THE CONCEPT OF THE READING ROOM

Stephen Everett's Reading Room will contain info about the authors, short stories, message boards, links to other sites, and links to amazon.com and bn.com, so that the books can be purchased on the spot, among other things to encourage return visits. And here is how I envision the site will work. The Alma Mahler historical novel will appeal to women especially and readers of twentieth century historical novels and European cultural history, as well as classical music aficionados. The Apollonius novel will appeal to readers of spiritual fiction, Roman history, and devotees of the Indian avatar Sathya Sai Baba, upon whose teachings much of the book is based, and whose followers number roughly 50,000 in America. (APOLLONIUS OF TYANA is being published by Zilch Publishing, a company founded by his sister in law to publish the works of the late comedian Andy Kaufman--see andykaufmaninprint.com.) JIMMY DUPPY will appeal to readers of Carl Hiaasen, Elmore Leonard, and Laurence Shames. And the Nick Kismet novels will appeal to readers of adventure fiction such as Indiana Jones and James Bond, and Clive Cussler's work, with some possible crossover into scifi/fantasy markets. Mr. Charest's novels will appeal to a variety of audiences, fans of contemporary, literary, humorous, spiritual and religious fiction will all find something to satisfy. KNIGHTS OF THE HARVEST MOON is a coming of age novel that will also find appeal with a variety of audiences. And Mr. McDaniel's books are overtly religious in nature. Taken individually these novels all stand a good chance of finding decent niches in their respective genres. However, when imprinted with the words--"If you enjoyed this book, check out sebooks.com for other recommended titles."--suddenly they begin to market one another. I can envision someone reading one of the novels, visiting the website, purchasing another novel, enjoying that, then reading a couple of mediocre books, then returning to the website for another suggested title. And I can see people who enjoyed one or more of the novels sending the website url to their friends, and/or placing links to it on their own websites. 

To my mind, once launched all these things would combine to put a tremendous marketing infrastructure in place before any publisher of these or my future clients' books had to lift a finger. And likewise, the publishers would all benefit from each others' marketing efforts, and those of the authors, resulting in a win win situation for everyone involved.