In Part 1 of this series we discovered that there was another way to publish besides submitting our manuscript to New York publishers and depend on a editor in their early teens to pass it up the line to a senior editor who might become interested in it. If youre a Copywriter, you discover there is a way to put your copy directly in front of the public. No longer will you be dependant on an editor who wants to look at it on spec -- which usually means you write it for free. Weve discovered we can go directly to the public to market our products. We are ready to STEP INTO THE INFORMATIONAL MARKETING SWAMP You soon discover that as well as being a writer, you may have to become a programmer you are going to have to learn something about the mysteries of domains, hosting, and search engine optimization along with an alphabet soup of technologies: cgi, php, html, asp, etc. and etc. After managing to find your way through some of this, you finally set up a web site to display your book, which you transferred from your attic trunk to the web. Wonderful. Its now in front of the public, just like youd hoped. You congratulate yourself that you have succeeded in getting past: New York Editors. New York Agents. The US Postal Service (since you didnt have to mail your manuscript out 500 times). Your attic trunk (where youve been depositing your unsold manuscripts). Your garage, which is NOT filled with 5000 unsold copies of your book. And your manuscript is now in front of the public who are eager to pay for it, download it and read it. Or is it? Oopswe forgot a few things. How are they going to find it? How are they going to pay for it? How can they get it into their hands to be able to read it? Once again, not to belabor the point, but we writers want to be read. Not being read is like having uh without uh Ok, forget that analogy. TO BE READ, WILL YOU GIVE THEM WHAT THEY WANT? But theres one other thing I forgot to mention. Does the public want to read what you want to write about? If they dont, then you are back to where you were with the New York editorstrying to sell somebody something they dont want to read or arent interested in. This is the hardest thing we writers have to get through our heads. Just because the Muse strikes, she doesnt always strike with something somebody else wants to read. Somehow, we have to find the secret of doing both: writing what we want to write about, and slanting it in a way that will appeal to the public. We have to give them what they want to read, or we wont be read. Its that simple. SOMEWHERE IN THE SWAMP, THE REVELATION STRIKES (GOOD THING IT WASNT A HUNGRY CROCODILE) You are going to have to be the whole thing the whole shillelagh. You are going to be: The Market Researcher. You will have to find out what the public wants to read. The Writer. You are already that, but you need to be a flexible writer. You are going to have to slant what you want to write so they will want to read it. The Editor. Youre going to have to ruthlessly edit your own stuff to make it as clear and easy to read as possible with no typos and misspellings. Design and Layout. You are going to design your book cover to make it as attractive as possible. The Publisher. You will optimally price the book and put it in a format that can be downloaded and read on peoples computers. The Distributor.You will have to set up your site so that your customers can pay for it and download it. The Copywriter. You will have to write advertising copy that will sell your book. Store owner. You have to set up your own bookstore where your readership will come to buy it. You have to sell it to them and collect their money. Promotion. You will have to promote your book so that people will want to find your store and buy it. Customer Service. You will have to handle returns and customer complaints. The CEO and CFO of your own business. You will have to take care of finances, taxes, and the law. Thats not too hard, is it? WHEN THE STUDENT IS READY There are teachers out there who have products designed to help you understand and accomplish each goal, but none of them put it all together. You might say, theres a specialist at each stage, but none of them seem to be a guide that will take you from start to finish. So basically, you need to know where the stepping stones are -- to identify each of the tasks you must master to become an Informational Marketer. In other words, you need a map "through the swamp" if, for no other reason than to keep from sinking into the quicksand. For each of these tasks there is a book or a software program designed to show you what to do or provide you with the resources you need. The goal, of course, is to have a monetizing website where you actually sell your new book as fast as you can and finally grasp the elusive goal of true publication. When you do that, you are almostalmost out of the swamp. Ahead you can see the dry land And the satisfaction that comes with it. Copyright 2006 John Young |
