Marketing – Page 4 – John D Reinhart

Goodbye, Baby

Stand by to eject bathwater on my mark.

Standing by, sir.

And…mark.

The bathwater is terminated.

Nice shooting, Lieutenant.

Roger that. The baby is outta here. Repeat: the baby is out of here.

Big ten four. Stand by for towelage.

Uh, negatory. Sorry. No can do.

Disregard that. Stand by to commence towelage on my mark.

Uh, sorry, skipper. No can do.

All hands, stand by. What’s with this gloomy Gus guff, Lieutenant. I believe I gave you an order.

Ten four on that, skipper. But, we don’t have, a, well…

Don’t tell me you ran out of towels.

Negative, sir. It’s just that, well, we ejected the baby with the bathwater.

Mongo Santamaria! You’re telling me we tossed the kid out the window?

Like a bullet, sir.

Well, there goes the towelage. All hands, prepare for battle stations. Angry mom at eight o’clock!

It turns out, writing a book is great fun. And it is great fun. Even though your imaginary friends, all those little voices in your head, drag you through the very depths of despair and pain and agony, the fact that you share that with them, that you are a witness to their travails – is an honor and a delight.

Oh, sure. That’s the cat’s pajamas, that part. Like ice cream for dinner every night of the week. Best of all, you tell all your friends that writing is the pits, it’s the worst – you feel like a zombie…hour after hour, typing, thinking, scribbling, coffee, beer, whatever. While, actually, your inner you goes “teehee, this is the best!”

Welp. The party’s over. They ate the pretty balloons. It’s crying time again, and you’re gonna leave me – I can see that faraway look in your eyes. Why must we get offa this cloud?

BECAUSE I PUBLISHED MY BOOK!!!

Yes, there is one more moment of glee, and that is when you join the Club of Shakespeare. All the world is a willing audience, hungry for your written words, longing for your thoughts, your ideas… and, once the book is published… Yo, lookit me, feedin’ the masses!

It’s a cerebral joy, and stunningly short-lived. I found no Disney at my door. Discovered Dreamworks dreaming of someone else. Ran across Random House randomly choosing someone else’s house.

No, the party’s over. Now comes the drudgery, the mind-numbing torture, of figuring out how to market this darned thing for real. It’s no longer a game, or a funny idea. Now it’s work, work, work, to get this product sold and out, into the sunshine where it belongs.

What? What’s that? How can you find it? Well, bless your generous soul, you have come to the right place. Let me pull your chair closer to the fire. Move it, dog. Make way for this most spectacular person.

Because you are you, and you’re a friend, I’ll let you have the book…for free!

No strings attached. Freebie. You go. Although, if you found it in your heart to write a dazzling review, I’m sure no one would be opposed to that…

Find DROPPINGTON PLACE here: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/618049

Now, this is important: type in the coupon code NJ38D. When you do, the most wonderful book you’ll download with your free coupon will be yours – for free!!!

Of course, you could also visit the author’s site, PhineasCaswell.com.

Now, to find that baby…

Marketing with Castanets

Let’s be clear: I don’t like castanets. Those clickity-clackety chips of annoyance can only be played by Spanish ladies with fingers like hummingbirds. I can play a bunch of things: flute, guitar, piano, Pandora – but, those nasty little wooden clackers of doom must be powered by voodoo or something. Hate ‘em. Even that clattery little noise they make sets my nerves on edge… sounds like somebody playing a skeleton. However, they do pave the way for a lame pun. If you know me, you know I love those.

Anybody’ll tell you that it never all comes in one package. Instead of wishing for a ship to come in, wish for a procession of small boats… a flotilla of good-news-bearing yachts.

If a ship comes in, that’s only because you won the lotto, or Raspy Crackers won the third race at Del Mar. It doesn’t happen. If you think that your ship’s gonna come in… well, my friend, I hope it does.

In marketing, you don’t want your ship to come in. Stay out there, my seafaring friend, cruise around, spread the word.

Think of all the one-hit-wonders you’ve ever heard of – folks who made a killer splash all at once, but then were gone. Pet rocks. A dozen rock ’n’ roll bands that you can’t even name, but their song was pretty cool.

One ship. One big hit. A ton of cash today, but, tomorrow?

The fisherman that drops the hook is planning on bringing in a big fish. I’m gonna make a killer pile of dough on this baby. If the fish goes vegan, or saw what happened to cousin Wally in these very waters just yesterday, the line comes up empty.

The fisherman with the nets routinely feeds his family because he brings in many small fish over time. His plan is to score many, many small hits. The aggregate effect is the same, if not better, than his single-hit brother. Sure, the brother makes the occasional big buck, and laughs at the net-gathering sibling. But the folks at the bank smile at net boy, because he is constantly in there, making his deposits.

