5000 COACHES: A NEW WAY TO SELL BOOKS

grassroots man, originally uploaded by chillhiro.

I loved a lot of things about the movie, Akeelah and the Bee, but one thing that stayed in my mind was the concept of 5000 coaches. When Akeelah's spelling coach quits on her just before the National Spelling Bee, he tells her to go home and look in her own family, her own neighborhood, her own school. There, he says, she will find 5000 coaches. And in them, she will find her victory.

Akeelah's school doesn't have the most rudimentary educational supplies; and her family is too distracted by their struggle to survive the hazards of their vibrant, but blighted neighborhood to pay much attentions to Akeelah's aspirations.

But what her coach teaches her is that sometimes all you have to do is be clear and strong about your dream--and then ask for help. The 5000 coaches, like the proverbial zen teacher, will appear. And they do.

In a lot of ways, the blogosphere has been for a lot of us, the land of 5000 coaches. Whether we're dropping in daily to support a blog friend whose son was recently in a devastating car accident, or sharing stimulus with the marvelous Melba who recently invited C.Delia Scarpitti to interview me for Create a Connection, or taking time to contemplate our magnificent planet, the energy of the ideas and passion shared in the sphere is a force to be reckoned with.

These days, book promotion has become not just the business of publishing companies or highly paid outside publicists. These days authors get to join in the fun, too. After all, who cares more about the success of our books than we do? At first, I was a little intimidated. What did I know about marketing? And did it mean I'd have to leave my little writing room?

Then I went out and looked for my 5000 coaches. The first one was MJ Rose, and her class Buzz Your Book. In that class, MJ taught that you need at least one signature idea to market your book. Like a good zen master, she couldn't tell us what it was; she could only teach us how to search for it.

Almost by accident, I stumbled upon a group of dynamic debut novelists known as Killer Year. The knowledge and encouragement, not to mention, the laugh out loud humor, they share in daily emails, has taught me more than I can say.

Since then, the coaches have proliferated. One example? This week my incredible literary agent and her family will be digging into their own rolodexes, then addressing and sending out 1,000 postcards--all to get the word out about The Liar's Diary. Needless to say, no agent contract in the world covers that kind of grassroots effort.

If I began to name my own band of 5000 coaches, I would quickly run out of space: Tess Gerritsen, Tish Cohen, Karen DeGroot Carter, Dan Wickett, Susan Henderson, Amy MacKinnon, Jacquelyn Mitchcard, Susan Messer, Jordan Rosenfeld, Myfanwy Collins, Laini Taylor DiBartolo...to name a very few. Then there are the many of YOU who pre-ordered the novel even before my mother did, or wrote about it on your blogs. Do you have any idea how great and wide my gratitude is?

More about my new way of selling books, my big, revolutionary idea tomorrow. Right now it's one a.m., and this marketing maven is going to bed.