It seems reasonably clear to me that a publisher can go a long way to making a book a bestseller if the publisher decides to make it happen. Make the book a sales rep pick; announce a several-hundred thousand copy first print run; talk the book up at BEA and elsewhere; include a letter from the head of the house in the ARC; devote a few hundred thousand dollars to advertising and in-store promotion; send the author on a big tour. The publisher might lose money in the process -- I get the feeling that happens fairly often to first-time authors who get the treatment I just described -- but the book will hit the NYT and other lists.

I say all this to emphasize that your publisher can do much, much more to make your book big than you can. It stands to reason, then, that the primary goal of your self-promotion efforts should be to recruit your publisher -- that is, to persuade your publisher's people to promote you the way you want them to promote you.

The question is how. Start with attitude: if your publisher's people aren't doing all you want them to, it's not because they're stingy or stupid or mean. It's because you haven't yet fulfilled your responsibility to demonstrate to them that it's in their interest to do more. Look, if you knew a certain stock was going to go up ten percent tomorrow, you'd invest in it today, right? And if there were another stock that you knew would go up 15% tomorrow, you'd invest in that one instead, right?

The point is, everyone wants to invest in something that will give them the best possible return on that investment. If your publisher isn't investing much in you, it's because they don't know yet what a great return you'll offer them. It's your job to demonstrate to them that they'll get that return -- that you're that winning stock.

You start by doing all the obvious, relatively affordable things: genre conventions; drop-ins in all the bookstores near where you live; etc. But what's missing from many of these efforts is a systematic focus on keeping the publisher informed. Does your publisher know what you're doing? Do you apprise your publisher of the efforts you make and the success you achieve? If you don't, you're missing an opportunity to demonstrate: (i) your confidence in yourself (investors are always persuaded by the confidence of other investors); (ii) your initiative -- that is, your ability and willingness to work hard on your own, which is likely to increase the value of whatever the publisher decides to invest); and (iii) the substantive value of investing in you regardless of where the investment comes from (your efforts are paying off, so it's reasonable to assume the publisher's would, too). A few examples from my own experience:

For my first book, Rain Fall, Putnam sent me to only a few cities for signings. I'd been hoping for more because I have a lot of public speaking experience and was confident I could connect with booksellers and customers. But I didn't complain; instead I recognized they just didn't realize yet that they'd get a return on investing more in a tour. And for each bookstore I visited, I asked the bookseller to shoot me an email about how the event went -- how many customers, how many books sold, my performance generally. These, of course, I forwarded to Putnam. I also visited a few territories on my own nickel, again keeping Putnam apprised of my efforts and the results. The tour was small but the results were good. That got Putnam thinking, "Hmmm, what if we sent him to a few more places?"

Early on, I decided there were a few hooks in the Rain books that might attract media. I half-jokingly thought of these as the "Three J's:" Japan, Jazz, and Judo, all of which were prominent aspects of Rain Fall in particular. So I spent a lot of time contacting media and organizations that focused on Asia, jazz, and martial arts. I got some interviews, which I then supplemented by taking out ads at my own expense. I got a few speaking engagements. Eventually there were a few feature articles. It was all useful in itself, but again the primary value was in demonstrating to Putnam my efforts and successes.

I didn't have a panel at my first Bouchercon (Las Vegas), but I went just to get the feel of the whole thing, to meet booksellers and other people, and to have a beer with Victor Gischler 'cause I loved Gun Monkeys. I learned a lot and met a lot of good people. One of the folks I met was George Easter, editor of Deadly Pleasures. George wound up reading and loving the Rain books -- so much so that he kindly featured me on the cover of his magazine. Again, that's great publicity in itself, but I also made sure to send a bunch of copies to Putnam and to tell them how it happened. I also paid for a bunch of reprints, which I distributed in the goodie bags at subsequent mystery conventions (Sleuthfest and LCC). I kept Putnam in the loop on all of it, and they were pleased.

