The Christmas Box Miracle by Richard Paul Evans

Author:Richard Paul Evans
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Akihito Kimura

Kansai Telecasting Corporation

Osaka, Japan

19

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It is oftentimes a blessing to not know our limitations.

It’s the only way to accomplish the impossible.

RICHARDPAULEVANS

IREALIZED THAT IFICOULDrepeat the Salt Lake phenomenon on a national scale, my book would be the number-one-selling book in America. Maybe even the world. Again, my naïveté was a blessing. I did not understand how the national publishing machine operated—the power of chains, distributors and publishers and the deals that are made at New York publishing lunches. Salt Lake City was still sufficiently provincial that a small book could make it on its own merit. But competing with the “big boys,” the large publishers and authors, was an entirely different matter.

Fortunately I didn’t know this. The challenges I recognized already seemed insurmountable. Especially the marketing. My entire advertising budget was a meager seven thousand dollars. Senator Bob Bennett had just spent nearly 2 million dollars to sell himself just in Utah. Telling the entire country about my book with only a few thousand dollars of advertising would be like feeding thousands with one loaf of bread.

Of course, national media—aTodayshow or anOprahappearance—would change everything, but the odds of being struck by lightning are greater than the odds of being on either show. Not having a publisher reduced my chances still more. Not even the local television stations were interested in my book. Being self-published, I learned, is like competing in the Olympics without a country—they make you run outside the stadium.

The hard truth was, I was an unknown with a little Christmas book.Ifthis war could be won, it would have to be won in the trenches. I would have to visit as many bookstores and book trade shows as I physically could, hoping that word of mouth would quickly spread. It was like shooting flaming arrows into a dry field and hoping that a brushfire might start that would sweep the nation.

My biggest challenge was time. There’s not much interest-in Christmas books before Thanksgiving, and none after Christmas. That gave me a window of about five weeks to sell—not enough time for word of mouth to spread nationally. I needed to find a way to get the word out faster.

As I was contemplating this challenge, an idea came to me. I could give my books to radio stations as Christmas giveaways. I would give twenty-five books to each station, with the only requirement being that they give my book to listeners, with the tag line “If you read only one book this Christmas, it must be this one.” The idea hadpossibilities, if the stations would do it. They likely wouldn’t. No station wants to give away free airtime.

Still, I reasoned, there are more than seven thousand radio stations in the United States. I figured if I could get just a couple dozen of those stations to participate, it would be worth the attempt. I printed a postcard with the details of the offer and sent it out to every radio station in the country.

More than four hundred stations called back.

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