I had a dream last night that I had launched a campaign to send out tons of copies of “Fear and Yoga” to individual people, people who might fall in love with it, spread the word, turn it viral. People like Christopher Buckley, Stephen King, Oprah. But I also thought (this was part of the dream too) about sending it to machers of the book club world. I wasn’t sure where to find them, although my unconscious had provided a major book club convention in Hawaii in August.
I woke up thinking, well that’s ridiculous. Chris Buckley and Stephen King gets tons of books. Another book would just go in their piles to take into the closest used bookstore. But book clubs, that’s different. They consume books like crazy. In fact, they’re the engine of the book industry. If it wasn’t for book groups, would anybody be buying fiction these days?
So what is it? What do book groups want? I know “Fear and Yoga” would absolutely be a great book for discussions. Do I offer to send one free book to any group as an incentive? Or to be available for a speakerphone chat? Or write a book club discussion guide for my website? Or have a contest? Or all of the above?
Not sure. I think I’ll ask some of the bookstore owners I know. And maybe John Mutter over at Shelf Awareness. And Twitter. There’s always Twitter.
That would be a great idea to somehow meet with the book club either in person or by phone, and be able to answer questions about the book, etc.
I’m in a book club and one time we did read a book by a local author and the author came to the meeting where we discussed his book. Unfortunately I missed that meeting but others said it was great to be able to talk to him directly about the book.
A book club discussion guide on your blog would be a great idea too.
Some of the books we read have the discussion guide actually at the end of the book, which is helpful if you’re the one who has to lead the discussion at the meeting. Other times people have found the discussion guide on line and used it for their discussions. So having it on your blog would be good!