More on the blurb brouhaha

[jbor at bigpond.com]

On 26/07/2006, at 8:23 AM, The Great Quail wrote:

> But so far, Penguin Press has done
> very little in way of online targeted marketing.

Hey Quail

Welcome back. Sorry to disagree with you, but they have managed to get 
a whole shitload of free publicity with this little stunt. The blurb 
went up on Amazon.com, got noticed, raised some eyebrows, and then it 
got taken down, apparently, according to AP, because "Penguin requested 
the posting's removal". Then our tv critic boy at Slate published his 
article ridiculing people (especially one poor guy who had posted on 
the Amazon.com discussion page for the new book) and stating that 
"Penguin Press's publicity chief disavows all knowledge of the blurb". 
That piece of false information (I mean, how hard would it have been 
for him to get *that* right? He only spoke to one person for 
confirmation, dammit, and then he misreported what she said ... ) 
fuelled the speculations that it was a hoax, or it implied that Pynchon 
had somehow independently smuggled his own Book Description onto the 
Amazon.com site without his Publisher knowing that he'd even written 
one. Either way, the Slate article escalated the "mystery", the 
"puzzle", that has been the focus of all the reports and blogging 
since.

I'm not sure how often a Book Description goes up before the title does 
on Amazon, but that was obviously the way it was planned, because when 
the blurb was "officially" allowed by Penguin to go up five days later, 
the title still wasn't up, even though it had been leaked in the AP 
article and the second Slate article where tv boy had to retract his 
initial misquote (with a smug and smarmy parenthesis, "Also, your 
exceedingly polite reporter regrets any earlier implication ... 
bobloblaw"). There was no legitimate reason given by Penguin for them 
ordering the blurb to be taken down from Amazon.com in the first place 
(it was supposedly a "change in scheduling" -- what change? Saturdays 
no good for them? Has to be a Thursday? They haven't even announced it 
on their own site yet ... ), nor for why it went up again when it did 
in the second place, and nor for why the title didn't go up until a few 
days later again. Meanwhile, the blogs ran hot, the buzz spread, and 
the AP report, with all the key pieces of their product brand in place 
("mysterious author ... postmodern classics ... puzzle ... no media 
appearances ... the Simpsons ... bag over his head ... Pynchon 
sightings, like so many UFOs ... Pynchon-ology ... the book's 
description ... allegedly written by Pynchon ... Amazon.com"), does the 
rounds.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_marketing

I seriously doubt that Tracy Locke is getting carpeted over any of 
this. What, all this free publicity? The advance sales for the book on 
Amazon.com and B&N generated by all the reportage and comment (it all 
leads back to that Amazon.com web page where, with just one click, you 
can now buy the novel formerly known as "Untitled Thomas Pynchon novel" 
and the coincidentally-timed Penguin Classics rerelease of Gravity's 
Rainbow for $33.75 plus p&h)? Nah, what Tracy'll be getting is a nice 
pat on the back from the boss and a handy little bonus. Good luck to 
her, too.

Credit where credit's due.

best