Travels with Myself

A Journal of Discovery and Transition
Doug Jordan, Author

Thoughts on Writing/Publishing

23.10 Sustaining Drive, and Marketing Books 8: A Role for The CAA

Having an MBA and managing my own consulting business for 30 years, meant I had some sense of business management, including the imperative of effective marketing and distribution. So I applied this wisdom to my book business: I did some research, I developed plans, I made calls. I made progress. But not enough. I needed help. I joined the Canadian Authors Association.

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Books by Doug Jordan

23.9 Sustaining Drive, and Marketing Books 7: Speakers’ Circuit

Now that [Terry Fallis] is a successful published author, he has speaking gigs all over the country. I’m not sure if his fame has reached the US. He mentions enjoying Whitehorse very much, but no mention of Wabash. I imagine he no longer drives himself to give a Wednesday afternoon talk at the Campbellford Public Library, but I could be wrong.

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Books by Doug Jordan

23.8 Sustaining Drive, and Marketing Books 6: Word-of-Mouth Marketing

The marketing strategy here is to attempt to lever the word-of-mouth angle (‘word on the street’?), by far the most effective method to draw attention to your book. It’s one thing to tickle somebody’s fancy on TikTok, it’s another thing to get that amused potential buyer to become an actual buyer; she needs one more bit of encouragement. People are much more likely to buy your book if her friend recommended it than if she only saw a video. You need to get people talking about your book, and then friends telling their friends about it.

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Thoughts on Writing/Publishing

23.7 Sustaining Drive, and Marketing Books 5: Other Channels to Market

Still, how many books will they sell? This is the classic queuing problem every B.Comm. student ponders in Operations Research 299. It’s the same problem every baker ponders when trying to decide the right quantity of buns to bake. Too many means wasted inventory and costs, too few and you sell out of product and have unrealized revenue. And therein lies the big problem with book fairs.

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Thoughts on Writing/Publishing

23-6 Sustaining Drive, and Marketing Books, 4: Bricks and Mortar Bookstores

So in seeking retail channels for our book, ‘The Treasure of Stella Bay’, we abandoned the Indigo empire and sought out local independent bookstores instead, especially those located in Ottawa (local author angle) and the Lake Ontario/Kingston region (to exploit the Amherst Island/Stella Bay locale angle). You can see my strategy here: if my book could get traction with these parochial stores, I could then lever this reputation into indie stores in the ‘big smoke’ (i.e., Toronto).

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Thoughts on Writing/Publishing

23.5 Sustaining Drive, and Marketing Books 3, TikTok

To get noticed on social media, words are not enough; even pictures are not enough. You need more than pictures to get and hold people’s attention. You need moving pictures.
And we’re not talking about black and white Charlie Chaplin movies, we’re talking talkies.
TikTok.

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Thoughts on Writing/Publishing

23-3. Sustaining Drive, and Marketing Books

In the face of this daunting market-place for books, most Canadian writers don’t realistically expect to become rich and famous, nor even become ‘best-selling authors’; they just want to be read. (I suppose that might be said of all writers. How many aspiring American authors also live in obscurity, their books languishing in their closets, unsold, unread and unloved.)

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Travels With Myself, Part IV (2023)

23-2. Year of ‘The Big Snow’

Meteorology records tell us that the first Ottawa snowfall in the fall of 1970 was November 10 but on the 12th, 9½ inches (24.6 cm); citizens didn’t see the ground again for 139 days.

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Travels With Myself, Part IV (2023)

23-1. Volunteer Vicissitudes

You don’t have to be a lifer to be a virtuous volunteer but you need to be committed; many volunteers, though, have other motives, or find out they aren’t as motivated to make a contribution as they first thought when they volunteered, caught in a moment of enthusiasm, or pressure.

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