A not so sneaky ploy
I love both mystery and SF novels. I read them in roughly equal measure, maybe slightly more mystery than SF. I'm writing an SF series now, but I have a 26K-word outline for a contemporary mystery/thriller and have written about 38K words of that book. Both of my SF novels have mystery plot lines: One Jump Ahead is a missing girl story, and Slanted Jack is a con-man tale.
Despite all that, no mystery review magazine or mystery bookstore will touch me.
As you might expect, and as I've mentioned before in this blog, I find this situation rather frustrating. I'd love to reach the mystery audience.
As part of my effort to do so, I've indulged in a not-so-sneaky ploy: I've donated signed first editions of my two novels to the charity auction at this year's Bouchercon, which I'll be attending this coming week. (Now that I'm announcing this tactic here, I suppose the veneer of sneakiness is gone entirely; oh, well.) I registered for the convention as an author, and in the attendee list they marked me as such and provided a link to my site. (Of course, in what I'm sure really was an accident, they dropped me entirely from the list; I'm hoping they'll fix that soon.) As a writer attending the con, I received the mass email from the con organizers soliciting donations to the auction. I wrote back that I wasn't sure they'd want my books, because of the SF marketing, etc. They replied that they would, and they pointed to a Baltimore-area writer who does future mysteries, the extremely well-known J.D. Robb (aka Nora Roberts). I sent off my books.
I plan to attend the auction and offer to personalize the books to the winner (which I'd be happy to do in any case), should anyone bid on them. I want to help the charities the auctions will benefit, and I'd do it anyway, but I figure maybe this way a few mystery readers will give my work a look.
I understand that this entire effort is almost certainly a waste, and it sure won't nudge the book-sales needle, but I'll feel like I at least tried, and that's something.
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2 comments:
sounds like a wonderful plan to me! you're making an effort to reach out to them, instead of just expecting them to come to you - as you say, it may not / probably won't nudge the sales needle today, but it's not the first drop of rain that wears away the stone.
-lisa
Thanks for the encouraging words. Your analogy makes me worry that you've been working near salespeople too long.
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