Novelist promotes book by exercising "military option"

West Palm Beach, FL, November 8, 2007 – If writing a pulse-pounding thriller isn’t hard enough, try building an audience for it from scratch. Without a costly advertising budget – or an endorsement from Oprah Winfrey – successfully promoting a book can be a daunting challenge.

But author Robert Stricklin has come up with an effective way to “enlist” new readers, generate some valuable buzz, and do something considerate for America’s finest in the process – by donating free copies of his novel, “A Necessary Evil,” to members of the military, mostly stationed abroad.

“Recently, while surfing the Internet, I stumbled across a Web site called Books For Soldiers, which enables civilians to donate published material to men and women serving in the military,” Stricklin explains. “The idea that – regardless of one’s opinion about the war in Iraq – you could offer our troops a little solace by providing them with a good read appealed to me. Then it occurred to me that by contributing copies of my own book, it would not only provide a little R & R for service personnel, but could also generate some positive word-of-mouth.”

Published in October 2005, “A Necessary Evil” has already enjoyed relatively strong sales thanks to a tireless grassroots promotional effort and glowing reader reviews that compare the novel to classic Hitchcock thrillers. The noir tale of a distraught widower who unleashes a Pandora ’s Box of trouble when he impulsively hires, then fires, a hitman has also found its way into more than 300 public and academic libraries in the U.S., Canada and the United Kingdom.

Within days of registering with Books For Soldiers, Stricklin received numerous requests for copies of his book. “Most of the requests came from military personnel stationed in Iraq and Kuwait,” says Stricklin. “In this case, handing out free copies of the book to total strangers at my expense actually feels good. I’ve done the same for book reviewers – many of whom kept the book and never returned the favor with a review – but this is different. You get a great feeling of satisfaction in offering such a small gift to those who are sacrificing so much that it doesn’t matter – regardless of whether they pass the book along to a brother-in-arms, tell their family and friends about it, or even like what they’ve read.”

Sales of “A Necessary Evil” have spiked in recent weeks. “I’d like to think it has something to do with the copies that have been donated through Books For Soldiers,” says Stricklin. “It’s something I would definitely encourage other writers to do — if only for the opportunity to provide our service personnel with a little homespun comfort.”

To learn more about Books For Soldiers, visit their Website at www.booksforsoliders.com. Copies of “A Necessary Evil” by Robert Stricklin are available at amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, and all other online booksellers.