Thought I had to share this with you. As authors, we are always looking for imaginative ways of drumming up sales - often going for the direct route of plugging on our blogs, on Twitter or Facebook etc.
But watch out, the strangest things may well lead someone to your book. Over Christmas I decided to watch again a BBC comedy that was on a couple of years ago called 'Off the Hook'. It was a pretty hit and miss affair about a group of teenagers going to university for the first time. In episode 4, their reclusive flatmate, who they called 'weird bloke' is revealed to be a pretty, if rather deranged girl (who is still known as 'weird bloke' right up to the end of the series). I wanted to find out where I had seen the girl before and so went onto imdb. I discovered she is called Georgia King, and on reading her resume, saw that she had recently made a film called 'Austenland'. Seeing as I have a strange hatred/fascination for things Austen-related (usually so I can just slag them off) I clicked into this film and read the premise - that a modern day American girl, with a fixation on Mr Darcy goes to a Jane Austen theme park in England, to 'discover' herself. I also saw the upcoming film stars JJ Field, who is one of the scrummiest actors around, so I was so sold on the film. But I decided to check out the book it was based on, and so downloaded a sample of 'Austenland' by Shannon Hale. I enjoyed what I read and downloaded the whole book. In all honesty the book turned out to be a disappointment and I doubt I would read any of her books again. (Still going to see the film of course). But what I wanted to highlight was that from a tiny thing like out of boredom, watching an obscure sitcom I'd seen before, on youtube, I ended up buying a book.
So, you never know, the strangest thing in the world - something you never even imagined, might just lead to that coveted book sale.
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