Bookseller Stories - National Feral Cat Day

In my never ending research for the opening of Paragraphs, I love reading stories from other booksellers and I will occasionally share some of these experiences with my readers.

I have been catching up on my twitter and blog reading this evening and found this post that I thought was relevant to the Island. My understanding is that at times South Padre Island has had a problem with feral cats although I believe the situation is much better now.

From The Booklady's Blog

(Phone rings)

Me: “Good morning, this is Rebecca.”

Caller: “Hi, my name is Blah Blahblah, and I’m a publicist for Gobbledygook Books” (clearly, I’m changing names to protect the innocent…or ignorant…or, nevermind). “I work with an author from your area who has written a book about cats, and she’s interested in doing a signing in your store.”

So far, this seems pretty normal. I get calls and drop-in visits like this all the time.

Me: “Okay, can you tell me more about the book? Is it a children’s book or a book about pets? How would you describe it?”

She proceeds to describe the book, which is apparently written for adults, but classified as Christian/Inspiration, and is written entirely from the perspective of the cats. Okay. For adults. Really?

Me: “Well, I generally do one or two signings per month, and I’m all booked up in September and December. What timeline were you thinking about?”

Caller: “She can really come anytime, but she would really like to do it on October 16th to coincide with National Feral Cat Day. We were you thinking you could tie that into your marketing and get the audience really excited about it.”

Internal Monologue (National Feral Cat Day? WTF? How am I supposed to market that? “Have you hugged your feral cat today?” “Come celebrate feral cats–bring yours and join the party!” “Buy a book, get a free rabies vaccine!”)

I rein in my snarkiness, request a review copy of the book and a publicity package (a word to the wise: never schedule a book signing without having actually seen and read the book. Bad things happen.), and tell her I’ll get back to her. Then I immediately hit Google to look for publicity ideas.