Publicity on Your Terms

Publicity is like shooting arrows with a blindfold on. You hope you'll hit your mark but the odds aren't in your favor. There are some ways to tilt those odds in your favor, however. The first is to get over the whole discomfort over having to sell your books. Some people are better at this than others, but I for one don't like selling. Although I've gotten more comfortable with it with each passing title.

Unless your publisher offered you a huge marketing campaign with the deal, you'll need to dedicate your own money and time to promoting your books.

What would I need to spend money on? you might ask.

Here are some of the things I've spent cash on to promote books:

• A button-making kit. With this I made buttons that said, "I like peas--ask me why." These I sent to my publisher's sales force so they could wear them at the trade show. I heard back that the salesmen did indeed wear them! It got my book special attention above the rest of the publisher's lineup of books.
• Items to create a "Get Caught Reading" float for a local parade, and 5,000 postcards that we passed out to attendees announcing the book and a signing by yours truly after the parade at the park. The Friends of the Library got on board to help put together our float that featured readers in various activities; two sat on back-to-back couches; two others sat on skids with tires afixed to their sides to give the appearance of a fishing dock with books dangling from the ends of their fishing lines; I sat in the front at a desk with a typewriter, supposedly writing; and the cherry on the top was a barechested man sitting in a bathtub with a cowboy hat on and his skinny knees sticking up as he read a children's book. The crowd really hooted over that one! Some years this parade has had an attendance of 8,000-10,000 people. It was my first signing and I sold over 130 books.
• Posters of the book covers and of me. The first posters I paid Kinkos to print and mount on foamcore. That cost over $130. I've since learned that Kodak's website will print photos of poster size for just over $11. So on this latest book my husband created two jpegs--posters that we uploaded to Kodak's site. They printed and sent them within a week, then for a $1 each we bought foam core and spray adhesive and mounted them ourselves.
• Thousands and thousands of bookmarks. For just over $500 we got 20,000 bookmarks printed, both sides--one promoting my books the other with simply my name. With my second book I sent these out to fans and distributed them myself to 100 bookstores that I visited across Minnesota. This got to be costly, especially since I couldn't mail the bookmarks Media Mail, like a book. So this time I've decided to let local libraries distribute them on my behalf. They enjoy the freebies and are more than happy to help out a budding author.
• Gasoline. As I mentioned above, I visited 100 bookstores with the release of my last book. I think if I hadn't been the mother of four at the time this would've been easier for me. It was a lot of driving. And I'm not sure it made a difference in overall sales. I like to think it did, at least in the smaller towns I visited. And I do know it made a difference at the Waldenbooks in Blaine (a suburb of the Twin Cities) because they've since asked me to come up for a signing; the books were flying off the shelves. But I think that had more to do with the fact that the manager actually read the copy I left for her and she was enthusiastic about it. Other stores, I have my doubts. And of course there's the gas to go to signings and readings. I've tried to limit my travel to a certain distance within home--I have five kids, so I can't be hopping up to Ely to sign a few copies of my book. It just isn't practical.
• Postage. Sending out review copies, advance copies, copies to Garrison Keillor in the faint hope that he'll adore my work and ask me to join him on Prairie Home Companion to read a snippet and maybe sing a hymn with him... At first a dollar here, a dollar there doesn't seem like much, but it adds up.
• CDs. With the promotion push for my last book, we created CDs that we gave to each of the 100 bookstores I visited. On these CDs were interview questions, a bio, book cover images, my picture, book club guides, all kinds of things the bookstores could use to promote my books, and I did hear back that some had used this to push the books.
• Meals while on the road.
• Clothes so I'd look like an "author" and not like a hick.
• Hair dye. :)
• Publicity photos. These can be pricey, depending on where you get them done. We had a friend who has a photo studio in his home take mine, although my newer photos were shot by my husband on our digital camera.

So, you see, publicity can quickly eat up all your profits if you aren't careful. But I'm looking toward long-range success, so I figure money spent now will bring rewards later when I have a broader line of books to promote.

Another thing I've always questioned, and please feel free to add your comment, is why publishers think sending books to reviewers is a good idea. It's another arrow with the blindfold. There's a 50/50 chance your reviewer will like your book. They could hate it and end up giving you negative publicity for it. Yet this seems to be the way all publishers work. Wouldn't it better if authors wrote articles for magazines whose readers enjoy your genre? With a little plug for you book at the end of the article, of course. But this way readers could decide for themselves if they like your writing, if what you're saying is connecting with them. The evaluation of your writing ability wouldn't all be funneled through some reviewer, but laid out for the reader to judge on its own merits. Seems to me the odds would be better there.