Marigold’s End – Page 5 – John D Reinhart

Gorilla Marketing Exposed in Book Chapter Release Scam

First, let me thank you for reading this.

I know, that seems like a really cheesy ploy to get you to read on, because now you’re guilted into it. And it would be (I wish I’d thought of it first), except that I really mean it: thank you. Now, is this “thank you” sincere, or an even cheesier ploy to guilt you into reading this post, which is really insidious (I don’t suppose it’s true that farmers live in the country, city folk live insidious. Equally not so is it that mackerels are facetious).

Sadly, this is a sincere thank you for an interest in my post. Without you, well, all my work comes to naught. So, once more, thank you.

Okay, so, now for the gorilla marketing part – are you ready? Gorilla marketing: do very little, expect very much. Make somebody else do the work. And today, YOU are that somebody else!

Chapter 4 of my novel, MARIGOLD’S END, is now on this site. Yes! Can you believe it?

Now, don’t click over there and start reading it yet…hey, you! Click back over here!

See, here’s where you do the work and I reap the marketing rewards. You read the chapter, and its predecessors, and realize that you really like this story. “Heavens,” you say to yourself, “I wonder where it will go next?”

Got that? Write it down if you have to.

Then, and this is the tricky part, you tell all your friends about how great this book is. See? I haven’t done a thing, but now MARIGOLD’S END is practically a household name in your social circle.

Ook. Ook. Pass me a banana. I’ll be lounging in the hammock if anybody needs me.

All seriousness aside, thank you for reading.

Oook.

Publicity, One Chapter at a Time

Are you ready for the next installment of MARIGOLD’S END? I’ll bet you are – you there, my writer friend, sitting on the edge of your seat wondering, wondering, wondering whatever happens to Phineas next.

At least, I hope it’s you. Nobody else in the room, that I can see. Yep. It’s you. Try to form a line there, would you please? A line of one rather resembles a dot, doesn’t it? Well, please form an orderly dot.

Writing is a lonely business. Your garret, or office, or room, or swimming pool deck, wherever you do your writing, fills up with characters, talking, laughing, fighting, sleeping, doing whatever it is that they do. Then you turn off the word processor, and, voila, it is only you.

No one is very much interested in you while you write, because, frankly, you are uninteresting when you write. Not as a person, mind you, but as company, because you’re in the room filled with all those interesting characters. The real people around you just sort of hang in limbo until you snap off the word processor. Oh, THERE you are!

So you, my dotted friend – dotted by virtue of being a line of one – are the witness to the publicity and hoorah surrounding the release of Chapter 4. Hoorah!

Chapter 4 introduces us to the life of a sailor. Chapter 1 introduced us to Phineas, Chapter 2 to the perils of traveling by boat in the early 1700’s, and Chapter 3 to the indescribable job of seasickness. Now we’re past all that and exploring the Kathryn B, and what it means to be a sailor.

In MARIGOLD’S END, you learn about the new world into which Phineas is thrust only through his eyes – a challenge to write, but hopefully not to read. Like you, Phineas’ learning comes through total immersion. It be sink or swim in the briny deep. You’ll find it over there, on the left, under MARIGOLD’S END, the Novel. See, it sort of drops down, ready for reading’!

So you, dear dot of a writer-friend, are in for a treat.

Let me know what you think. Drop me a line, leave me a comment, send me a mental note.

If you are a new dot, please be so kind as to stand next to the other dot, thereby forming a line.

A line! They’re lining up to read my work!

I KNEW this day would come!

Now, if I can just get ‘em to pay!

Marketing Ploy: Chapter Added

Okay, no lies here. Only the straight up truth. Something inside says to publish the chapters of this book, one miserable week at at time, until the book is laid completely before you. So, submitted for your approval, MARIGOLD’S END, Chapter 3. You’ll find it over there, on the left, under the title MARIGOLD’S END, the Novel. See how it works?

