Writing and Marketing

Medford Oregon, January 23, 2016:  Two writer friends and I had coffee yesterday, because they wanted to talk about marketing their books. One of them has published a couple of books but his last one has not sold much yet. The other fellow is still working on his book. Both books are novels.

I confessed that although I’ve written several books and have published them in one way or another, I’m no big expert on this subject.

However, as the get-together unfolded, between my marketing experiences and their ideas we actually did put together a couple of plans that seem very likely to be effective.

I Read the News Today, Oh Boy

Today, I got an email from one of them, and in his email he said:

“All very interesting, and I want to know more, but my purist streak pulls me back to the Dark Side, to wit: Why don’t I just learn how to write a Story that makes a reader want to burn through it before lunch because I have made this huge promise and they are hungry for their payoff?”

As I began to respond to his question, it reawakened something I learned many years ago from my client Jerry Richardson, the author of “Powers of Persuasion,” which became a national best-seller, about how we humans leave out parts of sentences. I have found it very useful over the years. Perhaps you will find interesting this response to my writer friend —

Hi,

To answer your question —

You asked: “Why don’t I just learn how to write a Story that makes a reader want to burn through it before lunch because I have made this huge promise and they are hungry for their payoff?”

Errors of Omission

Your answer is inside your question. All English-speakers engage in a practice that linguists would call “omission” or “deletion.” We delete parts of the sentence because they are “understood.” An example:

“Going to the store?”
“Want something?”
“Maybe milk.”
“Running an errand first.”
“No problem.”

Any English speaker can understand this exchange. And any English speaker can, if desired, spell out all the deleted elements. For example:

“Going to the store?”   (Omits who, and part of the verb, and a time element. Complete sentence is “Are you going to the store now?”)

“Want something?”  (Omits who, and part of the verb, the answer to the question asked, and a location. Complete sentence is “Yes I am. Do you want something from the store?”)

“Maybe milk.”  (Omits answer to the question, a request, and a measurement. The complete sentence is, “Yes I do. Would you bring me a quart of milk?” assuming they normally buy in quarts.)

“Running an errand first.” (Omits a person, an agreement to the previous question, an entire sentence about a time delay, a location, and another question. Complete sentence is “Yes I will, But there will be a delay because I’m also running an errand, buying something at the stationery store. Does that work for you?)

“No problem.” (Omits an answer to a question, and an indication of agreement. Complete sentence is “The delay is not a problem for me. I am happy that you are willing to bring the milk.”)

And the reason for deletion as a universal practice is that humans naturally and unconsciously remove wasted motions from pretty much everything they do. No English speakers would have the following conversation in normal circumstances. It sounds stilted and pointlessly formal, as if it were the Coneheads talking:

“Are you going to the store now?”
“Yes I am going to the store now. Do you want me to bring to you something from the store?”
“Yes I do want you to bring to me something from the store. Would you bring to me a quart of milk from the store?”
“Yes I will bring to you a quart of milk from the store, But I ask that you be aware that there will be a delay because I am also running an errand, which is that I am buying something at the stationery store. Does that time delay for my bringing a quart of milk to you from the store work for you?”
“The time delay for you bringing to me a quart of milk from the store is not a problem for me. I am happy that you are willing to bring to me the quart of milk from the store.”

About the only place you hear this kind of language is when a writer is clumsily trying to weave backstory elements into a short story:  “You know, Luke my husband, because you are over six feet tall, you are always striking your head upon the door jamb of our cottage here in the middle of the forest, five miles outside of the small town in Northern Idaho where we live. Ha ha ha ha!”

Deletions are Useful

Now these deletions are also functional. You can actually perform therapy for a person who tells you about a problem by simply retrieving the deletions (which is easy and obvious as soon as you look for them), and than ask them questions about these deletions to bring them into the person’s awareness. For example:  “Well when you say everybody hates you, who exactly do you mean by everybody? And when are the times that you have seen this person do something that seems like they hate you? And what is it that you actually see or hear them doing when it seems like they hate you?”

