by Ellen Byron
Despite my ubiquitous presence on social media, when my Cajun Country Mystery series first launched, I found myself dreading the thought of promoting it. The constant horn tooting – (Here’s a great review! Here’s another! Buy my book! Tell your library to buy my book!) made me incredibly uncomfortable.
For books one and two I swallowed my discomfort and followed all the typical promotional avenues, like Facebook ads and posts, Twitter posts, even two launch parties. But by the time A Cajun Christmas Killing, the third book in the series, was ready to launch, I couldn’t face another battery of self-congratulatory and occasional humble-braggy posts. Then a thought occurred to me. Why not own what I was doing? Instead of pursuing the awkward task of balancing sales with self-deprecation, why not be up front about my motivation, but with humor? I gave my promotional efforts a name: The Shameless Shilling Campaign.
Here’s how my Shameless Shilling Campaigns work. I come up with thematic ways to insert myself into photos relevant to my book’s theme. I then share those ideas with my graphics guru, Hunter. He does the Photoshopping, which is beyond my skill set, and I match his creations with what I hope are clever pitches for whatever book I want to promote. Hunter and I try to come up with three or four images, and I post one a week in the month prior to a book’s official launch date. I share the finished project under the bald banner of Shameless Shilling. That’s the lead of every post.
Here are a couple of examples from the campaign for the aforementioned third book in my series. A sandwich board? Talk about on-the-nose Shameless Shilling.
I totally embraced the campaign for the fourth Cajun Country Mystery, Mardi Gras Murder. The plot revolves around the Cajun Mardi Gras tradition of Courir de Mardi Gras, which translates to “Mardi Gras Run.” I’ve never joined a Run, but my close friend, renowned New Orleans artist Jan Gilbert, has, and she loaned me a photo…
During a trip to New Orleans, I went on the Mardi Gras World tour for the express purpose of taking float photos for Hunter to insert my photo into. (It’s a great tour, BTW; I highly recommend it. You even get a piece of King Cake when you complete the tour. Laissez les bon temps rouler!)
I’m a Tulane University alum and I have a close friend who was in a number of Mardi Gras courts in New Orleans. I inserted myself into one of those photos…
For the launch of my most recent book, Fatal Cajun Festival, I decided to mix things up a little. Hunter did the usual heavy lifting of inserting me into photos I’d taken at various New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festivals I’ve attended. I then used Canva to create Before-and-After graphics…
I fantasize that when readers hear I have a book coming out, they think to themselves, “Yay! It’s time for another Shameless Shilling Campaign!” As I said, this is a fantasy, but what isn’t a fantasy is the fun I have creating campaigns that take the onus off promotion.
I’ll be launching a new series, The Catering Hall Mysteries, under the pseudonym Maria DiRico, and I have another Cajun Country Mystery, Murder on the Bayou Boneyard, launching in September of 2020. Hmmm… A catering hall. Halloween…
The Shameless Shilling possibilities are endless.
Mardi Gras Murder, Ellen Byron’s fourth Cajun Country Mystery, won the Agatha Award for Best Contemporary Novel. The series has also won multiple Best Humorous Mystery Lefty awards from Left Coast Crime. Writing as Maria DiRico, she’ll debut a second series, The Catering Hall Mysteries, in 2020. TV credits include Wings, Just Shoot Me, and Fairly OddParents. Her award-winning plays, published by Dramatists Play Service, have been performed throughout the world. Fun fact: she worked as a cater-waiter for Martha Stewart.