Jun 25, 2007 02:44 PM
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Wed Feb 10
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"Who has more readers than US Weekly, is snarkier than Gawker, and has changed the world of celebrity gossip the same way CNN changed the world of television news?" So begins the marketing pitch for "Bloggywood," blogger Perez Hilton's tome on gossip and how to get "thousands of dollars worth of swag" from publicists. (Hello, IRS! He's so going down like Al Capone!) The book is written with Jared Shapiro, the News & Entertainment Director at Life & Style Weekly, who will be working on it in his spare time, and is being handled by Folio's Scott Hoffman, who reps the Fug girls. How are they going to market this book, you ask? "Perez and Jared will also ruthlessly mine their contacts at the monthly magazines, from Men's Health to Men's Fitness, Glamour to GQ, and so many more. From guest writing celebrity fashion pieces for Marie Claire, to profiles in Heeb, these two will launch a publicity and press assault never before seen in book publishing." Sounds slightly violent! But what will they publicize? Well, let's take a look at the beginning of Perez's writing sample!
XI. Writing Sample from Chapter One: INTRODUCING: "ME"Hello bitches! The Queen of All Media is about to expand her empire to the publishing world. With five million visitors every day, the Queen took a little time to publish a "tell all" - isn't that what they call it in Hollywood? Just a little something to show how you can - and should - become famous. It's not hard - if Tara Reid can do it (wait, did I just call her famous?), so can you. Why should Us Weekly have all of the fun? Am I not worthy? Please. Paris's "cousin" deserves a little fame too - and lucky for me I didn't even have to make a grainy night vision sex tape (though I would if anyone wanted me to).
Everyone's MySpacing. Everyone's clubbing. We're all reaching the world and hanging with the world like never before. And all I'm telling you is take your digital camera with you everywhere you go. With blogs and the web, the world is wide open for you to post anything you want.
I must admit, I can't take all of the credit for creating a site that literally went from 50,000 visitors to 5,000,000 visitors every day, practically overnight. America is obsessed with gossip. And while the publishing world has People, Us Weekly, Life & Style, Star, In Touch, and so many others, the online world has nada. And that's weird, considering gossip is the one kind of breaking news that needs to be updated every day, every minute, every second. Regular news can wait until Brian Williams reports it at 6:30pm. If Kim Jong Il makes a threat to South Korea, it's not as if you'll be at the coffee machine at work saying "Hey, did you hear about North Korea?" But if Britney and Kevin split up, well, you can certainly bet that's going to spread around the office faster than the Trojan computer virus. Because in celebrity gossip, one minute Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban are happily married, and the next minute he's checking into rehab for his issues with nose candy and grandpa's cough syrup. "
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