightclub for 72 hours. Members of the public would be
invited to choose the novel's characters, subject matter and title,
while Simenon hammered out the pages on a typewriter. A newspaper
advertisement promised the result would be "a record novel: record
speed, record endurance and, dare we add, record talent!" It was a
marketing coup. As Pierre Assouline notes in "Simenon: A Biography,"
journalists in Paris "talked of nothing else."
As it happens, Simenon never went through with the glass-cage stunt,
because the newspaper financing it went bankrupt. Still, he achieved
huge publicity (and got to pocket 25,000 francs of the advance), and
the idea took on a life of its own. It was simply too good a story for
Parisians to drop. For decades, French journalists would describe the
Moulin Rouge event in elaborate detail, as if they had actually
attended it. (The British essayist Alain de Botton matched Simenon's
chutzpah, if not quite his glamour, a few years ago when he set up
shop in Heathrow for a week and became the airport's first "writer in
residence." But then he actually got a book out of it, along with
prime placement in Heathrow's bookshops.)
What lessons can we draw from all this? Probably none, except that
even the most egregious act of self- promotion will be forgiven in
time. So writers today should take heart. We could dress like Lady
Gaga and hang from a cage at a Yankees game — if any of us looked as
good near-naked, that is.
On second thought, maybe there's a reason we have agents to rein in
our P.R. ideas.
Tony Perrottet's latest book, "The Sinner's Grand Tour: A Journey
Through the Historical Underbelly of Europe," will be published this
month.
A version of this article appeared in print on May 1, 2011, on page
BR27 of the Sunday Book Review with the headline: Building the Brand.
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