Monday, June 18, 2012




Author Blog Challenge #17

Describe the market for your book – to the tiniest detail (e.g., childless divorced women past age 50 who want to remarry). Why that demographic? How do you connect with them to market to them?



This book was written to address the imbalance between the academic and professional sanitised versions of welfare and adoption practice of mid to late 20th century Australia, and the reality of that practice from the point of view of personal engagement.  I wanted to ensure an accurate record of events remained as a reference for future social planners, reformers and legislators should they decide to re-invent past welfare and adoption practices. The intended market for The Little Mongrel – free to a good home, was politicians, university libraries, family welfare and adoption agencies, with a targeted readership to include those who had spent time in orphanages and institutions in Australia during this period, their children and grand children. This book was written to have readership appeal across a wide demographic, with particular interest to social historians, and as a reference text for those involved with the care and welfare of children and young people, social work practitioners, policy makers, program developers, researchers and teachers. These interest groups broadened the potential markets for this book to include educational booksellers, university bookstores, and welfare agency retail outlets.

To connect with these markets I developed mailing and emailing lists of all social work departments in universities, state and federal politicians, welfare and adoption agencies and support and interest groups, choosing key figures to request reading review copies and make comment and sending out a prepared press release and synopsis to all. I joined political action groups as well as making myself available to community organisations as a guest speaker, as well as arranging radio and newspaper interviews.

~ Merlene Fawdry

4 comments:

  1. It was so well done too Merlene.

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  2. I think this is a great piece to show potential writers the amount of pre-launch marketing that is needed to make a product saleable. The product will not succeed no matter how great if the marketing is crap.

    Well done with the insight into being sold after publishing.

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  3. Thank you Janice and Terry. These challenges are ... well ... challenging, forcing me at times to think back over a distance of years. It is a worthwhile exercise though that I recommend to others and there is a Winter Blog Challenge http://authorblogchallenge.wordpress.com/2012/06/16/ta-ta-ta-dah-announcing-the-winter-author-blog-challenge/ people can think about doing - northern hemisphere winter, that is. Thank you for your comments - always much appreciated.

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  4. Wow. That's quite a book. I'm proud to know someone that had something to say and just said it. I hope you get listened to. WRITE ON!

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For some reason I'm yet to fathom I'm unable to reply to comments left by others so thank you for dropping by and taking the time to read and comment. Merlene