…from daft ideas often come the next ‘great thing‘… the following Guest Post from my dear friend and fellow scribbler, Susan Toy, may interest other Writers and Readers… feedback on it is encouraged… please let us know if this is sum’thing yeez could support:

GoReadMe! – an idea on Crowd Reading

Susan M. Toy.

The marvelous Seumas Gallacher posted a status update to Facebook, a joke really, that had me laughing out loud here in my little trailer …

“…thinking of doing a GoFundMe thingy for a movie about my ‘To Be Read’ pile on my ebook Reader… calling it ‘Kindler’s List’… all contributions welcome… J”

Then an idea struck me – “What if,” I thought (those great little words that lead to the beginning of many great ideas, stories and novels). And I wrote a message to the kind sir himself, running past him first the kernel of this tiny idea that was forming, just to see if he thought it to be a good one himself. He did, and then I offered to write a guest blog post for him, after I’d given the whole thing – as to full concept and execution – more thought.

So here it is … the GoReadMe Campaign!

First, let’s go back a little way in time to a blog post I published in March of this year on the perennial subject that’s of interest to all authors – Looking for Readers in All the Right Places. https://islandeditions.wordpress.com/2016/03/03/looking-for-readers-in-all-the-right-places-2/ (I had actually blogged about this dilemma a couple of times previous and those links are included in this post. If you are an author looking for readers then I suggest you read about all my previous ideas.)

We’re all familiar with the GoFundMe campaigns Mr. Gallacher mentioned in his joke. They come in many different guises and are meant to help creators and business people raise the necessary funds required to launch and cover the expenses of producing a project by involving their friends directly in that financing.

So, when Seumas combined the idea of crowdfunding with the concept of a film about enormous to-be-read piles of books (which, to be honest, every single reader worth their salt has in their homes as well as on their eReaders, etc.), I laughed out loud, as I mentioned above, but then I began to think. So I sent him a private message:

“Seumas, your GoFundMe campaign to finance a film, Kindler’s List, had me laughing! But then, I thought … What about setting up a campaign called GoReadMe, and instead of raising money we raise awareness for reading and reading our books in particular? What do you think? I would love to take a crack at developing this idea into a thing and writing a guest blog post about the “campaign” for your blog that we can all then promote on our own blogs. Do you have any thoughts as to how we could present this campaign? Would we have a goal to find, say, 50 readers who will commit to buy and read a certain book or books by a certain author? Would love to hear your thoughts on this. It could be fun!”

And Seumas’s reply was simply, “terrific idea , m’Lady ”

Okay, so I used the words “What about” and not “What if” – same thing, essentially.

The point is that I’ve given more thought to this idea since first presenting it to SG and here are my new thoughts as to how it might work …

We choose an author who is interested in finding new readers for their books. Let’s begin with Seumas, since this is his blog, after all, and he was the one who started my brain rolling in this particular direction.

We make the announcement that we are beginning a GoReadMe! Campaign (and I’ve just added the exclamation point there to the name, because I think it looks better …) for this author and we’re looking for 50 new readers who will “pledge” to read either one of the author’s books or a specific title. Not only will they pledge to read the book themselves, but they’ll also agree to recommend that book to another reader who will join in on the GoReadMe! Campaign. That way, we only need to find 25 unique readers, because those new readers will find the other 25 for us. The campaign lasts a month, let’s say, during which time the author, and the author’s friends, promote the campaign, and the author keeps a public tally on their blog of the number of people who have pledged, and their names (or those who wish to remain “anonymous”), who have committed to reading a book and finding other new readers for it. Simple!

And, if friends have already read the author’s book(s) but still wish to become involved in the GoReadMe! Campaign, they can help by promoting this idea to their friends, encouraging others to become involved in reading this author’s great books!

In the end, what the “Readers” receive by pledging in this way is a warm/fuzzy feeling of not only discovering and reading a new book by a great author, but also the knowledge that they are helping to promote reading in general by becoming involved in this campaign in particular and encouraging more people to read.

By the way, I believe that the personal recommendation of a book by a friend is a much more effective way (word-of-mouth) of promoting a book than any review on Amazon or Goodreads, so that’s why I’m not suggesting that “write a review” be a requisite for readers pledging to take part in this campaign. No pressure, folks! Just pledge to read the book and find at least one other new reader. What can be simpler than that?

So, let’s begin the experiment, shall we?

Announcing … the GoReadMe! Campaign for Seumas Gallacher!

We need 50 people to pledge to read at least one of Seumas’s Jack Calder novels (listed below) and to recommend to one other reader that they do the same. You have 30 Days during which to pledge. This Campaign ends on Sept. 22. Please sign up in the comments section of this blog post. Thanks for taking part in this initial GoReadMe! Campaign!

Links to Seumas’s books:

THE VIOLIN MANS LEGACY

myBook.to/theviolinmanslegacy

VENGEANCE WEARS BLACK

myBook.to/vengeancewearsblack

SAVAGE PAYBACK

myBook.to/savagepayback

KILLER CITY

myBook.to/calderkillercity

…see yeez later… LUV YEEZ!…

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