I “wallpapered” the entire peninsula with flyers advertising my book signing event. I took out a small ad in the calendar section of the local newspaper. I emailed EVERYONE in my entire address book. I talked constantly about the event for weeks. I wrote about it in my blog. I did an interview with the newspaper telling all about the book and plugging the upcoming book signing.

If I do say so myself, I thought I did a pretty bang-up job of “getting the word out.”

How humbling it is to learn there are so many things I cannot control. For starters, the newspaper, which I had heavily counted on to attract much attention, neglected to include the information about the book signing. It was deleted by the layout guy, who obviously did not read the article before chopping it up. So there was essentially no newspaper coverage other than my tiny calendar insertion.

Secondly, the weather was miserable. Cold, wet, and blowy… the kind of day that makes even the ducks hunker down and stay put.

The bottom line is that the book signing event for “Just Joshin’” fell well below even conservative expectations. No one showed up who wasn’t already a personal friend. And even many of my closest friends didn’t brave the weather. I am indeed grateful for those who did, otherwise I’d have been rather lonely all afternoon.

In my opinion, marketing is the most challenging aspect of the whole book-selling process. So here I sit, surrounded by boxes of unsold books. Time to dig deep into my reserve strength and figure out another plan…

Any suggestions?