Book Advertising in the Australian Media

I set my radio alarm for 8:30AM, and when it goes off I leave it going until whenever I get up.

As Nova jumps from news to sport to weather, they have a short ad in between each. Surprised was I today to hear an ad for Dymocks’ sale on June new releases, “including Janet Evanovich’s Fearless Fourteen“.

This was the only time I’ve ever heard an ad for books, or even a bookshop, on the radio. TV has ads for Bryce Courtenay and Judy Nunn (formerly an actor on Home and Away, but that’s pretty much it. Ben Elton and Tara Moss get TV spots, but keep in mind that they’re famous not only for being authors. Sophie What’s-her-name has published one novel and has a column in Sunday Magazine – but she’s also famous not only for being an author.

You get the pattern? You have to be a whopping big bestseller and/or be famous for something other than your writing to get your book in the media in Australia.

Tim Winton’s latest has ad space on Facebook, but he’s another whopping big bestseller. As for print ads for books, I rarely see them. Unless someone’s come to town to do a luncheon sponsored by the newspaper in which the ad features. And the other print ads I’ve seen are for crime novels.

And that, my dears, is the status of book advertising in the Australian media. Oh, and every Saturday there’s a three-page section of Books in Weekend. But they’re more interviews and reviews rather than ads. There’s a lot of non-fiction, literary fiction, token women’s/chick lit…in other words, basically a whole lot of stuff I’m not interested in. Occasionally I do find something new to read, or a review of something I want to read – but this isn’t regular.

Keep in mind that we don’t really have bestseller lists that are well-known. In that same Books section of the Weekend is a list of the Top 10 fiction and Top 10 non-fiction. And that’s the only bestseller list I’ve seen in the Australian media.

So when I see y’all talking about the bestseller lists of The New York Times, USA Today and whatnot, I think of you as lucky. Because I think it might be easier to become a bestselling author in the US than it is to become one in Oz.

Best wishes and good luck to you all – you might need it.

Your Say
What bestseller lists do you regularly keep up with? Do they influence your purchasing? Do you have a favourite? What kind of books feature on the bestseller lists you read? What factors of the authors and/or their books propel them up the lists? Do the lists have any real meaning, or are they just one big popularity contest?