I've been trying to think of an angle to get media attention for Mur and was wondering if you had any ideas?
With Scott Sigler, JC Hutchins and, most recently, Seth Harwood getting all the ink (with good reason, don't get me wrong) how do we get the mainstream media to notice authors like Mur Lafferty...not to mention Christiana Ellis and Philippa Ballantine for that matter?
Believe me, I know that you had tons of innovative ideas. I love the video mix in, the comic book styling, the release of the book before the PodCast was done (time for some good cross-over marketing), totally sweet marketing concepts. I was just trying to come up with stuff you already hadn't... you took most of the good ideas, already.
Contacting a Public Broadcast station is a small step but contacting NPR will get more than one station. There are area type shows you could try to contact. EITMonline.com would get you a connection they cover DC , Richmond and parts of the Mid Atlantic area. Real Radio is 104.1 in Orlando Florida and has an FM Talk Format they have an Early show Monsters in the Morning they look for stuff that is topical. The problem is most agents would have access to this stuff I only know because I used to listen to some of these shows and others I know they may seem unusual but they have people who listen and follow up when they hear of things.
Maybe you could try to ride the coattails of someone who already does have that media attention. Like maybe getting Mur a blurb on the jacket of one of their books.
Sorry, I just found you guys today otherwise I would of participated sooner. My main question on this : are we trying to get world wide recognition for Mur's work, or are we hoping to sell more copies?
Here's one thing I noticed - searched you tube.com for "Playing for Keeps" where i found the one recommendation to buy the book, a cat playing the piano and Matchbox 20 clips in the first 5 pages or so. My search for " Mur Lafferty" brought back many results about Podcasting and the PFK proposal.
One of my ideas would be to do up a Hollywood type trailer for the book like it was the next blockbuster movie.
You tube has made instant celebrities from clips submitted (star wars kid) that the main stream media picks it up.
If you remember back to when bmwmoviesdotcom was up the media talked about the chapters that were directed by major directors ( Ang Lee, Guy Ritchie) and the numbers of people who would go visit the site to watch a 7 minute long commercial for their car.
( If we had time we could have slowly put out little bits for sites like Io9 to talk about design concepts, character designs etc.) As long as we did not tell them it was a movie being released. (yet)
My other bad idea- have the Rainbow Wig wearing guy at the baseball, football games hold up a sign that said PFK 8:25:8 but that's probably going to offend someone. same with having people hold up signs at on site newscasts.