Dial 1-818-788-9722 and Bret Easton Ellis's cold, sexy voice answers. Glamorama, he reminds, is out from Knopf, and then he starts talking about Victor Ward, "the boy of the moment in 1990s Manhattan, a male model and wanna-be actor who dates various supermodels, cheating on all of them...." Two minutes later, Ellis hangs up, but not before giving a complete preview of his new thriller.
Ellis is not the only author you can hear on the phone. BookTalk, an author recording agency in Sherman Oaks, Calif., features 1500 recorded interviews, available for listening around the country.
BookTalk's three-minute recordings of authors previewing their books offer exposure for both authors and publishers. David Knight, who launched the company in 1994, works with a variety of publishers, including Doubleday, Little, Brown and St. Martin's Press.
Based on BookTalk's significant caller response rate, book clubs and chains are hiring the company to provide previews for new publications and publicity campaigns. In addition to a new contract with Ballantine this year, BookTalk has contracts with Crown Books, Doubleday Direct's book club and United Feature Syndicate.
BookTalk listeners hear their favorite authors read highlights, summaries or anecdotes from their new titles by dialing a local phone number, followed by a four-digit code featured in a local newspaper ad. The caller pays nothing; BookTalk's tab of $600 for a three-month run, $900 for six months, or $1200 for a year can be picked up by a publisher, bookseller or individual author. (Knight offers discounts for individual authors and small presses.) The publisher sets up the date and recording time, and authors prepare their own text. BookTalk handles taping, recording, editing and marketing.
Jeff Bartlett, director of advertising and marketing at Crown Books, said the company got 8000 to 10,000 hits from one run of advertising with BookTalk earlier this year. Peter Guralnick's Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley (Little, Brown) got 2900 hits in three days.
Bartlett said Crown ran full-page ads in eight national newspapers for a week, listing BookTalk's number and codes for selected titles. In return, BookTalk included an announcement urging listeners to buy the title at Crown Books at the close of each recording.
"The response was overwhelming. We'll definitely work with BookTalk again," said Bartlett.
Under its new contract with Doubleday Direct, the bookclub is including BookTalk's 24-hour phone and preview codes in all of its direct mailings. Given Doubleday's 10 genre clubs and thousands of readers, Knight is thrilled with the arrangement and its large-scale outreach.
As part of its marketing, BookTalk runs an ad in the L.A. Daily that lists a different set of titles and authors each week. It also advertises a rotating list of authors each week in 33 newspapers throughout the U.S. and Canada. In its most ambitious endeavor to date, BookTalk has signed a deal with United Feature Syndicate to promote its listing in the syndicate's weekly distribution. The deal will expand BookTalk's reach from 33 newspapers to hundreds nationwide.
Knight told PW that United Feature will contact the newspapers, including the Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, New York Times and Los Angeles Times. The newspapers will then pay for the BookTalk listings-the same way they pay for Ann Landers and Dave Barry -- , and "we will share the profits evenly with the syndicate," said Knight.
Ballantine has premiered its first ads with the BookTalk access numbers in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post. In the past five years BookTalk has more than doubled its annual marketing budget, to $120,000, and its profits are now soaring into the six figures.
