Premiere

Saturday, a local bookstore held a premiere for Putting the Tarot to Work. This being my first premiere, I learned a lot in the process.

1) New writers had better be voracious self-promoters. This makes sense, of course — no one loves your book more than you do. In my case, I mailed out more than 100 postcard invitations encouraging people to attend the signing, called and faxed local papers, and sent email reminders to folks who had expressed an interest in the book.

These efforts paid off — Saturday’s session evolved into a sort of reunion of personal and business contacts from the past several years. That felt great, and I owe every single attendee a debt of gratitude.

The local store, however, which pretty noisily promotes its other signings, neglected to place a single ad in any local paper to promote this event. On a busy Saturday morning in their popular shopping center, a sign outside the door might have drawn in some of the bakery and coffee crowd — but the store itself only printed up a 4×5 sign (text only) and placed it by the register. (Next time, I’ll bring along a huge full-color piece and offer it to the store owner!)

Lesson learned: If I hadn’t tooted my own horn a bit, Saturday’s event would have been pretty thinly attended.

2) Alternative papers are tremendous allies. Several calls and faxes to the Clarion-Ledger, Jackson’s local paper, went unreturned by the book review and business staff. (Based on the one conversation I did have with a CL reporter, there’s an assumption that any local author must be self-published, and so there’s little interest in writing about that author’s work. Though careful to start my message with “I’m not self-published,” I still received no callbacks.)

An old classmate of mine, however, suggested I send him a copy of the book and mentioned he could get it to the editors of the Planet Weekly, our local alternative paper. The Planet Weekly promptly ran the book’s first review in the mainstream (non-Tarot-related) press and also plugged the signing. (Two attendees, in fact, mentioned they were there because they saw the event mentioned in the Planet Weekly review.)

Lesson learned: When getting the word out, start with the local alternative papers.

3) When communicating with the press, use the telephone — period. My publicist mentioned faxing the local papers with info about the book. Early on, I sent emails and notes. Problem: local papers are overwhelmed with papers and notes, so they mostly ignore them.

Lesson learned: Be prepared to place a lot of calls to find the right person to speak with … and then call — don’t write to or fax — that person. Once you establish the contact, you can send them anything you like.

4) Get a little help from your friends. John, Jeri, and Phil drove more than seven hundred miles round-trip to be here for the premiere, making the signing feel more like an event. Clyde’s parents drove down from northern Mississippi. Old SkyTel and WorldCom friends showed up in droves. Video Library staff and personal friends associated with the store turned out to support me and wish me well. Clyde — the center of my world — stood by, snapped photos, and made sure the day went smoothly as clockwork.

In the world of publishing, I’m definitely a little fish … but on Saturday, surrounded by people who love me and care about the book … I felt like my little pond was a great place to be.

Thanks, folks.