Since this is not the first Monday of the month I am a week late for my usual post when I have a little rant or I talk about books and marketing. (You are probably surprised I think about writing about books and marketing – yes?)
Sadly, I now know that I will never be the first person to visit Las Vegas and not put a single coin in a betting machine. It’s been done, but my point here is that I never waste money, and no one on this planet will persuade me to pay for something that I don’t need and don’t want.
I’ve always had to be careful of the pennies, and I’m tough and unmoved by sellers of any kind. Those who have read my autobiographies will tell you I am super-tough.
That said, I am wary of all the training and ‘tip orientated’ (not the rubbish kind) emails that drop into my inbox, promising me #1 in all genres within 10 minutes if I only cough up a couple of hundred (You can afford it! We offer monthly payments!).
I understand that some gurus, probably in the US have spent weeks, months, years, decades working out the very, best, persuasive selling techniques. Very few of them work with me. Why?
Firstly, in their excitement and enthusiasm they often treat me like an idiot. OK, so I am an idiot but I keep that a huge secret.
Secondly, I like to know up front exactly what this is going to cost, then tell me the benefits.
Do they? Not a chance. I am treated to a long winded (especially if you add in the ums and ahs) story about how they were broke and in debt before they had this amazing, brilliant, failsafe epiphany and now they’ve just bought a second Maserati for their 3 year old.
By now I’m shuffling my feet. Tell me the cost then tell me the main features of the product/wisdom/information.
Do they?
Not a chance. They waffle on and on and on, often two at a time if they are podcasting and they still don’t get to the point.
I’ve watched videos on line for all kinds of products and it’s always the same. A lot of them last a full hour by which time I’m screaming up the walls and swinging off the curtains in frustration.
DH and I got caught once, you know those guys in the street offering a free bottle of bubbly to attend the presentation? Seven times I interrupted the hyperventilating salesman to try and speed him up.
“How much are the units?”
“I’m coming to that just now.”
Several more minutes pass as he waxes lyrical.
“Can’t we just jump to the price right now?” He ignores me and babbles on.
“Look, please.” (This is me being patient and polite). “If it’s above a certain figure there is no way we have the spare cash, and so, we are not able to buy one however nice it is.”
“I tell you in a minute.” He rabbits some more. He is not deviating one milimetre from his prepared script.
“But if you jump straight there it will save our time and your time when you could be talking to a prospective customer who does have the spare cash.”
“If you’ll just listen to …”
By this time, I’m ready to jump over the desk and strangle him and it’s building up my resentment to buy big time. I’m getting to the stage where if he offers me a whole condo for $5 I shall tell him it’s too expensive.
And then there are the book blurbs – and we all know what we should put in those.
“As Carin is stalked by an unknown …. Can Matthew save her in time?”
“She yearns for love but could this be the one saviour she has been waiting for?”
“Can they discover the murderer before he throws them on the bar-b-que and eats them with a crunchy green salad like he’s done with his other victims?”
I just want to scream “Of course he/she/they will or no one would be left to tell us about it!”
OK, so I am really strange, it’s true that modern selling techniques just don’t hack it for me. That said I’ll simply put my Amazon author page address and you can visit it or not as you please.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lucinda-E-Clarke/e/B00FDWB914/
Tell me I’m not alone! Does the above get right up your nose as well? (Now you weren’t expecting a phrase (or is it a clause with a verb in it?) of such literary genius from me were you?)
Till next week when I will be back with the travels and history and the tale of the lap dancing club – take care.
lucinda E Clarke 
You’re not alone, Lucinda!
But how to sell books? There’s the rub. With the enormous amount of books being published, and, mind you, some are of a deplorably low quality, one has to pitch. Book blurbs can hardly do justice to books if they’re good. How much the worse off are those, who can’t write to save their lives? At the same time, there are many successful authors, who really aren’t that wonderful.
It is a conundrum, but I believe that we can only carry on, writing and giving the selling our best shot.
One thing has become clear to me, in my relatively short period as a published author: it helps if we, the authors, stand together.
Perhaps the best selling point for any book is the reviews it can gain. For my own part, I try to review all the books I read, but I could do better. It is difficult to find the time to do all the necessary work. By that, I mean writing, publishing, managing the social media, a blog, etc, etc.
I wish you the best of luck with your ongoing career.
