Author Name: Jay Thomas Willis
Book Title(s): Implications For Effective Psychotherapy With African-Americans; As Soon as the Weather Breaks; The Cotton is High; Born to be Destroyed; Paranoid but not Stupid; Why Black Americans Behave as They Do; Hard Luck; When the Village Idiot Get Started; Educated Misunderstanding; The Devil in Angelica.
Marketing Subject: Marketing to Special Clubs
This broad category of clubs doesn't include night clubs: where people
dance, have a drink, or socialize; it includes organizations like the Kiwanis’ or Lions’ clubs; it includes groups who get together to play cards or any other constructive activity. I once asked a man, if there were any clubs in a small town. I was referring to night clubs, but in his mind he was thinking of clubs like the Lions and Kiwanis.
When I refer to a general name such as clubs, I realize that I must specify what kind of clubs I’m referring to. Clubs in one sense are extensions of friendship networks. By utilizing clubs to help pass on the word about your book, you’re expanding on that network. One is likely to have a personal relationship with club members. A good thing to do is to keep a supply of business cards, brochures, postcards to pass out, and discuss your book personally and at every opportunity, with every member that make themselves available to you.
People are likely to respond better if approached on several different occasions. So don’t feel guilty about confronting people more than one time. And don’t feel bad about being rejected on any one occasion. Keep trying. Even in close knit groups you will need to be aggressive to sell your book. You can’t be a wallflower who sits and waits for others to come to you.
If one member buys your book, and feels positive about the book, he is likely to pass on a positive word about the book. Some people may not have any intention of buying your book, until they get a positive word from someone else. Others may not even know your book exists until they get the word from someone else. Especially in clubs, members tend to trust and rely on one another’s judgment, and value each other’s word. Membership in the club is the key. Members in such groups have a sense of obligation to help other members.
It mainly depends on the nature and extent of the club as to how to market to its members: for example, whether the club is formal or informal, highly organized or loosely organized. If a club is highly formal it may not permit certain types of activity. If loosely organized anything may be possible. In a club such as the Lions’ club you may have to present your book as part of a recognized formal agenda.
Your friendship, camaraderie, common goals and objectives, esprit de corps will go a long way in helping to sell your book in these type groups. Many members will help to support you simply because they know you, not considering the content of the book. Add positive content and you have the making of a book that they will buy.
If you have a decent relationship with other members of your club you should have no problem in selling your book to them. If the content of your book is good you will be that much further along in getting club members to purchase your book. That’s why it’s important to carry yourself in a warm, friendly, positive, and confident manner wherever you go—at all times. Your personality will be a big factor in helping you to sell your book, even in such close and intimate associations. If you haven’t learned to be a part of such groups, and to inculcate such friendships, it’s time that you got in the habit of doing so.
