NOT LONG ago, I found myself seated with a pimp and three high-priced escorts, the kind favored by the former governor of the great state of New York. I was in a lawn chair while the four of them were in a hot tub -- what is the word? -- gamboling in the steamy water and . . .
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Once upon a time, an author published a book and left the selling to the experts in the marketing department. This was the case as recently as last week. But that quaint notion has suddenly gone the way of Duran Duran. Now, because of recent developments in the world of publishing, writer and merchant are fusing into one. Willy Loman and Arthur Miller have commingled. Call it -- forgive me -- Birth of a Salesman.
Publishers still occasionally provide promotional support for an author to whom they have paid a whopping advance. Other authors, however, the ones without giant deals, are placed on an ice floe and set adrift. Yes, you say. Of course. 'Twas ever so. But if once comfort might have been derived from such platitudes, this was before the Internet and the anticipated Death of Print.
And yet, the ironic thing about the Death of Print is that no one seems to have told the publishing industry. Even as review column inches shrink and fewer writers appear on radio and television, books continue to tumble out like bunnies during birthing season.
It is a faint and slightly maundering sound, muffled, no, smothered by the cacophony of the culture. But to borrow a phrase from the indefatigable Mrs. Loman: Attention must be paid.
How?
Why, the author video. In the last few months, I have become an expert on this subject, as any author now must be. My new novel, "Shining City," will be published in July, and the promotional budget would not cover bus fare to the book party. To attract readers, I find myself looking to do something . . . sizzling. All of which brings us back to that hot tub, with those three high-priced escorts and that pimp.
Yes, yes, I know -- this seems utterly gratuitous: blatant, even prurient. David McCullough would never sit next to a hot tub in which John Adams is frolicking with Dolley Madison and Betsy Ross. But McCullough and I are very different writers, and given my material, pimps and hookers are not so far off the mark. "Shining City" is about a regular guy from Van Nuys, a middle-class dad, who inherits his brother's dry cleaning business and learns it is a front for a high-priced call-girl ring. He needs money, so he does some on-the-fly moral calculations and, presto, he's a pimp. Whatever you may think of the character's principles -- feel free to judge him with your book group -- it's great material for an author video.
