Getting Your Novel On Some Bookstore Shelves... Part 1

A couple of weeks ago, I received these packages in the mail...


I shared this photo on FB and teased people for a couple of days about what might be inside, before finally revealing their contents.


At least one of my FB friends asked, "Wow, that's a lot of books  Are you having a special event?"

My answer was no.

So then someone else asked, "Well then why did you get so many?  What are you planning on doing with them?"

I responded with, "Well, I'm making them available for anyone who wants a signed edition for just $15.00, plus $3.00 for shipping.  If they want a copy of each book it will be two for $25.00, plus $5.00 for shipping."

Then came the inevitable question of, "What happens if you don't sell them all?"

My response was this...


I went to one of the local public libraries and asked if they would like some free copies of a local author's books for their shelves.  They're response was a huge smile and "Yes, we would thank you so much..."  From there the conversation drifted to the subject of the books and discussions about whether they ever had authors come and give talks.  I'm currently getting lined up to go back in a month or two to give my first talk about writing and becoming an Indie Author.



My next destination was to return to Cabrillo College, where I received my Associates Degree in Human Services.  I went straight into the college bookstore and began looking over their shelves.  I saw immediately that they carried books by alumnus and local authors (I of course happened to be both).  Then I made my way over to the nearest salesperson and asked to speak to the manager of the bookstore.  After a quick introduction and a brief explanation, she told me they'd be only too happy to carry my books.  But instead of asking me to supply the copies she wanted to know who my publisher was.  When I told her it was Createspace, she smiled and said, "Great, I can order directly from them, we have a good working relationship with Createspace."  

I then asked about authors coming and doing book signings and she was quite interested.  She told me they don't have many but enjoy doing it whenever they had an opportunity.  In fact they were getting one set up for one of the instructors at the college.  I'm to get back in touch with her in a month, once the books are on the shelves and we will try to arrange a date and time for me to do a signing there as well.

Before I left, I went to say hello to a few of my old instructors and also slipped over to the college's newspaper office.  There I found out who I needed to contact to try and get some publicity in the campus newspaper.  I'm waiting for when the books are on the shelves before we get anything in print to help drive people to the bookstore.


So all this happened last week.  What did I get up to this week?  You'll have to wait for the next installment to find out.  

Until then, take care and keep writing.





Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Hobbies, Talents, Characters and Me...

A Bit About Marketing and Distribution...
https://www.musingsoftwocreativeminds.com/2014/10/getting-your-novel-on-some-shelves-part.html
www.musingsoftwocreativeminds.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2020-29
300507
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:24BIZX2QY627MFKMHLZPZA5OFXIEPO4P
<urn:uuid:7a0c08dc-99c9-4ce8-a2c4-1ee8f6afcd45>
2020-07-07T18:10:01Z
172.217.7.211
text/html
sha1:3QCMMSSIGYZXASHHJRO7NSBSBQK2DMV2
<urn:uuid:4d5ec5b9-b74e-4467-a15d-e84604d56d69>
https://www.musingsoftwocreativeminds.com/2014/10/getting-your-novel-on-some-shelves-part.html
response
<urn:uuid:94edf16b-62f6-4111-b2bf-0c69f4c6eb5a>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2020-29
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for July 2020
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-67-67-193.ec2.internal
software: Apache Nutch 1.17 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.2-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: http://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/