To plug, or not to plug...that is the question...

Well, you have to respect a good marketing concept. Many years ago, large corporations (and sophisticated small shops) learned that if they sent the major news networks well produced "news" segments a large percentage of news outlets (both print and video) would run the "story" as if it was their own. The "best" of the video ones would include "blank" interview spots where the locally/nationally recognized talking head could ask the carefully worded question (these can usually be identified by the fact that the asker and the askee are never in frame together. This has become something of an epidemic (see, e.g. the Center for Media and Democracy's recent piece on this). Of course, the the White House has embraced this reality distortion program as well.

There has been some whining that the blogosphere has suffered from this form of product/issue placement as well, which brings us to the present. I think I am amused...or at perhaps bemused...I'm not certain. I received the following from ABE earlier today:

Dear Ian

Just come across your blog via a link from the Fine Books Blog. If you are looking for any blog fodder, there are a few features on AbeBooks that may interest you.

10 most expensive Stephen King books ever sold through AbeBooks
http://www.abebooks.co.uk/docs/Community/Featured/10-stephen-king.shtml

A haunted bookstore with a ghost called Claire
http://www.abebooks.com/docs/Bookstores/BooksellerProfiles/profile-haunted.shtml

A bookseller called Larry Coven, who specializes in horror
http://www.abebooks.com/docs/Bookstores/BooksellerProfiles/larry-coven.shtml

Regards
Richard

I chose not to post any of them...mostly because I have been so busy over the past few weeks that I have not had time to post about events and topics that *I* thought are/were interesting...let alone feed the ABE PR machine. I post now because I was genuinely surprised by the number of other book blogs that *did* post about one or more of the "suggested topics." This is not, of course, on par with the "here is a complete post, all you have to do is throw it up" that has become much of mainstream "news", but I wonder how long it will be. As bad as I am about carving time out to post, I promise, gentle reader, that I will not post another's PR sound bite and pretend it is my own...but I'll post the umbrella message every time *laughing*.