Buzz, Balls & Hype

Linktopia

When it comes to pricing it looks like it's time to get personal.

“This is really the holy grail in a sense, pricing to the individual,” said Willard Bishop, a retail consultant in suburban Chicago who focuses primarily on supermarkets. “Everyone is on the path to doing what you are talking about.”

The full story in the NYTIMES tells you what's going on.

THE DOCTOR IS IN

A recent article in the Boston Globe  cites evidence that people take social cues from soap operas. Brazilian telenovelas have apparently helped to lower the fertility rate. In India, villages that watch more TV give more rights to women and girls. In the US, health advice folded into soap opera plots appears to be more influential than any other type of information dissemination. 

Here is what I wonder:

1)    Is this necessarily a good thing? Do we want our cultures to be shaped by popular entertainment?

2)    Do novels have similar influence, or is there something unique about TV?

3)    If we do have that kind of power as writers (assuming all of our books have best-seller potential), how much weight should we give this phenomenon in our work?

I’d be interested in your thoughts. We’ll be discussing this topic, as well as many others of interest, on today’s Litopia After Dark.  Please tune in and join the chatroom discussion. 

And be sure to check out Muse, Litopia’s new literary ezine, while you're there.

Susan O'Doherty, Ph.D.,is a clinical psychologist with a New York City-based practice. A fiction writer herself,she specializes in issues affecting writers and other creative artists. She is the author of Getting Unstuck without Coming Unglued: A Woman's Guide to Unblocking Creativity(Seal, 2007). Her Career Coach column appears every Monday on Inside Higher Ed's Mama, Ph.D. blog, and she is a regular monthly panelist on Litopia After Dark. Send your questions to her at Dr.Sue at mindspring dot com.

 

Linktopia

A trifecta from neuromarketing.com this week.

Have you been conditioned?  

...new research shows that even when consumers don’t recall the specific message, their preferences can be shaped to the point where they reject new information that conflicts with their stored brand association.

Keep reading here.

Is evolution at work on how we respond to marketing?

If marketers paid more attention to these traits and how their brands signaled them, they would have a better grasp of consumer behavior and know how to better design, market, and advertise their products.

The rest of the story is here.

What's your discount rate?

Evolutionary psychologists Margo Wilson and Martin Daly (both of McMaster University) studied this phenomenon and concluded that...

See what they found here.

The Most Fun Fan Letter

 I got this email last night and it was so much fun I though I'd share it. For those of you who don't know me personally, the M in M.J. stands for my real first name which is Melisse.

Melisse,

I just started reading what looks like it's going to be a terrific new ovel. It's called "The Hypnotist" by someone named MJ Rose (hah, an obvious nom de flume; probably some guy named Morris Rosenburg in a minimum security prison for securities fraud). It's about a group of ex-patriots in Paris after World War I (no, hold on, that's The Sun Also Rises by another obvious nom de flume, Ernest Hemingway, who is probably the cookie-baking hostess of a weekly book club in Illinois somewhere, I can't keep all these books straight). Anyway, "The Hypnotist" is allegedly Milbank Rosenstein's third book in a series, and it concerns...oh heck, you'll see when you pick it up at your neighborhood Amazon store. But what I want to tell you is that I just finished the fourth chapter in which we learn about this guy who stole five almost French paintings, and I turn on the news in my car this afternoon, and there's a story about the theft last night of five paintings from a Paris museum, including a Matisse, which shows you that this author Matisse Rotorooter really must know what she's doing. I'll be back with you soon.

Bob

THE DOCTOR IS IN

ALL OF ME

I received some fascinating responses to last week’s post on mothers and creativity. One that especially resonated for me was from Stephen D. Rogers. Stephen wrote: 

When one's identity/worth is questioned in childhood, I think it becomes easier to create and "wear" other identities.  I did not so much create worlds in which to play as I created identities which I could assume.  There's a shade of difference between playing pirates and becoming a pirate and then playing within that pirate's world.
 
