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Promotion vs. ongoing engagement

If you had an extra $11 grand to spend on promoting your book, how would you use it? New web site, ads, publicist, t-shirts, coffee mugs? There are all kinds of ways you could blow it, but this writer takes the cake. He dropped it out of an airplane over a city.

As money falls from the sky, will people use that money to buy his book? Likely not. He should have just given them the book, and invested that money in something else for them to buy. He should have dropped coupons for a free book from the sky (although that would probably get him busted for littering). Nonetheless, years from now, people aren't going to remember his book, they're going to remember the day that money fell from the sky.

As authors, think about how people will remember you, your book, and the crazy things you do to make them do so. How people remember you is the difference between a promotional stunt and ongoing engagement.

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This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on June 3, 2008 3:12 PM.

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