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Thank you HM. I’ve said this before I know, but in earlier times I was a shy, polite sort of person who is now morphing into a screaming virago with ‘buy my books’ in every sentence. I’ve learned that if you sit quietly in the back row, everyone ignores you and no one even knows your books are out there. I’m looking for the middle line – is there one?
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My best guess is that no one really knows how to sell books, they just do a bunch of stuff and some take off. Others don’t. They claim the credit for the ones who do and blame the stars for the ones that don’t.
That’s not much help, is it?
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Quite possibly Ellen. By the time we found out about a new way, it’s already outdated
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“I am really strange modern selling techniques” Erm – some kind of punctuation required here comma or full stop. Apart from that, I loved this piece. So on the button (or is it nail?)
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Eagle eye Frank 🙂 Popped back in and put it right.
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You’re on target with this post, as usual.
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Thank you David. 🙂
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There’s a whole industry related to producing those, ‘but wait, there’s more!’ ads, and infomercials, and ‘seminars’ … I too, want to know the nuts-n-bolts upfront. I once said, “If you can’t get to the point in five minutes, they whatever you’re offering isn’t worth my time.” They didn’t make the time limit and I left! 🙂 … but I think we’re outliers.
Book blurbs – Oiiii! … some of them are execrable! … and written by someone who clearly hasn’t read the book at all. 🙂 … we need to revitalise how ‘hooks’ are written. I don’t know a magic formula but I do know what doesn’t work! Maybe that’s a good place to start. 😀
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Now you’ve got to the root of it – don’t waste my time – think of the elevator pitch when you get in with Steven Spielberg! I just find them so annoying when they go on and on and on, so who came up with the long-winded refusal to tell you the price until they had bent your ear for hours.
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I think it was a ‘learn to play the piano fast’ seminar, with cheese platters, (sustenance) and a
no obligation’ cardboard keyboard free gift. 😀
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Ha ha they think of everything!
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I have to disagree with you on one point: you are clearly not an idiot. I’m so relieved to find another writer who feels the same way: it seems there is a predator lurking around every browser tab, waiting to pounce on the enthusiasm we all feel for our own writing. I sign up for “webinars” about how to manage my blog, or pitch to agents, and they turn out to be extremely long-winded sales pitches for expensive editing services or a how-to book. I send manuscripts to “publishers,” who get my hopes up by responding with glowing feedback, then after pages and pages explaining the industry, they ask for $10,000 to “co-publish” my book.
The fact that these humanitarians are willing to share their get-rich-now schemes is just proof that the schemes didn’t work for them… otherwise, why wouldn’t they just sip drinks by the pool?
On a heavier note, it’s actually a big part of what’s taken away my motivation to write. I haven’t written anything of significance since last June, and it’s partly because of the marketing assault that plagues me whenever I try to promote a manuscript. HM Holten is right that we have to “bug people” too, in order to sell our writing… but the people we “bug” are agents who invite it. As writers, we are targets for those who sniff weakness or desparation.
Every writer needs to be familiar with the Writer Beware blog at http://accrispin.blogspot.com.au/
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Kalanleitch I am not alone! What a relief. 🙂 What puzzles me is though how these marketing gurus came up with this long winded formulae which, instead of me slobbering at the mouth to put my hand in my pocket, simply builds up resentment to anything they have to sell. And yes I agree, it puts you off writing, you are made to feel such a failure because you are not selling millions of books every day – but that’s your own fault because you did not buy their magic formulae. There are a few who do write helpful and free blogs and to them, I am very grateful.
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Great link to Writer Beware, interesting stuff
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I am even worse, Lucinda. I have instant resistance. I don’t want to be sold anything at all. Show me the product, the price and the description and leave me alone to decide. Yours is the only email newsletter I bother to read and I never buy into online sales blurb about anything. It’s instant turn off for me. Can’t stand it. As it happens, I can’t buy any more of your books until you’ve written them…haha, but I try and nudge others your way as much as possible 🙂
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Ah thank you Val. We must be a strange sub-species of buyers!
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Just one more thing we have in common 🙂
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There are too many exciting and interesting things to do in and around Las Vegas to waste time putting money in machines that aren’t giving you a bag of chips or a Coke in return.
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It’s a place I would love to visit, but unlikely unless I suddenly sell millions of books – yeah right! 🙂
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