Matthew Dicks

Many hands make light work

My wife came home this afternoon and said, “I did some community relations for you today. You’re going to be speaking at the Barnes and Noble in Blue Back Square.”

Really?”

“Yup.”

“Um… do you want to tell me how that happened?”  She had begun to make dinner, seeming to bring this line of questioning to an end. 

“I went into the store,” she said. “And I spoke to someone at the information desk. He was excited about having you speak. He said that sales have been very strong.”

“That’s great, honey. Should I call him to set something up?”

“No,” she said. “I’ll take care of it. I’ll set it up.”

“Um… okay.  Should I do anything?”

“Nope.”

It’s kind of nice having a professional publicist and an amateur publicist working in tandem for me.

Appearing at the Wilton Library

Tomorrow night I will be sitting on a panel of new authors at the Wilton Library in Wilton, CT. 

If you’d like to attend, you can find details here. 

Though we will be discussing our books, the focus of the night will be on our journey to being published.  There will be writers in the audience in need of convincing that our success can be duplicated  with the right about of persistence, hard work and tenacity.     

AJ O’Connell’s article about the upcoming event and the authors (including me) was published in The Hour today. 

Instant communication

USA Today did a piece on authors using Twitter to communicate with their readers, something I have been doing for quite some time, and while the 140-character limit can be frustrating for someone who normally tells a story in about 100,000 words, Twitter has clearly done an effective job of bringing me into contact with readers and booksellers. 

I dare say that I have even made friends through Twitter. 

This got me thinking about what a different world it must be for someone like me, who is just getting started on his writing career, and a more established author like Richard Russo.  Based upon Russo’s comments at a reading I recently attended, I am certain that he does not use Twitter, nor does he read  or write a blog.  He probably receives letters from readers and fans through the mail, and perhaps there is an email address for him somewhere, though my search for one proved to be fruitless, but otherwise he has no immediate or direct pipeline to his readers, except through his appearances. 

In contrast, I receive about two emails a day from readers who have accessed my blog and found my email address and am often contacted through Twitter or Facebook by readers who have questions about me or the book.  Thanks to my participation on the internet, readers can contact me immediately and directly, and they often do.

Yesterday, for example, I received three emails from readers who I have never met, an email from a magazine looking to do an interview, and two messages via Twitter (one from a reader and one from a bookseller).  All had questions about the novel and words of congratulation for me in relation to the book and its review in the Times, and all were hoping for relatively immediate responses. 

And as I was responding to these readers, answering their questions and thanking them for their kind words, I wondered what an author like Russo might think of all this.  How much email or tweets might someone as popular and well known as he receive if he had a stronger presence on the internet?  Would he enjoy the immediate feedback that the internet can provide, or would he lament the days when he could focus solely on his books, absent the online chatter, while occasionally sorting through a stack of fan mail?

Would he consider all this proliferation  of author-reader communication a waste of his time, or would he see it as a means of reaching out to the people who allow him to make a living by writing stories?

I often wonder about this myself.

Would my time be better served working on my book, or is the hour or so a day that I spend communicating with readers worth it?  Does it make a difference in terms of book sales?  Do readers really appreciate the time spent writing back to them?  Am I establishing a precedent that I might someday regret? 

I’m not sure.  But I’m no Richard Russo, either, so I think I’ll keep answering my readers questions, tweeting my thoughts and blogging my opinions on topics like this.  It takes some time to do so, but it’s not like it’s not fun. 

New York Times Sunday Book Review!

No need to wait until Sunday!  The New York Times Sunday Book Review was published online this afternoon, and (I still cannot believe it) my book, SOMETHING MISSING, was included! 

My book.  My name.  In the Sunday Book Review. 

The review is short but very positive, and it’s the third book listed. 

I still can’t believe it.   

In good company

The Hartford Courant published a blurb about my appearance tonight at RJ Julia entitled “Mathew Dicks and Dr. Ruth.”  Surprisingly, I received considerably more attention than the famed sex therapist in the short piece.

