Meeting paperback readers

Toronto’s flagship Indigo store invited me to do a meet-and-greet, so I spent four hours in the store’s Mystery section yesterday presiding over twin stacks of SAFE HARBOR and BLACK WATER. It was a golden opportunity to meet paperback readers.

With our recent run of extremely hot summer weather, it was the kind Saturday you’d expect people to head for a swimming pool or a beach. The crowds were on the light side, but the shoppers who turned out were buying books—lots of books.

One woman told me she’d just returned from her summer cottage because she’d run out of books. She was loading up a canvas bag with paperbacks, including a copy of BLACK WATER, and told me that she goes through a book a day when she’s on vacation. Another shopper, sporting a Haliburton School for the Arts T-shirt, had just returned to the city after spending a glorious week at a painting workshop at the wonderful art school that’s a 20-minute drive from my stone cottage in the Haliburton Highlands. I told her that BLACK WATER is set in a fictitious part of Ontario cottage country that bears a very strong resemblance to the Highlands. She bought a copy of BLACK WATER.

Readers are readers, whether they prefer their books in paperback and hardcover format, or like to read them on their Kindles, Kobos or Nooks. They want good stories. And many of them enjoy meeting an author, and will tell their family and friends about the encounter. I introduced Pat Tierney to a number of new readers and some prospects. Some may go on to purchase e-copies of the books. A number were tickled to hear that Pat is based in Toronto. Their very own city is the setting for a mystery!

I let them know that although SAFE HARBOR is the first book in the Pat Tierney series, they could easily start with BLACK WATER. But many chose to go with the first book, and we ran through the store’s entire SAFE HARBOR inventory, and cut into a good chunk of its supply of BLACK WATER.

#BlackWater #Indigo #SafeHarbor

The power of a mystery/suspense series

But what I found especially interesting was that over in the PAID Amazon

Early yesterday, SAFE HARBOR started climbing as a Financial Thriller, a category I didn’t think it had previously figured in at all. Around 5 p.m. it was #10 in Financial Thrillers and #28,983 overall on Amazon. At 9 p.m., it had hit #1 in FTs and #9,539 overall. At 2 a.m. this morning, it was still #1 in FTs and #5,966 in the entire Amazon store. And as I post this blog shortly after 1 p.m., it is still #1 in FTs.

A mystery/suspense series holds a lot of marketing power. Readers return to read about characters they’ve enjoyed. “Safe Harbor introduced us to these wonderful characters and we get to go on another adventure with them when a murder mystery shocks a small Canadian town,” one reader said in the 5-star Amazon review she posted yesterday. “I really enjoyed spending time with some of the characters from the first book while being introduced to new folks in Black Water. You feel like these are regular people caught in crazy situations.”

And readers who haven’t read the early books will return for them if they’ve enjoyed a later book in the series. I make sure all my Pat Tierney books can stand alone so that readers can approach them in any order. “Although this book is the second in the series,” another reader noted in her Amazon review of BLACK WATER, “it is also a stand alone novel with enough information about recurring characters to satisfy a new reader.”

For an author, the challenge is getting new material out quickly enough to keep readers happy.

#RosemaryMcCracken #fictionseries #financialthrillers #womensleuths #BlackWater #SafeHarbor #suspense #mysteries

Wonderful Jack Batten!

Just back from a week at Loyalist College in Belleville where I spent a week at Rosemary Aubert’s annual summer writing workshop. Rosemary talked about the craft of writing, and her 12 students shared their writing experiences and excerpts.

For me, it was a great transition from the book marketing I’ve been doing in recent weeks to some serious writing over the summer.

Check the entire review out here.

#TorontoStar #JackBatten #RosemaryAubert #BlackWater #reviews