Submit here for publishing consideration and community feedback. Publicity is essentially free advertising. A full-page review, on the other hand, is free. The equation works on a smaller scale, too. Advertisers are interested in impressions, or the number of times the potential consumer is exposed to advertisements for the product in question.
Publicity is a way to generate exposure without the expense of advertising.
So every time you see a celebrity on Larry King Live , a doctor on Good Morning America , or a blurb about a new celebrity book in Liz Smith s column or in Time magazine, or hear a rock star talking with the morning drive team on your favorite local radio station, you can be sure that a publicist is somewhere in the background. Certain books are likely to get more publicity than others. In a word, the books that are most likely to generate media attention are nonfiction. Cookbooks, biographies, political books, and books about health generate a lot of publicity. With a big book, an enormous amount depends on the author s ability to sell to the media and therefore to the consumer.