Publicity Hound Tim Martin of Corona, California writes:
“I am working with Rex Bowlby, the author of the book “Why Would I Want the Toy, When I Can Have the Box?…101 Ways to Make the Most of Your Children, With the Least from Your Wallet.”
“It provides a treasure chest full of ideas on teaching and bonding with your kids using everyday items that will stimulate their imaginations, such as empty cardboad boxes, which can double as a fort, a robot, a train, a storage container, a house, a basketball hoop, a tunnel, and a pet house.
“But the book hasn’t gotten the exposure it needs. Are there any Hounds with unique ideas on how to spread the word about this book? Maybe even a way to move a truckload of copies at a time through a huge church or family organization, perhaps as a fund-raiser?
“This author isn’t in it for the money. He’s in it to make a difference.”
This is a natural for grandparents – we’re the ones who remember the time when this kind of creativity was fun – and necessary with small budgets. We’re tired of buying super expensive gadgets for the grandkids and would love to see a return to something simpler that also gets the creativity cooking in our grandbabes. A story in the AARP publications would go over big!
This book sounds terrific. Tim can contact the International Network for Children and Families, an organization of parent educators, at http://www.redirectingbehavior.com. The mission of the I Am Foundation, http://www.iamfoundation.org, is to gift books. This might be a good resource as well. As a parent educator, I would love to feature this book in my monthly e-zine and on my website, http://www.wholeheartedparenting.com.
There are over 300 children’s museums in the U.S. with 85 more currently under development. They target children aged birth-12 years. This book would have several dynamite uses for these museums:
1. Small Bulk Sales: Many have a gift shop and they are always looking for unique items to carry for either children or parents/teachers
2. Large Bulk Sales: All of them do annual fundraising campaigns — this book would be a great premium for them to give away to certain levels of donors or as a member benefit
3. Single Copies: Program Directors at children’s museums should have this on their bookshelf as a resrouce when planning activities for children or workshops for parents
Also, contact corporate foundations that focus their giving on agencies that serve children and families. They might be intersted in a bulk purchase to make available to the agencies they support
You can find a listing of children’s msueums at the Association of Children’s Museums website, and various foundation listings can be found at The Foundation Center and the Council on Foundations websites
When the school or church has children performing, ask to provide a skit which involves a few of the students demonstrating the use of boxes or other projects. Provide a special rate and/or encourage them to use books as a fund raiser.
Go to retirement homes or convalescent hospitals. These folks love to be entertained; especially be youngsters. Provide a skit during a school field trip, or evening/weekend project. Grandparents (and older) often seek something different to offer as a gift and a book of imaginative ideas would be great as many of them bemoan that children watch too much TV, play video games, and don’t think for themselves.
Have books ready and offer a discount.
Work with Scout troops, Boys & Girls Clubs, or other similar groups that encourage their members to do for others. They could help construct the projects and coordinate the school events and retirement home visits. Their parents would then learn about the book.
Libraries generally have a monthly sale of donated books. Attend some of these and offer a book free in exchange for buying books, as a drawing, or whatever else the library would allow. Also, go to reading times and offer the book at a discounted rate. Always have a flyer or brochure with you.
Using seniors in facilities, retired folks belonging to groups, developmentally disabled folks, etc. – have them make some of the projects and pay them. You can leave these as play toys at doctor or dentist offices, health clubs with child care areas, banks with a play area, etc. Leave flyers with how to order or obtain the book.
You never know until you try – although Dave Ramsey is a syndicated financial advice radio show that is Christian based, you may be able to “piggyback” off of his program (financial kit for kids) that he has developed to help young people. If you could team with him in anyway, even if it was to offer free books for his listeners, you will see yourself become famous.
Richard (Rick) Adams
256-656-1272
Okay – where do you find great big cool boxes??
-Appliance stores. Contact one in your area and see if they’d be interested in a Saturday-morning event, prhaps during one of their sale promotions. A space in the parking lot could be set aside for fort-building (or who knows!). Offer a free (AUTOGRAPHED!) book with any major sales that day, too.
