Getting What You Want By Making People's Lives Easier

This is a piece of advice that really applies to almost all aspects of one's life. There are lots of times when you want someone else to do something. In this context it applies to book reviewers, bookstores, your audience, and the media, just to name a few. You want the media to pay attention to your book and help promote it. It would be great if they published a photo of the cover of your book, or perhaps a photo of the author. You want bookstores to stock your book, and more than that you'd like them to be enthusiastic about it. You know what I mean.

As far as I can tell there is no (legal) way to compel them to act in your best interests. But there is a way to increase the odds of it. Make their lives as easy as possible.

You know how busy you are? How many emails you have in your inbox and how little time you have to track things down? Well most people are just the same. The way to get what you want is to simply make that an easy option.

When I was preparing to launch This Place Is Awesome, I created a Web page for media people. I posted a short description of the book and all the most important details (launch date, where it could be purchased, etc). I included a link to the press release and made my email address and phone number very clear and easy to find. I chose half a dozen photographs from the book that I thought were the most interesting and posted high resolution, print ready versions on the site. I also put a high resolution image of the book cover and a couple of photos of the author. In my case I also added links to a couple of songs by the band that was the subject of the book and a couple of sample chapters.

Instead of simply mailing off copies of the book to every magazine and newspaper in the area and waiting to see who made the effort to find out more, I chose specific people and contacted them directly. I sent them the press release and a link to my "media site", and asked if they'd be interested in helping to get the word out.

The idea of the media site was to make available to them everything they might need to cover the story. I didn't want them to have to contact me with six hours until deadline asking for a photo they could use. One of the wonderful things about the Web is that it can be your 24 hour a day receptionist, able to handle common requests any time, any day, without delay. My hope was that I could make the media peoples' lives and jobs that little bit easier.

Anything you can do to help people leave work on time and look good is worth the effort.

This applies to bookstores as well. I gave them posters, bookmarks, and buttons. The bookmarks in particular were appreciated. On my Web site I list them all, complete with address, links to their shop's Web site, and links to their location on Google maps. I plan to go back in the near future and simply ask them, point blank, "what else can I do to help bring people to your store and get them interested in my book?" If they're a good shop they'll know what bring customers in.

If you've been doing this for a while, you probably have a good idea of what works. If you're a newbie, ask questions and take an interest in the people you are asking to help you. Be easy to work with, responsive, and reliable. I know that sounds obvious and trite, but it's shocking how seldom it happens I was turned down by one local shop because he was sick of dealing with independent authors who did no promotion, and then looked put out and annoyed when the shop hadn't sold any of their books. I told him that I completely understand and I'm sorry that was his experience.

I know the music editor at an important local weekly and I know how he is under constant, crushing deadlines and other pressures. I asked him when the best time was to email him if I wanted to be sure that I didn't get lost in the flood. He told me about a specific time of the week when the pressure let up briefly and he had time to look at things a little more closely. He also told me about a key phrase to put in my subject lines that was likely to grab his attention. (Yes, it involves profanity, and no, I won't tell you what it is.)

I can't stress enough here that you need to go in with the right attitude. No one likes to feel like they're being manipulated (and a clumsy manipulation is possibly the worst mistake you can make). You need a gentle touch, a polite manner, and an honest approach. Don't pretend you're their friend unless you really are. They know you want something from them. A little humility and a lot of courtesy, can help you figure out what is going to make you look good in their eyes, and what will make them look good to the people they work with and for.

If your book is rubbish then no amount of sucking up will help you and if you're a well-known and consistent draw then you're in good shape already, but if you are somewhere in the middle then taking the time to understand and help people could be the thing that tips the scales in your favour at a critical moment.

Planning the Book Launch

Having decided to do a print run of my book, This Place is Awesome, I started to think about how to launch the book. A decent book launch seemed like an essential part of getting the project off the ground and getting some attention. Thankfully a dear friend who works at a number of Vancouver's best known and most loved music and social venues took an immediate and extremely enthusiastic interest. With D on board to help make the arrangements the question became "how many people should I expect and how big a venue should I book?"

It was very hard for me to guess how many people might take an interest in the launch. Would 100 people show up? Would I be lucky if I got ten? How on earth do you estimate this sort of thing?

For someone who never throws a party because he lives in mortal dread of having no one show up (or even worse - having one person show up - leaving me feeling doubly embarrassed), it was a more difficult decision than how many books to order. In the end I went with the north bar at The Railway Club. It's a venerable Vancouver institution, it was very familiar and comfortable (having shot countless shows there), it was comfortable and familiar to the people I expected to be interested in my book, it was conducive to speaking and being seen, it had decent gin, and it could fit 50 people comfortably - 70 in a pinch - and it wouldn't look completely deserted and sad if there were only 15.

Having a comfortable location was very important to me. As someone who had spent years learning how to be inconspicuous and unnoticed in a venue, I was now faced with the challenge of being the centre of attention. Public speaking is not something new to me, but this was a kind of speaking that I'd never done before. I wanted to appear at home and at ease.

I started to think about how to promote the event. Posters and handbills were a simple and obvious choice. I sent out a press release to all the local media announcing the book and the event, and I created the obligatory Facebook event.

Facebook events are regrettably not the reliable tool that they used to be. For a time they were a great way to let people know about upcoming shows. These days it seems they are a victim of Facebook's success. I sent the invitation out to about 500 people in the local area, but when I spoke to friends that I knew would be interested they said they hadn't seen the invite. It would appear that people are so swamped with invitations on Facebook these days that they routinely just ignore them. (I confess that while I always read each invitation I get these days, I rarely take the time to respond anymore.) I've also noticed, when observing other people's events, that they are not a particularly good predictor of who will actually show up, regardless of what the event page suggests.

