Archive for the ‘Letmestayforaday’ Category

Today a huge amount of cardboard boxes arrived at the publishing house in Amsterdam. The boxes contain all thousands of first print copies of the Dutch book Letmestayforaday, zonder een cent op zak de wereld rond (around the world for free).

With my presence at the annual UITmarkt in Amsterdam the promotional circus had already started last weekend.

At the end of August, the new season of “culture” commences with shows on outdoor and indoor stages all over the city. The Uitmarkt is an enormous variety with previews of theatre, cabaret, dance, pop and classical music, opera, mime, children’s theatre, street theatre and film. All performances are free, so it is no surprise that I also found more than half a million people milling about attending a bewildering choice of shows. I was one of the authors of the Nijgh & Van Ditmar Publishing House at the mile long book market where publishers present their latest editions.

There was no book to promote at that time, so the promotional manager had created little post cards that can be cut into a bookmark or can be used as a luggage lable (‘please fill out your flight number’). All I did was talk to people all day and give away the post cards and tell about the upcoming book behind the market stand. It was surprising how many people actually recalled me from my newspaper columns and some people had even followed the website extensively. The post cards will also be sent to lots of travel agencies in the country, so they can give them away as ‘perfect-on-board-book-if-you-hate-the-onboard-entertainment-that-much’-hint or just as a luggage lable. I bet you want one of those free cards, huh?

The rest of the week I had lots of contact with that promotional manager. She and I are basically planning the media agenda from the day the book will be out. All promotional activities have to be spread out a bit, to make any exposure worth while. If you have media talking about the book on one day, I don’t expect to sell any book after one month. It’s a fascinating commercial scheme! I had the first pretalks with producers of radio and tv, had a few interviews for newspapers and I also spent almost an entire day recreating The Beatles’ cover of Abbey Road with four Ramons. You read that well, photographers are just a bit too over-creative these days…

The most interesting activity of having a book published is the fact that I get to travel again. Not extensively as I did before, but I do have to leave the country again next week. Yes, because Dutch is also one of the main languages of Belgium, I get to visit and talk to some Belgian media too just before the show starts in my home country. Hello Brussels!

I’ll keep you posted!