It’s not unknown for a tuna to wander into a small fishing net. At first the fisherman thinks it’s the score of a lifetime…we’ll eat for a year! But then the reality sets in: the net is torn, and the ability to gather tiny fish is lost.

You’ve read about those companies that make a nifty niche product, and one day find themselves approached by the likes of Costco or Walmart. Their production model changes, their business model changes, their focus changes, as they ramp up to meet the incredible demand of the super retailers. The dollars are nearly huge – our ship came in!

But next year, the big retailers turn away to another supplier, and the customer base, the loyalty, the little fish, are gone. Filing for Chapter 11 is seldom pleasant.

Your marketing, then, might do well if you consider casting nets… oh, there it is: castanets! My humble apologies.

You are the One – Bring Your Wallet

In the writing business… that is, the business end of the writer’s business, although the writer’s business isn’t business at all, but art – this gets so confusing – not the business of writing art, the business of selling the art, which is a business unto itself, but we’re not talking about that. Actually we are, sort of… you’re a writer, you know how it is…

Restart.

If you are a writer, and you don’t have an agent, you need one. Yes, you can self-publish your novel, but who is going to sell your book for you? You? You’re a writer. You need an agent.

Finding an agent, well that’s the business end of writing. But agents don’t seem to drop out of trees, even if you’re absolutely, fantastically talented. I know this from personal experience. That dog don’t hunt. That ship has sailed. You can’t handle the truth.

So, you advertise, in a million different ways. You blog. You join writer’s circles and clubs and chats, and comment your brains out on other people’s stuff. You work like a monkey to get your name at the top of an agent’s mystical list, the agent’s short list, the who’s who of writers in the agent’s Rolodex. Rolodex – boy, that’s a piece of history, huh? Raise your hand if you know what a Rolodex is… uh huh, as I thought. Paltry, paltry.

At the end of the day, you have to face it: you’re marketing – advertising – in the hopes of getting an agent to look at you and say “wow, now THERE’s a talent!”

In the world of Gorilla Marketing, all this effort, all this subtle, almost not work at all, is aimed at just one person. Millions of readers, or in my case, half-dozens of readers, see your blog and comments, read your name… and move on to something else.

It’s like being a daisy in the middle of the tall grass – oh please, Ms. Cow, pick me, pick me! You stand up tall, doing your flowery best to grab a little bit of bovine attention… oh, puleeze…. Of course, nobody wins in the cow analogy. Literary agents are insulted, and you get eaten if you win. But, you get the point.

The point is that if Toyota gets you to run down to your local dealership and buy a car because you saw a good ad on TV, it doesn’t matter if they wasted the time of 30 million other viewers, so long as you buy the car. No, you don’t suffer from incontinence, but some poor sap does, and those commercials might just be the ticket… say, I didn’t know they made underpants like that!

The point is this: you market your keester off, in the hope that one, just one, single set of eyeballs, sees your stuff and says a quiet “bingo.” And when that one sees your stuff and mutters and magic phrase, all your Gorilla Marketing effort pays off, and the future is yours to pave.

Well, here’s to you, my marketing friend. May you hear a whispered “bingo” soon!

Now, if you’re an agent, you can find the first two chapters of my book here: PhineasCaswell.com.

Thank you.

Gorilla Marketing – Again

If you’ve read earlier posts here, you’ll know I’m developing a theory called “gorilla marketing.”

It’s really quite simple: you don’t do anything, and people beat a path to your door. Usually they bring loads of cash, and things turn out great.

Well, you don’t do nothing, actually. You do some stuff – you know, little marketing things that get people reading you and believing in you and eventually giving you the oodles of cash.

So, here, without any ballyhoo or marketing phrasing, is my pitch: the second chapter of my novel, Droppington Place, is posted on the web, here. It’s totally free.

Read it now, as the price is sure to go up.

Take out your marketing pencils, kids, and let’s just do a little analysis.

Interesting proposal – check.

Product offering – check.

Call to action – check.

Free offer – check.

Dude, it’s all there, and we haven’t really done any work. See how easy this was?

Now, for you to do your part. This involves oodles of cash, so you might want to take some notes…

Just to recap: Chapter 2 of Droppington Place is now ready to read, and you got a nice, healthy sampling of Gorilla Marketing in action.

Wow. What a great day!

Pass me a banana, would you?

Always Be Marketing

You noticed in my last post how I cleverly mentioned the name of my second novel, DROPPINGTON PLACE? Well, did you notice that I just mentioned it again? Boom. Right past you, there, huh? That, my friend, is marketing.

Well, actually, it’s not, because you are the only one reading this post. But, if I had, like, a million readers, boom… see?

Here’s another one: I put Chapter 14 on MARIGOLD’S END, my first novel, on the Pages part of this website. Huh? Did you see that? Huh? Right there. Boom.

