Storytellersunplugged

No, this post isn’t about Rhonda Byrne’s book, which, in my opinion, provided no huge revelation. The ‘law of attraction’ was taught to me by my grandmother many years ago. Only she called it common sense and relayed it to me this way: “When you spit in de air, you can’t ever move out de way fas’ enough so it don’t wind up back in you face.” Translation—whatever you put out in this world (words, actions, thoughts) you get back. Being a kid, I had to test her theory of course, and spent many an afternoon attempting to dodge airborne spittle. She was right. It finds you every time.

That spit theory remains with me to this day, and I’ve found it to be applicable in every aspect of life, even when marketing books. Here’s what I mean….

When it comes to marketing books, no matter what budget you have to work with, the key is to make even the smallest marketing effort really count. That said, we’re still left with the question: How do you know what works and what doesn’t? How do you qualify and quantify your marketing efforts.

That question is not an easy one to answer, unless you’ve managed to hit on something that causes a direct (and drastic) rise in sales, and that increase can only be attributed to one particular effort. For example, one of the most effective “Right now!” marketing tools I’ve used having a book trailer created for A House Divided, then distributing that trailer to certain movie theaters in a test market. Within a week of the trailer’s release, my sales in that test area quadrupled. Only then could I say, “Hey, this really works!”

So if it works, why don’t I do the same thing for all of my books and tackle every major city? Because it’s friggin’ expensive. I know it works, but it works in short bursts. I wanted longevity, so I had to figure out what would cause my readership base to grow without breaking me financially.

The answer was in the spit theory. For me, what has always worked best, aside from that one movie trailer blip, is meeting booksellers and buyers face to face. I make sure to get to know the person as a person, not just as a bookseller. Are they married? If so, what’s their spouse’s name? Do they have children? If so, what ages, gender, and what are they into? What does this person like to read and why? What’s their biggest goal in life? What do they want to be doing in 5 years, 10? If they could retire tomorrow and have plenty of money to get by, where would they go? What would they do? And why?

To make meeting people count, it only makes sense, to me, to really get to know the person. We’re inundated every day with advertising and folks begging us to buy one widget or another. Why would I want to be just another blabber mouth trying to sell something? How do I make myself different to this buyer? I make myself different by caring about, TRULY caring about what’s important to them. Once you do that, the book buying/selling is almost a side product because you’re accomplishing something far, far bigger. You’re giving another human being something we all crave…..an ear. Everyone, in every walk of life, longs to be heard.

Is all that effort time consuming? Absolutely. Is it worth it? Absolutely. If I put out the effort to make that person important, whose name do you think they’re going to remember at buying time? Whose books are they going to hesitate to strip and ship when it needs to be moved from a particular shelf? Whose books do you think they’re going to consider putting near the register or in the customer service area even though the publisher didn’t pay for that space?

Whether I meet a book reader/buyer face to face or mail out bookmarks, mugs, ink pens, and/or thank you notes, I make certain to remember that I’m touching a PERSON in some small way. And remembering that perpetuates the spit theory. If you treat marketing as an act of giving instead of selling, that giving will ALWAYS find its way back to you.

So share a little…when was the last time you gave a spit? What did you do that came back to you?