Buzz, Balls & Hype

Linktopia - are you 8 of 10?

They made car journeys pass faster, more interestingly. And you knew you had a good one when nobody wanted to get out of the car at the end of the journey.  NPR has the story on audio  here.

On average, 8 out of 10 people will read headline copy, but only 2 out of 10 will read the rest.  

Keep reading to find out  why so few words carry so much weight. The story is here.

...very good burgers and even better applied neuromarketing.

Five Guys know burgers and marketing.  Keep reading  here.

50 Things Not To Do If You Are A Publisher

Over at Nervous Breakdown a great great list of what not to do. If all publishers followed these suggestions the business would change a lot and possibly get very healthy.

THE DOCTOR IS OUT

(Hope you are enjoying the holiday weekend. See you next week.)

Linktopia

Linktopia with the help of Judge Page.  

But one of the publishers' biggest problems, he says, is that their selling strategies are built around book formats, and not about the interests of the people reading those books.

Find out who is doing the talking here.

With a sluggish year almost behind us, many are interested in what will make women--who buy 85% of what is sold in the U.S.--open their wallets.

Continue reading the story from Forbes here.

The special issue is editor-in-chief David Granger's latest ambitious attempt to produce the modern magazine, a product that marries the best of print and digital.

Is Esquire giving us a taste of how publishing will look sooner than we think?  The story is here.

THE DOCTOR IS IN

JANE-ITIS

Earlier this week I visited the Jane Austen exhibit at the Morgan Library and Museum. I'm sure I'll be back several times, probably dragging friends with me, before it leaves in March, but I wanted to make my first visit alone.

I get annoyed at people who claim exclusive ownership of a particular book or author based on pereceived expertise or deep sensitivity or something. "You didn't write the damn books," I always want to snap when someone refers to a writer she's not acquainted with by her first name, turns up her nose at "noobs" or otherwise assumes superiority over the average schmo. "They're out there for everyone to read--get over yourself!"

But Jane is mine. She rescued me from a difficult and somewht chaotic childhood and showed me the possibility of order and beauty. she sparked an early intrest in psychology by illuminating the ways people reveal their motives and feelings through language, gesture and dress. In college, I did my honors English independent study on the importance of theatrics in Mansfield Park, wrote a screenplay of the cabinet scene in Northanger Abbey for a film adaptation class, and used Lady Catherine deBourgh as my character study for my acting final. We are bonded in the way, in some cultures, the person who saves your life is considered your soul's guardian from that point forward.

So I resented the hell out of the dabblers who blocked my view of her letters to Cassandra and of the autograph pages of her only surviving manuscript, Lady Susan. They had come to the books through the movies, I imagined, and thought of her works as romantic chick lit. I wanted them out.

The culmination of the exhibit is an excentric film in which a variety of artists and scholars share their reactions to viewing the letters and manuscripts, and their personal responses to her life and work. I watched it with several of the tourists whose presence I so resented.

And a funny thing happened. As we listened to such disparate literary personalities as Siri Hustvedt and Colm Tóibín describe their awe at viewing letters that were written in her own hand, a fragile, temporary community began to build. As a body, we snorted and hooted at Cornel West's assertion that if he met her he would give her a hug--imagine her reaction!--and melted at his response to the question of whom he would invite to dinner with her: Chekhov. Yes! (Though I identified with Fran Lebowitz's confession that she couldn't bear to invite anyone else; she would want Jane all to herself.) We sat up a little straighter when Tóibín suggested seating her between Freud and Jung: such rich possibilities for brilliance and truth, or, more likely, for disaster.

And then it was over, and I left, not looking at anyone, not wanting to spoil the experience with chitchat. But I keep thinking how glad I am to have shared this experience after all--about the magic of great fiction that can entrance generations of diverse readers, and can engender the feeling in each of us of a personal, vital relationship that feels very much like love.

Susan O'Doherty, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist with a New York City-based practice. A fiction writer herself, she specializes in issues affecting writers and other creative artists. She is the author of Getting Unstuck without Coming Unglued: A Woman's Guide to Unblocking Creativity (Seal, 2007). Her Career Coach column appears every Monday on Inside Higher Ed's Mama, Ph.D. blog , and she is a regular monthly panelist on Litopia After Dark. Send your questions to her at Dr.Sue at mindspring dot com.

The Ad Man Answers #73

Thursday + Gregory Huffstutter = The Ad Man Answers

Q:  I am looking into buying remnant Cable TV and radio spots.  Any ideas?  What should I bid if I am doing a reverse auction with Bid4Spots as an example?  Are there any other ways to go after the remnant advertising on my own that you know of?  Thank you for your input.  It is greatly appreciated.