Never could I have ever envisioned my name being published alongside that of Dr. Ruth.

Matthew Dicks and a world renowned German sex therapist. 

Let the jokes begin.

Uncles can apparently sell books, too.

Not to be outdone by my mother-in-law…

My Uncle Bob recently sent me some copies of SOMETHING MISSING to sign and return to him so that he could give them out as gifts.  He also provided me with a FedEx shipping label to cover the cost of their return, and I assumed that his address and other information was contained within the barcode.  It was not, and so the package went out without an address.

Fortunately, the FedEx label did contain the name and contact information of the purchaser, so the company contacted Uncle Bob to retrieve his address.  In the midst of the conversation with the representative, he said, “It’s very important that the package arrive safely.  My nephew wrote a book and he signed some copies and was sending them back to me.”

The representative assured Uncle Bob that the package would arrive by tomorrow and the they concluded their conversation.  Five minutes later, his phone rang. 

“Hi, this is Claire from FedEx.  What’s the name of the book that you mentioned?”

Uncle Bob told her the title and the premise of the story. 

“I’m going to buy that book!” she said.  “It sounds really interesting!”

It’s nice to have such enthusiastic, persuasive family members.

The best of all booksellers

I have some amazing people working to promote my book: my agent, my editor, my publicist, and all of the booksellers working for my publisher and staffing fine bookstores everywhere.   

But sometimes I wonder if my mother-in-law might not be the best of the bunch.  I received this email today:

So I went into Posner's Bookstore at Grand Central Station and asked why the book was not on the front table of the store. The man looked it up and discovered that they had one copy.

"So where is it?" I asked.

"In the mystery section."

"OK.  Let's check it out."  I found it on the shelf tucked ALL THE WAY in the back of the store on the next to lowest shelf of the mystery department.  I explained that my son-in-law had been written up on the FRONT PAGE of the Sunday Courant, written about in the Boston Globe, and written about in USA Today, and how could they possibly sell this one measly book if they have it in the section that it doesn't even belong in?  I was outraged.

"Well, I will look into this and peruse the book," said the poor chap!

"Yes, and talk to your boss about ordering more copies for all of your Connecticut shoppers.  They will be looking for the book."  I explained that both Barnes and Noble and Borders has the book displayed prominently in ALL of their stores and that they are doing themselves a disservice by having only one copy hidden away. I told him that I will be back in two weeks and that hopefully it will be on the front table (at least six of them) then.

He laughed and said that he will do his best. He is going to look through the book and then talk to his boss.

I'm doing my best to promote and sell the book. On the lower shelf in the back of the store in the mystery department?  Damn!  We can't have that!

Is SOMETHING MISSING a bestseller yet?

A lot of people, friends and strangers, via email, Facebook, Twitter, and in person, have been asking me how the book is doing in the bookstores.  Unsure myself, I asked my editor, who explained it to me that it can take a while to find out how a book is doing.  “Right now we’re very happy with the number in-print and out to stores, but it’s sort of in the consumer’s hands at this point.”

As the book sells, she explained, bookstores will place reorders, and if the book does not sell, the bookstores will return the books to the publisher.  Through this process, we will eventually get a sense of how the book is selling. 

She also told me that it can take a while for a book like SOMETHING MISSING to reach its audience (I’m no James Patterson), but that the work of the marketing department and my publicist will go a long way in spreading the word and building enthusiasm.  So tell your friends, your neighbors and complete strangers about the book whenever you can, and remind them that it makes a great gift and that I’m happy to sign any copy placed before me! 

My wife does this especially well.   

So in answer to all of you who have been kind enough to ask about the sales thus far, the short and honest answer is that we have no idea how the book is doing and won’t know for a while. 

On an anecdotal basis, I can tell you that most of the bookstores in my area are sold out and many of the reorders have already been claimed by people who were placed on a waiting list, but I have lots of friends in the area, so this isn’t too much of a surprise.   

