This week I'm taking a soap box vacation and adding fun and useful things to my blog readers. For those of you who are wannabee independent publishers(my dream) Seth Godin spoke about how his publishing company, Chelsea Green Publishing produced a NYT bestseller without advanced preorders, a big advertising budget.
We did it[
Don’t Think of an Elephant!] by partnering with key progressive organizations, including
AlterNet, MoveOn, the Sierra Club, Democracy for America, the Apollo
Alliance, the Institute for America’s Future, Green Festival, Hightower and
Associates, Anita Roddick.com and many others, who all helped launch the
book on the Internet. They sent out e-mail blasts and posted information on
all their Web sites, and we gave them free downloads of the first chapter.
Then, once the word started to spread, especially via the blogosphere and
other word-of-mouth venues, key independent booksellers across the country,
as well as the national chains, got behind it and made it the bestseller it
is. In short, the strategy worked for everyone and got a critically
important book out there at the right time and into the hands of people who
will put the ideas to work. In the end it’s about creating social change,
and the reason it worked so well is that we all worked together; together we
had an impact.
It also helped that we made the book short, readable, and cheap. There are
not many serious books you can buy for ten bucks..."
I wonder, if we can rally together to promote quality christian fiction?
Writing to see what the end's gon' be,
Dee