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.