Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

Hmm, I think to myself. Perhaps the first viral marketing campaign tip I can come up with: realize that nothing is viral or even remotely organic in its exponential dissemination if it is featured in “Crain’s New York Business.” Much like the first rule of fight club is there is no fight club, viral marketing, to my understanding, hides it’s marketing so well you don’t really know you’re being used as a marketing tool—and if you do realize, you agree implicitly because the content is so strange, so amusing, so titillating, so outrageous, or even innovative and seductive that you pass it along to people you know willingly and eagerly. I’ve never passed along anything - a link, a book, a recommendation for a diaper brand or a YouTube video - because I was compelled out of a sense of marketing pressure.

Oddly, my first tip isn’t among the seven - because that would be a short and meaningless article indeed. The actual Tip 1: Build an e-Network. Citing mythological “sociologists” who say that everyone has a network of 8-12 people, the article recommends anyone looking to virally market something tap into blogs, forums, social networking sites and podcasts. Specifically the article mentions LinkedIn.

Specifically, Sarah has to go lie down with the weight of the flannel-suited well-intentioned-but-out-of-touch blitheness that has obviously missed the entire point of viral marketing. Again: emphasis on viral, hiding the marketing. Nothing comes across as more insincere when I’m reading email than a barely-hidden request for marketing. “Your readers will love this!” Or, messages from people I don’t know that read, “OMG, did you see this?” and then a link to something that clearly comes from the same URL as the sender. My reaction is usually, “OMG do you think I am dumb?”GalleyCat has another example of asking people to behave insincerely for marketing purposes: “Review my book on Amazon, and if it’s posted, I’ll give you $50.” Niiiiice.

In a nutshell: Marketing is by nature insincere. Viral publicity contains the sincerity that marketing lacks - it’s one person saying to another, “Dude, WTF, this cracked me up, awesome, check it out.” It’s a dose of personal endorsement, which in the internet age carries a lot of weight, and it’s about the message more than the product being carried by that message.

Next tip: Convert customers into marketers. Make clients an offer to incentivize their carrying your message with them. Yeah, no thanks. The only time this article comes close to actually Getting It is: “Simply offer such a good deal or exceptional service that customers will reflexively want to tell others about it.”

YES. THAT. Sincerity sells. Sincerity is often viral.

Tip 3: Go where the eyeballs are. Find sites with traffic to “generate buzz.”

Oh, for God’s sake. That’s not viral. That’s plain old everyday smart marketing.

But, but, but! The viral element in that section of the article isn’t fully highlighted in the “tip” text. The example provided is rather savvy: companies like Sweetriot Inc. use their MySpace page to link customers and invite them to submit artwork for packaging purposes. Brilliant. Imagine that for an author and publisher, where readers are invited to submit a cover design or art for a promotional postcard to publicize a book. But that’s not just going where the eyeballs are; that’s using MySpace’s strengths to allow customers a sense of ownership in a product they love. Cultivating personal investment - another dose of sincerity - through social networking.

Tips 4-7 are really not rocket science: make the message interesting, simple, and targeted towards the interests of the audience. Yeah. I’m bowled over by the brilliance. Add a few quotes from random business people about “getting their name out there” and other empty-nouned phrases of no consequence, and that’s the rest of the article. Game, set, yawn.

So why am I wanking on about this? Because one thing I’ve learned in the few years I’ve been here is that authors have a majestic uphill battle to publicize their books, and a very short window in which to do it. Thus my first thought was, “How do authors create viral marketing campaigns? Is it possible?”

Maybe. Sincerity and viral marketing seems to be often spontaneous, and because it is, there are conditions under which its likely, and there are ways to make that elusive viral campaign more likely, but there is no set formula. That said, what seems to nudge the viral into blisters of popularity, aside from sincerity? In my opinion it’s a twinset of enticements:

1. Entertainment.
2. A good deal.

First: entertainment. Absurd & funny, silly & sexy. As I think about the book trailers I’ve seen, among the most successful and hilarious was Sherry Thomas’ video trailer for Private Arrangements. Before I’d heard about the book or even the plot, I heard about the trailer, which operated on simplicity and hilarity. I wasn’t even sure the plot was one I’d like but dude, that video cracked me up.

