Blogger: Mary Keeley
When you read the title of today’s post, Engagement, did your thoughts turn immediately to your audience? No wonder if you did; we stress the importance of engaging your readers frequently on this blog. The topic of one of the sessions at Book Expo America last week created a vision that engagement has as much to do with businesses and libraries as it does with readers. I want to pass it on to you for consideration.
Shop-Local Movement
On the first day of BEA Stacey Mitchell, co-director of the Institute for 
Local Self-Reliance, gave a plenary talk titled “Meeting the New Localism Challenge: Protecting and Promoting Communities and Local Economies.” Her topic, about which she is passionate, reminded me of a blog I posted over a year ago, “Adopt a Cause,” in which I suggested ways for authors to grow your author platform while also serving a worthwhile cause.
Stacey shared several noteworthy statistics to support her stance on the movement. I didn’t attend the session, but in Judith Rosen’s PW online article Stacey is quoted as saying that since 2009, 660 new independent bookstores opened, the number of local farmers markets has grown 21 percent, and the number of local independent coffee shops grew at one and a half times the rate of Starbucks. According to the article Stacey reported that people are not only buying locally but also investing locally, citing examples in Minneapolis, Cleveland, Phoenix, and San Francisco. Read the article to learn what’s happening in these cities.
So how can you, an author, appropriate this local movement idea for your author platform?
- Research the shop-local movement so you can speak intelligently about the potential win-win benefits for everyone. You’ll need to be ready with answers to their questions in order to engage their interest. You know, knowledge is power.
- Take what you’ve learned and think of creative, new events to propose, based on what is popular in your community, but with a fresh twist. Use the information you have to come up with creative, plausible ideas you can work on together to draw people to your events and purchase your books as well as products from their local store.
- Next, contact chambers of commerce in your vicinity. Find out if they have launched a shop-local movement in their community, and tell them what you’ve learned in your research. Online shopping, from Amazon in particular, has taken a toll on small businesses. Showing them viable ways you and local business owners can work together to stimulate sales is the surest way to gain their support and engagement.
- Work with local bookstores and libraries. They are striving to stay current with technology and provide goods and services their local patrons desire. Offer to work with them to arrange events that are both appealing to patrons and relevant to your next book. At the very least, your contact with them will be a step forward in building relationships with these important people in your area, people who could become your strongest influencers for your word-of-mouth campaign when the book releases.
Encouragement was in the air at BEA, and it’s been promising to learn about publishers launching creative partnerships and new imprints, because creativity is a must in this industry today. The shop-local cause may be a means for you to put creative ideas to good use for mutual benefit. Who knows, you may become a celebrity in your local area, which is a solid foundation on which to grow your platform.
Are you up for thinking creatively about how this idea could work for you in your community? Have you had past experience partnering on events in your local library or bookstore? Or another store? Tell us about it. What is your biggest obstacle keeping you from pursuing this idea?
TWEETABLES:
Authors, here is one way to engage local businesses and libraries to grow your platform. Click to Tweet.
How can authors get businesses and libraries on board to promote your book? Here is one idea. Click to Tweet.
Mary, thank you for today’s post. I read your post on adopting a cause… While I am not certain of having a cause, I think two topics that resonate in the novel I’m working on and the prompts I hope to build are having ‘special’ abilities (like determining someone’s response before it is said and being able to see inscriptions, movements and changes the normal eye would not). Not certain if they are really ‘special’.
The other topic is growing up with one parent, maybe because I did that. All my protagonists (even yet-to-be written ones) have just one parent. Somehow, I’m hoping to find a way to connect both topics with a tinge of science and lead it all to God.
So, that which I need help for is this: how do I connect ‘special’ abilities, single parenthood, and a little science? (As expected, all I hope to write will be to God’s glory, and ultimately end with the protagonist acknowledging the Father as the Truth).
