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

*sigh* The fake trailer made me all nostalgic for the porn of my youth.

My son’s a big Chuck fan.  I’ll let him read it first and tell me how it is.

Walt’s tip for helping to make a successful viral marketing campaign:

1) Find a hot chick.
2) a) Give the hot chick something to do that parades her around in a dance
or
b) Make the hot chick look lonely and available
3)Make the production amateurish enough to convince viewers they’re not being setup.
4)Fun, unique, or exciting—Choose two.  Make it happen.

That’s pretty much it. 

Oh, and one last:

5)If a hot chick isn’t available, use Stephen Colbert.

Maybe this isn’t in the same category as viral marketing, but Zane’s Purple Panties sure managed to draw my attention because of the controversy.

Book not available in stores = seems more scarce; book touches on a taboo subject = “what’s the big deal curiosity”; author feels discriminated against = a show of solidarity by buying the book?

That’s some good marketing - whether intended or not.

LOL.  Coming from Chuck Palahniuk, that does not surprise me at all.  This is the same guy who wrote a story that routinely caused readers to pass out at live readings.  He’s a master of shock.

A netwok of 8-12 people?  Doesn’t help if they’re preschoolers, I’ll bet!

spaminator--quite34--try quite 3 and 4, and you’ve got my social circle!

Hokay, I simply don’t believe that Chuck’s writing made anyone pass out at a reading.  Throw up, maybe, especially if the reading was after-hours at a sleazy bar.  But pass out, no. 

Here’s my plan for a viral marketing campaign.  It involves Candy and Sarah, a dozen kittens, free bookmarks with forged Robert Pattinson autographs, a box of illegal fireworks, and a video camera, all set to Tom Jones singing “What’s New, Pussycat?”

Yes, there will be way too many Adobe Flash graphics and I will send it to Five Critical Trendsetters (Barbara Walters, the cute skater boy at Trader Joe’s, Barack Obama, Stephen Jobs, and Perez Hilton) and wait for my imminent fame.

My code is alone37—not once this viral campaign gets going!

This is actually a very interesting post.

I can’t say I’ve seen a lot of clever viral marketing campaigns launched by authors. There were the authors wearing swan hats and manga costumes at RWA. Those created a bit of a stir :-) Other than that, I’m drawing a blank at the moment.

I have, however, seen some things that may have unintentionally created buzz for a book--like a *really* bad review one book/author received on a major blog/site that got picked up by other blogs. Or the whole James Frey He-lied-on-Oprah! thing. Before that broke, I had no clue who he was (I admit, I live in a cave). I bought his book at a used bookstore :)

Well, in a coinci-dink, Seth Godin’s blog for today (Friday May 16) is on Viral Marketing - Why word of mouth doesn’t happen.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

Seth has a lot of blogs and a main site: http://www.sethgodin.com/sg/

Who is Seth, well, he is one of the guys who changed how marketing experts understand marketing itself.  His book Permission Marketing encapsulated the idea of moving away from"Wait! I’m advertising! And you must stop! what! you! are! doing! and be my victim!!!!” (What is called “interruption marketing,” which is how marketing worked for decades, and still does in a lot of areas like TV commercials.)

But even more stunning (and I mean stop in your tracks for-I-am-stunned-speechless), in 1999 came the Cluetrain Manifesto.

This manifesto is #1 The best example I know of (in other words it worked for me) of Viral Marketing and #2 changed how marketers not only did their jobs but actually thought about US, the consumers.

If you are interested in Viral Marketing or just effective marketing, this is something that will make your heart sing.

http://www.cluetrain.com/

In the world of marketing (or management or politics or information technology or ....) valued humans (who are clients or employees or voters or… ) are often called “seats” (as in people in chairs… “Look, we can ignore the people and talk about the seats for we are sophisticated").  Same with eyeballs and users.  And let us not forget the delightful “head count.”

Anyway, when you click on the cluetrain link, keep scrolling down as it is a long opening page. Try to imagine what it was like to read, for the first time, “We are not seats or eyeballs or endusers or consumers.  We are human beings - and our reach exceeds your grasp. Deal with it.”

So… viral marketing… lots of people talk about it as if it is a magic spell to cast over people and MAKE THEM BUY.  Yes, they will have no choice but do your bidding.  But it is really about the human element, about doing something so interesting or different or astounding or helpful or loving or WHATEVER that you-as-a-human turn to another human and make a comment.

So the real question in my brain is… how can I be astounding?  How can I be helpful?  How can I make a difference to another human being?  How can I be a laugh-riot or deeply compelling?  How can I participate in something grand/sizzling/cool/whatever-enough to create a human link?  As a human, *this* is how I was born.  I was not born to think about seats.

Because if I haven’t done that compelling thing, I haven’t done my part as a human… and other humans (not viruses, not blogs, not dollars, not site counts, not...) won’t… market?  No.  The goal isn’t to market, is it?  (If that is our ONLY goal, why not sell boxes of marketing instead of books?) The goal is for the human to interact with something of value (however that is defined).

Create meaning first. 

That’s what I found when I read the Cluetrain manifesto, and I couldn’t stop myself from telling others about it.  We call that viral marketing now (as if this term is more powerful than word-of-mouth), but what it really is, is one human being saying WOW real-honking-loud.  So loud another human hears it, even in a forest.

I don’t think hats, candy, keychains, pens or t-shirts sell books. (Although I can think of a few ways Marta could leverage those kittens into some sales.) I think books sell books. Everything else--ads, blogging, interviews, videos--has only one purpose: to lure the reader onto the author’s website to check out the excerpt or to persude her to pick up the book in the store and crack it open and read the first few pages.

I’m trying a different marketing tack this year, since my publisher isn’t touring me. I’ve offered 100 free copies from my backlist (advertised on my website) and 25 ARCs of the upcoming release to readers who engage to review the book somewhere (advertised to my newsletter subscribers.) The goal being, as SB Sarah writes, to have someone who already loves my work to tell others, “Dude, you’ve got to read this.”

The mailing costs aren’t insignificant, but the response has been amazing, and I’ve been impressed with the ingenuity with which readers are networking to get the word out.

To me, that’s the way viral marketing works--give consumers (to use a general term) motive, means or method to reach out to others and share their love for the product. It’s not about chalking AT&T;ads all over the sidewalks and making the city clean it up.

Although, I’ve got to say that Julia’s old-fashioned “write totally kick-ass books with unforgettable characters and expert plotting so that readers are salivating for more” is also an effective technique of getting book sales.

I’m so hooked that I constantly check the bookstore for her books even though I know a new one isn’t coming out for months.  (Sometimes the new covers fool me for a second.)

Marta! We just did viral marketing!

Julia, we did it without the one dozen kittens or the illegal fireworks!

You know I’m totally of a fan of yours, but you kill me by making me wait so long to see what happens with Russ Van Alstyne and Claire Ferguson. 

Maybe I better enter your contest for one of those ARCs.  Would you take a tabby for it?  I’d even be willing to in a “genuine” bookmark autographed by Robert Pattinson.

http://www.amazon.com/Flirting-Pride-Prejudice-Perspectives-Masterpiece/dp/1932100725/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1211046815&sr=1-1

I knew I had seen the picture from “rules of gentility” before!

I knew I had seen the picture from “rules of gentility” before!

It’s also on the new reprint of Heyer’s Cotillion.  It’s a Marcus Stone.

I am huge Palahniuk fan! Read all his work, even his two non-fiction works..