The Butcher, the Embezzler, and The Fall Guy
Launch Team Resources
Hello Team!
Profound thanks for helping me get out the word about The Butcher, the Embezzler, and the Fall Guy!
This is long but you’ll have everything you need in one place! Just use what you need.
We are now in crunch time leading up to publication on June 6th! You are part of my marketing plan developed with Pages & Platforms which accompanies my publicity plan by BookSparks. From now through June I’ll be reaching out by email about every week to suggest/remind you of ways you can help promote the book.
This week I’m launching a pre-buy campaign that includes entry for a big bundle of goodies. If you have already pre-ordered, you too can still sign up for the goodies. Just click here to visit the pre-order page. And GoodReads is running a special giveaway of ten books. You can share any of these you see that I post on social media.
The single best thing you can do is leave a review on GoodReads and BookBub (prior to
June 6), and on Amazon (on June 6th). (See below instructions down under June 6th.)
If you asked for a PDF, you should have it by now for reading. My box of books just arrived so if you asked for a print copy, I’ll be mailing it to you next week.
For starters, please join my mailing list and follow me on social media, if you haven’t already…
On the next two pages you’ll find language and images you can use to share the book with your social media audience, email, however you communicate with friends, or on your newsletter. Feel free to change the words to sound like you. I’ve tried to keep these simple and straightforward so you can simply cut and paste. Also, don’t be shy about reposting every couple of weeks and especially first week of June….people need many touches before they act!
To save an image from this page, just right-click and choose "Save as..."
The pre-order links below all take buyers to Amazon. If you’d like to direct your friends to local bookstores that have created direct pre-buy links for me, please use these if you’re in these locales:
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Print: A Bookstore, Portland, Maine (they’ll have a stack of books signed by me)
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Longfellow, Portland, Maine (I’m doing my Portland launch here)
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Blue Hill Books, Blue Hill, Maine
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Norwich Bookstore, Norwich, VT
Please reach out if you have questions: gretchencherington@gmail.com
If others ask you how to reach me, please direct them to: gretchen@gretchencherington.com
Thank you so much! Sending hugs and gratitude!
Gretchen
Social Media Posts Before June 6
Suggested language for Facebook and Instagram posts
I just finished Gretchen Cherington’s new book and loved it! It combines everything I’m interested in—great family story, a front row seat inside a major company, Hormel Foods, an embezzlement that nearly brought the company to its knees in 1921, and Gretchen’s keen insights about working with CEOs and executives through her consulting career.
Here’s what author Shelley Blanton-Stroud had to say about it: “Cherington’s The Butcher, the Embezzler, and the Fall Guy combines what I love best about John Carreyou’s Bad Blood and Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City—the fascinating interplay of history, business, personality, and crime. Not just what happened. But, why it happened, and why we ought to care.” — Shelley Blanton-Stroud, author of the Jane Benjamin Series
Preorder here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B8H5WK3G
I just finished Gretchen Cherington’s new book and loved it! It combines everything I’m interested in—great family stories, a look inside a major food company, Hormel Foods, an embezzlement that nearly brought the company to its knees, along with Gretchen’s keen insights about working with CEOs and executives through her consulting career.
