Ina at the movies

Last week Ina came skulking into the store. She whispered hoarsely from the counter, "P-Doobie, I need to talk with you. In private." She beckoned me over to the young adult section, and, her eyes darting as if she were a spy who had momentarily forgotten where the drop point was, checked for CIA agents in cooking and home improvement. We sat down. "I have a great idea," she whispered, "and I want you to be the first person I talked to about it. It's brilliant."

I knew immediately that the idea had something to do with promoting Ina and her books. She had talked with the folks at the movie theater about running a 30-second ad promoting local authors. The production costs for a video are only $400, she said, and then only $300 per month to show the video before each of the four films, so it would cost the store a mere $4000 to produce and run for a year, not to mention having the everlasting devotion of the local authors because we footed the bill.

At that point I felt as if I were slumping to the floor.

"And I have a skit all planned," she said. "I'd get all the local authors, and we'd each take one of our books off a shelf and pass the book to the next author while we each talked about our books. Doesn't that sound hilarious?" My lips did not unpurse. She said, as an afterthought, "Of course we'd say that our books are available at your store."

I told her I'd take the idea to Michele, who is the chancellor of the exchequer, and discuss it. Ina was agreeable, and, after checking to ensure that the trail guides behind us weren't bugged, she skulked out.

Michele and I talked about the idea for about two seconds and concluded that Ina was indeed still out of her tiny socks.

I sent Ina a note stating that our main concern is, of course, getting the most bang for our limited advertising bucks. If we were to advertise at the movie theater, we'd want to showcase all the books and the cool toys, not just one small sector.

Ina took that as a yes.

"Of course!" she wrote. "You'll be surprised at how much they can put in one of those ads. Individual actors, or a group of people together, could be on for less than five seconds. The total ad is 30 seconds, but we could ask for longer. Do we want to meet and discuss?"

Today I got another note from her asking whether we had been to the movies yet so we could watch the ads. Right now we don't want to spend twelve bucks each to sit through a flick about a high-school comic-book fan or a case of mistaken identity in which hi-jinx ensue just so we can watch the ad from the stationery store in which the owner's daughter emerges from the depths of a cardboard carton to announce that the store is a FedEx drop-off point.

Ina's dream: local authors rake in the big bucks, thanks to free advertising from our store