Learning from the Masters: The Art of the Publicity Ploy

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Sometimes it seems that some novels (and movies) are like Douglas MacArthur’s old soldiers; they “never die, they just fade away” (eventually). Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child have published a “lost” chapter of their first novel Relic on their official website, with the caveat that the chapter really isn’t lost, and never was; it was “just asleep,” which is to say replaced by a substitute. In it, the FBI’s Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast interviews Margo Green, a museum employee who “knows a lot more about what's really going on than she realizes” about the murders Detective Vincent D’Agosta and Pendergast are investigating.

The authors find their characterization of Prendergast and their planting of a red herring concerning the criminal past of New York Times reporter Bill Smithback awkward and unnecessary, respectively, and include the “lost” chapter, presumably, to show their readers that they are not perfect, that writing is a process, and that the resurrection of a discarded chapter can seem, at least, to offer something that, although not new or original, is still somehow worthwhile to a website. However, one gets the impression that the point of publishing the piece is more promotional than pedagogical.

Robert R. McCammon seems to take the opposite approach to generating publicity for his works, refusing to allow his first four novels to ever again see the light of day because of their inferiority to the rest of his oeuvre. Gee, a writer who is that concerned with the quality of his writing must be a writer, indeed! we’re apparently to think. I mean, here is a guy who’s willing to put his art above mere profit. One doesn’t encounter such integrity very often, in or out of the publishing world. The problem with such reasoning is that several of his other early novels are little, if any, better. Usher’s Passing (1984), The Wolf’s Hour (1989), and Mine (1990), for example, are certainly not among the best of which McCammon is capable, although they are still in print. Still, as a publicity ploy, his refusal to allow the republication of Baal (1978), Bethany’s Sin 1980), The Night Boat 1980), and They Thirst (1981) has surely earned him attention and even some respect. (Of course, these volumes may well be published again,. posthumously, earning his estate the money they are not now making for the author himself.)