Like most book bloggers, I get e-mails from authors. In a crowded marketplace, it's difficult for an unknown to get noticed since big publishers are more likely to throw money toward big books by big authors. As a result, little authors need to spend more time being marketers than working on their craft. It's a shame, really.

Last month, I received an e-mail from John Barlow promoting the trailer for the reprint edition of his novel Intoxicated:

(Advice to John Barlow: Edit for grammar and typos before hitting send. Also, don't forget to mention the name of your book. Although you did include a sentence about its content, the title is nowhere to be found.)

Under normal circumstances, I throw such e-mails into a folder called "book press" with the intention of going back and reading them as I find time. Time is hard to find, so those e-mails never see the light of day again. Occasionally, I clean out the folder by deleting but never looking at the super old stuff. But why did I notice Barlow's book and not the many others?

First of all, the e-mail didn't come across as a form letter. Not only did it read and look like something from an actual human rather than a marketing machine, it mentioned BookBlog in the body. Including the name of the site or person you're writing to might take a bit of research or extra time, but it's worth it. I'm a person, and I like personal attention. Recently, I received several e-mails from a PR firm to promote products that would fit into what we do here, but they were all addressed to "Jesse." I was tempted to write back and ask, "Who the eff is Jesse?" but it takes less effort to ignore carelessness than confront it.

Barlow couldn't have known, but I recently acquired Drinking, Smoking & Screwing: Great Writers on Good Times from Bookins. The older I get, the more nostalgic I become for the days of my youth. I used to have lots of fun doing naughty things and damning the consequences, but these days the suffering lasts longer than a morning hangover. (I recently was invited to a bar for a birthday celebration that started at 10:30 p.m. My response was, "Uh, no thank you. I go to bed around ten.") Reminiscing and reading about wild fun is mostly what I do now, so Barlow's Intoxicated, about a cocaine-based Victorian soft drink, hit the right target market.

Did the trailer do anything for me? Not really. Although it's the latest trend in book marketing, I haven't paid much attention. Others have. Watch the Book is a new blog dedicated to book trailers, albeit trashy ones. (I'd never read any of the dreck they've promoted so far.) Book Trailerpark highlighted more diverse titles, but they are apparently defunct because of whatever is going on inside The Book Standard. The future is likely to see more and more titles being promoted via trailers, and I expect it's just a matter of time before they hit the flat screens that have been going up in my local jumbo Borders. To that end, Big Bad Book Blog has offered a few useful tips for would-be trailer producers. The best ones are stylish, short, imaginative, and fun.