WORLD BOOK DAY

5 Unique, Free and Zany Ways to Sell Your Book

My ideas are better than ChatGPT’s

Happy World Book Day, my writerly friends!

So, let’s talk books — our books.

In 2017, I published my debut novel, With the Music. It’s a good book — I know this because people told me — but sales figures are lacklustre outside a few niche circles. This might be because I don’t bombard people’s social media and inboxes twice a day yelling at them to buy my book.

I’ve done a few indie author’s events in Barcelona and Melbourne. If people are interested, I’m always delighted to sell them a signed copy of my book, but I don’t force it down their gullets.

Until now.

The cost of living has gone up so I’ve now reached a happy stage in life where purchasing red meat from the supermarket is a rare treat. I tried some side hustles, but they’re not working.

So now it’s really time to flog my book.

The wonderful and highly-entertaining writer Sherry McGuinn asked ChatGPT for unique ideas on selling her screenplay. The ideas the robot provided were not unique, as Sherry had already thought of them, and some involved money.

As someone desperately clinging onto my job for fear that AI steals it, I like to assume I have much better ideas than ChatGPT or any other natural language processing terminator.

So I asked myself for some ways to sell my book that are:

• Unique — cos if I do the same as everyone else I’m not going to stand out.
• Free — cos, being a writer, I’m not exactly rolling in cash.
• Zany — cos, like those smug home renovation shows, unless I come up with a “wow factor”, no one gives a rat’s arse about my book.

I’m sharing what I came up with in this article in case you too, my friend, are in need of clever ways to sell/aggressively promote your book.

1. Publicity stunt involving heights and a superhero costume

I don’t know if this was a thing in your city but in early 2000s Melbourne, a series of men dressed as Spiderman or Superman would climb on top of some tall structure and sulk.

I think they were raising publicity about the lack of fathers’ access to their children as a result of custody battles. While that’s far too serious a topic for me to get into, I noticed these men did get a lot of publicity.

On a trip to Bolivia, I abseiled down a 50-metre (164 American units of height) building dressed as Spiderwoman. That experience cost me $50, but I reckon if I’m sneaky about it I could get access to the roof of some famous, tall building free of charge.

I could perch precariously on the ledge, dressed in a borrowed superhero costume, clutching a box of my books and refuse to come down until a million copies of With the Music are sold.

The Kindle version is like five bucks, so surely a million people can afford that just to stop me tying up emergency services and holding up traffic.

2. Start a cult

Once upon a time in Hollywood, a creepy-eyed psychopath recorded some shitty music that no one liked. In retaliation, he started a cult that lead to murder that lead to the end of the peace, love and understanding Boomer paradise that was the 1960s.

I won’t go that far. But if I become the leader of a cult, my book will be kinda like the Bible and my followers will be forced to buy it. If I have 100,000 followers and each one purchases a copy of my book for, say, 15 bucks, that should do quite nicely. I’m not greedy.

3. Hack Amazon

Despite a couple of 5-star reviews from verified purchases, the Al Riddim of Bezos’s wee shop doesn’t rank my book that high. However, with a bit of cunning hacking, I could change that.

I’d insert With the Music into the top of Amazon’s book club, editors’ best books of the month, best books of the year, best sellers, best books in top categories, most sold and most read lists. People would then be bound to notice my little ole book, realise it’s awesome and purchase their own copy.

Alas, despite an IT background, I have no hacking skills. And I don’t indulge in illegal activities, just to be clear.

4. Make payments with copies of your book instead of money

In my possession, I have around 40 paperback copies of my book. I could arbitrarily value them at $200 apiece. Along with ebooks, valued at $50 each, I could use my book to pay for the shitty things in life we’re forced to cover — taxes, rent, mortgage, utilities, healthcare — thus leaving my bank account free to accumulate and grow.

The recipients of my book would surely realise how amazing it is and spread the word, driving even more sales.

5. A nudie dash in the library

Due to my previous reluctance to market my book, libraries don’t know about it so they don’t have it in stock, sitting there face-out on the “recommended reading” shelf.

I think if I ran naked through various libraries, waving copies of With the Music in both hands, whoever chooses which books to order in would surely take notice and request a great many copies of my book. Then I’d simply repeat the action in every library in town. I’d also get my cult followers to do the same in the libraries in their cities.

So there you are — some unique, free and zany ways of selling a book. Note, I never said anything about realistic.

PS. This piece was satire. If you didn’t realise that then you, friend, are a nincompoop.

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