Another question I have is this: should there be a specific cause for every author? I’ve been trying to narrow my thoughts to ’causes’ of authors that I read, and response isn’t going so well. Realized that a majority of them actually write on issues that they need answers to, not minding its connection to their previous works…
I was surprised by a recent discussion with our representative to the county board. He said that the public library patronage is no longer first and foremost about books. “DVD’s?” I guessed, and I was wrong. He explained that use of the community rooms brings the most people into our libraries. The library has become a place of engagement.
*I keep my writing simple in hopes of engaging adult Christians who struggle to read. Spiritual literacy is a cause I care about. That’s the “what.” Maybe the “how” connects to the public library. Thank you, Mary, for raising the topic.
Shirlee, public libraries have definitely moved beyond the hushed tone, mausoleum like structures of my childhood. Some of the libraries in my area have walls of windows over looking a garden, comfy seating and a cafe. Our small town library is currently expanding and I’m hopeful there will be enough room to start a writing group closer to home.
Great post, Mary! I think you gave focus to a lot of people today.
* When I read the title, I didn’t think about my readers, though. I thought back to a church in San Marcos Texas, that I was visiting with a lady whom I’d just met for the first time after corresponding and telephoning for a month…and before whom I then got down on one knee and said, “Barbara, will you marry me?”
– She looked to the altar, crossed herself (for she is Catholic), and said, “Yes…a thousand times, yes.”
– We were married a year later, to the day, at her parish church in Indiana.
– And remarried a little than two years after that, in a helicopter over the las Vegas Strip…by a Catholic priest who’d received special dispensation from his bishop…thanks, Bish!
* Barbara had agreed to meet me in Las Vegas, but had not yet agreed to remarriage…I didn’t know it, but one of the conditions she’s privately set was that we had to be remarried by a priest…and the authorization literally did not come through until the last minute. The Hand of God, methinks.
* So I have a cause, I guess…which is to show that, as Jon Foreman of Switchfoot sing, “Love ALone Is Worth The Fight”. We tend to marginalize the loves in our lives, placing them somewhat less dear than our passions – I have certainly done this – but at the end of the day, and at the end of life, an arm around the shoulder and a gentle hug are something you can’t get from your inner fires. They can only come from the warmth you build in the heart of your husband or your wife.
Andrew, what a great engagement/re-engagement story. You have one of the most unique wedding stories—helicopter, anyone? 🙂
What a sweet story, Andrew. ?
What a great love story, Andrew. Thanks for sharing!
You’re a true romantic, Andrew. I bet that helicopter wasn’t even a gunship.
No…I did try to get a Huey and have the ceremony performed on strings, but a McGuire only has three slings. Since we needed a witness, that was out. Neither Barbara nor the priest were disappointed about that. Odd.
* Forgot to mention that the wedding was at night. Quite spectacular. So was the view of Las Vegas. (You did catch that when I said ‘quite spectacular’ I was referring to Barbara, right?)
* And yes…in the eyes of the church the divorce never happened, as neither of us had the heart or desire to annul the first marriage…so it was a ‘renewal of vows’.
Mary, what a unique post. When I read your title, I thought first of getting engaged (to my husband), and immediately after that, of engaging readers. Yes, my brain is trained. 😉
*My first book incorporated ballroom dancing. I had thought it would be fun to host a book release party at a local ballroom dance studio. That book will probably never see the light of day . . . but it was a fun idea to consider. 🙂 I can definitely see the value of focusing on the shop-local idea. I’m going to have to think more on how I can do this. The only thing coming to mind at the moment is with book releases, offer local products rather than gift cards as prizes. This has an upside and a downside, though. You’ve got me thinking. 🙂
Jeanne…hear, now, the DI’s voice from Parris Island…
* DO NOT LET YOUR FIRST BOOK FADE AWAY.
* Hosting a launch party at a ballroom studio is such a lovely idea, it brought a catch to my throat…and when you said “never see the light of day”, a tear to my eye.
