How do you market a book written in a foreign language by an author who’s now dead, that was originally published 60 years ago, and has been overlooked by mainstream publishing ever since? This series takes an ongoing, insider’s look at the campaign to get Hans Fallada‘s Every Man Dies Aloneon the bestseller lists, by Melville House publisher Dennis Johnson.

From the start, we were confident that we had in Every Man Dies Alone a book that would generate the fabled, unmeasurable thing they say is what ultimately sells books: word of mouth. That is, we were confident we would win a citizens’ campaign. The trick would be keeping the book in stores long enough to get it going.

Thus, a key component of our early campaign was to boost the word of mouth among booksellers.

So, well before publication, we began to get early reader’s copies into the hands of some of the country’s leading indie booksellers — nothing radical there, but we worked it like we’d never worked it before, with the publisher writing out letters (by hand) to bookseller after bookseller, making calls, sending more ARCs. It didn’t take long: several booksellers became immediate champions of the book. One, Nancy Olson of Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh, North Carolina, even wrote a letter about it to other booksellers (she called it “admirable” and “inspiring”) and nominated it for the IndieBound’s “Indie Next“ list — a monthly list of recommendations to booksellers put out by the American Booksellers Association. It boosted orders immediately.

And once word of mouth is gets going, it moves in interesting and unexpected ways.

Take, for example, our encounter with Alan Furst, bestselling author of some truly great World War II thrillers. It seemed to us that the brilliantly learned person who wrote those novels would surely be interested in Hans Fallada. So, we approached him for a blurb. He not only wrote one, he called it “one of the most extraordinary and compelling novels ever written about World War II. Ever.”

But he didn’t stop there. He went on to write an even-more moving review of the book for the Globe and Mail. He wrote another for Barnesandnoble.com. And in an interview with Seattle alt weekly The Stranger that was supposed to be about his own new book, Furst gave us another lengthy plug, saying he was proud that he’d “helped Melville House support it,” because “it’s an astonishing story.”

But of course, inevitably, word of mouth is happening not where you can see it, but where you can’t. Even though you can follow it somewhat now on the internet, it’s still largely an invisible phenomenon and only sales figures can ultimately back up your suspicions and hunches.

Still, we’ve been fortunate to get more visible examples than most — take this letter that came in just yesterday from a librarian in Minnesota who’d read about our postcard campaign:

I sat down and read Every Man Dies Alone shortly after it first appeared on the book scene, and within the first hundred pages I knew I had something outstanding. Since finishing the book it very comfortably ranks as one of my all time favorites, and as a book I would unhesitatingly recommend to anyone. Being a librarian by trade, I immediately recognized the accessible nature of the book, and I’ve added this title to the top of my “Books for Non-readers” list–a truly high compliment considering the inherent gamble in putting your faith in one book to transform a non-reader into a reader.

So… I recently read on your blog about the genius idea to market Every Man Dies Alone with postcards, which could then be left anywhere/everywhere. I would love to get my hands on a stack of these postcards, and I could engage in quite a campaign of postcard dropping here in Minneapolis, MN. Metro-transit, coffee shops, libraries, community bulletin-boards, and any random windowsill or stairwell I can manage to find.

Oh, and before I forget, I should like to give a little shout out to Micawber’s Books in Saint Paul for turning me onto Every Man in the first place. What a great independent bookshop.

Anyway, if it would be possible to obtain a stack of postcards, or any posters, bulletins, or other materials you could spare, I’d love to contribute with a citizen’s campaign of my own.

If this won’t work out I understand, and I’ll just have to keep marketing by word-of-mouth.

Your friend in Minneapolis,

Jon Allinder

We sent him a stack of cards yesterday.