29
Jun
Building a Brand
I left BellSouth eighteen months ago, and after six months playing games and thinking about my future, decided it was time to work again. I had had decided to give consulting a go and built a website for my company, finanSight, a clever corruption (I thought) of ‘finance’ and ‘insight’ that characterized what I wanted to do. I realized a website wasn’t sufficient to make me rich, so began to develop a marketing plan.
I never got very far with the plan: within weeks the good folk at AlphaResults, introduced by a friend, needed some help, and nervously and clumsily I stumbled into a relationship with my first client. But it worked, and I am still working for them. Less than a month later I was having lunch with a former colleague, and he suggested that he could use my help with his business, DCSHealth. He became my second client, and I am still working for him nine months later. And then an old boss called me up to introduce me to a business acquisition team who he was thinking of backing, and I had my third client and was fully engaged.
Along the way I have been writing and wondering why it is so terribly hard to use my network to crack into publishing. Given that I haven’t hit the mother lode yet, I recently decided I needed to turn up the heat on my advisory business. I have done no marketing to speak of, so was just thinking again of how to play that game, when out of the blue the phone rang: it was an old colleague with a nice chunk of work, a client made to order!
The point, of course, is that my name is a brand that carries reliable, recognizable attributes among my business colleagues, and it almost sells itself, but it means squat in the writing world. My wife, also an author, just told me that Michael Connelly should call in his next book. He has a brand and no longer has to try.
It took me twenty years to build my current brand, and while I hope it won’t take that long in this new world, I am certainly in for a long slog. And this time it’s not enough to make the brand work with a few hundred senior folk, it will have to be thousands, then tens of thousands.
I’d better not quit that day job just yet!
editorial Uncategorized Writing
July 7th, 2007 at 9:14 pm
I have written many books,short stories, essays, poems, articles, screenplays, and some radio plays.
Yes, book publishing is marketing, but I don’t know if that is always such a good thing. I studied English and American literature for my BA and MA and also taught it, so I still have a perhaps antiquated and romantic view that literature is supposed to do more than give people what they expect…when a ballet mother I know brought in several of the last decade’s best-sellers and announced that she would throw them away if nobody took them, I asked her what one of the books was about. She couldn’t remember. Her reaction was, “Oh,it was some trashy thing I read at the beach and it made no impression.” If that was a best-seller, the pinacle of success in writing today, that most writers aspire to, then what was the point?
Well, the answer to that question is easy. Each of us has to has to have his own point, must find the meaning in what we write, or write out of that core.
The marketing is important, but so much of that has to do with “credentials”, or “platform”…what right do you, the writer, have to be writing a book and why should anyone read it?
For me, that question is irrelevant and any answer will be purely speculative. The proof of the value of a book is in the reading. And anyone who reads my work will understand its value.
It may sound arrogant, but that is the arrogance which any writer of conviction must have–and has probably earned.
July 8th, 2007 at 3:42 am
Thanks for the comment Eric. The writer of conviction must, indeed, have the confidence that their work is good, maybe even great, and perhaps anyone reading it will realize that. But your knowledge wonb’t make anyone pick it up, any more than my conviction that I have a brilliant new product will fill the shelves at WalMart. If it’s enough for your close friends and family to say, “Wow, that Eric, he’s really a cool guy,” then I’m very happy for you. But remember they are only reading based on the “family brand” that you have built up over the years anyway.
Reading a book takes time that people aren’t willing to give you unless they have a very good reason, and over time this “reason” becomes your brand.
July 27th, 2007 at 7:44 am
You tickle me. I have two responses.
First, how do you define success as a writer? Is it critical acclaim? Unit Sales? $ Sales? Winning awards? Personal satisfaction? Your scorecard is very important to consider. I had a conversation with my brother and nephew recently about success in the music business. My brother was bragging that since he makes his living as a composer/musician (and won an emmy and grammy), his success qualifies him as “the” expert. I asked: what’s your scorecard? He said “money, of course.” Then my quick-witted nephew said, “Then 50 Cent is the most knowledgeable musician of all time.”
I think you get my point.
Second, is my predictable response, from two viewpoints. You have to make a concerted effort to get outside your comfort zone (and network) to branch out into another one. And, as far as people who put down the publishing business for its emphasis on marketing, we have to remember that not only is it a business, it is a business in a severe struggle for financial survival. There are perhaps millions of writers out there who expect their books to sell “by osmosis” without any effort. Sorry, that’s not the products sell. Writers who want their books to sell without marketing are lazy, scared or both.
I will add, however, that the publishing industry needs to recognize that they are in a chicken-egg quandary. They expect an author to already be on the road marketing a book that hasn’t been published, yet what’s the point in scheduling appearances if your book isn’t out there? They need to test for a) a good idea/premise/message and b) drive/commitment.
Is your desire to sign with a publisher? Then please, my friend, don’t join the host of writers out there lamenting the need for marketing, because their scorecard must NOT be to get published. (I’m not sure what their scorecard is, frankly…) But you - Gareth Young - are way too smart and sophisticated for that!
August 1st, 2007 at 3:09 am
Gareth, I hadn’t realized you’d returned to blogging; I just happened to stumble across this, this morning in my Feeds section (which I never check). Good to see it!
As to the subject matter of these latest posts, thankfully I have no experiences to offer; all of my friends who are artists of any kind seem to be caught in this position, of spending more time and energy trying to sell art than to produce it.
The buzz word a few years back in finding a meaningful career was to follow your passion and try to make your living doing what you love most. I tried that and failed, after ending a professional career that was unsatisfying for a similar reason; it ate up all my time and my identity. These days I have a job that is meaningless to me and that I don’t think about after I leave the office. I don’t make that much money and it’s not that satisfying, but that nine hours a day does not too badly interfere with my intention for the balance of my life, and that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.
So I applaud your courage and what I perceive to be underlying confidence in yoru art. Considering what sells these days, I’m not sure that commercial success isn’t more of a condemnation. Maybe you are experiencing the true reward for the quality of your work at this time, when it is being experienced more by people with the ability to appreciate it.
Just an unverifiable thought. Hang in there!