The Creative Writer's Survival Guide: Advice from an Unrepentant Novelist

Finding the Odd Venue to Promote Your Book

174 Finding the Odd Venue to Promote Your Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . My most successful book-​ signing event was not at Borders or Barnes and Noble, nor was it at any independent bookstore. Where I sold the most books was a place called Duke’s Italian Beef Drive-​ in in Bridgeview, Illinois. Duke’s is a small restaurant that specializes in Italian beef and Italian sausage sandwiches or a combo sandwich that includes both beef and sausage. (If you’re not from Chicago, you may be appalled by the gluttony that this sandwich suggests, but if you are from Chicago , you know that this is pure Heaven . . . unless, of course, you’re a vegetarian, of which Chicago, I’ll concede, has a couple.) In short, Duke’s is not a placewhere hipsters hang out.What you’ll find is food, lots of it, and, occasionally, you’ll find me standing by a stack of my books with hand-​ written signs to let the customers know how much the books cost. The first time I set up a display at Duke’s, I signed over a hundred books. Why did I do so well there? For one thing, Duke’s is located where my novel, The Book of Ralph, is set. Furthermore, one of the book’s chapters is set in Duke’s. When I wrote the chapter, I hadn’t planned on doing a signing there, but when the book came out, I sent a copy of the book to the owners. A few months later, one of the owners showed up at a book signing that I was doing in a mall and offered to hang up a poster of the book in his store’s window. Five years later, the sign is still hanging there. It’s the best advertisement for the book I could have asked for. Whenever I receive an e-​mail from a fan living on the southwest side of Chicago, chances are they learned about the book from the sign in Duke’s.When the paperback was about to be released, I contacted the owners and ran by them the idea of doing a signing. Fortunately for me, they were all for it. Book signings at bookstores are dime-​ a-​ dozen, but a book event at a place that sells Italian beef sandwiches is odd enough to garner media attention. Feature stories appeared in both the Chicago Reader and the Daily Southtown, while short notices were listed in the Chicago Sun-​ Times and the Chicago Tribune. A radio interview I’d done a year earlier for the hardback re-​ aired with a new announcement tacked on about the signing at Duke’s. I can’t stress enough the importance of finding unique venues to Publicity 175 promote your work, but I don’t necessarily think that a unique venue in and of itself will generate the attention that my Duke’s signing did. The venue should somehow be intrinsically tied to the book’s subject. Keep in mind that not every book lends itself to this sort of promotion . I have returned to Duke’s two more times to sign copies of new books. In addition to the new book, I always display my older books, and, without fail, the book I sell the most copies of is still the older book—The Book of Ralph. Often, people who buy the book have already read it and are now buying it for friends. Take a good, long look at your own book. Are there potential venues lurking within? My friend Sherrie Flick promoted her novel Reconsidering Happiness at the bakery that inspired the bakery in her book. If such a venue doesn’t exist within the pages of your book, are there any unusual venues where your target audience might be found? I was offered an opportunity to sign books at a class reunion sponsored by my high school’s class of 1979 (I was class of 1983). The reunion organizers decided to turn the event into a fund-​ raising opportunity and open it up for any graduating class to attend. Even though I wish I had sold more books there, I suspect I’ll benefit from word of mouth from the few dozen books that I did sell as well as from the books I donated for the raffles. Don’t disregard doing readings at bookstores, but look beyond the traditional venue. You may discover that the most fertile places for selling books are in the...