Selling the Book

When my first books, Amazing Days and Places to See, People to See, Things to Do, All Across Canada, were published in the 90s, marketing them was easy -I didn’t have to do a thing! My publisher, Scholastic Canada, did it all – sent out review copies, saved reviews for me etc. My job consisted of filing my reviews, cashing the royalty cheques, being interviewed by my local weekly, and answering “fan mail” from two youthful readers in Labrador who felt I had given that part of the country short shrift.

Ah! The changes wrought by the passage of time! Authors no longer have to search for agents and publishers willing to take them on. The computer has put paid to all that, creating a book bonanza on the internet for readers. This has resulted in a seismic shift in traditional publishing, as these companies struggle to cope with fundamental changes to their industry. Among the changes is the way promotion and marketing is now handled.

Regardless of whether an author has signed on with a big press, a small press, or has decided to go it alone, there is a new onus on him/her to promote as well as write. Traditional publishers are now embedding marketing requirements into their contracts and watching closely to ensure that their authors are adhering to their agreements.

One needs to have a purpose for marketing. In the case of the Mesdames of Mayhem, it is exposure. And so by forming a collective, we hoped to pool our resources, skills and audiences to increase our reach. So what do we do?

Social media is the first and most obvious place to start. A Facebook page, Mesdames of Mayhem, Twitter account @MesdamesMayhem, and a website and blog are de rigeuer, along with tweet teams and blog tours to help spread the word.

Being alert to opportunities can also result in some exciting and non-traditional venues. This has been the case with the Mesdames’ anthology, Thirteen. With help from Friend of the Mesdames, Jane Coryell, we entered into two promotional opportunities with theatre groups who were staging mystery productions. In return for using our website, Facebook page and Twitter account to promote their production, we were given permission to have a table at the theatres in question, sell our books, and be given a boost in the printed programs.

While at the theatre one evening, Madame Madeleine Harris-Callway and I noticed a bookstore at the corner. We walked in, introduced ourselves, and handed the owner a bookmark and a book. He immediately told us he would take some on consignment and invited us to do a signing at the store. The local newspaper was on hand to photograph and interview us at the signing.

We contacted several Ontario wineries and invited them to contribute wine to our launch. Most didn’t express an interest, but one sent us a lovely letter wishing us well and enclosing a gift certificate for 10 people to tour the vineyard and enjoy a tasting.

The Mesdames have bookings with several libraries in Ontario, to read and discuss the process behind creating and selling Thirteen. We have been invited to participate in some book clubs as well.
There are other irons for the Mesdames in the proverbial fire, but these will keep for another day. In the meantime, we continue to look for opportunities to showcase our wonderful book and our very talented collective of writers.

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See You Later, Alligator

(Originally posted on January 14, 2014 by mesdamesofmayhem)

 

If there is anything an ice storm teaches us, it is how helpless we can be when confronted with the forces of nature. And while there is much to be said for the traditional weaponry when plotting a murder, I find myself drawn to the natural world to do my dirty work.

In my novel manuscript, Tooth and Claw, Laura Jensen, an attractive wealthy woman with a past and some strange predilections, travels to New Orleans for a business conference. There her past catches up with her. What should have been a peaceful and enjoyable cruise on the Mississippi turns into her worst nightmare; and her body is dumped in a bayou and into the jaws of a very hungry alligator.

Although I have vacationed in New Orleans, one of my favourite cities, and have in fact, enjoyed a bayou cruise, I was not that familiar with alligators, so some research was necessary. While visiting my friends Janice and Larry Hatt at their West Palm Beach condo, I prevailed upon them to take me to see alligators. We went to a place in the Everglades called Shark Valley. Why it is named Shark Valley is a mystery to me since it is not a valley and there was a noticeable absence of anything resembling sharks. But there were alligators galore, and after, wandering off on a trail during a break in the tour and nearly stepping upon one – fortunately for me fast asleep – I wisely stayed in the tram for the duration of the outing.