The theory we’re testing here is exposure. Repetition. Repeating the name over and over. If you look over my posts, you’ll see a preponderance of pirate pictures. Ah, another part of the theory.

If the theory of repetition holds true, when I finally get MARIGOLD’S END pried out of the hands of my stalled editor and published, there will be a line of people waiting to buy it. It will virtually be a line… or maybe a virtual line. Maybe a hypothetical line. Maybe a line of one. Me.

But that’s the gamble of marketing, upsides and downturns. Read the chapter. Leave a comment. Boom. You are marketed.

Bad Guys Need Not Apply

Enjoyed quite a bit of Tomorrowland, the new Disney marketing vehic…film. The message is a little preachy, but, at the 80% mark I realized that there were no bad guys. How cool is that? An interesting, provocative film without an antagonist. Oops, put down that optimism, sonny, here he comes now. Bwah-ha-ha!

Bad guys in art must be a gimmick. While there are certainly bad guys in the world – if you are one, please raise your hand. Look around, kids. See? None of your friends are bad guys – overall, we’re a pretty good lot.

You know this is true, not because it rhymes, but because, if there were as many bad guys on the street as there are in the movies –on a bad-guys-per-picture ratio – you’d be lucky to get home at night. We’d be up to our armpits in evil.

My story is about a good guy who has to face out some bad guys in the meanest part of town… please. The bad guys are a contrivance, a means of creating conflict because all stories must have a central conflict.

Superheroes. How can you have a superhero if there is no evil to overcome? As an author, you must create super-villains to challenge your superhero. Boy. That sounds like comic book stuff… oh yeah, superheroes come from comic books.

In the real world, take a walk in a certain part of town and you will find disadvantaged people willing to prey on you. And, you’ll find unkind, even bad people preying on them. A real superhero would be down in that part of town, not battling super-evil geniuses, but correcting the societal imbalances that create a bad part of town in the first place.

Because life isn’t about bad guys. The conflicts in life don’t usually come from a ne’er-do-well trying to do you in. Go ahead. Shoot me. I was getting kind of bored anyway.

No, the conflict in life is much more sophisticated. It’s that ticking noise in the car. The hesitation when she says “I love you, too.” It’s the never-ending debt that hides behind you, altering your judgments.

It’s the frustration you feel when things don’t go your way. When you could do more, but don’t. When you could say the right thing, but stay silent. When the parade marches down the street, and you’re standing on the sidelines.

There are no bad guys there.

This diatribe is brought to you by my newest novel, DROPPINGTON PLACE. It’s a charming little story about an earnest boy from a broken family struggling through his parents’ recent breakup while trapped in a magical world fashioned from paper by an Elizabethan playwright. No contrivances here! I tried to make bad guys, but couldn’t . Even the scariest guy, the master sorcerer, turns out to be pretty fun.

So, when you sit down to write the great American story, maybe the story isn’t really about good guys triumphing over bad guys. Maybe it’s more basic than that. Maybe it’s about regular folks doing their best against challenging circumstances.

If you must have a bad guy, maybe you could, like, make him move away in the first chapter. Or, better, make him be a chronic cough that pops up at the worst possible moment. Yeah, triumph over that little beauty!

Shameless Marketing

Go ahead, say what you will. Get it out of your system. Shameless, tasteless, bad form, bad ‘cess to it. Fie on thee. There you go. Are you through?

The cause of this invective, as you well know, is that I put together a cute little video about a model sailing ship, announcing its YouTube launch on a sister page, Droppington Place.

Nobody watches it, but, well, as you’re the only person reading this post, low ratings are no shock to me. Rather a low par for a very lonely course. You’re a writer. You know how it goes.

So, there were some little cranky-making nits and gnats in the movie – not enough to stop a would-be Steven Spielberg like myself, but perhaps enough to make a would-be watcher say dude, what was that?

Although no one has watched the move, there is still the profession to be honored. Plus, one never knows.

Hours under the cinematic hood resulted in this: TA DA!!!

Hey, you say, I didn’t watch the other video, but this video sure looks the same.

You, my hyper-critical friend, are only halfway right. Yes, the majority of images are the same. But, there are some pretty big deal changes.

Some of the images are taken from other photography sessions – one shows even an incomplete ship. Ho HO, did not see that coming, did ya?

But, here’s the shameless marketing part – one of the images, a 7 second segment, shows the cover of my novel, MARIGOLD’S END. The cover features the same ship model, dramatically blowing up in the background.

Genius, I know.

AND, if you look carefully at that one shot of the crew on the deck, some joker cleverly inserted the face of yours truly in the background. Oh, so clever.

Say what you will, this is a great example of cross-platform marketing.

