To market to market to buy a fat book

Some folks have asked me what I am doing to take "The Missionary and the Brute" to market. LOTS of things - actually. One of the key things I am doing is mailing out marketing DVDs to independent booksellers. Each is an autorun disk that looks and acts like a website, but is truly self-contained on the disk itself.

This is what it looks like when it opens up:

As you can see - it begins with a video trailer in the center - contains all the bookseller info on the left hand frame, and has a menu across the top with several options:

• About the Author
• About the Book
• The Blog (link)
• Readings/Booksignings
• Order Books (link)
• Contact the Author
• and Download the book in PDF format

Each page has purportedly interesting background material that will hopefully create an impression with the most vital component of my book-marketing campaign - the independent booksellers.

About the Author:

This page - as it sounds - contains information about my writing career. Brief author bio - pithy photo of me and nice cover shots of my previous books ("The Hand Behind the Mouse" and "Bungee Jumping & Cocoons") and a couple of the magazines I have written for ("Persistence of Vision" and yes, that is indeed "Easyriders"). The right frame contains a brief blurb about my travels in Tanzania as Founder/Executive Director of Brick by Brick for Tanzania.

About the Book:

Herein is some generic information about the book itself. And a pledge to help booksellers stay vital in this challenging market. One of the ways they can do so is by offering up content (i.e., authors!) in their stores in a way that online bookstores can not do.

Readings/Booksignings:

Here I offer up my services to try to help draw traffic to the bookstores. Not just for my book, but to help establish a model for how we - as authors - can help keep the stores alive. Notice also that I reiterate my offer to answer Book Club questions here with an easy to use request form.

The other menu items include a link to this blog, another link going to the exclusive bookstore only ordering site (allowing discounts), and my contact email address. I think it is a pretty nice piece.

If you have a bookstore near you who would like to investigate further how to feature "The Missionary and the Brute" (and me!) at their stores, please contact me here. Much appreciated!

It's a mutually beneficial relationship we as authors have with booksellers. I want to make it the absolute best possible!