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August 29, 2005

Of Best-Sellers, Community Corner, and Maddalena

A front-page headline in yesterday’s New York Times caught my attention. In her article "After Jail and More, Salesman Scores Big With Cure-All Book," Melanie Warner reports on the success of Kevin Trudeau’s No. 1 best-selling how-to and advice book. According to Warner, "the updated and expanded version of Natural Cures ‘They’ Don’t Want You to Know About, which Trudeau self-published, has been outsold only by "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince."

Isn’t that a phenomenal success, you ask might yourself.

Seems that way, given that Mr. Trudeau, a handsome single man surrounded by cars and beautiful women, has also “had some run-ins with the law,” and served two years in federal prison for credit-card fraud. But, that’s not my point. Nor do I wish to worry whether he is “nothing more than a latter-day snake oil salesman,” as Ms. Warner cites one reader of his book.

The moment I saw the New York Times article, I remembered having read about Mr. Trudeau’s marketing campaign in Publishers Weekly earlier this summer. With a two-billion-dollar health-products global enterprise behind him, is it surprising that a weekly budget of half-a-million would eventually sell three million copies of a book, even though it includes a blurb by a reviewer who had died four years before?

Dear reader, can you imagine what I could do with Mr. Trudeau's one week’s budget to market my book?

But, Maddalena is well on her way. Amazing how much publicity my historical novel has received just by honest local media coverage! Last week I loved sitting on Rick Adam’s Community Corner. It’s great fun to see a person, normally no more than a few inches high on your TV screen, suddenly materialize before you, shake your hand in a welcoming way, warmly encouraging you to tell everyone about your book.

Well, I did, and you can check my events page for the details. Do enjoy learning about Maddalena and the fascinating era in which she lived!

Posted by Eva Siroka at 01:01 PM | Comments (0)