You would think that once you have the concept, and have wrestled the bear to the ground with your bare hands, the rest would be a walk in the park. Alas, that is not the case. You may have a glossy cover and 269 pages of funny material, but you have to persuade people to buy it. That much used phrase "If you build it, they will come" is a lie! It takes time, tenacity, and an iron will.
In this third and final part of our series, Ian Coburn explains the wonderful world of marketing the book.
We Have A Book, Now Where Are We Going To Sell It?
To get the book into stores, I needed to market. We released the book in November ’06 to get some response and send it to some national reviewers. We wanted to sell it while we gathered quotes for a new back cover, as well as get it on Amazon. We quickly learned that Valentine’s Day was the best day to officially release the book; we could really play up that angle in the media.
The publisher sent out a press release in mid-January, which yet another person, a public relations consultant I met at another party, wrote. That’s where Simon heard of me and requested a copy of the book for review. Living in Chicago, I have some large resources available. I hit all the local newspapers and television media. Two news stations put me on air in early February, some suburban newspapers covered me, and one of the anchors from a news show I did used the book in his weekly newspaper column, which appears in a popular Chicago paper. The attention brought in orders from Barnes and Noble, who ordered a few hundred books to stock in stores. Airport bookstores and specialty shops, like Spencer Gifts, ordered copies through the standard wholesalers Ingram and Baker & Taylor. The publishing company and the book were on their way.
Soon I started to get radio, where I had more time to discuss the book than on TV. I was brought in by a smaller monthly Chicago news magazine, WASSUP!, to write a dating advice column I named “Lunch is Not a Date,” to which I hold all rights. I’ve now written three very well-received columns for them. The paper has a circulation of 95,000 monthly throughout Northern Illinois and Chicago. Real Chicago, with a monthly circulation of 15,000 in Chicago, brought me in to write “Lunch is Not a Date – The Q&A.” My first column with them debuted last month.
Article comments
1 - Marco
Wow. Great stuff. I am one of the readers who has been talking about Ian's book everywhere I can. In fact, I got kicked off a dating message board because they thought I was spamming! I have been following this interview along as he put up the links on his site.
I'm not a writer or a blogger, but I am an avid reader. I live in OH but have been on consulting assignment in Chicago, where I heard about Ian's book because as Simon points out, he is marketing it everywhere. I had no idea what authors go thru and applaud you all for doing it. Without you, there would be nothing for people like me to read! I found the comments about publishers and authors being responsible for the decline in literature to be very interesting and make sense. It is getting harder and harder to find good books. More and more they are just about marketing. For instance, I recently read "The Average American Male" which is just horrible and its publisher spent over $10,000 to market it with videos on YouTube. Ian's book is so much better and along the same genre. $10,000 for it could really make it take off. Yet, it goes unread and unconsidered by such a big publisher or they wanted it changed to the crappy book they are pushing.
I hope that "God is a Woman: Dating Disasters" does very well. We should all get copies, if for no other reason than to show publishers this IS a book people want and IS what readers want to read. Maybe it could do for books what independent film as done for movies. If it wasn't for independent film, all movies would be "White Chicks" now; the big places only make good films because of the pressure from small films to compete with them for awards.
Thank you both Simon and Ian for the insight. I want you to know I'm doing my part; I just talked my friends into buying a bunch of copies off Amazon for their bachelor and bachelorette parties! Thank you to all authors and aspiring ones for your hardwork. Lord knows I couldn't take punches like these.