I’ve finished my book. Yea! Now for the hard part: marketing it – and me. This will apparently involve branding myself (sounds painful), identifying the niche audience and then developing an expandable platform. I’ve got to admit; I’m not looking forward to accessing my inner pushiness. On the other hand, being assertive is pretty much a condition for survival.Besides, given the competition for public attention these days, it makes sense to learn the ins and outs of mass marketing. I figured I’d start with some examples of what not to do and was pleased to find this week’s news stories have yielded a bumper crop of marketing no-nos:
- DO NOT market yourself as a thoroughly untainted candidate from Illinois if you’re going to have to retract, alter and otherwise adjust your recollections about how many calls you took from ex-Governor Blagojevitch’s brother.
- DO NOT market yourself as California’s all-powerful non-partisan savior if you’re going to have to cede all power to a centrist broccoli farmer to prevent California from a budget end-of-days .
- DO NOT market yourself as a baseball icon and potential Hall of Famer if you’re going to be caught injecting yourself with suspicious substances provided by your cousin (PS: you don’t need a college education to know the difference between right and wrong and being 21 means you’re not a child in most cultures).
- DO NOT market yourself (or let yourself be marketed) as NBC’s new late-night king until we see whether, as your mentor takes over the prime-time slot just ahead of you, 10 PM is the new 11:30 PM
- DO NOT market yourself as an appropriate mate for a lonely widow if, in fact, you are a 200-pound chimpanzee.
Another one, not limited to this week, bears repeating: DO NOT market your book as a memoir if in fact part or all of it is made-up. Publishers also don’t have to tell me twice.
1 Woman' s Vu by Nikki Stern 
Oh come now! the marketing approaches you listed above were certainly helpful at one time—ahhh but not now. I for one will still give Conan my undivided attention! he deserves it- he was the only one during the writer’s strike that entertained us (remember the spinning wedding ring?)…NBC has sold out to Leno. They get a a free ride and don’t have to produce any programming for the 10pm slot. What do we get…more of the same- maybe this is really some kind of reality show- “Old Late Night Hosts…and …’ Stay tuned but not to NBC from 10 to 11.
Dear Nikki,
Maybe your memoir should be about the paucity of eligible men of quality. I’m so sorry things didn’t work out for you and the CHIMPANZEE…maybe better luck with the BROCCOLI FARMER or a CANDIDATE FROM ILLINOIS?
Either way, continue to INJECT YOUR quest for your own LATE NIGHT KING with your trademark witty insights…publishers (and your fans) will love that!
Hah! I hope you’re not suggesting I write about something as personal (not to mention boring) as my so-called love life – yawn. Best to keep my witticisms focused on current events and hope my fans increase in number while staying as high-quality as they are now.
Tell more about your book.
Hi Nora: Hmm,. don’t want to give away the title yet but what I can tell you in advance of actually getting it into print is that it’s a book that derives from my personal experience as a victim who was temporarily seen as having moral authority, which made me ask “what is it, who has it, what does it mean to have it and why do I get the feeling it’s a seriously outdated, not to mention corrupted notion?” Obviously, I’m playing a little bit with semantics but it’s the idea of “moral” plus “authority” that’s gone all wrong in my view – in politics, in medicine, and in popular culture, to name a few topics I look at in my compact little book. Within a month or two, it’ll be available via a website I’ll link to from here — then we’re off and running!
First of all, thanks Nora ‘cause I didn’t want to embarrass myself by asking a question I assumed everyone else knew with regard to the book. I know….I’m not a long-time visitor but nevertheless….
Obviously you should be your own publicist because you have definitely gotten me very interested with your brief comments about the content. Now I’ll see if I have any talent at all with regard to reading between the lines since ‘I think’ I may have a sense about its premise.
And yes….I’ll let you know just how terribly wrong I was if necessary! 🙂
Alan: You certainly have a talent for making this author feel much more positive about making the decision to tackle the marketing on her own…thank you for that!
Thank you, Nikki, for answering my rather abrupt comment. I’m with Alan: your book sounds compelling and I’ll be waiting for your posting some of it.
Nora if a quarter of the people I meet were half as polite as you’ve been, somehow it would add up to a better place 🙂