The reason that this works as a therapy is that the sentences that come from a person’s mouth actually reflect his/her mental models, and the knowledge and viewpoints he/she unconsciously follows inside their heads. They don’t see things that are missing from their experience or their mental model or which is forbidden by their opinions, and so they cannot speak these things because these things are non-existant or invisible to them inside their heads.

For example, people who do not know how to sell cannot form very complete sentences about selling because they don’t actually have a complete mental model. If they do have a mental model, it is often non-functional, opinionated, and not based upon personal experience, and may be adopted wholesale from some other person.

For example, “I hate selling. It makes me feel swarmy.” (While they may be reporting a feeling they had one or more times in the past. there is a LOT of deletion here.)

The Answer is Often in the Question

And, to get back to the answer to your question, the answer is in the deletions inside your question.

You asked: “Why don’t I just learn how to write a Story that makes a reader want to burn through it before lunch because I have made this huge promise and they are hungry for their payoff?”

The deletions:
Who is this reader? How did the story get into his hands so that he could read it? And what was it that you did that caused the story to get into his hands? And how did this person hear about the large promise? And what was it you did that caused him to hear the big promise?

If we delete these things, including readers, and there are no readers, what does the rest of the sentence mean?

I think the question, rewritten, is: “Why can’t I just write a BETTER story, and then because it is now better, then (with no other effort on my part) a vast horde of people somehow find it in their hands and read it with delight?”

The truth is we’ve all been misled by the deletions in that “better mousetrap” story. In fact, you build a better mousetrap and stop there, and spiders can enjoy undisturbed webs across the path to your door.

Bummer

Because now we’re back to the original dilemma. The human truth is that is is far more fun (and comfortable) for most of us to write a story; and we know how to do that.

Unfortunately, It is far less fun, and far less comfortable to spend time on the marketing actions that will get that story in the hands of a reader, much less a horde of readers; and also far less fun, and far less comfortable to spend time on the marketing actions that will cause these currently non-existent readers to hear about your big promise in the first place.

Fictional Readers

To take the path your question suggests, we must create fictional readers, for only fictional readers can hear the promise or read the book with no marketing. It’s easy to create these fictional readers, just write a fictional story about your fictional success. In fact, we can do it right here, right now: “One day the writer wrote this book, and it was really, really good. And then seven hundred thousand people bought the book and paid a lot for it, and he became rich and famous!”

That was easy, wasn’t it?

But alas, outside our story, these fictional readers cannot buy your books.

If you want REAL readers, then marketing actions must be done, because you must have buyers before they can open the book to become readers.

The bare truth is that unless lightning strikes — like winning the lottery with a ticket that mysteriously blew in your window — the most brilliant story in the world with no ability to effectively get it into the hands of real-world readers … is a manuscript buried in a casket along with the writer, many years ago, crumbling into unread dust.

It Doesn’t Matter How Good the Book Is?

It doesn’t matter how good the story is if people don’t read it.

They can’t read it if they’ve never heard about it. And right now, 7.1 billion people on this planet have never heard about it. Further, they can never hear about it if there is no careful marketing plan, no effective marketing actions, and no attainment of successful sales.

Without marketing, for all practical purposes, THERE IS NO BOOK.

Oh What is a Writer to Do?

So we come to this — Working on making the book better without fixing the broken/nonexistant marketing is running a treadmill. Good exercise, maybe it feels good, but takes you nowhere.

In asking your question it’s not your “Dark Side” talking. It’s your blind side.

You gotta market, and successfully, if you want to earn money by writing a novel.

Perhaps you will hate this response, because I’m guessing (from the deletions in your sentence) that these parts are unattractive. Well, go ahead. My definition of a friend has only two parts: A friend is someone who is loyal, and who tells you the truth.

I tender this viewpoint in friendship.

— Arthur

PS:  While even Picasso continued learning till the end, as a practical matter, you don’t need better writing skills. The proof? Look at the best-sellers and estimate the percentage who are better writers than you. Not that many, right? This tells us that it’s not the writing skill that enabled them to sell those books.

So what could it be? 🙂