So, why publish chapters of the book. Once you’ve read it, you’re not likely to buy, like, a dozen copies. Maybe you could – they make great Christmas presents and passable doorstops – but no one is holding their breath.

No, it’s something more fundamental than marketing. What is the WWW if not the marketplace of the world. What is the Internet, and the ability to publish whatever, whenever, if not a way to float ideas, to share thoughts, to trade our works of art with one another?

In Shakespeare’s time, he published his own work through a publisher, hoping that it would sell. But more than just hoping for a little quick cash, a little Elizabethan jingle-in-the-jeans, he had to write, had to publish, had to share his words.

You’re a writer, you understand. You do the blog thing as a way to express yourself.

More, this is marketing. While I want you to read this book, and DROPPINGTON PLACE, my next book, I really want to impress in your mind that my books are good and entertaining and worth the paltry shekels one shells out for them. I’m not marketing these books, but their children.

Which, according to gorilla marketing, means I’m not marketing at all, but publicizing. You, John or Jane Q. Public – isn’t it weird that John and Jane have the same middle initial? It must be Quincy – are not being marketed, but are reading a fine piece of publicity. No pictures, please.

So, go on over and click on MARIGOLD’S END, the Novel, and breeze through Chapter 3. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Oh, and enjoy the publicity. No pictures, please.

Cliffhanger Marketing

When we left our heroes, Norman, Jake, and Wanda dangled over the boiling lava pit, suspended in the air by a single strand of dental floss.

“I believe it’s beginning to stretch…” Jake gasped.

The cliffhanger, the white-knuckler squeaker of a nasty dilemma that makes you just want to, makes you just have to, makes you just DIE to start the next chapter and see what happens, is an old, old way to sell stories.

Scheherazade used them to keep herself alive in the One Thousand and One Nights, remember? The king was going to lop off her head when she reached the end of her story, so she spun out cliffhangers, night after night, until he finally said “dude, like, cut it out!” That may be a loose translation.

The upside of cliffhangers is that you bring the audience back for the next chapter. It’s rather a component of gorilla marketing, wherein you don’t do anything, and let the story do all the work.

The downside is that your story becomes lurchy, if that’s a word, and rather roller coastery, if that’s a word. Your sensitive love story about a girl and her pet dragon must necessarily take a turn for the violent, or for extreme emotions: I HATE you, Nogard bellowed. The end.

Another downside is that cliffhangers become rather tedious. For goodness sake, can’t he AVOID the traps once in a while? The old Batman TV show had just 22 minutes to get out of a cliffhanger, tell some story, and get into a new one, making the Caped Crusader seem, I don’t know, rather cartoonish?

So, it is with a blend of cliffhangery, if that’s a word, and gorilla marketing, that you now find Chapter Two of MARIGOLD’S END here on this very site.

Taa Daa!

As you’ll recall from Chapter One, our troubled twelve-year-old, Phineas Caswell, points the loaded pistol, trigger-finger itchery (if that’s a word), squarely at the running-away back of Alfred Townsend, the unarmed bully that has made his life a living hell. Will he pull the trigger and end his woes? Will He? WILL HE???

Well, now you can find out. The second chapter, cleverly titled Chapter Two, now has it’s own page. Oh, and you’ll be surprised at the turn of events. I hope.

Now you can read the chapters, build up steam, get rolling in MARIGOLD’S END, and wait breathlessly for Chapter Three. Oops – I gave away the title!

Before you get all wormy-squirmy and palm-sweaty like you do in the seat across the car dealer sales manager (How am I going to get you into that car today, friend?), I must remind you: this is gorilla marketing. Don’t buy the book – you can’t!

But, let me know what you think, would you? Liked it? Hated it? Mondo disregardo? Your feedback, my independent writer friend, is most needed.

Now, I’m not desperate – I know that’s what you’re thinking. But, I’m not, I’m not, I’m not. My darling editor is moooviiiing soooo slooooowly, think of this as Plan B.

