Michael Tabman's Blog: Crime Scene - Posts Tagged "midnight-sin"

When I embarked on my first book signing last year with Walking the Corporate Beat: Police School for Business People, I was given a sobering warning: If you sell two books, that’s average, five books is a good day. Sitting there with a stack of 15-20 books, that did not sound encouraging. Now I was really concerned, as this was a non-fiction, lessons-learned book; I knew it did not have the wide appeal of a novel. However, things worked out much better than anticipated. At each of our six book signings, we either completely or nearly sold out. I would like to say that was because my book was so irresistible. While I was confident I wrote a good book, I also knew that sales did not correlate to the quality of my book. How could it? Nobody knew what was in the book. Unless you and your book are well known – and most of us are not - you are not selling your book. You are selling you.

My wife accompanies me on all my book signings. As native New Yorkers, we are both gregarious and starting conversations with strangers comes easy to us. And that is where it begins. You must engage the bookstore customers in conversation and get them interested, first in you and then your book. Just sitting there waiting for people to approach you, generally will not work. You may get a few curious people, but they are uncomfortable approaching you, especially if they feel they will be faced with “Wanna buy my book?” Be friendly and keep it light.

Also, use mob psychology to your favor. Invite groups of people over. If you engage people in conversation and share a few laughs, others will notice you. What happens when people see a crowd? They become curious and they want to see what’s going on. Now your audience has grown.

As with all sales, be ready for rejection. At our Midnight Sin book signing this weekend we sold 15 of our 20 books. With that, came a lot of “no thank you” or people deliberately avoiding eye contact and even some rudeness. That’s how it goes. Be confident in yourself and your book. The number of books you sell is contingent upon many factors out of your control; it does not define your success as an author. It is just one step in the process. You will meet new and interesting people. Most of all – have fun.

When I was working narcotics in New York in the late 1980s - early 1990s, the television show, Miami Vice had left its impact. We called it the Miami Vice effect. By that, we meant that when we brought a case to court, juries were expecting to see drug agents dressed in pastel colors seizing race cars and speed boats with millions of dollars and hundreds of kilos of cocaine. Working in New York, we made some good cases and pretty big seizures, but nothing like television.

More recently, law enforcement would refer to the CSI effect. Here, judges and juries expect cops and especially the FBI to perform the same kind of forensics that they would see on CSI – and usually within the same one hour time frame. While forensic capabilities have come a long way, once again, it is nothing like television.

If you have been watching the Casey Anthony murder trial, you will see some interesting forensics. You will also see some good examples of legal strategies at work. This is an interesting case. If you are writing crime novels, you may want to pay attention to this case. I think you will pick up some interesting tidbits. Sometimes life imitates art and sometimes art must reflect life.