For my third hardback (Rain Storm) and the paperback of #2 (Hard Rain), Putnam started paying bookstores for special placement. And each book tour was bigger than the one before it -- about five cities for Rain Fall, ten for Hard Rain, 20 for Rain Storm, and a whopping 30 for the new book, Killing Rain. On each tour, I worked hard to keep Putnam's costs down, paying for meals and a lot of other things myself (remember, you have to demonstrate confidence in yourself, otherwise why should your publisher be confident?). For the latest tour, I told them I wanted to reduce air travel, do more driving, and eliminate escorts to help control their costs. They responded by sending me to more places (beware of what you ask for...). And on this tour, I felt like we were really getting some nice synergy: I visited many more stores, and most of those stores had the books prominently displayed, increasing the value of the visits and of the impact of the displays. Which brings the conversation full circle to how to get the most impact out of your drop-in signings...

These are just examples. There are others, but the point is that the main value of all my efforts has been that Putnam has decided to match (or exceed) them. If Putnam hadn't increased its promotional investments, my own efforts would have had a fraction of the impact.

So I would argue that your most important constituent will always be your publisher. It seems so obvious that I think a lot of people overlook it.

ABOUT BARRY

Barry Eisler's interest in the "forbidden knowledge" now found in his celebrated series about half-American, half-Japanese assassin John Rain began when Eisler was a child, with a biography of Harry Houdini. In the book a cop was quoted as saying, "It's fortunate that Houdini never turned to a life a crime, because if he had he would have been difficult to catch and impossible to hold." Eisler was fascinated that someone could acquire knowledge people weren't supposed to have, knowledge that could make someone dangerous, and that fascination led to a lifelong study of martial arts, including western boxing and wrestling, Japanese judo and karate, and Brazilian jiu-jitsu; a library of books on esoteric subjects such as methods of unarmed killing, lock picking, breaking and entry, spy craft, and other areas that the government would prefer only a select few to know (a library which, by the way, Eisler's wife used to insist remain hidden, but to which she has now granted shelf space because, after all, "it's only for research"); and three years of employment with the CIA's Directorate of Operations.

A baby-faced, big-haired, funny-eyeglass-wearing guy gets his spy school diploma from then Director of Central Intelligence William Webster

During his time with the Agency, Eisler was trained in small arms, long arms, hand-to-hand combat, improvised explosive devices, small water craft, air drops to friendly forces, surveillance, counter-surveillance, counter-terrorism, agent recruitment and management, and interrogation and manipulation techniques. He was also placed in a fulltime Japanese language program. In 1993, after leaving the government, Eisler moved to Tokyo to train intensively at the Kodokan International Judo Center, to continue his language studies, and to immerse himself in the country and culture. The city, with its jazz clubs and whiskey bars; its back alleys; its wonderfully varied illumination; and its exotic tastes and scents, catalyzed Eisler's preexisting "forbidden" interests. While commuting to work one morning, a vivid image came to him: two men following another man down Dogenzaka street in Shibuya. He didn't know where the image came from, but he started thinking about it. Who are these men? Why are they following that other guy? Then answers started to come: They're assassins. They're going to kill him. But these answers only led to more questions: why are they going to kill him? What did he do? Who do they work for? Eisler had always enjoyed writing - short stories as a teenager, a foreign policy column for the Cornell Daily Sun while a law student, marketing copy for companies later in life - and the way these two men were following the third felt like a story to him. Eisler started writing, and the character he discovered became John Rain; the manuscript, the novel Rain Fall.

Today Eisler lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area and continues to travel frequently to Japan and other parts of Asia. Rain Storm (Choke Point) won the Barry Award and the Mystery Ink Gumshoe Award for Best Thriller of the Year, and the Rain books have been included in numerous other "Best Of" lists, including those of the San Jose Mercury News, Publishers Weekly, Ft. Myers News-Press, Deadly Pleasures, and the San Francisco Chronicle. The books have been translated into nearly twenty languages and have been optioned for film by Barrie Osborne, Oscar-winning producer of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.