Fried Chicken

 by Charlotte Hinger

 I found this really great cartoon in The New Yorker. It was perfect for my Type M post. I really wanted to use it. It featured this chicken and the ridiculous efforts a certain social media company  (you can bet it will remain nameless) uses to win users to their network

I can't use it. People who know what they are doing (not me) say that nothing will get one sued faster than copying images without permission. What's really sad is after many years I have mastered the knock of inserting pictures into blogs. Some of my friends mastered the art at the very beginning. They just went plink with their index finger and voila--witty entries appeared that were illustrated.

The cartoon was so applicable to what's on my mind: marketing. I can't use the cartoon, but I can tell you what it was about. A guy is walking down a hotel corridor carrying a chicken, knocking on each door, telling each occupant that he would like like for them to join his professional network.

I thought it was hilarious because it summed up the sheer looniness of much of today's marketing efforts. The number of books being published every year is astronomical. Far too many for the market to absorb. The industry counts as a book a work that has an International Standard Book Number. No doubt there are many more that do not have this number. 

The whole purpose of marketing is to get a book into the hands of persons who might want to read it. One of the surest ways to do this is to win an award given to writers in that genre. I always read the Edgar winners and the finalists. I read the winners of Western Writers of America Spur Award. I read the Pulitzer prize winners for fiction and some of the finalists. There are many other contests that interest me.

Another sure way to focus attention on a book is through reviews. Unfortunately, the publications with the most influence (New York Times, Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and BookList) receive so many books in a week that it's difficult to make the cut. The New York Times receives about 1000 books a week. Of course, there's a substanial increase in sales of a title when it's featured. 

Sadly, with the winnowing of small town or regional newspapers there are fewer publications that try to call attention to local authors or novels that have something to say about issues in that locale. 

Marketing is an important part of the business. I've always thought those of us who have had the good fortune to be traditionally published have a duty to our publishers to do our best to sell our books. 

There's always someone waiting in the wings who would be tickled plumb to death to take our place!