And viral marketing doesn’t even have to be a trailer - because damn, standing out in the sea of book trailers seems an incredibly difficult task right now. Consider Janet Mullany’s hilarious “Top ten things no one would ever say in a Regency-set historical romance” which was mentioned and teased in reviews and in non-romance blogs as being particularly hilarious - and it was a back-of-the-book Easter egg for readers who picked up a copy of The Rules of Gentility. Funny, silly, and absurd or sexy spreads faster than slick and overprocessed every time in my experience.

And second, the allure of a good deal. Jane at Dear Author has a poll up asking for the preferred promotional giveaway - ARCs, Published books, or gift certificates. Wise question - anything that’s something for little or something for nothing spreads online. Bloggers doing giveaways, big or small - and there are some big ticket givers out there, tend to attract traffic. One method of viral giveaways that seems to work, but likely because it’s new, is the method used by Jane and by Ann Aguirre in which if you win a book from them, you commit to blogging about it either there or at your own site. Granted, if you’re an author, postage get get way expensive, but asking for a word in exchange for free reading material isn’t such a stiff request. At least, I haven’t heard anyone complain.

What marketing tools work for you - or what techniques have you seen that were so great, you wish you’d thought of them yourself?

Stay tuned - as soon as my scanner and I are back on speaking terms, I have a whole collection of promo material and giveaways from the RT Gauntlet of Promo Hall that are so over the top with awesome and holyshit for your collective perusal.

The only difference between “Purple Panties” and the nearly two dozen other titles that I have written or edited is that it is a collection of LESBIAN EROTICA. To that, I say shame on it all. It saddens me that we still live in a world that is so sexually oppressed. Now I am not saying that people need to rush out and read the book, or any of my books. I am saying, point blank, that people have a ton of sexual hang-ups that they need to get over. Everything is not for everybody but to “be offended,” to claim that a book is “too racy” for book signings but “Succulent” was not too racy a couple of months ago, nor “Dear G Spot” before that, or the book before that and so on, makes the real rationale behind it obvious. Will they feel that same way when “Honey Flava” comes out two weeks from now or “Another Time, Another Place” in early June? “Zane’s Sex Chronicles” in August? “Sensualidad: Caramel Flava 2” in August? Will they feel that same way when my next full-length novel “Total Eclipse of the Heart” comes out in November? “Head Bangers 2: An APF Sexcapade” in March? Will those books be “too racy” for book signings or to be featured?

Do not mistake this as some sort of plea to sell books. “Purple Panties” is currently #442 on Amazon.com, just as high, or higher, in rank than any book that I have ever put out. It will sell like crazy because it is a book that was long overdue. There are millions of people in this world in same gender loving (SGL) relationships. Who has the right to judge them, or tell them what they should or should not do with their lives?

This saddens me because I have now gotten a glimpse, just a tiny, miniscule glimpse of the discrimination that homosexual and bisexual people face in this world; especially in American society. Eleven years ago I set out on a quest to liberate and empower women”both sexually and overall. To know that we still have such a very long way to go is disappointing. I am not a lesbian but not because I have anything against it. I am just attracted to men. However, I now consider myself an “honorary lesbian” because I am pissed off at the injustices directed towards them and their gay male counterparts.

I am not going to go on and on about this but I had to speak on it. Life goes on.

Blessings,

Zane

P.S. Do not think that, for one second, this will deter me from my path. “Missionary No More: Purple Panties 2” is complete and will be released on schedule next January.  “Flesh to Flesh” edited by Lee A. Hayes, a collection of GAY EROTICA, will be released later this month. I am proud of that book as well. People love as they love; not as directed.

I’m curious - is there a bias against lesbian erotica? Has anyone encountered this bias in their own work in the past? I know that a few erotica publishers have mentioned in passing that f/f erotica is not among their biggest sellers - is there a lack of interest in reading female-centered sexual content, or is there a blockage getting it to the marketplace altogether? I know there are different types of discrimination faced more by lesbians than by gay men, but are booksellers reacting to a perceived lack of demand for f/f erotica and protecting their bottom line, or is there a decided aversion to anything lesbian? Your thoughts?

Please note: The Sundance Channel version is rated TV:MA, and according to the Sundance website, the four parts air on May 19 and May 20th/21st at midnight and 1am. Check your local cable listings to see if that same schedule applies in your area, and if you have parental controls enabled on your DVR, it might not record things that are designated with a TV:MA rating.

