Book Marketing

Book marketing ploys abound in the world of self help books.  My friend Sally who is a therapist, before she married was trying really hard to find herself a mate.  She read a lot of self help books at that time.  She was looking for a firm commitment so of course she read everything she could about relationships.  She hosted a few evenings at the city’s University Bookstore that were called ‘Mars and Venus Go on a Date’. The books of the same name were available at the table she had set up and men and women were supposed to be able to meet each other at this event.  I stopped by one of them because I was in the area and I wanted to see what was really going on there.  There weren’t many people there and the book marketing tactic that the authors of ‘Mars and Venus Go on a Date’ had put together to help sell their books, did not end up working to help Sally find a date.

She actually was handicapped in the area of choosing a good person to date.  She told me that once, that she didn’t trust herself and that’s why she thought she read so many books on the subject.  She was trying to heal an old wound.  She asked me if I could tell her what I really thought about men she was dating at one point, because of her feelings about not being able to trust herself.  I usually didn’t think that highly of them, one she brought to Thanksgiving once was an obvious alcoholic for example.  And she dated a good friend of mine who I never, ever would have dated who I knew to be very unreliable and annoying.  He was a good friend unless you dated him.  She consulted with me about it before she started, and I said ‘don’t’ but she still did and ended up very frustrated with the experience.

Ironically she met her husband who she does have a good relationship with, and two small children now too, because she went on a trip with this mutual friend of ours to a Summer festival.  She broke up with him due to some of his behaviors at the camping festival, but there was a man in her camp who took an interest in her.  They dated secretly for months before they made it known that they were having a relationship.  I thought that was funny because she had always been so open about her bad experiments previously, but that time was definitely different in all ways.  They were a good match, she was in love for the first time and they’ve been married for seven years now.  I guess this shows that self help books might change your thinking a little, but in matters of love it’s better to trust fate and what it will bring you when the time is right.