In which new meaning is brought to the term ‘book release,’ and also in which Young Thomasina wonders whether the Blogs as Publicity phenomenon is a creation of the media, publishers, or her own overactive imagination

Yes, there can be too much of a good thing. This fall, bookstores will be crowded even before the customers/rabid fans (as in ‘fantatics‘) stampede in, with a near-superfluity of ‘brand-name’ authors jostling each other in book form on the shelves.

Lest you think I am only indulging my linguistic hyperbole, consider this: “blockbuster” authors John Grisham, Steven King, Michael Crichton, Dean Koontz, John Le Carre, Robert Ludlum, James Patterson, Michael Connelly, David Baldacci, Tess Gerritsen and Danielle Steel all have new books this fall. Should that list be insufficiently intimidating, consider that literary favourites Margaret Atwood, Isabel Allende, Cormac McCarthy, Mary Gordon, Richard Ford and Alice Munro will also have new titles on the shelves, while infrequently-publishing-but-well-beloved authors Thomas Pynchon, Charles Frazier, Thomas Harris and Joseph Wambaugh will issue their latest. In nonfiction, Michael Lewis, Gore Vidal, Bob Woodward, Frank Rich, Bill O’Reilly, Andrew Sullivan, John Ashcroft, and Barack Obama will also be releasing books. With such a bevy of names, it seems as though they really are releasing the books, much as one might release a large bucket of live minnows into a stream, or horses at a racetrack, or perhaps the entire aviary at the zoo.

All of these books will be released into the wild between now and Thanksgiving, which is typically the largest season for publishing, but everyone in the industry is experiencing doubts about whether or not the market can handle this many big-name books. “It’s raised the bar for everyone in the business, at the most crucial time of the year,” said Sandi Mendelson, who has been a publicist for books for years. Meanwhile, Michael Cader, the founder of the industry website Publishers Lunch, worried: “There’s a legitimate question whether this is too much at once.”

Some speculate that publishers were simply too eager to compensate for what has been a moderately dull year in publishing so far, with no ‘breakout’ book defining the earlier seasons. Book releases are planned just like movie releases, and many publishers have apparently aimed their blockbusters at the heavy season, with the result that the heavy season now resembles the monsoon. Jerome Kramer, the editor of Kirkus Reviews, echoed this point of view exactly: “Publishing is caught up in the blockbuster mentality,” he said, “and there was a clear pattern this year of saving everything up for the holiday season.”

The article in the Los Angeles Times explained that it was more difficult for publishers to schedule or hold back the release date than it is for those in Hollywood, on the grounds that the former are at the “mercy of their writers’ abilities to actually deliver manuscripts.” A lamentable plight, no doubt, but not a terribly logical justification, as studios are at the comparable mercy of their screenwriters, in addition to their producers, directors, cinematographers, assitant directors, location scouts, second assistant directors, casting agents, second second assistant directors, possibly moody actors, costume designers, possibly scandal-plagued actresses, sound designers, hair and makeup artists, editors, catering companies, key grips, and, quite frequently, the weather.

Pardon my digression. I simply got into the habit of making gigantic lists at the beginning of this post and haven’t gotten out of it. The point is that those in the book industry have now published themselves into a corner, and are not only worried about who is going to buy ten books in a month, but how they can possibly acquire the marketing room to advertise to those people who have rash and impulsive book-purchasing tendencies such as my own. There is simply not enough window-space in Borders, or, most importantly in the eyes of a publisher, the appearance of an author on a TV show or interview. “There are too many new books to fill these slots on news, cable and magazine shows,” said David Rosenthal, executive vice president and publisher of Simon & Schuster. “So you have to think outside the box.”

And “outside the box” apparently means “inside the computer,” because Simon & Schuster has—excuse me while I faint from surprise—decided to go to bloggers to publicise the new political thriller from Robert Harris, entitled Imperium: A Novel of Ancient Rome. Simon & Shuster contacted Bread and Circuses, Adrian Murdoch’s blog on the later Roman empire, and the literary blogs Prettier Than Napoleon and Mental Multivitamin.

“This isn’t something I was doing a year ago, but I think it’s a huge opportunity for us now,” raved Leah Wasielewski, marketing director of the publishing company . “I got a fantastic response from some bloggers, and it makes sense because this approach allows us to target consumers directly and gauge their interest. You go right to the source.”

The irony (perhaps) is that the blogging response is not always prolific or positive. Only Prettier Than Napolean features a review written by the author of the blog; she calls it “a fine book” and praises the fact that “modern attitudes do not intrude.” From the point of view of someone who has not read the book, it is informative, specific, offers detractions as well as admiration—the kind of review I’d like if I were, say, the marketing director of Simon & Shuster.

It’s clear, though, that the publishing company remained honest and didn’t buy anyone out, because Bread and Circuses and Mental Multivitamin only include or link to different reviews, neither of them jubilant. Bread and Circuses’ embedded Spectator review says of the novel: “This novel is a hill with several hazy peaks, but no summit. Just after Harris’s regulation 400 pages, it doesn’t end. It stops. …Meanwhile, there are unsettling infelicities on almost every page.” The excellent review that Mental Multivitamin links to, The View from the Foothills, is equivocal: “It’s by no means a bad book, and I’m not sorry I spent the time with it; and I might even cock an eye at the sequel that Harris is clearly planning to write. But I didn’t cordially love it, either, and it lacks some breath of life that I can’t quite put my finger on.”

On the other hand, perhaps this is the all-publicity-is-good-publicity theory, as favoured by scandal-plagued actresses mentioned above. After all, I diligently went and searched out the posts on Imperium, and perhaps this is all that was supposed to happen. I know about the book now, do I not? Imperium Imperium Imperium. Still, Daniel Menaker, editor-in-chief of Random House, may have actually had a slightly more accurate view of blogging publicity when he confessed that for him “the Web is like a teenager’s room. It can be very messy, and you don’t quite know how to bring order to it. But you can’t ignore it. You have to deal with it.”

Maya Reynolds writes about the same too-many-good-books ‘conundrum,’ with the suggestion that it is “Time to Visit The Bookstore.”