One of my bootcampers impressed me this week with a quite brilliant idea: she’s carving out one day a week to focus on her book, and on that day she puts an out-of-office autoresponse on her email. But instead of a generic ‘I’ll get back to you tomorrow’ message, she took the opportunity to explain exactly what she’s doing and share a little bit about the book. The result of course is that she’s suddenly accountable to a whole load of new people who are asking how she’s getting on with the book, and she’s had lots of people asking for more information.
It’s a lovely demonstration of the magic that can happen when you start talking openly about your book. One of the reasons I think it’s worked so well is that it’s unexpected: we’re used to dull out-of-office messages – if we have any emotional reaction to them at all it’s usually irritation – but then to read more carefully and discover that the person you’re contacing is actually undertaking this fascinating project that you didn’t know about invites you to find out more.
It’s also responsive rather than interruptive – they’ve emailed her, she’s not being intrusive, she’s just responding and letting them know what she’s up to. That’s not a marketing blast, that’s a conversation.
Clever. SImple. Effective. Just the way we like our book marketing.