In my case, my FB event showed over 100 people attending the event. On the day, I had about 65 people with many "confirmed" people absent. This isn't a criticism of those people - more a cautionary tale for those who might take the FB stats as a reliable indicator.

I should also mention that I did what I could to promote the upcoming event inside the venue. I made sure they had posters and handbills, and that the staff knew about the show. This falls under what I consider to be the "so obvious I can't believe people don't do it" category. Nevertheless, lots of bands fail to court the venue before a show in the belief, I can only presume, that the venue will set aside the attention being demanded by every other band to take an interest in and a make special effort to promote -their- show. With so much stuff competing for people's interest these days it's not enough to assume that anyone will come seek you out and pry out of you the reasons why they should be excited. The best thing you can do to endear yourself to others, and get them to want to pay attention to you, is to make their lives (and possibly their jobs) easier. But that's another posting.

In the meantime I had sent out ten copies of the book to various people in the hopes of getting some good quotes to use in promoting the book. I got lucky and received a very positive review from one of the city's daily papers. The local entertainment weekly picked up the story of the launch and ran a piece both online and in the print edition.

With the date set, the promotional materials in the community, and D excitedly telling everyone she knew that they -must- attend, there was nothing to do but wait. Actually... there was tons to do.

The Day I Nearly Crapped Myself - Delays In Shipping

Lulu.com had estimated that it would take about 5-10 business days for my books to arrive. I placed the order two weeks before the launch date. That way, if I discovered within the first week some horrific typo or oversight in the book, or something went wrong with the printing, I would still have time to get a replacement order in. I ordered 100 copies and hit the "Order" button while staring at the big number beside "Total Invoice."

The lesson today is why you should always have a backup plan. For everything.

I checked the lulu.com site obsessively for a note indicating that the order had been completed. To my delight it happened with about eight days to spare. I was in good shape, it seemed. The next day I went onto the FedEx site to find out where the shipment was and when I might expect it to arrive. I was pretty excited.

It was about 09000h when I found my shipment on fedex.com, next to the status message "order cancelled by shipper." WTF!?!?! It certainly hadn't been cancelled by -me-, so I jumped over to lulu.com to look for a phone number.

Lulu is one of those companies that operate in some variation on the "virtual" model. There was no phone number anywhere on their site. Actually there was just one - it was the phone number for their public relations company, buried in amongst the media resources.

There is no substitute for having direct, real-time communications with someone when things are going wrong. I knew that lulu.com was comparatively efficient at responding to emails, but that only meant that I'd reliably get a response within 24 hours. I needed to know what was going on NOW.

To their credit, lulu.com has a real-time chat function on their site. I was able to get hold of a customer service person within 15 minutes and the investigation began as to what was going on. It was a little clumsy having to type everything. I wanted to make it very clear how concerned I was, but I didn't want to come across as a shouty, inconsolable lunatic. I tried to choose my words carefully to convey the correct tone. I was, after all, setting myself up as a writer here.

One of the unexpected advantages of this awkward way to converse is that I did end up with a complete transcript of what was said - a trick that can be difficult to manage in a verbal conversation, and is frequently thought of as potentially valuable after much as has already been discussed.

The customer service person was attentive and seemed appropriately concerned. The big question was whether the order had actually been printed or not. If it hadn't been printed we needed to know immediately so that we could find out why and get it on the press. If it had been printed and just the shipping was cancelled we needed to know if it was a problem with the shipping or with the finished product. And if it was just a clerical error then I needed to know so that I could safely climb down off the ledge and close the window.

Adding to the sense of panic was the fact that I had a phone interview with The Georgia Straight early that afternoon. There was lots of time to reship a finished order, but if it needed to be printed (or reprinted) then there was no guarantee that, between the printing and the shipping, it would arrive on time. The odds seemed split between having the books arrive the day of the launch, or possibly the day after. Should I mention this in my interview, or just pretend that everything was fine when I knew full well that there was a chance I could be launching a book without having any to sell or even show to the attendees?

The person at Lulu took on the task of finding out what had happened. I decided to just go back to bed. Over the next couple of hours there was nothing I could do to fix the situation, and I couldn't bring myself to do any work to promote the event when I knew it might be for naught. Another hour of sleep seemed like the only sensible thing to do. I was already feeling exhausted and it was barely 1000h.

When I got back up and checked my email an hour or so later there was an email from lulu.com explaining that the tracking number I had been given was incorrect, along with the correct tracking order. A check of fedex.com showed the shipment on its way and due to be delivered the next day. The clouds parted, the sun shone, the cat started purring, and music played.

In the time that I had been in limbo I was wracking my brain for solutions. Should I cancel the launch and rebook it for a later date? How important was it to have books to sell on that day? Could I come up with some kind of coupon that I could sell at the event, which could be redeemed for a free book. If I did a coupon, would I have to pay to mail out the late copies, or was there another way to distribute them? I even considered offering to hand-deliver them - not a huge hardship if only ten people were to show up for the launch.

And that's my second lesson - there are always numerous ways around a given problem. The key is identify what your real goal is. If my only goal had been to have books to sell at the launch then I could have been empirically screwed by a printing/shipping error. But if my goal was more general - to sell books - then a bit of creative thinking would be able to get me there. I might have had to expend a little more energy, or possibly a little more money, but I could make it work. Recognise what your goal is and be prepared to be flexible with your tactics.