Just as I planned, we ate a late and leisurely breakfast today. It was as warm and sunny as forecast. Walking out in the sun by a frozen lake was very enjoyable and I even took a few photos just to prove I still remember how. Then Camera Girl and I drove over to the big city (ha!) and had some Thai food. Splendiferous.
I went over the communication I received from my book marketer and set up what I hope is a productive post-launch meeting where I can finalize a plan to finish off the launch with a large number of readers getting their hands on the book in the next week or so.
Apparently, there is a website called BookFunnel that will allow me to run a giveaway in exchange for the customer’s e-mail address. This will facilitate follow-on advertising of my sequel books and other writing projects. In conjunction with this the marketer thinks I should produce a follow-on epilog or teaser to entice the readers to sign up for some program of material that I will produce in the future. All very interesting, but what I’m also interested in finding out is whether the traction I created with the launch is indicative of a book and sequels that will be popular or not very popular. I basically don’t have any real knowledge about what a popular book start-up looks like.
I’ve sold a little over a hundred and twenty copies to date and that doesn’t seem to be an overwhelming response by the book buying public. I was hoping for more like a hundred and twenty million copies or even a hundred and twenty thousand copies. I’ve had to cancel my rental of MetLife Stadium for my book signing event. Instead, I’ve taped together three or four of the boxes that Camera Girl gets her dog food bags delivered in and set them up in the lower driveway. I hope it doesn’t rain soon. That tape’s not so strong. I’ll be giving away free key chains with the name of my local mechanic on them. He had them out on the counter and I thought he wouldn’t mind if I took a few (or all) of them. I don’t think he bought one of my books so I think it’ll be alright.
For my next book, maybe I’ll attempt to reach viral status using a best-seller adjacent name. In other words, I’ll make it sound like some other popular work. For instance, “Reacher” is a very commercially lucrative series. So maybe I could have a series with a character named “Reached.” He could be like Reacher only in the past tense. So instead of being enormously large and strong I’ll make my character big but kind of old and worn out. Sort of like Reacher in thirty years. And he could fight crime but only in retirement villages and old age homes. And his tag line will be, “What did you say? Speak up you young punk!” I think it could be huge.