Reading, you can tell which writers know their characters from the inside and and which writers only know their characters from the outside.  (Even things like motivation can be viewed as an external detail.)

My beloved acting teacher, Herbert, once came into class and announced, "I just saw an actor, in character, who puts all of you to shame." He went on to describe a little boy he had passed on the way to the theater, who was riding a bicycle, wearing a towel tied around his shoulders, and shouting, "Sal Mineo!"

"I have no idea what he was shouting, who he was shouting to, or who he thought Sal Mineo was--but it was completely real to him; he was 100% engaged. That is the level of engagement, of commitment, I want from each of you."

When we're children, it is natural for us to try on different identities, different ways of relating to the world. Most young children routinely play some variety of "house," "school," and "cops & robbers," as ways of exploring adult experience and playing out possibly dangerous roles in a safe environment. As we age, we integrate the roles that work best for us into our adult personalities.

Some of us, though, continue to playact through adulthood, through writing, acting, or just daydreaming. I have never seen research to support Stephen's idea of cause and effect between having our identities questioned or denied and seeking out alternative roles, but it makes intuitive sense. And as another wonderful acting teacher used to say, "That's your bank account! If your father beat you, your mother hated you--great! Use it! Embrace it! That's what will make you an artist!"

Susan O'Doherty, Ph.D.,is a clinical psychologist with a New York City-based practice. A fiction writer herself,she specializes in issues affecting writers and other creative artists. She is the author of Getting Unstuck without Coming Unglued: A Woman's Guide to Unblocking Creativity(Seal, 2007). Her Career Coach column appears every Monday on Inside Higher Ed's Mama, Ph.D. blog, and she is a regular monthly panelist on Litopia After Dark. Send your questions to her at Dr.Sue at mindspring dot com.

Linktopia

Linktopia continues yesterday's post on the changing world of publishing with this update from fastcompany.com

Game Changer of the Day

So the big news in publishing is there are no game changers anymore. We must bury the words. The game changer was the internet  way back more than 12 years ago. Now  anything and everything is possible. And anything that can happen will happen. Not all of it is good and not all of it is bad. But  one thing is for sure -- no one knows what is going to happen. 

There is no one solution. Everything is a solution. That means writers can't jump on every bandwagon thinking this one is going to change my life. 

This is a terrific article. Please read it. Jason Pinter has it exactly right.

We have to understand that technology is not a short cut to hard work. And we have to understand that what worked for  Jill  might not work for Jack.  

Before you jump on a bandwagon,  look at the the path that writer took before you evaluate his results and try to follow them.  

When an author like Seth Godin self publishes a novel after having several NYT bestsellers and a strong tribe of followers and sells 100s of thousands of copies  - it isn't proof that self publishing works. It's proof that Seth made something work.

Ultimately its about the book. 

Sadly I meet authors every week who self publish  books and spend $1000, $5000, $10,000 and more and sell less than 100 copies. I recently met one who spent $100,000 and who wound up selling 200 copies. What happened? People went to their websites or online booksellers and read the excerpts and didn't like them. 

I'm not saying don't be innovative. I'm not saying don't try new things. 

We must keep being innovative. 

But I am suggesting we shouldn't be followers without studying the paths we are about to take and making sure our footsteps even can match up with the ones we're sticking our shoes into. 

We can't all self publish a book and expect to have the success of The Lace Reader if we don't  have that specific that book and that PR budget and most of all that  group of bookstores willing and able and excited about hand selling a book that has to do with their town.

750,000 books were self published last year. 250,000 traditionally published.

That's a million books a year! And no one can buy a book they never heard of. No one asks a friend or a bookstore owner or a search engine "Tell me about a book you never heard of and I never heard of but that I will want to read."

I believe - I want to believe - I am desperate to believe  - that talent will always rise. But I'm a realist too and I can see that the path to that rising will become more complicated than ever.