--David Domm

 

A:  Remnant advertising can be tricky business.  On the surface, it seems easy enough... you're just snatching up unsold space on TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, and websites.

But let's take a step back.

If you want a real-world equivalent to media buying, look no further than the travel industry.  Flying non-stop between LA and NY over Thanksgiving is going to cost a helluva lot more than connecting thru Houston on a random Tuesday. Basic supply & demand pricing.  It’s the same way TV networks charge a premium for "Dancing With The Stars" vs. late night reruns of "According To Jim."

At a certain point – full or half-empty – that Tuesday plane is going to take off from Houston just like that rerun of "According to Jim" is still going to air at 11pm, even if only a handful of advertisers fill the commercial breaks.

If you own an airline and have unsold seats, you can release inventory to outlets specializing in last-minute deals, like Priceline.  Because it’s better to get something for those empty middle seats, right?

In advertising, however, media outlets have a few more options.  For unsold inventory, they can air:

- Station Promos.  "Next week on FOX, don't miss an all-new episode of 'House'..."

- Public Service Announcements.  "This is your brain on drugs..."

- Bonus or Make-Goods for existing advertisers.  "We're sorry, Mr. Clorox Bleach Media Buyer, but your commercial on NFL Sunday didn't air correctly, so we're going to throw some freebies your way..."

It's in the media vendor's best interests to hang onto their inventory until the last possible deadline, hoping it will get sold at normal or slightly-discounted rates, knowing they can always fall back those station promos or PSAs. If a large advertiser unexpectedly pulls out, you might luck into a spot on "Dancing With The Stars,” but it's far more likely you’ll be airing in that 11pm "According to Jim."

Because most remnant deals are struck mere days before airdate, you need to be nimble to manage the negotiation process and back-end metrics.  Direct marketing agencies often specialize in buying remnant inventory (here's one I've worked with and can recommend), and have buying programs that measure ROI, like "Cost Per Sales Lead."  Experienced remnant buyers also have pricing history with the media vendors, and may place several accounts at once, leveraging their overall spend to secure further discounted rates.

But if you want to strike out on your own, a reverse auction like Bid4Spots is a great tool.  Reverse auctions are the opposite of eBay, which has a starting price for goods/services with potential buyers bidding up from there.  In a reverse auction, it's the buyer posting their advertising budget, dates, markets, and CPM goals (cost-per-thousand impressions), then the sellers (aka TV stations) bidding against other networks wanting to dump unsold inventory, with the lowest rate winning the transaction.

As a buyer on Bid4Spots, your strategy doesn't involve bidding per se, but establishing budgets and CPM thresholds high enough to attract desirable sellers, yet low enough to make the stations work hard for your business.  As a starting point, you can use these ballpark CPMs (not scientific, just guidelines based off experience) then whack 50-75% off.  You'll have to experiment with different budget levels and CPMs to find a sweet spot.  If you really want ESPN and TNT on your media buy, and you're only getting C-SPAN to bid for your budget, you'll need to adjust your strategy. 

GoogleTV is another way the lay person can place their own media.  In this case, it's a forward auction where you're bidding against other advertisers for station inventory.  The only downside is that most of GoogleTV's inventory is limited to DISH satellite subscribers (13 million households), with only a few networks (CNBC, Bravo, MTV, USA, MSNBC) available for purchase across their full cable universe (95 million households).

The web is a fount of remnant inventory, with ad networks specializing in packaging banner ads.  If you're willing to let the network run your advertisement across hundreds of websites – filling up quotas of unsold space – you can achieve major cost savings.  But if you’re not careful, it could mean your banner ad for “The T-Bone Lover’s Cookbook” accidentally winds up on Vegan.com.

That’s the risk of buying remnant.  Your creative needs to be ready to go on a moment’s notice, and you may not have time to check if the environment is the best fit for your message.  Plus, you need to have your funding secured and be willing to open up your schedule to non-prime placements.

Working with a trained media buyer would likely save you money and headaches in the long run.  Media people speak their own language, and the process is more complicated than calling your local ABC station, asking “So… got any spots on tomorrow’s ‘Flash Forward’ that haven’t sold yet?”

Gregory Huffstutter has been punching Ad Agency timecards for the past dozen years, working on accounts like McDonald's, KIA Motors, Suzuki Automotive, and the San Diego Padres. His first mystery, KATZ CRADLE is on submission while he's working on the sequel. The first 100 pages of his novel are linked here. For general advertising questions, leave a comment or send e-mail to katz @ gregoryhuffstutter dot com with 'Ask The Ad Man' in the subject line.

Linktopia

Linktopia (with the help of Judge Page) and another trio of links. 

