GUEST: THE BOOK BREEZE

Today's Saturday Guest is Donna Keihle, publisher of a new, free hard-copy newspaper for readers - a direct-to-readers promotional avenue for you to explore .

Why did you establish The Book Breeze?

Because readers are always looking for something good to read and writers are always looking for a good reader.

What does The Book Breeze offer?

A reader targeted newspaper distributed to the places they frequent such as book stores, libraries, coffee shops and conventions.  As an entertaining and informative monthly publication, The Book Breeze offers:

·         Articles such as the one Cassiel Knight contributed for our July issue on paranormal romance

·         Behind the Book by Maggie Jaimeson

·         Karen’s Reader’s Choice Lounge

·         Reviews by Roberta Rogow

·         New releases

·         Puzzles

·         Short Stories

·         Writer’s Cave – a peek into the mind of a writer

·         Writer’s Challenge – a 50 word or less contest with prizes

What made you think of this?

I owned a restaurant on the Oregon Coast that served breakfast and lunch, until the day Subway opened up across the street and ended my lunch trade.  Every day we sat and counted the customers streaming into the new place in town.  At first, I thought they’d come back until I realized I would never be able to compete with Subway’s pricing and national advertising.

How did you survive with half your business gone?

I didn’t focus on my weakness but counted my strengths.  We didn’t just do breakfast; we had the best breakfast in town.  Everything was homemade, right down to the jam from berries I picked myself.  So I changed the name to Basically Breakfast and went after customers. 

People on vacation are more apt to splurge on breakfast, so every Friday afternoon I went to all the motels in Lincoln City with a handful of flyers and gift certificates.  I gave each desk clerk a free breakfast and left flyers knowing that tourists will ask a local where to eat.  In weeks my business was back up stronger than ever because I identified my customers, and then pursued them.

So the goal of The Book Breeze is to aggressively go after every writer’s customer – the reader?

Exactly, with distribution to coffee shops, book stores and conventions.

Our next issue will be in the 1,800 registration bags at the mystery convention - Bouchercon in September.  See our website for more information at: www.thebookbreeze.com  Deadline is July 20^th.

There is one more thing I’d like to mention and that’s Operation Paperback.  As readers, we all know the value of escaping into a good book, this non profit organization supplies gently used paperback books to our military personnel overseas as well as military hospitals within the US.  They are looking for the following genres:  bestsellers, action, spy novels, murder mysteries, fantasy, and science-fiction.  The Book Breeze has a collection point at Jan’s Paperbacks in Aloha, OR but if you don’t live in the Portland, OR area and want to help, you can go to their website at:  www.operationpaperback.org to find out how you can show support for the men and women who serve this nation.  Also, if you know of someone in the service who’d like to benefit from this program, they can register to receive books from the Operation Paperback website.