Today is the first of April.  In the weeks since the tour began on March 7, I’ve done 35 hour-long presentations and traveled by car more than 3,500 miles.  That’s a lot of talking and driving.  Book tours sound glamorous and fun, right up until you find yourself dragging luggage in and out of hotels without a bellman in sight.  But I’m not complaining.  Meeting people is part of the job.  Doing book talks is part of the job.  Being polite to impolite people—most especially the ones who tell me I look tired—is part of the job.

So when newbie authors ask me for career advice, I often tell them the following:  Get Thee to Toastmasters.  Nobody cares more about your book than you do.  You’re going to need to be able to stand up in front of people and tell them about your book.  You’re going to need to be able to do so without stammering and stumbling and without peppering every sentence with ums and ahs.  You’re going to need to be an interesting and engaging speaker.  Most of the time those newbie authors look at me as though I’ve lost my marbles.  They think being an author means they get to be hermits.  Nope.  Doesn’t happen.  You need to be a capable public speaker, and a year in Toastmasters will get you there.

Sometime in the last month, a newly self-published author asked me for advice.  I said, “Who buys your book?”  Answer: ” I mostly give them away.”  Bad idea.  If you want to be an author, you need to write books that are good enough for people to be willing to BUY them.  The thing that’s missing from books by many self-published authors is that critical element of book publishing—editing!!!  The books end up being poorly written and poorly edited.  No wonder someone has to give them away.

But self-published or not, one thing authors MUST do is be involved in sales and marketing.

During my years in the life insurance industry, one of the things I learned is that your best customer is your most recent customer.  And that was the real purpose of my question to the self-published author mentioned above.  Who buys your books and do you have a database of same?  That line of inquiry caused a certain amount of eye-rolling on his part.  That wasn’t something he wanted to hear because he didn’t think actually selling his book was part of the bargain. I’m here to tell you, that is not true.  Writing a book and editing it are only part of the job.

When Until Proven Guilty was published in 1985, I had just finished up ten years in the life insurance industry.  What I had going for me was a Rolodex with 250 or so names in it—people who were friends, co-workers, clients, and acquaintances.  Some of them were in Arizona and some in Seattle.  For the kickoff signing, I called the people in the Rolodex and invited them to the event.  And when there was an Arizona segment for that tour—a self-paid tour, by the way—we called the Arizona names.  This was 1985 after all, so there was no such thing as the Internet.  Phone calls were it when it came to contacting potential customers.  For subsequent books, when the grand opening events were held at the Doghouse, my daughter was tasked with calling the list which gradually became known as the Doghouse List.  For whoever was doing the calling, answering machines were a huge blessing.  Being able to leave a message meant not being caught up in a half hour chat.

Eventually the Rolodex went bye-bye and the list, still called the Doghouse List, moved to a computer file.  Now, rather than a phone list, it’s primarily an e-mail list, and it’s a vital part of my business.  I guard that list with my life, and nobody else touches it.  For one thing, it contains the names and e-mail addresses of more than 12,000 of my customers.  How do I know that?  Because I’m the only one who adds names and addresses to the list.  Every one of those 12,000 names is someone who has received at least one and probably more than one e-mail message written by me personally.  Incidentally, my first Avon Books sales rep, Holly Turner, taught me that one personal contact is worth ten readers.  From where I’m sitting—with books regularly landing on the New York Times list—I think her advice holds true.

Answering e-mails personally counts as a personal contact.  I don’t have a secretary who scans my e-mails or responds to them.  E-mails from readers come to me and are answered by me.  Those little notes are important.  The people writing them are my CUSTOMERS, and customers are ALWAYS important.

It took a lot of years to grow those 250 initial names to 12,000.  I passed that benchmark last night, and I’m already ten to the good on the way to 13,000

That’s something else my years in life insurance taught me.  My agency manager, Gilbert F. Lawson, always said:  Know the score, keep the score, report the score.  The score will improve.

I’ll let you know when we hit 13,000.