-Radio and stero places might work as well for an event. See if you could get a local radio station to broadcast from the store or the parking lot.
-Mini-storage locations, especially if it’s a new one needing its own publicity. Most of them sell the boxes so that might be an interesting resource link.Here again – maybe offer a free book to anyone who rents a space on the day of the event.
This sounds like a natural for article marketing. No doubt the author has dozens ideas and tips that he could weave into free standing articles of around 500 words or less.
Couple the article with a great bio/resource box which contains a solid offer for his book, with links that lead to a sales page, and submit to any one of dozens of “article directories”.
Don’t make the mistake of submitting just one article… submit a hundred or more. You’ll never have to worry about making sales again. Your articles will bring highly qualified sales leads… and hundreds of back links to your selling pages.
You’ll find that the more focused or “niched” the article directory is to your target audience… the more and better quality results you will enjoy.
Thom Reece
http://www.ArticleMarketingNetwork.com
Sending a release or ready to use article to all the regional parenting publications, as well as the national ones, should generate some good media coverage. There are also parenting editors at most daily newspapers.
I’m going to assume that all the obvious national magazines for Parenting have been pitched along with the various regional versions of same. Ditto for lifestyle sections of major metro papers…we’re hounds after all right?
Have they considered senior publications with a grandparenting angle?
But they also mentioned some kind of a giveaway — there is a very cool non-profit organization in San Francisco, a hands on museum for children called the Exploratorium. They might be perfect for some kind of giveaway. There is also a similar incarnation in Denver called the Children’s Museum. There might be other similar organizations in many other markets that would be a practical fit. But think beyond giveaways and publicity, they might also consider carrying the book in their gift store or online catalog!
a few ideas:
Partner with a School District to provide these books as a resource for teachers who sense that parents need some help interacting with their children. As the husband of a teacher, elementary school teachers are always looking for nice subtle ways to help out parents.
How about a reader-inspired follow up book. Very similar to what Tom Brokaw did with his war book. the next few books were all reader-submitted stories and best sellers, i believe. Have a contest for people to share their own ideas. You would get a lot of publicity for the contest that would obviously help sell the original and could lead to a series of books… such as 101 things to do with an Older Parent, a dog..etc. (kinda like the Rich Dad, Poor Dad series)
I see on your website that you’re no stranger to publicity. As someone who knows the frugality market, I’d look at seeding articles specifically to frugality publications, on and offline. Including my own Frugal and Fashionable Living at http://www.frugalfun.com/frugal.html
The big problem with the frugality market is that it’s very easy to brand yourself, the media love you, and frugalists still don’t open their wallets. Thus, I’d look at ways to monetize the traffic you generate other than selling books. Have you considered Google AdSense? It usually brings me about $300 per month. For the same reason, I’d develop programs you can present in the schools, etc., get paid for the speeches and figure you can also approach the sponsoring orgs to use your books as fundraisers: you sell at wholesale, they sell at retail.
Also think about long-term events and promotions you can do, such as what I’m doing at http://www.business-ethics-pledge.org
(And your vegan book would probably also appeal to frugalists).
How about sending the book to a handful of Mommy bloggers that are well-read, say in the Technorati “magic middle,” which are blogs that have from 20 to 1,000 unique links from other blogs. You can start at the URL below.
http://www.technorati.com/blogs/motherhood
Ask them to read the book and give you their feedback, maybe on a Survey Monkey survey. This will give you data that you can use to promote the book and some of these “connectors” might blog about the book too.
Thank you so very much for taking your time to respond with your great comments and suggestions to Tim’s plea for assistance in trying to gain exposure for my book, Why Would I Want the Toy, When I can Have the Box?
I thought the creation and writing would be the tough part, but it doesn’t compare to the challenge of trying to get the word out.
Toy?/Box,
Rex Bowlby