Create A Super-Viral, Hyper-Local Bestseller... Like My Dad!
The Incredible Saga Of The 'Murder In Menomonie' Book Release
In 1984, my father pulled off an audacious plan to sell his self-published book entitled, Murder In Menomonie. I was nine at the time but I still remember his scheme to make his first million dollars, which of course, he did not.
My father was the late Norm Rockwell. Not the famous painter, the famous cartoonist as he would tell everyone. (Learn more about my family’s uncomfortable relationship with name “Norman Rockwell” HERE!)
My father was a cartoonist, art teacher, and writer. Mostly a cartoonist, but he also wrote three self-published books. He also wrote fun articles for magazines and The Stars and Stripes after getting drafted into the Army in 1960.
In 1984, shortly after getting started cartooning full-time, my father had a flash of genius:
He was gonna’ write a book!
Obviously, a lot of people have this flash of genius, but his flash came with a marketing gimmick. More on that soon.
He was going to write a murder mystery. And not just any murder mystery. A funny murder mystery.
The title for his book was simply going to be, Murder In Menomonie.
You’re probably asking yourself, what the heck is a “Menomonie”? It’s my hometown in Wisconsin. My mother, Ingrid Rockwell, STILL lives there in the house I grew up in.
Okay, enough of all this mushy stuff, back to the story.
I learned most of The Murder In Menomonie Saga directly from my dad, and my mother has verified the following facts.
My father decided not only would he write a comedic Chandleresque mystery set in my little hometown…
He would get people to pay to be in the book!
You have to remember that this was before the internet. He couldn’t just go on the local Menomonie Facebook Community Group and say, “Hey, anybody want to be in my book for fifty dollars?”
No, he drove himself to all the businesses and people he knew around town and pitched the idea to them.
You could be included in Murder In Menomonie for $50.
Fifty bucks was a lot back in 1984. That’s like $200 today! (I think. I’m no economist!)
Not only did those wanting to be in his book have to agree to pay him fifty dollars, he would portray each person however he saw fit. Mostly in incredibly goofy ways.
You had to have a bit of a thick skin to want to be in a Norm Rockwell production.
After going around Menomonie (Population around 12,000 in 1984) and getting something like twenty people to agree to his book scheme, he set about writing the damn thing.
My dad wasn’t the kind of guy to outline a book. I’m not either, but he REALLY wasn’t the kind of guy to outline. He was a pantser’s pantser. (The term pantser meaning “to write a novel by the seat of one’s pants.” It’s a stupid term, I know…)
When he was ready to write, he was ready. And of course, writing meant getting in the family car and heading down to Iowa.
Ready To Write? Let’s Go To Iowa!
You might be saying to yourself, “That literally makes no sense.” And I’d agree with you, but bear with me.
The entire “Rockwell” side of my family lives/lived in Northern Iowa in a city called Mason City. The city still exists out there on the plains. Just south of Owatonna, Minnesota.
We were ALWAYS driving down to Mason City to visit somebody in the hospital. Everybody on the Rockwell side loved to drink, smoke, eat pork grease and ice cream.
They also loved to have strokes. Almost a Rockwell family pastime.
I remember going down to Mason City, Iowa, to visit my grandparents one time and NOBODY was in the hospital. It was amazing.
It was also the time my father decided it was time to write his book, Murder in Menomonie.
At the time, we had a 1980 Plymouth Horizon. I hated that car. Riding in the back was brutal.
Aside: When I was sixteen I got the Horizon. One day when I was coming back from school the front axle broke. Both the front tires pointed up instead of down. That was the end of the Horizon.
Did I drive the car 80 mph over train tracks and get some sweet air? The world will never know and it remains a mystery as to why the axle broke.
So there my brother and I angrily sat in the back seat of the little blue Horizon when my dad sprang his plan on us:
For the entire trip to Iowa he would dictate aloud his book to my mother. She would take shorthand on yellow legal paper the entire way!
Well, that’s one way to do it, I suppose.
For the entire four hour trip TO Mason City and BACK from Mason City, my dad slowly drove the Horizon while both parents laughed their asses off writing the book.
I didn’t know what was going on other than a vague sense of the fact that my parents seemed happy about going to Mason City, which would have been a first.
By the time we got back to our little house in Menomonie, the book was finished, and by finished, I mean my mom, Ingrid Rockwell, got to go type the entire thing from her chicken scrawl.
In 1984, self-publishing was not the noble pursuit it is today. No way. People looked down on it. There was no word for “indie-publishing” other than “vanity press.” While I’ll admit this is a good name for the pursuits my father pursued, it’s also kind of a dicky name.
Did my father care? Hell no. He was a bit eccentric though, and that’s putting it mildly.
He drew the cover himself and was ready to go (once my mother had typed the thing up).
He worked out some deal with a local printer who he probably offered a spot to in the book if he printed it for free and then… BAM.
He had ten boxes of Murder In Menomonie books sitting in our damp garage.
He had to get those things OUT THE DOOR and into people’s hands!
And what was his master plan to sell these 2,000 copies of his self-published masterpiece?
Simple.
He had the people who paid to be in the book sell the books for him.
This is starting to sound like some kind of MLM scam, but it WORKED.
Practically every business in Menomonie in the summer of 1984 had a stack of Murder In Menomonie books for sale on their counters. Heck, even the bookstore had some for sale.
Brilliant.
The local Red Owl Grocery carried the books, SuperValu Foods did, gas stations, insurance salesmen. Even banks!
Everybody who was in the book and wanted to be seen IN the book was selling the damn book!
Or maybe they just liked the book. It IS very funny.
He cleared something like $5,000 on those bad boys. Which for the time, wasn’t bad at all (that’s Midwestern slang for “good.”)
A few years later he wrote a follow-up called, “The Thing That Ate Menomonie,” but it only broke even. Apparently an idea this good can only be pulled off once.
So you see, good reader, if you have an idea for a book, just get people to pay you to be IN the book and then have them SELL the book FOR you.
Wham bam thank you mam’! Pure, creative, marketing genius.
Announcement! [with update]
I wanted to take this space to announce that I will be publishing my father, Norm Rockwell’s book, Murder In Menomonie, right here on Substack in the near future. It’s not very long, but I’ll be publishing the thing in its entirety. With pictures and all.
Since it was written in 1984, a lot of the people in the book have passed over to Valhalla, like my father, so I don’t have anybody to interview regarding being in the book. :(
But, I hope you’ll have some fun reading it.
Murder In Menomonie is going digital!! :-)
UPDATE: 9/1/24: Still working on finding some legal releases before I can publish. Thanks for your patience!!
Shoutouts!
I’ve been having a lot of fun writing “Inspired By True Events” on Substack. There are lots of great people here. Here are some of them!
My wife, K.L. Rockwell. Watercolorist and Raconteur!
Nur Nadar, of Humbling The Narcissist! Humble him and Subscribe below!
Maggie Jon from How To Get Your SHEET Together. Great help for those of us with various issues surrounding ADHD. Like me! (what’s your name again?)
Thalia The Muse of Comedy 🎭 from Thalia’s God Tier News! Her articles are super fun and so are her Notes! Make sure to read her Notes! Subscribe below:
Looking forward to it! I actually thought, "Wonder how you could get a copy of that book."
This is brilliant and so well documented. I’ve inherited my mother’s poetry and I’ve been wanting to set them to print form. I’ve also considered sharing some here. Show how her talents rubbed off on me. This has inspired me to give it some real thought once more. Thank you for sharing and I look forward to it!