Back in 1989, a memorable film about baseball called "Field of Dreams" was released to critical acclaim.
The seminal moment arguably occurred early in the film when a man, walking through a corn field, heard a voice telling him "if you build it, he will come," the word "he" referring to a once greatly admired then disgraced ball player named Shoeless Joe Jackson. So with his wife's reluctant permission the man turned part of a cornfield into a baseball stadium and the story goes from there.
Over time, the key expression has morphed into "if you build it, they will come" and can be applied to almost anything -- such a novella called "Manhattan Morning." All one has to do is write it, put it up on sites such as Amazon or Goodreads (owned by Amazon) and readers will surely arrive.
Well, that's not exactly the way it works in real life and especially if the book is identified as "literary" fiction.
The book was initially released in 2015 after a number of friends read and critiqued it, but readers outside of that circle didn't arrive at all.
So, in the Age of Coronavirus when there seems to be fewer things upon which to spend money and when the public is arguably doing more reading while sheltering at home, I decided "why not?" and spent about $120 to launch a Goodreads giveaway of up to 100 copies of the novella in its Kindle format, where the short book, centered on a walk through midtown Manhattan, is illustrated.
The month-long giveaway, which just ended and in which "Manhattan Morning" was identified as "An illustrated Kindle novella for readers who love stories set in New York," apparently attracted 363 entrants of which 100 were awarded copies of the book. According to Goodreads, 275 people shelved the title in a "want to read list."
Fascinating!
How many people will actually read the book is another matter entirely and if they do, will anyone comment or give it a review -- good, bad or indifferent?
Stay tuned.
Perhaps there is a reason so many people in this country appear to be employed in "marketing" of one form or another.