As narrator Martin Torgoff says, the documentary explores why the US is a “sex drenched” culture, and how it got to be that way. If you’re looking for insightful depth of commentary, this isn’t it. The style of this particular type of documentary runs so fast through decades of change that it seems to encourage through name dropping and celebrity interviews the Google-research of its viewers. I happen to watch tv with a computer on my lap, as does Hubby, so as we watched Parts 1 and 2 on Friday night, he was curious about the supreme court cases mentioned, while I was curious about Sandstone, Plato’s Retreat, and Bette Midler’s career in the bathhouses of New York City. As a habit, we Google while we watch - and this documentary is perfect for our obsessive multitasking viewing style. Our search history, it is a kinky place.

The style of narration, which is edited together with musical clips, archived footage, and contemporary interviews, is similar to the other VH1-umentaries, but it works for this subject as well as it did for The Drug Years (which I watched multiple times whenever I encountered it on tv) because the undertaking is so multi-facted. The sexual revolution encompasses several major socio-political uprisings, from feminism to gay rights, and touching on all of them requires a deft flexibility that doesn’t always flourish in documentary work. I don’t know that the series actually explained why we’re a sex-drenched culture, though I agree that we are. I always figured it was part of the Puritan morality that was part and parcel to the founding of the whole damn place, concurrent with that fear that someone, somewhere, was having an orgasm and must be stopped. The documentary seems to attribute the drenching to the excess and then the backlash, with the two sides washing over each other since the early 1990’s but I don’t think a firm conclusion was ever erected.

Also, I wish that the individuals being interviewed were identified with more alacrity, because there were times I was fascinated by someone’s attitude or with their commentary, and wanted to know who the crap they were, and had to wait until the subtitles got around to telling me who they were and what they’d written. The expectation that I know who Erica Jong is? Not a stretch. I do know who she is (and I totally got a kick out the idea that the woman who coined the term “zipless fuck” and wrote candidly about assertive female desire was a classicly elegant woman in a black dress and pearls). But New York Magazine columnist Ariel Levy, who wrote Female Chauvanist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture, was onscreen about three or four times before she was identified, and I was Googling the text of her comments to see if they could tell me who she was. I get that the focus is on what these folks have to say rather than who they were (though why Cybill Shephard, exactly?) but some of the elements of who they are inform the fact that they’re talking to me.

I was fascinated by the uncensored nudity, not because it was nudity (look, boobs!) but because it was nearly naked or naked people who looked normal, and not toned, airbrused and post-production edited within an inch of their actual skeletons. Even the Playboy bunnies serving drinks had jiggly bottoms, which isn’t what I’m used to seeing from Playboy.

Some of the highlights:

1. Watching Hugh Hefner get his ass verbally handed to him on The Dick Cavett show by feminist Susan Brownmiller.

2. Footage of the aftermath of the Harvey Milk and George Mosconi assassinations, and the outrage following Dan White’s manslaughter conviction.

3. Helen Gurley Brown and the rise of Cosmopolitan in constrast and comparison with Playboy

4. Two words: Bathhouse Bette. Love her.

As I watched, I kept trying to figure out where, when, and how romance novels would hook into the sexual revolution. There’s no doubt in my mind that they are related, especially since The Flame and the Flower debuted in 1972, and romance novels were among the first depictions in popular culture of female sexual fulfillment at the hands (and mouth and mighty, mighty wang) of the hero, born partially out of his sexual and emotional compulsion to please her - to say nothing of the rape motif of early romance and the critical presumption of ambivalent sexual attitudes on the part of the early romance reader. There’s a good bit of revolution present in the repeated narrative of a mighty wang, meeting the powerful va-hay-hay, and going on over there to live happily ever after.

As I chew on the role of romance novels in the revolution, it makes me ponder the possibility of a documentary that would weave the two together, examining the socio-political climate as romance novels hit the market, and the changes therein as the genre flourished. Sex: The Revolution examines pornography, and pro-sexuality texts like the Masters & Johnson studies and the Kinsey reports, and of course The Joy of Sex, but there likely wasn’t enough time to take a left turn into narratives that embrace female sexuality like those found in romance novels (and no, I’m not saying they’re porno. Far from it). If you watch the documentary, I’m curious what you think of it. Let me know.