Dovegrey touched yesterday on the subject of a book's brief window of opportunity, and as that's something which has been preoccupying me for a while I thought I'd mention it here and hopefully get people's thoughts on it.
As I have said before, I am in the happy position of being sent lots and lots of books and I do my best to read as many of them as I possibly can. Sometimes I manage to synchronise my reading and posting with a book's publication; occasionally, I write about a book way ahead of its coming out, as I did with Michelle Paver's Dark Matter, on the basis that if it interests readers they will then know to look out for it and look forward to it and I in turn shall flag it up again when release day arrives. More often than not, however, I am wildly out of sync. with the book's timetable, because with the best will in the world I cannot read to fit the schedules of the many publishers with whom I am in touch, and so you may get a post here on a book which has been out for some months (I'm not, of course, referring to 'old' books, but ones still on front lists, still 'current') and with which you are already familiar.
Now, I can see why the publisher wants their latest book to make a big splash - particularly so if it's one of their lead titles and they are putting a lot into its marketing. If it's a best-seller list contender they will want sales concentrated into a period which will have an impact on the chart, not spread more thinly over the months, so 'saturated' coverage - whether in newspapers or on blogs - will be what they are after. If you are a writer, the same thing may apply, but I'd have thought you'd be glad to see your book being written up on a blog at any time, and particularly a while after publication, so that the momentum is kept up and sales (and income) continue. Looking at things from the point of view of a reader, and a reader of blogs as well as of books, we want variety, do we not? We don't want to see the same book featured on every blog we visit in a given week, even if we are interested in comparing opinions on it and we respect the views and enjoy the postings of those who've written about it.
My point, then, is this: it may serve a publisher's interests to have a blogger post as close to publication day as possible, and to a lesser extent that applies to a writer's needs, but for readers - and it is that group for whom this blog is written, after all - that 'window of opportunity' I referred to earlier should be as wide as possible.
What do you think?
