Mince pie? I’m eating humble pie right now. Anyway, a quick PR Friday funny for you – and a lesson for some PRs too!

Contently has a client at the moment – the very funny and interesting Michael Howell, who recently brought out his debut technothriller novel The Christmas Virus and then, not long after making a digital version available for Kindle, iPad, iPhone and so on, sold the movie rights for a very healthy five-figure sum.

As an author myself, I know that’s one of the dreams so I was delighted to be able to help him spread his good news and success.

Off goes a press release with little comeback. Strange, thinks I. I know some people got it – they replied and we’ve set some stuff up – but others, that I would have called bankers, didn’t. It was doubly strange as the book’s co-lead is a feisty female journalist, which I thought gave it some more relevancy and appeal to the press (as well as being a journalistic stocking filler).

So I makes some phone calls – very unusual for me as I know how busy journalists are – and quite a few say they haven’t got it. Sends again, no joy.

And then one very kind soul – who is getting a bottle of whisky for their trouble – finds out what it is. Due to the phrase ‘The Christmas Virus’ being in the header and text, complete with links mentioning the same (as well as some extra bit.ly links) and my hosting/email coming from outwith the UK, many a journalist’s IT setup has seen this and went ‘no chance is that getting through’ and has done what good filtering software should and nuked it before the reporter ever saw it.

So the lessons are that sometimes phone calls are still very, very handy and that virus is not a handy word to have in a subject heading.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to make sure Mike’s next book doesn’t have .exe in the title… and buy a fax machine.

Scottish author and programmer Michael Howell has sold the movie and TV rights to his debut novel The Christmas Virus just one week after the Kindle/iPad version went on sale.

The technothriller shows a world taken to the brink of chaos after Islamic terrorists activate a virus in 95% of the world’s computers just before Christmas.

The rights have now been sold to film publicity company NoKidding Ltd for an undisclosed five-figure sum.
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Quick client announcement: if you are a journalist or blogger in Edinburgh during the Edinburgh Festival(s) and fancy eating free somewhere, then Illegal Jacks on Lothian Road will happily feed you for free in return for a review.

Full press release after the link. And yes, the offer is open to Edinburgh bloggers and press too.

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