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But Palmer received more publicity from the newspaper story than he ever did when the book was first published. “Without a doubt, your article did more in one day than the publisher has in years,” he said.
Thanks to the power of the media and the Internet — and a few sprinkles of dumb luck — Palmer’s book has new life, and he will soon be appearing in a guest spot on John DeBella’s radio show in Philadelphia.
The story starts with Mike, from Alpharetta, Ga., a suburb of Atlanta. Mike enjoys unusual news stories. On Dec. 30, Mike searched news.google.com for the word “crazy.” The Palmer article contained the word crazy. Mike read it and thought it was interesting.
Mike’s also a five-year member of a Web site that focuses on peculiar news, fark.com. Fark’s founder, Drew Curtis, started the Web site seven years ago because his habit of e-mailing silly stories to his friends was bordering on annoying.
Fark has become an Internet sensation and a favorite of radio DJs across the country, garnering 10 million page views per week. The same day Mike found Palmer’s story, he submitted it to fark.com, and within a matter of days, Palmer was on the phone with the producer of DeBella’s show.
The farking of Palmer’s article brought the story on the Community Life Web site more than 12,000 hits, more than any other story in the entire River Valley Newspaper Group for the entire month of December. And the fark.com link to Palmer’s story was only online for two days.
The article receiving second place in the Web hits category — with about 8,000 hits — was a La Crosse Tribune article about the archbishop. “Now I can cross that one to-do item off my list. ‘Become larger than the archbishop — done,’” Palmer joked.
There isn’t any news yet as to whether the online publicity has helped Palmer sell more books. He won’t know himself until he receives royalty checks.
But he remains hopeful. “This could be the one little pebble that starts the landslide,” he said. “Maybe some agent will be listening to the radio show. Who knows?”
Amy Hufford can be reached at amyhufford@gmail.com.
