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When publicity embargoes fail

The New York Times has a story about some recent large-scale publicity embargoes for big books that ended up getting thwarted when newspapers – their appetites whetted, perhaps, by those very embargoes – obtained early copies of the book and reported on them ahead of the publication date.

What does the currently ubiquitous Alan Greenspan have in common with George J. Tenet, Bob Woodward and Harry Potter?

In each case publishers prepared elaborate marketing plans to roll out their books under strict embargoes, hoping to control the books’ reception and focus attention at just the moment they hit store shelves. But each time, news organizations were able to buy early copies and write about the contents, creating a publisher’s nightmare of managing bruised relationships with other media outlets — or fans — that thought they had exclusive first rights to the material.

The task of unveiling a big book— especially one with great news interest or enormous popular demand — has changed dramatically in recent years as players in an increasingly competitive news media seek to be the first to unveil content, and the Internet makes it more difficult to keep books under wraps.

At the same time the delicate publicity dance has taken on a heightened importance as books, like movies, must now explode out of the gates or quickly recede.

Closer to home, a similar situation occurred with the recent release of former PM Brian Mulroney’s doorstopper memoirs – a strict embargo didn’t dissuade a couple of prominent national newspapers from “obtaining” copies of the book and reporting on the contents a couple of days before anyone else had seen it.

The damage that leak had on the book’s fortunes can perhaps never be measured. </sarcasm>

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