“Reincarnationist” Heads for Second Life

Imagine the book tour of the future. Travel has gotten to be expensive and difficult. Security at airports makes flying unpleasant and cutbacks at airlines make food even worse than that. Here in the future, even if an author did want to tour, hardly anyone would show up. Between their jobs, their families, and their social networks, no one has time to actually attend author events in person.

Those things being the case, instead of packing a suitcase, that futuristic author might spend some time getting an avatar ready. She might then send the avatar into a virtual performance space where she could read from her book in front of many--perhaps hundreds--of other people’s avatars, accomplishing in a single evening what would have required a great deal of travel and too many airline lunches, and all without ever taking off her pajamas.

For thriller writer M.J. Rose, hot on the trail of promoting her new novel, The Reincarnationist, the future is now and it looks ... well, experimental. On Tuesday at 5 p.m. EST, a reading event for The Reincarnationist will take place in the ether at a Web site called Second Life. An avatar of the actor who reads the audio version of the book will do a reading, after which Rose’s avatar will hold court, taking questions from an audience made up of--what else?--avatars.

“I’m really looking forward to the event,” Rose says, “because it’ll be an interesting experiment. There are nine million Second Life members, so just announcing the event will go far in getting more people aware of the book. Plus, it’s exciting. People are spending a lot of time online and this gives me an opportunity to reach them in a fun environment.”

With a background in advertising, Rose is no stranger to innovative marketing techniques, something visitors to her book-marketing-themed blog, Buzz, Balls & Hype, rediscover every day and that the publishing industry at large has been taking notes on for the last decade.

“A little more than seven years ago, everyone thought I was crazy when I did what Salon called the first virtual book party on line. Since then,” says Rose, “I’ve been committed to trying everything new to see what works and what doesn’t when it comes to book promotion.”

If a recent spate of media mentions are any indication, Rose’s blend of attention to old and new media is working. She says that the “Second Life event is kicking off stage two of the promotion [for The Reincarnationist]. The book has been out for three weeks and the publisher just went back to press for a second printing, and stores are reordering. I’ve done about 12 days of the book tour with about five or six more real-life events left, plus a 40 to 50 blog tour that kicks off the first week of October.”

Rose says she’s as aware as anyone of how competitive her field has become. “People don’t buy a book they haven’t heard of. The marketplace is very crowded these days and I know too much about how hard it is to compete and what it takes.”