Promoting Wolfman

We had an interesting weekend with our friend Stanley Trollip. Stanley was a colleague of mine at UND and we worked together in getting UND to develop a graduate program in Instructional Design. Stan is one of the most interesting people I know and he seems capable of so many different things having moved through multiple careers. In my own retirement, I continue doing many of the same things I have always done with my hobbies related to my interests in education and educational technology.

In contrast, Stan, who is originally from South Africa, has taken up writing crime fiction. He has a series of books with colleague Michael Sears set in the south of Africa. The pair writes as Michael Stanley.

Like rock musicians, writers evidently have a strong urge to do things on their own. Stan has just finished a solo effort – Wolfman. This book is a crime novel set in Northern Minnesota.

Stan was visiting us at our northern Wisconsin cabin and we decided to visit independent bookstores in the region to see if they would stock his book. The idea came from a Duluth Herald article (you are probably blocked) reviewing works by regional authors.

I don’t write fiction and I had never thought about the strategies of promotion that apply. I have watched Stan do book talks at bookstores, but visiting bookstores was something different. The strategy seemed to work pretty well. One store had read the review and already had books on order. One store bought a couple of books from Stan (signed). The other store was being staffed by someone without the authority to make purchases. Independent book store folks think way different from the mindset of academic publishers.