Trojan Horse Book Marketing

by John Jung
(Cypress, Ca., USA)

Writing a book is an adventure in its own right, with many unexpected twists and turns both good and bad. Marketing your book is another adventure, quite different from writing, and one for which most writers probably have no desire or expertise. But POD writers must, of necessity learn to promote and market if readers are to discover their writing.

My marketing experiences, good and bad, have been quite informative, interesting, and often frustrating. Friends suggested that I create a journal or record of the adventures (and misadventures) of my foray into history writing. The result was a site I created, http://jungjr.googlepages.com, which I shared last year on this site. Steve Barancik, as he does for everyone, provided very helpful and supportive comments, including the wise suggestion that I abandon this site since google was not planning to continue developing googlepages.

The present blog post is a follow-up to this earlier submission. Because my judgment is that my audience is limited, and that I can best reach it through forging networks and making in-person presentations, my new strategy has been to market myself as a speaker more than to try to market my book. In other words, I am using a Trojan Horse approach by promoting myself as a speaker to gain markets for my books.

In my three years of publishing works on Chinese American history, I have had the good fortune of numerous opportunities to hold book talks and signings at various sites before Chinese organizations and community groups, Chinese history museums across the country, Chinese churches, university Asian American Studies programs, public libraries, one literary festival, and one writers’ group. Some of these engagements occurred through dumb luck and others involved some strategic planning. In any case, these in-person events have led to the large majority of the sales of my three books, Southern Fried Rice, Chinese Laundries, and Chopsticks in the Land of Cotton, whereas direct online sales through the website of my POD printer have been quite minimal.

Consequently, I recently developed a website, http://yinandyangpress.weebly.com to document the positive reception of my past speaking presentations that I send to organizations and groups where I would like to get invited to speak (and sell books). I developed another site that gives links for online purchases that also includes glowing blurbs about each book from scholars, http://yinandyangpress.zoomshare.com. I posted positive comments from readers, http://www.csulb.edu/~jrjung/bookaudiences.htm, and from audience members at my talks to further stimulate interest in having me give presentations.

The logistics and financial aspects of this approach present other real challenges. I have to coordinate talks at out-of-town sites by having two or three during the same trip and staying with friends or relatives when possible because most of my venues offer no or limited travel expenses. I have to hope my sales cover my expenses, but even if I only break even, I view the events as a means of building a foundation for future talks (one place has invited me three times, once for each of my books). Other big, big problems when speaking out of town is estimating the proper number of books to have on hand, and how to get them delivered at minimal cost before I arrive at the site. If I bring too many, I have to find a way to get them home without incurring more costs. If I bring too few, I miss out on some potential sales. And, if they arrive after the event, it would be total disaster! So far, the worst outcome was that the Post Office lost one box of 30 out of 90 books.

Only time will tell whether this different approach will work!

See John Jung's books.