Big Fish, Little Pond

Oklahoma Promotin'

 Donis here. Since my fellow Type M-ers are musing about promotion, allow me to share an excellent  piece of advice I received many years ago. When my first book, The Old Buzzard Had It Coming, was just about to come out in 2005, I asked my beloved editor Barbara Peters what she thought would be the most effective actions I could take to publicize my work. (Keep in mind this was before the great flowering of social media.) Attend Bouchercon? Do a national tour? Hire a publicist? Her advice was to concentrate on activities in Oklahoma, where the book is set, and environs – at least at first – because readers are always interested in reading about a place they recognize and people they are familiar with. This advice had done me well. Over past past decades I have attended conferences all over the country and done book tours all over the U.S. I receive fan letters and notes from everywhere in the wide world, but when I do anything in person, I always draw a bigger audience when I'm in my home territory of Oklahoma and its sister states of Kansas, Arkansas, and Texas. The only book in the Oklahoma-set series that did better here in Arizona, where I live, than it did in Oklahoma was The Wrong Hill To Die On, which was set in ... you guessed it ... Arizona.

So here is what I'd advise any author early in their career who asked me about promotion. Concentrate your efforts on whoever is your audience. My books are regional and seem to strike the loudest chord with those who are familiar with the region, though I get a fair number who are simply fascinated with life in pre-World War I America. If I were writing a series about a gourmet chef, I'd be hunting out foodies. Fashion for fashionistas, racing for race aficionados, genealogy for family historian, apple farming for Washingtonians. This is not to say that others won't be delighted by your brilliant plotting or gorgeous prose, and as time goes on it's very good to expand your publicity efforts to a broader audience. But since there's only so much time and money to go around, spend it to build your base, especially when you're starting out.