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Authors Discuss Their Books By Phone on BookTalk Network
Diane Patrick -- 8/17/98
Kurt Vonnegut, George Plimpton, Barbara Wood, Elmore Leonard, Anita Shreve and more than 1200 other authors have recorded comments on their latest works for BookTalk, the 24-hour recorded book-discussion line.
According to BookTalk founder David Knight, publishers like the five-year-old service "because a lot of people can't get to book signings. It creates that bridge between author and reader."

Ballantine, Doubleday and Little, Brown are among the publishers that are including BookTalk's telephone number in their display ads. "You can only contain so much information in a print ad, and you can't always tour an author," said Stacey Witcraft, advertising manager at Ballantine. "We do tons of BookTalk recordings for most authors, and whenever we do a print campaign we mention it." Those authors whose books don't get ads, she noted, are listed in BookTalk's directory, which is distributed to consumers through bookstores in the Los Angeles area.

"The first ad we ran was for The Perfect Witness," Witcraft said. "In Chicago alone it generated 400 telephone calls. That's really impressive when you think that someone is making a long-distance telephone call [to hear an author]."

Publishers pay between $100 and $200 a month to record their authors; if the recordings stay up for three months, it's $200 a month; six months, $150; one year, $100. Knight explained that the author prepares the script, d s the recording from home or office, and BookTalk d s the taping. Publishers, he said, are tying the recordings in with other promotions, such as Web sites or audio press releases, and talk shows use the service to preview potential guests.

Consumer response is "very vocal," Knight said, who noted that the service is talking with Amazon.com about using its recordings because callers often want to purchase the book. BookTalk is also speaking with Baker &Taylor about doing fulfillment. BookTalk itself, however, d sn't have a website.
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