* With this unique setting, you have the opportunity to touch people’s hearts in a way that they will remember forever. Dancing is special, personal, and can be a sacrament (remember the song ‘Lord Of The Dance’?)
* Don’t let that moment die. Water it, nurture it, and please, find a way to let it bloom.
Thanks for the encouragement, Andrew and Carol. I’ll take a look at it and see how much of it needs revamping. I personally love the story. Maybe one day it will be one I can publish. 🙂
Jeanne, I’m with Andrew. With all you’ve learned about craft since writing that first book, have you considered rewriting it if you think the plot is sound? I totally rewrote my first three to flip them from omniscient narrator to third person limited, and it was the first two pages of one of those that generated a request for a full manuscript at the CCWC. What if I had just given up on those stories?
Hi Mary,
I totally agree we need to support our local bookstore and libraries. We need to support our local gift shops, businesses, drug stores, and grocery stores.
I’ve worked for an independent pharmacy the last seventeen years. The owner retired a few weeks ago and sold the business to a chain, and I went to work for the chain. In the past few weeks, I’ve heard so many people comment they remember coming to my store years ago and how sad they are that it’s not there any longer. Part of me wants to cry and tell them that if they’d only continued to shop at my store, we might still be in business.
I want to encourage everybody to shop locally unless you are prepared to say goodbye to the local business forever.
Thanks for this post!
Yes, I have thought a lot about this. My middle-grade book is fiction, but based on a local company at the turn of the last century. It features a well-known local landmark, the “Henderson Castle.”
If my book ever gets published (!) I have considered
* contacting the castle – after all – wouldn’t visitors love a keepsake book for a child in their life?
*I have also considered partnering with the local museum which has displays of the regalia from the Henderson-Ames Regalia Company.
*AND the local schools and public library will sometimes have a “read together”, so wouldn’t a great mystery book featuring local history be a great choice?
* and the state of Michigan will often purchase a book with a state connection and give a copy to every school library in the state. (such as Leslie Helakoski’s wonderful “Woolbur”) Why not mine?
I am probably a better networker than I am a writer!!
Sheila, uh, your last line…if the high quality of writing you show in comments here is an indicator, you must be a truly outstanding networker.
* I always look forward to what you have to say, and how you say it.
What great marketing ideas, Sheila! Thanks for sharing them.
I’m a huge fan of shopping local and love the idea of introducing a shop local movement in my community. We actually need more local “mom and pop” shops. For instance, I’d love to have the availability of a trendy, urban hipster coffee shop for those times when I need to write in a young adult, “real world” environment while enjoying mass quantities of caffeine. The music is usually thought provoking as well.
Oh gosh, I love this post!! The company I work for is very active in our community. My co-worker is President of the Boys and Girls Club, I am Chairman of the Gala Committee for our local Christian school, while I espouse and love Starbucks, I do the bulk of my writing at my local coffee shop and love seeing the members of our community filter through and stop to chat about the latest book they read. Inserting oneself into their community, the small business, and such lends to a bit of the “Mayberry” feeling and also shows that authors aren’t just out to market for exposure. We give back. I rarely blast my books in those occasions, and while often, it comes up due to other’s knowledge, people get excited to know there’s a published author who’s the “same as them” and loves their community. It’s engaging, it’s revitalizing, and it’s rewarding! LOVE THIS POST!
Oh, I just love this! A local friend and author is a week away from opening his independent bookstore The Last Word here in Fort Worth (https://www.facebook.com/thelastwordbooks). I have featured him as an author on my blog, talked up his Go Fund Me campaign to support the store’s opening, and plan to be a frequent customer and champion of his endeavor. Thanks for these tips for engaging a cause like this.
That is so cool, Teresa. I love independent book stores. Whenever I visit my oldest, twenty-something daughter in Nashville I request two things, an hour or two at a local coffee shop (there’s one on every corner) and a trip to an independent bookstore. Many of the above mentioned support local artists and authors. Sigh. I really need to get that ball rolling in my town.
