Don't hide the brownies

Wednesdays are my crazy day. I try to cram a bunch of work in to the early morning because I leave at 9:45 to take the kiddos to gymnastics. Afterward, I have to hurry home for lunch before the witching hour for children starts. This usually means I don't get to eat until dinner on Wednesdays.

So set the scene last Wednesday, a beautiful day here in West Texas. I'm making my way home with the kiddos and, as usual, I'm starving and possibly a little cranky. Up ahead I see three adults with signs standing on the side of the road outside a local private school. I'm intrigued enough to slow down, but I can't see their signs.

Instead of holding them up angled toward the oncoming traffic, they are holding them up toward the road in front of them. So I can't read them until I'm right in front of them. And the signs say...

DRIVE THRU BAKE SALE! 

Pure genius! An opportunity to get a brownie without getting out of my car was exactly what I needed. But I couldn't read the sign until the last second when I would have had to switch lanes and make an on a dime left hand turn. So I kept going. Not because I didn't want a brownie, but because getting one would now be an inconvenience. It would mean driving another block and turning around. Just to be clear, this would have taken all of two minutes. I live in a small town where traffic is at a minimum. But that should say something. Even an inconvenience as small as two minutes was too much.

If that sign had been turned 45 degrees to face the oncoming traffic, I would have enjoyed the rest of my drive home munching down on a brownie.

So what's the take-away besides my obvious deep need for a brownie.

It doesn't matter how genius your marketing campaign is if you aren't visible. You could have the most innovative idea since the inception of virtual blog tours, but if no one can see your sign, it doesn't matter.

Logistics count. A unique blog tour concept won't work if your participants are sent the wrong dates for posting or a broken buy link for your book. A genius cover reveal is useless if you use a small or corrupted file of the image that no one can see.

By all means, be innovative, unique and ground-breaking in your marketing efforts, but don't get so hung up in your own creative genius that you let something as small as a poorly directioned sign stand between readers and your brownies...I mean book, your book.