THE OFFICIAL BLOG OF INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLING AUTHOR CHERYL KAYE TARDIF

Mystery, suspense, thrillers, paranormal, horror & YA by "Cheryl Kaye Tardif" & romance by "Cherish D'Angelo". Cheryl is represented by Trident Media Group in NY.

Wednesday, April 08, 2009

Subliminal Advertising: How far will fans go to help authors get noticed?

An old friend emailed me last night and told me the funniest story about how he helped promote me. Here's his email:

I was in Chapters with my wife and the kids on the weekend, and I went to look for CKT in the mystery section, and there was NOTHING! I went to one of the computers, and while you are listed, stock was ZERO.

I was waiting for my wife, so while I waited I went to ALL SIX of the computer terminals, searched for Cheryl Kaye Tardif, clicked and left up the page with YOUR name and YOUR titles before I left the store.

Heh, heh, heh, the book-reading public in Ottawa's west end doesn't know they were affected by subliminal advertising!

ALL SIX terminals!
My friend's story made me laugh, but it also made me really thankful to have friends and fans like him. It isn't easy trying to get noticed in an industry that now sees over 400,000 new books in the US alone, per year. Book marketing takes up a lot of my time. Word of mouth is always the best form of advertising, but just having my books visible is also important. I wonder if anyone in Ottawa saw those computer monitors and bought my books as a result. :-) Email me if you did!

Over the years I've had fans email publishers asking them to publish my books or make a large print version. Some fans have gone into their bookstores and turned my novels so that the covers faced out. Some fans have left my bookmarks in libraries. And of course I've had fans tell their friends and family about me and order my books for gifts.

1 comment:

Cheryl Tardif said...

I wish I could say that they simply sold out of all my books. Unfortunately, this is the trend these days.

Big name authors get shelf space first, unless someone goes into a store and requests a book title. Usually stores will then order a few copies.

Feel free to ask your bookstores to stock my books. ;-)