One rather unique, though entirely unintended, way of platform growing? Being a hockey mom.
Let me explain…
One of the other hockey moms that I’ve known for years is a master saleswoman with a very large network of clients. And she has a HUGE family. Without intending to do so, I guess my excitement for my work spread to Monique. So, the next thing I know, she’s beta reading for me. And then, her husband Francois is as well. Her husband, the high powered lawyer with connections all over the world. (Up until recently, he was a canonical lawyer for the Vatican) So now I have these 2 hockey parents who encourage me like I was family, and the next thing I know, they’re telling me, “when this book comes out? Don’t you worry, we’ve got New Brunswick covered. Everyone we know will buy the books. They won’t have a choice.”
Also, Monique is heavily into one of those home sale businesses, and guess where she’ll be giving away bookmarks with links to my books? In the bags of her products!
The thing is, being a friend came first. I have zero skill at schmoozing for self-gain, which is always such a red-flag for me. Did I ask or expect their level of enthusiasm and dedication? Not at all. But that is how God works, He provides when and where we least expect it
What better sales people that friends who love our work and see promoting it as a favour to everyone who reads it?
And yes, I named minor characters after them.
When Monique hosts a book launch party for me in her hometown? You can bet I’ll be there with bells on!
And I can bet that I’ll be the only Anglophone (English speaking) author of Native American historical fiction (about captivity, loss of ancestral lands and injustice) at a book launch in an Acadiene town mere miles from where the British took French captives and put them on ships for the Colonies and Europe.
And what themes resonate with Acadiens? Captivity, injustice, and oh yes, loss of homelands.
Did I EVER think I’d have a platform among people that Longfellow wrote about in his epic poem Evangeline?
Nope.
Am I surprised? Sort of.
Because it only occurred to me as I typed this.
Should I put this in my proposal? I think so!
That is so cool, Jennifer. It all makes me smile. 🙂
If my newest complete manuscript should be contracted at some point, since it features both a Navajo Code Talker and a young couple expecting a baby with spina bifida, I’d love to connect with both spina bifida and Navajo Code Talker associations and maybe do benefit events to support those organizations, the Code Talker veterans (who are sadly disappearing so fast now) and families affected. I think that would be so cool. 🙂
What a amazing characters!
Thanks for this post, Mary. Definitely gives me a lot to think about!
Thank you for your post Mary. Something I’m passionate about is African missions. However, another writer pointed out that my post about my mission trips don’t fit my brand of “Friendship, Hope, & Fried Fruit Pies.” I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. I travel to share the name of Jesus in a land where people have never heard his name. Yes, my picture on my website looks like I’m having a garden party, but I think there’s a place for my passion about Africa missions on blog as well as the stories of women friendships and sharing of recipes.
Shirlee’s comment about community rooms and events drawing readers into the library is so true. There’s never been a better time for authors to connect with libraries and library patrons through author events. Propose a program around the topics, themes, research related to your book. Join with other authors for panel discussions. Offer to teach workshop on writing.
The American Library Association offers a wonderful program call “Authors for Libraries.” For $39 a year, authors are listed on a website accessed by Friends of the Library groups and librarians who plan and host programs in their libraries. This database is searchable by zip code so librarians can find authors in their area. I believe authors also receive a newsletter with information about what’s happening in libraries around the country.
The “Authors for Libraries” website is:
http://www.ala.org/united/authors_for_libraries/authors-for-libraries
Thanks for the great blog post, Mary!
Judy, thanks for the awesome tip. I wonder if this would apply to authors who wrote about a certain area, but they no longer live near that community?
Yes, Lara. The website includes a blurb about your book(s) as well as a link to your website. Include the setting/area in your book description. I’m not sure if you have a choice of more than one zip code when you enter your information. In addition, consider contacting the libraries in the community and surrounding communities in the area where your book is set.