Friends and relatives have also reported that the book is sold-out in stores in New Jersey, Florida and Massachusetts, but again, there’s no telling if the stores in question ordered one book or twenty books, so these reports are difficult to rely upon.

Amazon gives every book a sales rank based upon sales conducted through their site, and I have a friend who has been watching my sales rank closely and reporting it to me, but even this data is difficult to understand.  On Tuesday, the release day, SOMETHING MISSING jumped from #68,000 to #25,000, and by Wednesday afternoon it was at #8,000 and had cracked the top 100 in the humorous category. 

But a day later it had shot back up to #42,000, and today the book ranks #6,152 as I write this post. 

So who knows?  I assume that my book is so new that the numbers will remain volatile for some time, but I have no idea how Amazon’s sales rank works or what the data even represents.

But when I hear some news, good or otherwise, I’ll be sure to share it here with all of you!

Book clubs: A good use of my time? Or just plain fun?

As a first time novelist, the publishing process is new to me, and so I’m not quite sure what typical authors do to promote their books, communicate with readers, and make themselves available to the general public. I have wonderful people at Broadway working with me, but I’m also trying to do my part, using Twitter, Facebook, and this blog to reach out to potential readers.

Recently, a new opportunity for outreach and promotion has arisen: book clubs. In the past month, I’ve received requests to attend the meetings of about half a dozen book clubs, all of which plan on discussing SOMETHING MISSING, and the book isn’t even out yet!

Since the book has already been chosen as a Border’s Book Club pick, my participation in these book clubs seems to make a lot of sense, and to be honest, I love book clubs. I love talking about stories and authors and writing in general. And to think that I will not be required to read some potentially terrible choice from a fellow book club member (usually my wife, who chooses books using a bizarre and indecipherable process of Internet searches and obscure recommendations that seems to inevitably yield a week of painful reading) is just an added bonus.

My question, though, for the authors, publishers, booksellers, and publicists in the world is this: Is this something that authors routinely do, and is it a good use of my time? Sure, these meetings will be fun, but will they generate sales, buzz, and the like? I’m not sure. Would I be better off spending an evening in a library or a bookstore, promoting my book, or could the time spent with these book clubs be worth the effort?

Product placement

In reading some of my Amazon reviews (I know I shouldn’t, but they’re still very good), I noticed that two people commented on the specificity to which I wrote about certain brand names in SOMETHING MISSING, wondering if I received money from the companies mentioned as a form of product placement.

Certainly a fascinating idea, and one that I wouldn’t mind pursuing in the future, but the reason behind my specificity is two-fold:

Martin, the protagonist in SOMETHING MISSING, is more detail-oriented than anyone I know, and though he doesn’t tell the story first-person, I attempted to imbue the omniscient narrator of the story (me, I guess) with his characteristic obsession for detail as a means of enhancing and infusing the story with his character. My friend, Shep, referred to it as Martin-speak, and he heartily approved of the decision. So the use of brand names (Subaru Outback instead of station wagon, for example) was an attempt to do just this.

Also, I like to think that the reference to a Subaru Outback paints a different and far more specific picture in the reader’s mind than the word station wagon. Having grown up in the 1980s in the “way back” of a long, wide, wood-paneled station wagon, the word station wagon paints a very different picture than a station wagon of today.

But the idea of product placement in a novel is an interesting one. Would advertisers be intrigued by this idea at all? Unlike commercials, the references to specific products in a book could not be skipped over, but then again, if taken to the extreme, stories might become a morass of brand names and commercialism.

But it might be something worth exploring. For example, in my current manuscript, my protagonist, Wyatt, will eventually be driving a car. Probably a pick-up truck. If Ford would like to pay me to make that truck an F-150, with at least six specific references to it in the book, why not? As long as it fit the context and original intent of the story, would this be bad?

The businessman in me says no, but the writer and artist in me is beginning to wonder…