We are now giving away hundreds of dollars in incentives – photos, potholders, free books, and yesterday, we decided to offer signed copies of two of my most popular paperbacks – Dancing Dogs and Rose In A Storm – both works of fiction – to people who order copies of “Second Chance Dog: A Love Story” from Battenkill books before December 18, the cutoff for getting signed and personalized books to people before Christmas.

Book buyers at Battenkill will also be eligible for the other stuff, some of my photos (Minnie And The Hens), free books, potholders. Today, my friend George Forss offered  a dozen of his fabled photographic bookmarks to be given away for free to people who buy books at Battenkill. He is contributing to my campaign to sell 1,000 or more books there. George supports buying local, individuality and freedom from the corporate grip. He likes writers, too.  (You can buy books at their website, or by calling the store at 518 677-2515. Connie is losing her voice, but not her good nature or determination.)

The tour is getting campy, one woman called over the weekend to ask Connie if she was having an affair with, Connie, a very polite and reserved human being, was quite shocked, didn’t know what to say, she finally blurted out “no, don’t you read his blog?” The woman said, “well, good because I’ll just come up there and beat you up.”

Connie and I talk a lot about incentives, a new word for writers.

I remember hearing a few years ago that some writers had begun offering Iphones, even Ipads, as incentives to people who bought their books. The rumor was that book sales really spiked when incentives were offered – discounts, free books, free technology. One independently wealth writer I know even bought a dozen large screen HDTV’s and gave them away to people who posted five-star reviews on Amazon. Most writers I know were quite horrified to hear this. Writers have been making less, not more, money and are asked to do more, not less, when it comes to promoting their work.

I have to say these stories confused me, made me uncomfortable. I had never had to offer “incentives” to people who bought my books – there are a million of them in print, I always thought books didn’t need incentives. But that was before the recession, and before the true rise of the Kindle and the Ipad, which changed almost everything about publishing. The traditional media – magazines, newspapers, NPR Shows, independent bookstores – that had always chosen bestsellers and fueled the sale of books – stopped working as venues to sell books. Newspapers and magazines declined, they dropped their reviewers, NPR chases celebrities like everybody else and most of the great independent bookstores either closed or radically curtailed their stories to deal with e-books.

I sensed right away that I would have to build a platform for my readers, for my books, and then saw that the blog I created to do that had become almost as important as the books, perhaps more so. And the platform grew, expanded to social media like Facebook. So I’m learning a lot in my first new book tour, my blog is powering it and one of the most interesting things I have learned is that consumers expected incentives when they buy things now. After the recession, the discounting of things became commonplace – sales, discounts, rebates, gifts and paybacks. People want something when they buy something – even something as traditional as a book.

How do you ask people to spend $20 or $30 for a hard-cover book when they can get it on their e-readers for $10, or next year in paperback for $13 or they can choose a thousand titles for free? My blog followers are committed and loyal, nearly 900 of them have brought my books from my local bookstore, Battenkill, and many more have bought it online or through their Kindles, Nooks or Ipads. I’ve found that these incentives I have been hearing about really work, they really draw people to my site, to my book, to Battenkill. The book is in a third printing, the first time that has happened in awhile.

 

Incentives are no longer seen as a crass and commercial intrusion into publishing, they are a widespread and growing element of book sales, they are simply a way to sell things and consumers expect them, respond to them. I sure do. I am quite tickled to get a markdown on something I want to buy. And what, a friend, asked me, does this have to do with good writing? Everything, I told her, the book has to be something people like and talk about, or the incentives fall flat, and you have to do a good job of writing about the book for anyone to be interested in all.

Connie told me this morning that these new incentives began working the minute I posted them on the blog yesterday,  orders were pouring in again, online and on the phone. I have it in my mind to sell 1,000 books via Battenkill – we are very close, and then some.

For me, the incentive program is a lesson, writers like me will have to learn about marketing to survive, and I think I am getting good at it. It works here as long as I am honest about it, don’t over do it, But what I have also learned about the new book tour is that I can now fight for my book, and  see that I fight harder for it than my publishers ever did or will. That is a good thing. Publishers are still very important – they edit, print, package and distribute. They keep track of royalties and sales. They do their thing and I do mine. I’m feeling solid about the new book tour, I haven’t quite quit on this one. I want to get to 1,000 books sold at my bookstore and trigger another printing or two. I’m not sure I can afford to many more things to give-away. Unless I sell tons of books, of course.

There’s still about 10 days. You can call 518 677-2515 or visit Battenkill’s website, they take Paypal and ship anywhere in the world.