Is That Noise An Avalanche Or A Stampede?

By John Ramsey Miller

In case you haven’t noticed, TV shows like THE TODAY SHOW are basically 95% advertisement/ promotion content and 5% news. Seriously, unless there’s a disaster of epic proportions, the first five minutes of the telecast contains the most news you’re going to see for three hours. The other morning Al Roker stood before a Sharp TV monitor to wave his hands at the high def map of crappy weather happening (and he shamelessly plugged “This Sharp Monitor”). That was followed by one of many “What’s new in Electronics” features. Then cooking with chef whoever, make-up tips, some stuff about babies, and a controversial author hawking her book condemning the left-wing media over the left-leaning media. I love irony. Yet I watch it every morning and I’m a consumer and I want to see or hopefully own the latest electronics just like everybody else. Since I am officially downsized for life I am not buying all of that totally unnecessary shiny crap like I used to. For Christmas I got an iPod. It’s on my dresser and one of these days I’m going to figure out how to use it and at that point I intend to load it with music and books and possibly videos of my dogs lying under the porch.

The world is all about promotion of products because unless we all buy, buy, buy, the economy collapses. Most of us fall for sales pitches in some form or another every day, and night until we sleep. In order for someone to act on a sign or ad, they have to see it nine times and have to be open to the product, or they zone it out. Of the millions of messages most of us are exposed to, our brains screen out all but a few. I spend a few years in advertising and I was pretty good at making people want things. But after twelve years at this craft I still have no idea how to promote my own books. Even though I understand that if I don’t do it, it probably won’t get did, I curl up in a corner at the thought of promoting myself. It’s no secret that the authors who best promote themselves …sell best.

My first fiction editor told me something that stuck with me, “It is your job to write the books and ours to sell them. You handle your end and we’ll handle ours.” The perfect situation for this author, and most other authors I know. She wanted me to spend my time writing and not out at signings because she explained that they could sell more books with one small ad than I could crisscrossing the countryside pen in hand. And she was right …at the time. Gilstrap told me recently that what she said was probably true twelve years ago but that the days of being an author and staying away from “flogging” the work and letting the publicity department at the publisher take care of it, is in the same trash can with last year’s Sony Play Stations. Don’t get me wrong, my present publisher’s publicity department does a thorough job, but none of the houses have the budgets they had in the old days and not a farthing to waste. If your books sell in big numbers it’s a different story, but most of us don’t knock Patterson off the best-sellers lists with any regularity.

I’ve been thinking about doing an infomercial where a reader can (if they act immediately) get two books for the price of one if they pay the ten bucks shipping and handling plus they’ll get a bonus offer of a plaster pig-lying-in-the-sunshine-smiling paperweight.

My new book, THE LAST DAY came out in Mass Market paperback December 30th. That’s a picture of it up there in the first paragraph because I couldn’t figure out how to put it right here where this “X” is.

I am presently writing a new book without a publisher signed on, which is not really unusual, but sort of scary in the current currents. I am told that the mood at the major houses is akin to Paris in the days before the Terror where necks are being eyed for the blade, and agents are worried because selling books to the houses is harder than selling new Chevrolets. For years I’ve told aspiring authors the odds of a financially successful career are slim, but possible. Lately a lot of best-selling authors are seeing their numbers plummet and it appears that the ranks of new works being purchased by the houses are being trimmed down, and the amounts of advances being lowered. I think we may be seeing the death of big-house publishing as we’ve know it, even when the economy improves. What we do now will determine our own survival as authors. I don’t intend to be a dinosaur standing around chewing plants wondering what that growing bright thing in the sky might be. Okay, now all we have to figure out what we are going to do about selling our work in a new way and in a whole new world. I think we best be looking for alternatives to depending on the traditional houses, and living without their advances, and not thinking primarily in the printed-books-shipped-in-boxes model, is something we’d better explore sooner than later. Or we can look for a career change. So far I have my eyes open, but I can’t see anything clearly through the fog of uncertainty. Yet I am pretty sure I hear a thundering herd of something large coming toward me.

Check out my newly improved site: http://www.johnramseymiller.com/

So, gang, what can we do to stay ahead of the game? Curling up in a corner isn’t working.

4 thoughts on “Is That Noise An Avalanche Or A Stampede?

  1. A lot to chew on in your post, John. The times are certainly changing. I’m also writing my next one (with Lynn Sholes) on spec. But I look at that as a plus. When the time comes to pitch it to a new house, the selection of publishers still around will be the strongest ones to survive the future. I think we’re going through a thinning of the herd and the publisher that figures out how to stay ahead of the curve is the one I want printing or streaming or blogging or injecting or skywriting my book. As for right now, we all need to keep doing our job which is to write the best books we can. If it ain’t on the page, it won’t be on the shelf, virtual or otherwise.

    BTW, I love The Today Show, too, but I’ve also become addicted to Morning Joe on MSNBC, 6-9 weekdays. Give it a try.

  2. No, they are reading you here. It’s just too friggin’ scary to even contemplate–the economy coupled with the future of publishing…

  3. I agree with Robin-it is scary. I read this when it first posted and wanted to think on it a bit. Writing on spec is always scary, especially if (like me) you’ve done so before and the book hasn’t sold. And this is an extremely tough environment in which to sell a book. I do also feel that I’m in the dichotomous position of a)trying to downsize in our own life (Anna Quindlen wrote a great column about this recently for Newsweek) and b)simultaneously being part of the problem, trying to promote a commodity for people to buy.
    As far as what you can do in terms of marketing, it’s the old adage that 50% will work, you’ll just never know which. I grapple with that every book as I try to figure out what might have worked last time, and what might be worth tossing in favor of trying something new. This time around I think I’ll drastically cut down on my actual touring in favor of virtual tours.

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