why don't publishers/authors advertise on TV?

[minervaK]

It just struck me that they don't. Everything else is advertised on TV -- why not books? Anyone know?

MK
www.minervakoenig.com

[B.R.Stateham]

Have you ever priced the cost of advertising time for even local stations? Unless your pockets are filled with spare 50 and 100 dollar bills for maybe thirty seconds or less. . . don't even think about it.

[minervaK]

What about public access TV? I've seen some pretty lame ads on those channels, so it's gotta be cheaper. I realize it doesn't reach a national audience, but it seems to be 'the thing' now to make videos to publicize books -- an investment of a couple of hundred or even a couple of thousand to air those videos on television, even only locally, might be well spent...

[Jack Getze]

I've seen TV ads for Dan Brown's books. Patterson's too.

[Neil Nyren]

We do advertise on TV, Minerva. As B.R. says, though, it is expensive, so you've got to have a big budget for the book to add it into the mix.

[I. J. Parker]

You see, it's absolutely in the power of publishers to create bestsellers. Of course, funds being limited, they can't do it for all their authors, so they do it only for the one who already sells massive numbers of books. A safer investment that way. Or perhaps one-upsmanship toward the competitition.

[minervaK]

Man, I've gotta get cable.

[B.R.Stateham]

Let me give you two alternatives that might give you a bigger advertising budget per dollar. The first one is radio. Much cheaper than tv and hits as many, or maybe even more, listeners as tv does viewers. And small packaged bundles of hits can be affordable.

There are advertising agencies who put ads on the movie screens. . . those ads you look at before the previews come on. They put them on hundreds of screens regionally every night. Those ad spaces are not out of reach budgetarily speaking. And they do work.

[Neil Nyren]

Publishers regularly use radio. And there's been some experimentation with movie screen ads - jury's still out on that, though, I believe.

[Anne Frasier]

I've always thought it would be great if publishers got together and made some cool television ads. Not for specific books or authors, but to promote reading and books. And not some boring PSA, but something really well done by talented directors.

[I. J. Parker]

I don't see publishers getting together on anything myself. And they would simply end up pushing their selected authors.

[Karen Dionne]

In a sense, the television program Castle does this. It's the equivalent of an hour-long commercial that sends the message that books, and specifically crime fiction, are sexy. The ghost-written tie-in, Heat Wave, is doing really well, too, which tells me a LOT of readers are not only watching the show, they're buying books.

[minervaK]

Oh, hell no. Do NOT tell me there's a book connected with that series. Is it 'written' by 'Castle?' That's fucking brilliant.