 

 I feel certain creative minds will figure out ways to help the cream rise to the top.  A friend of mine suggested that one way is  more expensive books - not less expensive. Maybe that will happen.

Free books are already failing to translate to bought books. Many are being read by people who only read free books. 

 

One friend had 89,000  downloads of his  free ebook. His next book - which was not free -  only sold 1000 copies. What happened? Was the free book bad? Did the readers just not like his work enough to buy the next one? Or did they just not want to buy a book if it cost money? 

 

But whatever we do we have to remember one thing - the most important to me -the thing so many writers seem to shrug their shoulders about when it comes up is that  we have work hard and take our time and learn our craft. 

 

If we want to keep readers- not just get them once - but keep them - we have  to do everything we can to write good books. And there are no short cuts to that. 

 

There are no game changers there. 

 

 

 

 

 

What Goes Viral?

Funny, irreverent, humor, non-selly, not pushy, heartfelt, entertaining?   Who knows what makes something go viral but it is truly the holy grail on the internet and my friend  Douglas Clegg seems to have hit the mother load with his funny Tips For Writers ebook.

 It is almost at 10,000 reads and it's only been up for 5 days!!!!!! Way to go Doug!

THE DOCTOR IS IN

THANKS,  MOM!

Sarah Stockton suggested that, in observance of Mother's Day, I write a column about how our mothers influence our creativity. I thought this was a brilliant idea, but couldn't think or write quickly enough to post it last week.

D.W. Winnicott wrote eloquently about the importance of the "good-enough mother" (that is, a mother or other caregiver who meets the child's basic needs) to the development of the creative imagination. His theory (grossly oversimplified) is this: The attuned mother anticipates all of the newborn's needs. She detects from the baby's subtle movements, expressions and vocalizations that she needs to be fed, changed, cuddled or burped, and performs these services long before the baby becomes distressed. This gives the new baby a sense of safety in the world.

As the baby matures, however, the mother's attention is sometimes diverted elsewhere, and she is less immediately responsive. The baby might announce hunger, but the mother won't jump to feed her--she will finish the page she is reading, or the thought she is writing, before answering her child's cry. This delay--not long enough to cause the child real suffering but enough to frustrate her--gives the child the opportunity to imagine gratification before it appears. She learns to soothe herself through images of the breast or bottle, of the clean diaper or loving embrace, knowing that these comforts are imminent. As time goes on, the child's desires become more complex and the interval before gratification expands, allowing for the development of increasingly sophisticated, creative play. The teddy bear becomes a companion (or "transitional object," representing the temporarily absent caregiver or friend); the child's bed becomes a ship or pumpkin-coach or magic carpet.

Years ago, I was in charge of developing a play therapy program at a preschool for children with developmental delays, mainly Down syndrome, and I relied heavily on Winnicott's ideas to help me understand and address the marked deficiencies many of these children exhibited in both creative play and problem-solving--deficits far greater than their measured intelligence would have predicted. Many of the kids had medical issues that had kept them in the hospital, separated from their parents, in early infancy; and weak facial muscles that made it difficult to read their expressions--or to suck productively, so that they had to be force-fed, on a schedule. Some parents, traumatized by their children's disabilities and/or suffering an ego blow from having produced an "imperfect" child, became depressed and minimally responsive. When we instituted a program designed to repair some of these disadvantages, along Winnicottian lines (periods of "mirroring," or watching and imitating the child's microscopic facial and body movements; tactile, aural, and olfactory stimulation; and immediate and enthusiastic gratification of reasonable wishes followed by gradual delays while introducing dolls, puppets, and other projective items) most of the children caught on and began playing like "normal" kids.

So I have great faith in Winnicott's theories. But in my experience, they are incomplete. Winnocott was concerned with normal creativity--the ability to use our imaginations to resolve real-life issues and to plan for the future. But if this were the whole story, then the best-adjusted people, those who had the most responsive parents and lived the most productive and fulfilled lives, would be the most successful artists--and we know that is often not the case.