Here’s what Laura Davis has to say about it: “In this fascinating historical memoir, Gretchen Cherington sets out on a determined quest to discover why her grandfather, who played a pivotal role in the early success of the Hormel meat company, was ultimately forced out of the company. To understand the event that forever changed her family’s fortunes, Gretchen returns to her midwestern roots to uncover the truth about the meatpacking industry and the powerful men who shaped it. Engrossing me from first page to last, this is a compelling mystery of corporate greed, family legacy, and a granddaughter’s search for answers.” —Laura Davis, best-selling author of The Courage to Heal and The Burning Light of Two Stars
Preorder here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B8H5WK3G
Paraphrase what I wrote and add:
Here’s what Kerri Arsenault has to say about it: “Cherington dismantles myth after myth in this visceral and emotional story, one complicated by family legacies large and small that are twined by love and loss. At the book’s center, a small town that orbits around buttoned-up businessmen and an industry that feeds the nation’s bellies with slaughtered hogs.” —Kerri Arsenault, author of Mill Town: Reckoning with What Remains, a New York Times Editors’ Choice and Chicago Tribune Top Book for 2020
Preorder here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B8H5WK3G
Suggested language for LinkedIn posts
Want to read a great book I just read combining family history, the beginnings of what is now Hormel Foods, and a true crime that nearly brought the company to its knees in 1921? My friend Gretchen Cherington’s new memoir combines all these and insights from her near 40-year career advising CEOs and executives. Here’s what Marshall Goldsmith says about it: “A fascinating story that will keep you captivated from start to finish! Beautifully written with an attention to the details of history, Gretchen creates a tale that brings the intriguing facts of management, corporate greed, and the fate of Geo. A. Hormel & Company to life.” —Dr. Marshall Goldsmith, Thinkers50 #1 Executive Coach and New York Times best-selling author of The Earned Life, Triggers, and What Got You Here Won’t Get You There
Want to read a great book I just read combining family history, the beginnings of what is now Hormel Foods, and a true crime that nearly brought the company to its knees in 1921? My friend Gretchen Cherington’s new memoir combines all these and insights from her near 40-year career advising CEOs and executives. Here’s what David Barber says about it: “A wonderfully written book with great backstory about the early days at Hormel. The author treats her subjects fairly while shining a light on misguided trust between friends, the importance of innovation to leapfrog competitors, and the deep determination needed to succeed.” —David Barber, executive at Barber Foods
Suggested language for Twitter
(Tweets need to be short, so keep yours about this length.)
Great News! My friend Gretchen Cherington’s new book will be out on June 6th. It’s a great story about her grandfather, an act of white collar crime in the early 1900s, and the founder of Hormel Foods, punctuated with her insights from consulting to hundreds of CEOs and executives. I loved it! You can pre-order here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B8H5WK3G
Other things you can use in posts through the next weeks:
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Share link to Gretchen's website:
https://www.gretchencherington.com/ -
Share link to Gretchen’s family photograph archive:
https://www.gretchencherington.com/photos-butcher -
Share link to Gretchen’s newsletter (which gets them Chapter 1, "Flimsy Pretext," for free):
https://www.gretchencherington.com/newsletter -
Share a link to Gretchen's playlist on Spotify — the sounds these men heard at the embezzler's dancing pavilion back in the early 1900s!
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6HyZfXMunSyrKUWT3pIbR4 -
Share link to PREORDER BUY BUNDLE GIVEAWAY DEAL before June 6:
https://www.gretchencherington.com/preorder -
Share link to Gretchen’s Huffington Post essay (for any friends interested in #MeToo, Poetic License, etc.):
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/richard-eberhart-father-me-too_n_64068645e4b0c78bb74484e6
First Week of June and June 6th
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Repost the pre-order giveaways up until June 6th.
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Use these memes:
Here’s a meme for the one-week mark: LINK in Dropbox folder
Here’s a meme for the Pub Day: LINK “
Meme for after June 6 th here LINK “
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If so inclined, you can do a quick video on Facebook or Instagram. Videos always get good engagement – maybe a few words from you holding the book in front of you at your house or outside. “Just read this great book…..and loved it! You can preorder at the link in the text.”
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If you have a newsletter and haven’t shared book yet, please do this week.
On June 6th: PUB DAY!!!
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Give yourself a hearty congrats for whatever you did!!
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On Amazon, leave your review, using these instructions:
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Go to www.amazon.com and search for the book by title or by name (I’d send you a link but if Amazon sees too many reviews directed from one source, they’ll sometimes remove some – I don’t want that!).
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The link to ratings and reviews will appear right below my name. Click there and it will take you further down the page. Then click the gray “Write a Customer Review” button on the left side of the screen.
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Leave your honest review. The best is to give it 4-5 stars and a few sentences. One way to make up these reviews is to steal phrases from other reviews (a trick, but it can work) and if you can think of a pithy heading, that’s great. Something like I Loved this Book! Or Cherington’s written a winner! Or True Crime, Family, Corporate Scandal and Greed!
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Please know that it may take a few days for your review to appear after Amazon approves it. The sooner you leave it, the more help it will be! If it’s still not there in a few days, let me know. It’s never taken longer than that.
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WE did it!! For me, you will be forever tied to the launch of this book. My launch teams
hold a really special place in my heart.