More on Marketing

What a great blog Norm. I echo everything you wrote and hope you will indulge me in adding some of my own comments.

Marketing, or promoting a book, is sometimes a larger part of an author's experience than actually writing the book that he/she is promoting. Ironic, isn't it! Especially since an author, particularly of fiction, must write more and more books to reamain viable in today's publishing world. Sometimes, they have to write more than one a year. The big-name publishing houses are now often owned by big business and books have become a product - a commodity - and the big business wants to make money on their products. Who can blame them. Authors are also judged on how well their last book sold and if those numbers aren't 'good' then they are not likely to be asked for more of their product since the last one didn't fare so well. So you see the catch-22 the author is in. The last book written must sell well enough for the next one to be even considered. Imagine all the time and effort and author spends writing and promoting, often at the same time.

These days authors are often asked for their platform, even by agents, before the full manuscript is even read. Marketing departments will want to know how to promote or sell the book to their clients which are typically the larger conglomorate bookstores. Often the sales person for the publisher gets a minute or less per book to grab the attention of the buyer at the bookstore. So that saying, don't judge a book by it's cover - well, that happens more than any writer cares to admit. Yet writers rarely get input on the cover of any of their books let alone the titles.

Promotion isn't excactly a foreign concept to those in the arts. There's an old saying that all publicity is good publicity or "-that there ain't no such thing as bad publicity," although I think politicians, especially today, would disagree with this sentiment. But consider Britney Spears and all the bad publicity she's received; it seems to have worked in terms of selling her recent song. I grew up in Los Angeles, Venice to be exact, and I like to tell people that I went to the high school where the movie Grease was filmed, although years after I graduated. Those of us who grew up near 'Hollywood' are all too familiar with the many young people that came to the area looking to be discovered like the fabled story of Lana Turner sitting in her tight sweater at the counter. Us locals knew that was more of a myth perpetrated by some movie studio or marketing department but it worked.

So, how far should an author go in promoting his/her book--specially today when audiences' attention spans are shorter than ever and more and different types of media are competing for those shortened attention spans? In fact, surveys over the last few years reveal that the average person is reading less and less - despite the success of such books as the Harry Potter series. In fact, more people today want to write a book than read one.

Perhaps the most famous and drastic act of promotion occurred on October 30, 1938 when Orson Welles developed a scheme to promote H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds by adapting to the format of a real news broadcast, resulting in mass panic. As a result of the promotion sounding and 'feeling' like a real news broadcast millions of listeners really thought that the Martians were invading. It was a marketing success but a public safety disaster. (For more information, on this go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orson_Welles).

Promotion, like the poor, death, and taxes, will always be with us. How authors can most effectively promote their works seems to be a debate that will last just as long.

Think blogging will help?

www.storytellerroad.com

Sometimes coffee and pie--

--are as important as gasoline, or so the old biker says.

At first thought, you might consider this statement to be simply a parallel between motor fuel (gasoline) and people fuel (pie and coffee) and give this maxim a dismissive "yeah, yeah, I get it" nod of the head.

You'd be as wrong as the writer who says he is too busy to read.

While pie and coffee will certainly provide a biker with an energy boost, they won't sustain you for hours on the road. Unless you eat a whole pie and wash it down with a full pot of coffee. However, then you're not going to stay in the saddle for hours anyway, as your kidneys will demand a pit stop or two long before your bike's gas tank goes empty. The real gasoline that fuels a biker is a good meal, preferably one substantial enough to see you through a couple of hundred miles, but not so heavy as to cause you to doze off during the ride, thus originating the term "last meal."

Instead, pie and coffee provide flavor, inspiration, an opportunity for mild indulgence, and a chance to enjoy someone else's flavorful good work. The variety of available pies--from old standbys such as apple and berry to exotic raspberry chocolate cream--means a biker can be as conservative or wild as the mood strikes. And if that biker makes a wrong choice or finds an ill-cooked piece, little is lost--it's only pie.

Four wheels move the body, two wheels move the soul. Nutritious food fuels the biker's physical needs, pie an coffee freshen the heart.

We authors each take a journey down our own writing roads, and books such as Novelist's Boot Camp can be the "fuel" for our writing machines. In Novelist's Boot Camp it's all about making progress, getting the book done, enjoying the ride that is inventing, developing, drafting, revising, and editing a manuscript that one can be proud of. If you want to go forward in achieving your writing mission and take command of your novel, Novelist's Boot Camp will help drive you there.

But what about pie and coffee? If these are necessary to bikers--and they are--where does a author find his equivalent dessert and cup o' joe?

In the works of others, that's where. Not in those works we look to for guidance, or market trends, or education in the craft or business of writing, but in those where we find adventure, passion, new ideas, smiles, sorrow, insight, and intelligence.

The biker who does not have time for pie and coffee misses the opportunity to savor not only a hot beverage and dessert, but the ride as well. Writers who spend all their time immersed in their own works miss the unconscious inspiration that comes from reading the work of others.
If you don't have time for pie and coffee, then you probably don't have time to ride. And if you as a writer don't have time to read two pages for every one you write, you are doing a disservice to your soul.

Seconds, anyone?

Todd
www.storytellerroad.com