I think (based only on observation and experience, not formal research) that those of us who received not-quite-good-enough parenting--that is, enough care and responsiveness to keep us alive and functioning, but not provided predictably enough to make us feel secure, wanted, and sanguine about the future--are often at a creative advantage. We learned to use our imaginations not just to delay gratification and solve problems in the real world, but to create worlds of our own, where we may have lived for extended periods, and which we were hopeful enough to try to communicate.

Naturally, mothers are influential beyond infancy, and I plan to discuss their roles more in future columns. Any thoughts or experiences are, as always, appreciated.

Susan O'Doherty, Ph.D.,is a clinical psychologist with a New York City-based practice. A fiction writer herself,she specializes in issues affecting writers and other creative artists. She is the author of Getting Unstuck without Coming Unglued: A Woman's Guide to Unblocking Creativity(Seal, 2007). Her Career Coach column appears every Monday on Inside Higher Ed's Mama, Ph.D. blog, and she is a regular monthly panelist on Litopia After Dark. Send your questions to her at Dr.Sue at mindspring dot com.

 

The Ad Man Answers #82

Thursday + Gregory Huffstutter = The Ad Man Answers

Last time, we put together a little reader contest to brainstorm creative marketing ideas around Marshall Karp’s upcoming CUT, PASTE, KILL.

Here’s the Ad Man’s entry: 

From the creative brief, we established that Marshall’s mysteries combine humor with wicked plot twists.  So a good marketing campaign would reflect those sensibilities.  Also, we established that Marshall has limited budget, but potential access to camera equipment and actors.

Instead of a traditional, 60-second book trailer that attempts to summarize the plot of a 304-page novel, the Ad Man envisions a viral video shot in the style of a local news segment.

The video opens on Eduardo, a smarmy reporter with cheesy Geraldo Rivera mustache.  He’s in a large auditorium, surrounded by craft booths and smiling, middle-aged women.

Eduardo:  Sharpen your scissors, Chantilly.  From WCTY, this is Eduardo Gilberta reporting on-location at the Great American Scrapbooking Convention.  There are 33 million scrapbookers in the world… so what do they do behind the closed doors of Northern Virginia’s EXPO Center?  Is this a sweet, innocent gathering of photo archivists, or a boot camp for [dramatic pause]… murder? 

The screen fills with an over-the-top graphic:  “SERIAL SCRAPBOOKERS – KILL, KILL, KILL!”

Cut to series of interviews between Eduardo and good-natured conventioneers.  Dramatic background music and skewed camera angles turn the wholesome setting into something ominous.  Every time there is a (snip), it’s clear words have been amateurishly edited out.

Eduardo: If you were to kill (snip) somebody, who would you choose?

Scrapbooker #1: My brother, (snip) he really needs to go.

Eduardo:  What brought you to the scrapbooking convention today?

Scrapbooker #2: I’m here to practice my blade-work.

Scrapbooker #3:  What can I say?  I just love cutting things up.

Scrapbooker #4:  One of the biggest challenges is getting rid of your (snip)dead.

Scrapbooker #5:  One way I torture (snip) is with (snip) acid. 

Scrapbooker #6:  When you get to my age, you know lots of people who deserve to (snip) die.

Cut to a workshop session with tables full of scrapbookers.  The instructor raises an Exacto knife over her head and plunges it into an unseen object.

Instructor:  That’s right, thrust it in. ladies!  Make a clean hole, cut out those eyes.

Eduardo:  (Back on the convention room floor)  So there you have it… an army of knife-wielding sociopaths, hell-bent on global annihilation.  If you missed this weekend’s Great American Scrapbooking Convention this weekend, count your blessings… and lock your doors.

Cut to WCTY news studio, where Eduardo is sitting across long table with well-coiffed weekend Anchor.

Anchor:  That’s your report?

