Mother Knows Best: Five
Things I Learned About Selling My Book From My Mom
By Cherie Burbach
I always knew my mom liked to sell things. Whenever I wanted to just throw
things out she always wanted to have a rummage sale instead. She’d go through
the trouble of dragging tables outside, putting price tags on all our little
tchotchkes, and sitting there from early on in a weekend with little old ladies
that negotiated the prices from 10 cents to a nickel.
Not me. I hated dragging our things out for the neighborhood to see; I hated
sitting there while people tried to get a bargain from my already drastically
reduced pricing. In short, I hated being a salesperson.
But my mom is different. She’s been in retail sales for more than 20 years and
knows how to sell. And since I published my first book, she has become a big
source of book sales. So much so, in fact, that I have think I should be giving
her a percentage as an agent’s fee! But don’t tell her that.
The point is, she’s not shy in getting the word out about my book. And now that
I’ve seen her results, I realize I have a lot to learn from her sales skills and
how they could help me promote my book.
I published my first book of poetry, The Difference Now, in February. When it came out, I was planning a wedding and working full-time and
didn’t have much time to promote a book. I was also a bit shy about telling
people about it. It wasn’t that I wasn’t proud or didn’t think it was any good;
I believed in it, wholly and absolutely. And it also wasn’t that I didn’t know
how to go about promoting it. After all, I’ve worked in marketing for more than
15 years now. But I had a hard time balancing my humbleness with the fortitude
needed to sell my book.
Enter my mom. She was very excited about my book and talked it up wherever she
went. At first I thought, isn’t that sweet, she’s my mom and she’s proud of me.
I thought maybe these people were buying my book just because I was her
daughter. (We artists are an uncertain lot at times, aren’t we?) But after a
while I realized that people were buying the book because they liked it. And
they never would have liked it if they hadn't even known about it. As we say in
marketing, you can have the best product in the world but you won’t sell a thing
unless people know about it. And that’s where my mom came in. I’ve been
observing her methods and I think we writers can benefit from each and every one
of them.
Lesson #1 - Show that you are excited and proud of your work.
This may seem like an obvious one, but I quickly realized that my mom was
not shy about talking to people about my book, whereas I would feel like I was
“bragging” if I brought it up. Ironically, as a marketing person I was not at
all shy about promoting the companies I’ve worked for or the products we
produced. My zeal as a marketing person made me extremely good at my job,
because I could convey genuine fondness about the thing I was promoting. When I
talked about my own work, however, I would stammer and become quiet, giving
people the impression that my work wasn’t very good.
My mother was just the opposite. She would easily describe my poems to people,
talk about mentions I’d had in the local media, and proudly talk about my sales
ranking on Amazon. She would talk about my books with neighbors, co-workers,
friends, and, as I’ll mention a little later, complete strangers.
She’s not only sold my book but created excitement about it. I received my first
fan letter from someone she sold the book to. With my mom’s help, a woman she
works with bought my book and then she and her daughter looked on the Internet
to view recent articles about it.
When my mom got done talking to people they wanted to read what all the fuss was
about. And isn’t that why companies spend millions of dollars in advertising? To
get us to at least try their product?
Lesson #2 - Carry Your Book With You
My mom started carrying one of my books around with her everywhere she went.
She kept a copy in her purse and in her car. She schlepped around with a copy of
my book to the grocery store, work, the coffee shop, anywhere she happened to
be. She never wanted to be without an opportunity to show someone the book. She
also used it as an icebreaker in talking to people. She could not only say, “My
daughter just wrote a book,” but also show it to them. We all know we’d rather
see something than just hear about it.
Incredibly, she sold books to complete strangers this way. As I mentioned
before, as an artist, sometimes it amazes me when someone I’ve never met or
don’t know takes an interest in my work. Call it modesty, but when my mom first
started selling books I thought people were just buying them from her because
they liked her. That might have been the case at first, but suddenly she was
selling them to people who didn’t know either one of us.
About a month ago she was in a department store and while she was shopping it
started to rain. A lot. She stood in the entryway of the store to wait out the
rain, and while she stood there another woman joined her. They made small talk
about a number of different subjects, when suddenly the subject of writing came
up. My mother, not missing a beat, told the woman that I had just published a
book of poetry, and of course, pulled my book out to show her. Since it was
raining anyway, she began to look through it and asked my mom where she could
buy it. My mother told her it was available at the bookstores and online, or she
said, she could just sell her the copy she had been carrying around. The woman
looking at the book bought it right there on the spot!
