The Good and Bad of Book Promotion

I read an article today in the WSJ by Nell Alk entitled, Author Runs the City (here). I thought for a moment, "What a great idea for research into a novel, getting to run a city for a day." I wondered if the character he was researching was a big city mayor. I was wrong. Actually it was an article about Scott Jurek, author of "Eat & Run: My Unlikely Journey to Ultramarathon Greatness".

When I first started reading Diane Mott Davidson I thought she had a good idea in including her recipes at the end of her mysteries. I still think the recipes are a good idea, I just don't read her books anymore. I got to a point where I didn't find her characters engaging.

I thought a good way to expand on this idea of hers would be to include some of the runs, bike rides, and swims that take place in my novel in the back of my new novel. I decided against it. Don't get me wrong, I think that My Jurek has a great promotional idea for his new book. He's got a famous name, he's got a following, he even gets it in the WSJ. Davidson's idea is a bit more passive. Not much promotion. Fun, but no promotional aspect.

Then I realized that they weren't even useful. I never made one of those recipes. I liked reading about them originally, but that wore off. I even asked my wife, who turned me on to Davidson, if she had even used one of the recipes. She might have admitted to making one. It was all gimmick. That's the way the run, bike and swim routes would have come off. Gimmicky. No thanks. So, when you buy my new novel, you'll not see any mapped out race routes. However, you might see a bookmark for my novel in your race packet for your next race. Not gimmickry, that would be all promotion.