So I was reading Andy Nulman’s amazing blog “POW! Right Between The Eyes!” this morning and was pretty jazzed to read about a cool idea he had for a small publisher. His idea was to place some of your books in a popular bookstore with a sticker saying “Here’s a Simple offer. Take this book home. IT’S FREE!! All I ask in return is that you blog about it”.

I love this because it is clever and a great way to get people talking about your book.

I also love it because it is something I tried a few years ago….or at least something similar. I did everything except the sticker (because I didn’t think of it). Basically I just placed books on the shelves of stores and told the store manager a few weeks later to see how sales were going and explained the free deal they were getting and asked if they would like to order more.

Not quite as effective as Andy’s idea since mine lacked the viralness but I was able to move some books in a big retailer without jumping through hoops to get placed in the stores.

Another tactic I used to spread the word/create interest was I got together 40 friends and family in a shopping mall food court all sitting together at the entrance area to just read the books……all the same book (holding it up so people could see we were all in sync) The visual was a sea of the same book and all the readers were happy and enjoying themselves. In about 2 hours we had hundreds of people pointing out that we were all the reading the same book…..or asking about the books and asking were they could get one.

One idea I never did but always wanted to was rent a panel van and drive from parking lot to parking lot driving up to people and I work at a printing factory and I have a few boxes of books and am selling them at a great deal…..would they be interested?

Hope my ideas inspire you to try something cool and unusual with your business.

Anyway seeing that I am thinking on a similar plain as Andy makes me happy.

saul