Posted by matt | Posted in Doing it Wrong | Posted on 03-02-2010
Tags: font, mistake, novel, press releases
Here is a fabulous suggestion! Before sending out a press release, look it over and make sure it doesn’t say anything dumb.
As a sometimes-journalist, I get sent some dreadful press releases, but this may be the funniest one. The subject: “Was Emily Dickinson Gay? Interviews Available.” Oh, are they really? Because I thought she was dead.
Anyway, the text of the press release is about a guy named Jerome Charyn who wrote a novel in the voice of Emily Dickinson. (I think that we can assume that it is comprised primarily of hyphens. But can it be sung to the tune of “The Yellow Rose of Texas”?)
There are a few inexplicable forays into first-person: “it’s easy to see how Emily’s poetic instincts are born from the shifting sensations of comfort and resentment brought by a childhood spent serenading Father with my tiny Tambourine.”
But the best part comes at the end. After describing how fabulous this novel is, the release closes with this: “while this vivid impersonation is a stylistic achievement, it’s also confining and limits higher revelations. ”
Oh. Well, okay, thanks for the info. Did you just copypaste someone else’s review of the book and then spam-blast a bunch of freelancers without checking to make sure that the review was favorable? BRAVO.
And the second best part: the entire press release was formatted in Comic Sans. I don’t normally call out people for making careless mistakes, but that font is beyond the pale. The parties responsible: Mark Goldman (516)639-0988 & markgoldman73@gmail.com and Ryan McCormick at (516)901-1103 & Ryan@risingsunpr.com.