Eduardo:  Yep.  Chilling stuff.  Barely made it out of there alive.

Anchor:  You’re already on probation for this.

Eduardo:  I don’t know what you’re talking about.

Anchor:  We pulled the original footage, Eduardo.

Cut to the previous series of interviews, this time with all the (snip) words included:

Eduardo: If you were to kill time at a mall with somebody, who would you choose?

Scrapbooker #1: My brother, he ’s so fashion-challenged, he really needs to go shopping.

Scrapbooker #4:  One of the biggest challenges is getting rid of your old magazines.  Personally, I’m dead set against a messy craft room—

Scrapbooker #5:  One way I torture my husband is with all the piles of acid-free paper I leave around the house. 

Scrapbooker #6:  When you get to my age, you know lots of people who deserve to be memorialized in a scrapbook before they die.

Cut to the same scrapbooking workshop, where the camera stays on the scene longer, pulling back to reveal the Instructor is hacking into a pumpkin.

Instructor:  Make a clean hole, cut out those eyes.  And that’s how we bring together our entire Halloween theme!

Back to WCTY studio.

Anchor:  This is a serious breach of conduct.

Eduardo:  So I cut and pasted a few words, but c'mon, they’re scrapbookers… it’s like a homage.

Anchor:  I just got word that you’re to clean out your locker immediately. 

Eduardo:  This is the fourth convention you nimrods had me cover this year.  Can you fault me for spicing it up?  Besides, who cares if I tweak a few old biddies—

Eduardo suddenly grimaces, and keels onto the desk.  The camera pushes in to reveal scissors stuck in the middle of the reporter’s back.  The Anchor screams like a teenage girl as blood spurts onto his tie.  Pandemonium on the set for a split second then cut to slate with Marshall’s cover art.

Anchor V/O:  CUT, PASTE, KILL by Marshall Karp.  Available at booksellers everywhere on June 8.  Sharpen your scissors.

------

Remember, folks, it’s not enough to create entertaining content.  You also have to find avenues to distribute it.

So if Marshall were to create a mock news report, how could he get it out into the world?

·      * Home page of his website (free)

·      * YouTube (free)

·      * MySpace (free)

·      * Facebook (free)

·      * Funny or Die (free)

·      * Internal distribution to Minotaur sales staff (free)

·      *  Blog advertising thru Authorbuzz (paid)

·      * Outreach to non-traditional outlets, like Michaels’ craft stores, which may be interested in carrying rack of books (potential co-op)

Marshall could also help spread the video by having a website contest, where fans who pass the video to 5 or more friends are entered to win a prize.

While the Creative Brief said that Marshall had slim to no external advertising budget, it may be worth contacting “Scrapbook Advertising”, a digital network that links websites like Scrapbook.com, Scrapjazz.com, Scrapbooks.com, Scraptutur.com, and ComputerScrapbook.com. 

With over 600,000 monthly visitors, they may be of assistance with seeding the video in the scrapbooking community.

The Ad Man wishes Marshall the best of luck with his marketing efforts… and take it from someone who’s already read CUT, PASTE, KILL cover-to-cover, you won’t be disappointed with this book (unless you’re Eduardo).

To reader Elysabeth… you’re the winner of a signed galley.  Please send your mailing address to katz@gregoryhuffstutter.com and it will be on its way before you can say “Lomax & Biggs.” 

Stay tuned next week for the first of two-part Q&A with bestselling YA fantasy author Garth Nix!

Gregory Huffstutter has been punching Ad Agency timecards for over a dozen years, working on accounts like McDonald's, KIA Motors, Suzuki Automotive, AAA, and the San Diego Padres. His first mystery, KATZ CRADLE is on submission while he's working on the sequel. The first 100 pages of his novel are linked here. For general advertising questions, leave a comment or send e-mail to katz @ gregoryhuffstutter dot com with 'Ask The Ad Man' in the subject line.