Your input, spread out over the number of weeks over which I plan to release a chapter…let’s see, here, 18 chapters, take away the 2 I’ve already released…let’s see, carry the 1…should coincide with her completion of her editorial chore.

Badda boom, badda bing, and all I have to do is NOTHING! Now THAT, my reader friend, is gorilla marketing!

Writing at Disneyland

There’s something sort of crazy about being, well, sort of crazy. At the top of the list is that you don’t have to explain anything – well, I’m just sort of crazy like that. You get lots of clever adjectives, like quirky, and different. And, because you’re just sort of crazy like that, you know, quirky and different, you find yourself with lots of free time on your hands. Let’s not invite her – you, know, she’s quirky and different.

This big and mighty world tries really hard to convince you that being busy is doing something. You can be busy all day long at Disneyland, but, what have you accomplished beyond exhausting yourself and dropping two hundred bucks to a guy in a mouse costume? Nothing, Jack. For all that busyness, you accomplished nothing.

So it is with we quirky, different writers, dontcha think? This endeavor right here, this very one you are reading, which hopefully brings a smile to your erstwhile lips and perhaps gives you something over which to mull when you are not busy being busy, may very well be busyness for the sake of busyness.

It occurred to me while thinking about marketing…I mean, promoting…my book, my mind spinning feverishly like a rabid squirrel in a hamster wheel, that there is nothing to do about marketing…I mean, promoting…my book until my adorable editor is done with it. For the record, she did say she thought this was the best so far, but had scarcely started chapter two. Sigh.

Without a product, what is there to promote?…coming soon from John Reinhart, the author who is, well, uh, is kinda waiting in limbo while his editor wraps up his glorious…wait, where ya going?

BUT, there is a sequel to MARIGOLD’S END, tentatively titled PELICAN’S WAY… there’s sort of a theme here, see, where the Marigold is a ship in the first novel that gets blown up…oh, poop, I spoiled the ending…double poop, because NOW I spoiled the ending by telling you that Phineas blows it up at the end of the book…oh, triple poop! So, see, Pelican is a ship in the next book that gets…well, you’ll have to read that one.

Anyway, the rabid squirrel brains rattled out a good synopsis of that book on Tuesday. And I must say, it’s a ripping good synopsis, as synopses go. That was Tuesday.

On Wednesday, the quirky, different sort of crazy writer that I am, I sort of cracked out a terrific synopsis for my other series of books, called DROPPINGTON PLACE. For a preview of Droppington, scroll to the bottom of this page and you’ll see that I have a blog for that, too. Oh, I’ve thought of everything.

So, while my lovely editor does everything other than edit my book, my NEW plan is to work on DROPPINGTON PLACE. And thus my hands will be busy.

But, is busyness productivity? If the words crackle and dance from your fingertips, but never get published, is that accomplishing anything?

Maybe that’s why my crazy, quirky, different friends are so fond of Disneyland.

Elevator-Speech Dustcover Marketing

Don’t you hate those people who sum up their lives in, like, fifteen seconds? What do I do? Well, after I graduated with my MBA from Dogsnorton University, I became the sales manager for Incredible Products, the premier manufacturer of sodium-hydroxide based whisk-broom filaments with offices here and in seventeen other countries. Perhaps you should look into purchasing sodium-hyrdoxide whisk-broom fliaments. Your first thought: don’t these elevator doors ever open?

On the one hand, it’s nice to know what that person is all about. On the other, an elevator pitch invariably leaves you standing there saying “uh, well, huh, how about that?”

Sadly, this must become you. Wait, don’t go! …well, go if you must. But hurry back.

The fellow making his elevator speech to you is showing you a sign, paving your road, mentoring you, yes, you. Instead of muttering “you’re ticking me off, Phil,” you should take a mental note. Use a pencil if you have to.

This person is showing you how to market your book. He’s not exactly granting you permission to be annoying and mono-focused, but he is giving you a great example of how to sell. His elevator speech is guiding you in creating your dustcover speech.