If somebody ever watched my video, they might wonder about what that dramatic book cover is.. about… and Google MARIGOLD’S END, and, bang, zoom, the circle remains unbroken.

Not only that, but the casual reader of Droppington Place, and there is only one of those, now has a link to the video, which leads back to the book. Ah, the web, the web…

Obviously, with only one reader and no video watcher, the full effect of my marketing tour-de-force has yet to be felt. But give it time…-150-200 years or so, and then we’ll have something about which to converse.

So, the video is here: Black Swan by Zvezda, and the launch article is here: Hello, Hollywood!

Zoom! You, my writer friend, have been mar-ke-ted… see how easy it is?

Next I think I’ll write a song…Marigold’s End, the Theme from Marigold’s End, the Phineas Caswell Adventure.

Now that’s a catchy title!

I’m likin’ it!

Gorilla Marketing, Phase Two

You just gotta love a sequel, huh? What better way to follow up a mega blockbuster hit than with another blockbuster? Boom, looka that, folks, something even better!

Well, in the spirit of gorilla marketing, I’ll go you one better than a sequel.

Howzabout this; Chapter 2 of DROPPINGTON PLACE? Oh, yeah, uh-huh, fist-bumps all ‘round.

Wha-aa-aat? Sonny Jim, you’re just plain givin’ away the whole dignity-danged store!

No I aint, Pa. I swear it. It’s a new market thing program about monkeys. All the cool folks ‘r doing it.

In today’s hurly-burly, gotta-make-a-buck world, you have to stand out of the crowd. You have to be the one. The one. You. If you don’t, the world will run right over you.

Think about this Internet. Right this instant, you can look up, like, a gazillion books for free. Books on just about anything, and fiction, and graphic novels, and whatever you want.

When you put your hard-earned words into that maelstrom, unless you just happen to be a Hemingway, or a Rowling, or a King, or another author more current whose name I should know but don’t because I’m actually an uncultured boob, you get lost in that rush of online pieces, just another salmon in the dash upstream.

So, you have to stand out. You have to be different. You have to be the one sought out by your readers.

Enter the gorilla wearing a tie.

GO: “I say, old bean, why not publish your work in a blog first, eh?”

JR: “But, jeepers, Mr. Rilla…”

GO: “Go, please.”

JR: “Oh, okay. Goodbye.”

GO: “No, don’t leave, you ninny. Simply call me Go. No need to be formal.”

JR: “Oh. Anyway, Go, nobody reads my blog.”

GO: “Surely someone does.”

JR: “Well, I guess there are quite a few…”

GO: “There you are. Publish your book, one chapter at a time, to your readers. They’ll read it, talk amongst themselves, and before long, why, they’ll be clamoring to… “

JR: “To buy my books?”

GO: “No, to have you hanged. I’ve read your stuff. You should be ashamed.”

So, in the spirit of Go Rilla, the marketing monkey…

GO: “Ape, if you please. Great ape, in fact.”

DROPPINGTON PLACE, Chapter 2, is now released on my Droppington Place blog, here. You can also follow the link at the bottom of this page to the Droppington Place site.

Enjoy!

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.

BN Marketing Promise Kept

I’d say this promise is kept by popular demand, but you, dear reader, and I both know that that’s not true, for there is only you and me in this cruel-hearted world. Please place your beer here – _____ – for crying into, later. For we have work to do now.

First and foremost: below you will find the outline for my book, DROPPINGTON PLACE, precisely as promised in yesterday’s post on Bare Naked Marketing. An important part of marketing, of course, is delivering on your promises. Some of those promises are implied. If you shell out several dollars for a Yugo, that the car has a steering wheel is implied, along with seats and a suitably tame headliner. But a promise like “I will share this with you,” well, that’s a promise with no ifs, ands or butterumpusses about it.

If you were a playwright, you’d know this formula:

Act I: we meet the protagonist and his circumstances. All is well until, just at the end, something dreadful shatters his peaceful existence.

Act II: things gets worse and worse, more and more dire, nastier and nastier, until, at the very end of the act, the idea emerges that will save all.

Act III: we act on the idea, vanquish the dreadfulness, and resolve the manifold puzzles presented during the day. If it’s a musical, the audience walks out humming the overture.

In DROPPINGTON PLACE, we don’t have quite that much structure. You’ll find the outline over there, on the left of this site, under the strikingly original title DROPPINGTON PLACE: Outline.

So, there it is, you and I are sealed at the word processor. I share this with you in the hopes of giving you a window into my creative process.

I trust, of course, that we won’t see you running down the street with my outline in hand bellowing “Eureka! I know what to write!” That would bring bad juju, wouldn’t it?

Your ideas are always welcome – simply comment on this blog.

Stay tuned, dear reader. There are chapters, both of this book and MARIGOLD’S END, to follow.

Remember: no running.