On her “Pencil Shavings” blog, Latina author Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez writes about what works and doesn’t work for promoting her novels:
"Again and again, I found that the only media my readers ever mentioned in conjunction with having heard about my books was Latina magazine …A few saw me on The Today Show. The rest? The rest heard about me from their sisters in their Latina sorority, or from a Latina pal at work, or from their Latina sisters, mothers, aunts, daughters and, yes, even from their grannies. It was a sister-to-sister grassroots network that was selling my books—and one that I believe requires a grassroots approach to marketing to be effective."
She said that New Yorker ads, Kirkus reviews, and even New York Times features have not had much effect on her sales. So to reach her core audience, she’s planning to throw a party for the release of her novel, “Dirty Girls on Top” (which is a sequel to “The Dirty Girls Social Club.”) Make that a lot of parties. Two hundred and fifty of them:
"Why not bring the books into women's homes, where other women can come? And why not get sponsors to donate gifts and goodies? And why not raffle off a fabulous trip to a resort for the hosts?"
How did her publisher (St. Martin’s Press) react to this innovative idea? Negatively, because it’s never been done before. But she’s going ahead and hopes to have most of the parties take place the weekend of July 11-13. The prize is a weekend for two at the Fairmont Princess Resort in Scottsdale, Arizona, including airfare and brunch with the author.
She plans to support the parties with a mini-reading from her book and to connect to the parties via webcam.
It’s a creative approach—obviously made easier by the fact that this book is a sequel to one that’s already been a best-seller. But if your book (fiction or non-fiction) has a clearly defined audience that you can reach through websites, a version of this could work for you, too. For more on how her parties are being set up, click here.