Love it, hate it, or just don't care about it, but if you are looking for publicity you should at least be looking at Twitter.  Guy Kawasaki shows you how he tweets for business here.

Nikon teamed up with Ashton and his Twitter popularity to start a new promotion with a video hook.  The rest of the story at brandweek.com is here.

Staying at brandweek.com because here's the story on an app promotion (do you remember months and months ago when we kept saying mobile was going to be bigger than anyone could imagine) that with a little tweaking would have been a great fit for publishing. You might have seen the spot, here's the  story.

When Twittering Does Work

CBS Sunday Morning just did a story on the food trucks in Los Angeles and how they are drawing crowds via Twitter (one has 44,000) followers and it makes us wonder (not for the first time) how authors/publishers can do something similar. All these people showing up at different spots to get food they love could be meeting authors they love... or lots of other things.. what if publishers created events to give out samples in one spot one day in one city.. and what if... Here's a link that that came after the Twitter story in the Spring.

THE DOCTOR IS IN

Check out Susan Perry's article about my work on Psychology Today

Dear Dr. Sue,  
Your recent post about how negative words have a greater impact on people really struck a chord with me.  Sometimes, though, no words at all can be just as bad.  I've been querying agents and getting back nothing but form rejection letters, no comments whatsoever.   I have no idea why they don't want to read my novel, and trying to blindly guess at what I might need to do differently to attract someone's attention is impossible and frustrating. On top of that, they take an eternity to respond--not a month or two, but six months or more.  Some are going on a year.  At this rate, the book's going to be several years old by the time I even get somebody to read it. The whole thing is disheartening, and perhaps even a bit insulting.  I feel crazy to continue trying to sell my book. 

Am I too sensitive?  Or are agents actually behaving badly?  And why should I bother?

Sick of Writing

Dear Writing:

No, you’re not too sensitive. Rejection hurts, and being rejected repeatedly, especially in a way that makes you feel ignored, insignificant, or invisible, can be demoralizing and, as you say, disheartening. I don’t think the agents are necessarily behaving badly, either, though. They are swamped and shorthanded. They’re doing their best to wade through towers of queries, synopses, and manuscripts. If they took the time to write to each author, it would be another year or two before they got to yours, and they would never actually have time to sell a book. It’s easy to say, “don’t take it personally,” but how do we accomplish this? On last week’s Litopia after Dark, we discussed the negativity study. Dave Bartram commented that at one point in his writing career, he had become so embittered by rejection that the bad feelings contaminated his joy not only in writing, but even in reading: he couldn’t walk into a bookstore without thinking, You bastards! Dave said he had needed to learn to compartmentalize—to separate the act of writing from the effort to be published—in order to rediscover his motivation to write. This is not easy to accomplish, but it can be done, and it is essential for serious, sensitive writers. Try keeping your submission materials in a different place from your writing paraphernalia. If you perform both activities on the same computer, file your WIP in a separate location from the finished work that you are submitting. If you write in the morning before breakfast, submit in the evening after dinner. Don’t look at email, google agents, or compose submission letters while taking a break from writing: keep the two realms as discrete as possible. When the form letters do come, say to yourself, “It’s not personal—it’s just business.” Remind yourself that these people don’t know anything about you, and may not know much about literature—even if they’re highly successful, their area of expertise is sales. If it helps you to feel better (and this really does help some people), perform a ritual—burn the rejection slip in the bathroom sink; shred it and then flush it down the toilet; write FU all over it in red pen; or edit it for grammatical errors and stylistic awkwardness. Then put time and space between this unpleasantness and your exercise of your vocation. Perform a different ritual before sitting down to write: sprinkle lavender oil around the room (to dispel negativity), chant softly to yourself, “Art is Everything,” or read a favorite poem or passage. Remind yourself that this is what it is about: slipping into this imaginative space, creating work of beauty and meaning, discovering and honing your true vision. The rest is just buying and selling—exciting and fun when it goes well, but nothing to do with your core.

Susan O'Doherty, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist with a New York City-based practice. A fiction writer herself, she specializes in issues affecting writers and other creative artists. She is the author of Getting Unstuck without Coming Unglued: A Woman's Guide to Unblocking Creativity (Seal, 2007). Her Career Coach column appears every Monday on Inside Higher Ed's Mama, Ph.D. blog , and she is a regular monthly panelist on Litopia After Dark. Send your questions to her at Dr.Sue at mindspring dot com.

Hand Yelling Evidence of Angles

This is a lovely lovely magical book that is perfect for children and for grown up children too. Suza Scalora is a photographer whose work graces magazines and ads... but here as in her other books she creates fantasy proof of angels with a lovely narrative. Buy it for someone you love.