When you buy a book, you don’t just read the front cover. You flip it over and read the paragraph on the back of the dustcover to see if the book has more than just a cool picture to recommend it. That guy’s elevator speech is his dustcover paragraph.

Here are two dustcover paragraphs on my book, MARIGOLD’S END:

The deep blue sea has haunted and hunted twelve-year-old bookbinder’s apprentice Phineas Caswell ever since it took away his best friend and his father. Now, shanghaied aboard his uncle’s ship, the Kathryn B along with his new-found friends Louise and Taylor, he must face pirates, storms, and the secret of nations as he learns the meaning of trust and the value of responsibility.

…and…

Everything happens to twelve-year-old bookbinder’s apprentice Phineas Caswell: his father and best friend are taken by the sea, he’s beset by bullies, and he’s dragged off to sea by his uncle. But, after learning the ways of sailors, after battling ruthless pirates, facing storms, and even determining the fate of nations, he realizes that life is not what happens to you, but what you make it.

So. Which book would you buy? – I’m sorry, “neither” is not a valid option. I’m still trying to decide which of these best describes not just the story, but the style of the book. Like the elevator speech, how you say what you say says what you need to say, too. Well, I say!

The second book sounds like more fun, but the first book might teach you more. I haven’t figured out which one I like yet – your input would be appreciated before you leave the elevator.

So, go out there and practice your dustcover speech. Who knows? Someday you might be on an elevator, and someone might ask what you do. You turn to them and say “Everything happens to twelve-year-old bookbinder’s apprentice Phineas…”

Don’t these doors ever open?

Gorilla Marketing Phase I: In Process

At eighty miles an hour, hauling bananas down the freeway, the steering wheel of your new Yugo pops off the column and into your lap. Turns out the factory hadn’t quite gotten around to tightening the steering-wheel bolt. First, it’s a miracle your Yugo can go that fast, but, most important, you rather expect the thing to be complete when you find it in the showroom.

So, bringing the book to market.

Instead of guerrilla marketing, which takes advantage of evolving market circumstances and opportunities to quickly and effectively advertise a product, I’m using a technique called gorilla marketing, which takes advantage of overall laziness and general inaction with a grudging commitment to minimal effort. The gorilla marketing maxim: how much can you get done without doing anything.

Gorilla marketing is certainly affordable, both financially and time-wise, although it may not be as effective as that guerrilla thing in getting a book to market.

But, guerrilla or gorilla, you gotta do one thing: finish the darned book. Finish. It. Cross all of the T’s, dot the I’s, and get it done beyond done. Spell check it. Grammar check it. Re-re-re-read it once more.

I am happy to have an utterly brilliant editor very close by. My wife has a master’s degree in Russian literature, is an avid reader, and, most important, a mother of three terrific kids.

In the best gorilla marketing tradition, I didn’t even bother to print the thing out, but simply emailed a copy of MARIGOLD’S END to her. I just hear the boop as it arrived on her cell phone. That’s really close to doing nothing about marketing my book.

Jackity-crackers, kids, we’re working now. Although she is perhaps the slowest dignity-danged editor on the planet, she’s really good at it. And the price is unbeatable!

She will clean my clock on just about every sentence in this thing, and will make me rewrite the stuff that just doesn’t make sense to her, and we’ll have approximately 27 arguments over why Phineas says this and not that.

But, at the end of it, the MARIGOLD’S END that comes out will be the cat’s underwear.

So before I sent it to my editor, and in order to bring the number of soon-to-be-coming snarky comments to a bare minimum, I had to spell- and grammar-check it one more time. Found a couple of things I’d missed – who knew? The grammar-checker challenged my sentence structures – fie on thee, grammar-checker! Anyway, it’s done, and the missus has already said she regrets taking on the task. Cool!

Now, how to fix the steering wheel in my Yugo…