To Market to Market to SELL a Fat Pig...

Yesterday was the first day of my weekend. I spent EIGHT @#$%^&* HOURS of it sitting in a chair at my computer doing a marketing plan for my book. I resisted. I procrastinated. I took three coffee breaks (and I don't even drink coffee). I photocopied several sheets of paper entitled "S.M.A.R.T. Goals". I lined them up niceley on the desk, along with several pens in order of colour and size. Walked the dog. Did some yoga. Experimented with various kinds of herbal tea. Soon enough I recalled the great advice of writer Stephen King re: the cure for writer's block - "ass to chair." I moaned loudly, then remembered that nobody was home so the moan dissipated into a small but snivelling whimper. And slowly but surely a marketing plan arose from out of my fingertips and brain waves.

It's not that I don't know anything about marketing - in fact, I've studied it extensively. That probably makes it worse. Barnes & Noble are the people who need the plan - they won't stock my book on their shelves for the paltry 8 weeks I'm guaranteed unless they see that I'm going to be doing something to drive people into the store to buy it. What they really want, is for me to drive people into their store who will buy a lot of other crap too. Or even mainly the other crap.


So it's not like I can just call them up and go, "Dudes. I know how to market stuff. Trust me." I think Lucy Maude Montgomery may have done that when she published Anne of Green Gables.

Marketing is two steps removed from my real passion around this book. My primary passion is that I share the information with everyone. I'd rather teach the stuff, to progressively larger audiences, until everybody hears it. I had considerably less passion about writing it down. But there was some sense of purpose, destiny, calling in doing so. After all, I can write. Lots of people who know stuff haven't a clue how to communicate it on paper. The writing took me three years, since I was doing it only on vacations and study leave. It was gruelling. I was in such agony at times I was afraid I might not die. But said labour produced this beautiful child: a bouncing baby book! You'd think that was the end of it. But apparently in order to have anyone actually read the book they have to purchase it ergo they have to know it exists.

Hence the marketing plan. Not only do I have to create that and make it look and sound good (a bit like a school project), I also have to write press releases, fact sheets, a variety of author bios, "hook" lines, summaries, and even the flippin' questions and answers for radio or TV hosts. Go figure!

*ANNA! What does all this whining have to do with leadership? I'm readin' yer blog and I'm not learnin' anything so far that I can use!*

Sometimes we have to do what we don't like. What we're not so good at. We may even have to do things at times that we believe are useless, because there are rules and people "above" you may enforce the rules -- whether they make sense or not, and whether you like them or not. The best way to deal with this is to own your emotions rather than project them onto others. Be aware of your feelings of anger, frustration and boredom. Sit in those emotions for a bit. Have a good ol' whine-fest (as opposed to a whine-tasting)but keep it to yourself.

~~ be aware of your emotional response
~~ embrace your emotional response, rather than try to shut it down
~~ don't project your whining onto other people
~~ ass to chair

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