I tend to be a sucker for articles on ebook marketing. Hope springs eternal that I’ll stumble across a fresh insight, some new angle on the industry that I can use. Who knows what that might look like? Perhaps an untapped market on Mars that loves epic fantasy?
Anyway, I just read a piece by a well-respected guiding light in the indie movement. Boiled down in a nutshell as I mix my metaphors like a bartender shaking up a cocktail for James Bond, the article advised the following: increase your customer base, charge more, have more to sell.
Uh, well…hmm…
Kind of reminds me of the article I once saw about a poll of doctors that said the number one way to live longer was to not die.
Anyway, the article plunged me into a deep, moss-encrusted well of nostalgia, complete with small frogs chirping (yes, like birds) Rule Britannia, bringing back the sunlit days of yesteryear when I bravely braved the cubicle land that was Big Idea Productions (makers of Veggie Tales, excellent company-paid lunches, and looming bankruptcy).
We frequently hired consultants in that business. They flew in (usually from either New York or Los Angeles) and spent several days onsite, dressed in impressive clothing and using words like “synergy” and “paradigm” and “dynamic.” They would end up telling us what we already knew (such as: zip up your pants after going to bathroom, never accept large wooden statues of horses from Greeks, and don’t eat oysters in months beginning with the letter Z). We would then pay them lots of money in order to get them to go away and leave us alone.
Of course, we never learned, which is why we would start thinking about hiring more consultants. Usually in the spring, when hope springs afresh and eternal, kind of like how Old Faithful in Yellowstone Park always leaps up again every now and then, jetting up into the air and causing tourists to scurry and click-click-click with their cameras and Mabel Thorkelson of San Jose, California to screech at her husband, “Bob! Get Junior away from that moose! I tell you, we should just put that kid in reform school and be done with it!”
This, in turn, forms Junior’s character, giving him a deep-seated antipathy of authority (such as moose and his mother). Later in life he will end up being a successful bank robber and will fall in love with a beautiful Spanish girl named Esmerelda.
I digress.
All that to say, yes, hope does spring eternal, which means I will probably continue reading articles that advise on ebook marketing, even though none of ’em ever have anything new to say.
Thank you for the summary of this article; now I won’t have to bother reading it myself. In return, I’ll summarise some webinars I listened to recently, which were talking about “how to increase your mailing list subscriptions”: get more people to read your blog, and get them all to subscribe to your list. You’re welcome.
It kind of reminds me of my late mother-in-law’s reply when I asked her how to [paint pictures, make pickled eggs]: “It’s easy! You just do it!” Sure, Mom, sez you.
I fail, however, to understand why Bob Thorkelson Jr. is going to be afraid of moose’s mother. It’s probably a dynamic synergy paradigm. Rule Britannia!
Ah. Those webinars sound familiar. I think a lot of those people are just repackaging stuff they’ve heard/read from someone else. And then the someone else sees THAT webinar and repackages…vicious circle of meaninglessness. Captain Obvious is in charge, no doubt.