Lesson #3 - Create Interest With Branding
Carrying your book around is a great way to create interest, but there are
also many other ways to market. As writers, we are often on limited budgets, and
with the competitive nature of the industry, these days we are forced to help
promote our work ourselves. Again, at first I felt rather shy about this, but
then one day my mom, my husband, and I went to see an author at a local
bookstore. This author has written dozens of books and is by all accounts very
successful. Lo and behold, when he finished reading from his work, he pulled out a
box of tee shirts to sell! I looked at my mom and knew I could do that too.
Hey, if it worked for him (an already successful writer), why not me?
I found a source for inexpensive tee shirts and bought some iron-on transfers
that can be printed on a home computer. I printed the graphic from my book cover
onto transfer paper and ironed it on a tee shirt. Voila! Instant advertising! Of
course, my mom was the first person I gave one of these shirts to.
One Sunday morning she popped into the local coffee shop while wearing the tee
shirt. The girl behind her commented on the shirt, and my mom said it was from
the cover of her daughter’s book. Of course, she pulled my book from her purse
to show the girl (see Lesson #2). As this was right before Mother’s Day, she
told the girl that the book would be a great present for the women in her life. After
perusing the book the girl agreed, and my mom sold her that very copy.
As a marketing person, I’m very much against the thinking that “trinkets” are
what marketing is all about. Marketing is an entire umbrella of promotional
effort, and includes PR, advertising, mailings, and branding. Of these, branding
is absolutely key. So take something about your book, whether it is the cover or
a concept, and use it consistently. As I mentioned, tee shirts are inexpensive
and can work terrifically for getting the image of your book out in front of
people. Bookmarks are a great leave behind when talking to bookstores about
carrying your book. When sending any correspondence about your book, tie an
image into the mix. With each of the press releases I sent regarding my first
book signing, I used the cover of the book in the upper right as a graphic.
Think about this: a total stranger may initially pick up your book because the
cover attracts her. Isn’t that what we do sometimes in a bookstore?
Lesson #4 - Shoot for the Moon, and Remain Undeterred
After reading my book, one of the first things my mom said was, “Oprah needs
to read this book.” I’ve no doubt that many people say that about Oprah, and her
book club has no doubt given reading and literature the publicity it has so long
deserved. My mother also wrote to Oprah, and remains undeterred that if Oprah
could just read it, she’d absolutely love my book.
My point with this lesson is not to overwhelm Oprah with cards and letters (I’m
sure she gets enough of that already) but to reiterate the point that despite this
being a very lofty goal, my mom actually believes my book is good enough to go
all the way. And since she’s a huge fan of Oprah, naturally it was the first
thing she thought of in relation to the book’s potential. She says this with
such confidence that sometimes I half expect Oprah to call me one day and ask me
to be on her show. My mom’s enthusiasm is a reminder to all of us to believe
strongly in our work.
Lesson #5 - There’s More Than One Way To Skin A Cat
We’ve already discussed marketing to bookstores and talking up our books to
people we encounter in everyday life. In taking one more tip from my mom, the
other thing we need to do as writers is look at our book from a reader’s
perspective.
In the case of my poetry book, I also designed the cover and chapter graphics.
Of course when my mom talks about the book with folks, it is one thing she
brings up. To once again use the lady in the department store as an example, one
thing my mom talked about with her is painting. She mentioned that I was an
artist and designed the book cover. This also became a topic of conversation
with the coffee shop girl when she was admiring my mom’s shirt.
The lesson to take from this is to step back and look at what’s unique about
your book. I would never think to say to someone, “I wrote a book and painted
the cover.” I’d be lucky to get the first part of the sentence out. And yet my
mom used this as another point of conversation, to continue the discussion
toward my book.
All in all, what I’ve learned is that my mother is not just a proud mom, but a
clever salesperson, too. Taking a few tips from her could help all of us
emerging writers and the guerrilla marketing we must perform to get the word out
about our work. Don’t you just hate it when mother really does know best?
Cherie Burbach is the author of two books of poetry, The Difference Now
and A New Dish, as well as At the Coffee Shop, a humorous look at
the world of Internet dating. She is currently working on her first novel and
resides in Wisconsin with her husband. Please visit her website at
www.thedifferencenow.com.
