Social media not necessary to be BC bestseller

My partner’s new book – West Coast Wrecks & Other Maritime Tales – is on the BC Bestseller list!

And he didn’t use any so­cial me­dia to get it there. That’s right, no Facebook, no Twitter, no LinkedIn and no blog. Rick (James) doesn’t even have a website.

So, how did he ac­com­plish this?

Well, it’s a great book to be­gin with. In twenty-one chapters he ex­plores fas­cin­at­ing tales of ship­wrecks, shares the stor­ies of some unique coastal char­ac­ters and de­tails oth­er note­worthy events in BC mari­time history.

West Coast Wrecks a BC bestseller.

The cov­er, a com­mis­sioned paint­ing by Peter Rindlisbacher de­pict­ing the wreck of the Geo. S Wright, is stun­ning. And the book is Harbour Publishing’s Raincoast Chronicles 21.

Raincoast Chronicles have been pop­u­lar col­lect­or items since Howard White pub­lished the first one 39 years ago. But still, West Coast Wrecks had only been out two weeks when it made the BC Bestseller list and hadn’t re­ceived any pub­li­city yet.

So, what’s Rick’s secret? He worked his way onto the best­seller list the old-fash­ioned way.

By chance he happened to be in Victoria soon after the book came out. He vis­ited every book store he could think of, in­tro­duced him­self and offered to sign cop­ies of West Coast Wrecks.

As a res­ult, many book­stores put ‘Signed by Author’ stick­ers on the front cov­er and moved the book to a more prom­in­ent dis­play loc­a­tion. Rick re­peated the pro­cess when he re­turned home to Courtenay.

Isn’t it thought-pro­vok­ing to dis­cov­er that amidst all the so­cial me­dia hype, a little en­thu­si­asm and leg­work, coupled with a friendly man­ner can have such an impact?