So proclaims a full page, full color ad on the back of the art section of today’s New York Times. Rhett Butler’s People by Donald McCaig is the powerful companion novel to Margaret Mitchell’s classic Gone With The Wind. (You heard it on MySpace first!)

It hits bookstores tomorrow (Tuesday, November 6, 2007), and has been well worth the wait for millions of devoted “Windies” who’ve always wanted to know more about that dashing, mysterious Rhett Butler.

In a world where Hollywood pushes out sequels and spin-offs practically before the popcorn is even swept out of the Multiplex, Rhett is big media news. The biggest movie of all time, based on one of the biggest books of all time. . . and we have to wait 70 years to hear Rhett’s story? What’s that all about? The answer is simple. The Margaret Mitchell estate, St. Martin’s, and Donald McCaig wanted to make sure that it did literary justice to Gone With The Wind. And it does.

So a major ad campaign is certainly a fitting way for its proud publisher (St. Martin’s Press) to launch Rhett Butler’s People. On the heels of terrific reviews, including one in the New York Times Book Review on Sunday, our print ads will certainly help to get the word out.

But if you are like most people in the digital era, chances are that you heard about this book long before today. And chances are that you did not hear about it first in a newspaper ad or from a book review. In the age of Facebook, people learn about music, movies, books, and games from a million sources. They learn from websites, social networks (e.g. MySpace and Facebook), blogs, bookmarking sites, widgets and, most of all, from each other. The speed of the social network is incredible. Old fashioned word of mouth, but on steroids.

So, to launch Rhett, our brilliant publishers went to work early. They wanted to create buzz, but where to start? First, they created a beautiful site for the book (www.RhettButlersPeople.com) so that people had a place to go to experience a taste of the book. They created an online excerpt and promoted it with a newsletter (The Rhett Watch). They created a content widget so people can put Rhett on their own sites all over the Web. They ran pre-publication ads on Yahoo for two weeks to drive people to www.RhettButlersPeople.com. They used an online publicist to blog and twitter about the book, as well as post video content all over the Web. They even encouraged Rhett and his friends get his own MySpace page. Which they did.

I particularly loved the little note that “Lauren” from Washington D.C. (who appears to be a vampire) sent to Rhett on MySpace last week saying “Can’t wait for your new book this weekend!” As a publisher, that makes me very, very happy. (Note to my friends at the Barnes and Noble in D.C.: Watch your necks tomorrow night.)

The result of all this is that ads in the New York Times are the culmination, rather than the start, of the promotion of Rhett Butler’s People. In the old days of publishing, buzz began in the industry and among booksellers. In the Facebook world, we spread the content out there in cyberspace and hope that readers like what they see. If they do, the buzz takes care of itself.

It seems to have worked for Rhett.

Brian Napack is the President of Macmillan.