Marketing Market

The past couple of days have been filled with working on my client’s marketing strategy, making contact with various areas, and getting really frustrated with Scribd. It appears that no matter how many times I hit send for my confirmation email – as I’d updated my information – the stupid email won’t send. “Check your spam folder” is their FAQ advice. And what if you don’t have a spam folder? What if your email box is spam free because you don’t use that particular email often and in public, so you don’t even run a filter? Then I guess you’re SOL because your emailed pleas for help to the email address they give go unanswered. It’s rather disheartening, because this means I can’t use Scribd as a full resource until they get their act together.

There are perks to having my time taken up by this, though. I’ve also managed to market some of my own things. (Because I’m evil like that.) And even though I originally had not planned to do it, I’ve taken a look at perhaps finding small distribution for 10 Confessions & A Kiss. I mean, other than going to Coldcut – who seem niced enough when they took on Akashik years ago even though I look at that comic and wince. From pain.

The kind of pain you get when your brain cramps because you need to fix that storytelling up, and you need it now. The kind of pain that sends nurses running for a liberal dose of morphine. The kind of pain…. yeah. You get it.

I just think my chances of getting 10 Confessions into Coldcut are slim. I also think those who get the Coldcut catalog would be sloughed with notices from a lot of other handmade comics (i.e. minicomics) around 10 Confessions… and it wouldn’t be noticed very well. That’s what happened before with other things.

So I happened across someone who seems to make a living at being a traditional door to door salesman. I think the proper term here is “agent”. I have emailed him, thinking to myself if I can just get him to take on 10 I will be content with 3 little stores. I’m not greedy when it comes to 10, although I should be being as I chose the more traditional route for its publication. But you see, I also don’t want to spend all my time handling a book that doesn’t pay my bills and having my bill time cut into. It’s a real problem.

Oh well, I’m terrible at making pitches anyway. So one or the other, we carry on and I’ll carry on. Chapter 2 is getting very close to getting done, and this means I’m very close to having another Kickstarter campaign. In the meantime, the printer told me the chapter one books will be on their way to me soon.

Yes, I know you’re supposed to make these by hand. Just typing this post is killing me. My days by the photocopier are sinking in the west, I’m afraid. C’est la print. 🙂

Work Work Work but It’s Not All About Marketing

I’ve spent my morning, really most of my day, worrying about my own personal projects instead of everyone else’s. This has been made possible by the letter E. E stands for such words as empty, as in empty cue. It can also stand for egomaniac, which I have been accused of being, and exercise, which I’d like to get to some day before my death.

Someone offered me a large sum of money to promote their material. I could use a large sum of money right now – dearly – but I still hesitated before accepting. More than a large sum of money I appreciate my own moral integrity, such as it is. Would I be letting that person down? This meant I needed to research on what I could do for him, to make sure he wasn’t investing unwisely.

My personal marketing strategy is a simple one. I talk like I’m a real person on my blog, I mention real life stuff everyone can relate to, and I’m just me. I’ll buy adverts once in a while when I have $5 to spare (no really, $5) and I give things away for free sometimes… mostly because I figure if i don’t then it will never ever get read. Turns out this strategy of mine, built largely out of shyness and partly out of lack of time, is the recommended model. Who’d have thunk it.

I have notes in front of me of the things I do that work and some things in front of me I found today that might work. I’m picking based on two things: being shy and whether or not the strategy requires I fake being friendly and use people as stepping stones. When I have it all formulated out, I hope to make a post here of what I’m doing for others to adopt and follow. Let’s all hope I find the time. And I’ve decided to accept this person’s offer, but on one condition: he writes like a real person once in a while and mentions things people can relate to. Otherwise, the campaign is doomed to fail.

Anyway, through my forays I rediscovered Scribd. I’d joined them a long time ago, when I was doing Akashik, and uploaded the first book. And promptly forgot them. Upon finding them again, I saw… I have readers there! I have followers! What the HELL! When did THAT happen???

Scribd also sells your books now. How nice is that?

So then my time, which was supposed to be spent working on 10 Confessions & A Kiss, got set aside so I could spend some time updating my Scribd. Ha ha ha, silly me.

The first thing I’ve done there besides take down one of the two books I had up is to upload another book, because it seems to me I should expand my base there. I chose to put up Black Wolf, Silver Fox, as that’s the first book I ever published and usually comes first. I’m linear that way.

I have my doubts about Scribd suddenly shooting me to the stars and giving me the royalties I need to stop doing stuff for everyone else, but … it’s still something that brought me some followers and I never knew it. Perhaps you also should check it out.

Black Wolf Silver Fox by Katrina Joyner