Alligators continue to fascinate me, albeit from a safe distance. Genetically, they are linked to dinosaurs and have been around for some 230 million years, without evolving much. And while human beings are not part of their usual diet, they are considered opportunistic feeders, which means they will eat anything that comes their way. In 1995, a nuisance alligator was killed. The ‘gator, estimated to be about 50 years old, had seven dog collars in its stomach, one from a dog that had been missing for 14 years.

The jaws of the American alligator can exert 3000 pounds of pressure per square inch- enough to crunch bones. They generally kill their prey by rolling until the prey drowns. They then stash the kill in a muddy bank or underwater cave until it is putrid enough for the alligator to tear off pieces.
Alligators were hunted almost to extinction for their skin which is made into fashionable leather goods – shoes, handbags and belts, until they were declared an endangered species. However in recent years, their numbers have increased dramatically, and there is now an annual hunt in the bayous. Hunting licences are required for this. The recent series, Swamp People, on the History Channel, documents the hunt.

The supremacy of ‘gators in the Florida Everglades is now threatened by pythons. While not native to this part of the world, the giant snakes have found the Everglades to be an ideal home with no natural predators. The pythons are thought to number in the hundreds of thousands. An urban myth is that people adopted the snakes when babies as pets, but as they got bigger and threatened small children and family dogs and cats, the owners irresponsibly released them into the Everglades. A more plausible theory is that the snakes originally escaped from a breeding facility that was damaged in a hurricane. Winters in Louisiana tend to be about ten degrees colder than Florida which is too cold for the pythons and probably explains why the Louisiana alligators have not been threatened by the snakes.

If history stays the course, the alligators will prevail and continue on for many more millennia.

The Idea Shop

If I were to take a poll of writers to find out what question they are asked most frequently, I’m betting it would be, “Where do you get your ideas?” Author Stephen King once joked that there’s a company in Cleveland or some such place, called The Idea Shop and every month it sends him a box of ideas.

Appealing as the notion of an idea shop is, it really isn’t necessary. Ideas are all around us all the time. Really!!

Some writers find inspiration in careers they’ve had; education; family experiences and family histories. Other sources for ideas are in newspapers, magazines, the Internet. We’ve all seen medical thrillers written by doctors, legal thrillers written by lawyers, mysteries based on cooking, on knitting and on quilting.

Most of my own ideas have come from simply looking and listening. Inspiration is never very far away. The idea for my story George came to

me one day in late October when I was driving along a country road and saw a gallows (a Hallowe’en decoration) with a dummy hanging from it. My mind immediately began to play with the possibilities – what if that’s not a dummy? What if a real person is hanging there, but because it’s Hallowe’en, people just assume it’s a dummy?

Driving along another country road with a friend, she pointed to a pretty frame cottage and remarked, rather casually, that the cottage was supposed to be haunted. From that casual remark came the ghost in For Elise. My story, Sugar and Spice to be published in Thirteen, had its origins in an incident described by a former student of mine, and Stooping to Conquer (EFD1: Starship Goodwords, Carrick Publishing) was inspired by the commentary of a tour guide in one of the great country houses in Ireland, which I visited many years ago.

Future plans include a fictionalized account of a bit of family lore involving a young boy who died under mysterious circumstances, and a story based on some intriguing material I happened upon while researching my novel which is currently undergoing revisions.

A favourite technique is one I came across from author Anne Bernays in her book What If (HarperCollins). Consider a perfectly ordinary situation, then add a “what if” question. For example, you are driving home from the supermarket and stop for a red light. What if a man opens the door on the passenger side, jumps in and points a gun at you and tells you to keep driving? There you have a complication and the beginning of what might be an exciting plot.

Award-winning author and teacher (and the most recent of the Mesdames) Rosemary Aubert, gave each of the students in her class at Loyalist in June a little notebook to keep track of ideas. In fact, I’ve been keeping an “Ideas” notebook for years. It’s crammed full of my jottings, musings, and clippings from newspapers and magazines that could morph into a short story or novel one day.

Carry a little notebook around and jot down ideas as they occur. Who knows? If you don’t use them in a story, perhaps you could open a Stephen King-type Idea Shop of your own and send a box of ideas to authors every month.