April 26, 2006
One of the problems facing an author/freelance writer like myself is trying to figure out where to spend your energy (along with energy, read time & money).

The income to-date from the novels hasn't been very large, and if I were to do a profit/loss statement on the fiction/marketing area, I'm sure I would come out in the red.

It's easy enough, from a business perspective, to view the money, time & energy you spend on promotion of a novel the same way you would in any other business. A proctologist wouldn't open a practice without letting all the assholes out there know there was a place to go, and the local restaurant would want an ad in the paper and a big sign announcing a grand opening, and Jimbo's Bait, Worms & BBQ would, too.

Word of mouth alone doesn't really cut it, although occasionally businesses do that.

I interviewed a marketing expert a while back on an article for Podiatry Management (or perhaps it was Podiatry Online), and she commented that Coca-Cola continues to advertise.

If you click on over to Joe Konrath's blog, which focuses almost entirely on book promotion & marketing, you can see that Joe stirs up some controversy on this subject. The best thing, many argue, is to just write a good book.

Well, yes. But Joe also notes that if it's published, it is a good book, and promotion and sales aren't necessarily linked.

I don't have Joe's energy, time or personality, but in my own way I put quite a bit of effort into book promotion, although probably significantly more sporadically. Part of this has to do with the fact that Joe is published by Hyperion, which is a major publisher with major distribution to most bookstore, big or small. He's hitting 500 bookstores (if he lives long enough) this summer to promote RUSTY NAIL.

Although he's insane (in a good way), I look at this endeavor with a certain rue mixed with wistfulness. My last novel--DIRTY DEEDS--was published by a small press that did not have distribution, and just getting the book into bookstores was difficult and often impossible. I, in fact, had a book signing with the Borders located in the Renaissance Center, where GM is headquartered, canceled because of distribution issues, and believe me, that was one signing I really looked forward to--a Friday noon signing with several thousand employees of GM in the area.

At the same time, I've got my website, I did mailings, went to some cons, did bookstore signings, a couple radio/TV interviews, and a few dozen library and ROtary Club talks.

What was killing me was people then being unable to find the book anywhere but in a box I carried with me or on Amazon.com.

Hopefully this will be different with the new publisher when THE DEVIL'S PITCHFORK comes out in October. Midnight Ink is an imprint of Llewellyn, and although Llewellyn is not a big NY publisher, they are a very big non-NY publisher, and as far as I can tell, they've got normal, successful distribution channels. So, hopefully, if somebody interested in Mark Terry's books wants one, they can stop in their big old chain store on the way home from work and actually find it there.

And I'll do mailings, and go to cons, and book signings and library talks and it wouldn't surprise me if I ended up doing some more Rotary Club talks, and all the stuff that goes into book marketing. I'm also planning to put a bigger emphasis on website and Internet marketing, so stay tuned.

Best,
Mark Terry