Everything old is new again!

I’m partly the odd product of trying to maintain a skillset that straddles the world of marketing and advertising design as it was in the 1970s, and today’s digital age. When I began to pursue my career in the graphic arts, I lugged examples of my work around in a big, zipper portfolio. Back home, I had a colorful collection of marker pens, mechanical lead holders and non-photo-blue pencils scattered across the top of a big sloping desk. To the side were reams of bound drawing paper, tissue, semi-transparent visualizer paper. Several small cabinets with wheels scurried about the office to serve whichever need was critical for the project at hand.

In the corner stood a huge, blue, sit-down Goodkin 5B, which was a glass-backed camera of sorts, used to project a scaled image of an object or photograph from a moving focal plane/copyboard, through a tilted glass back and onto a sheet of paper. It’s hard to imagine the amount of work that went into a rough layout rendering. Precisely ruled lines measured to typographic x-heights (lower case letter heights from baseline) to simulate text on a page. Scaled Polaroid prints from a photo shoot to simulate the shots to be used, until the processing was complete and “chrome” proofs could be generated from the film separations. Stacks of cut-up Photostat prints, saved to recover the silver from them. Haberules, Pica scales, linen testers. Type spec and copy marking. Did I mention reams of paper? Collaboration was the rule. I collaborated with agency account men, copywriters, printers, even paper salesmen.

Fast forward forty years, and all the tools and toys have changed. Many of the prime jobs of that day no longer exist. Now, visualizing any concept and sharing it around the room is streamlined, and AAs – authors alterations – once the bane of agency life, are now no biggie. Markets numbering in the hundreds of millions can now be pitched instantly with advertising that is tailored to the prospect’s interests. Those same prospects can be pitched simultaneously across a variety of media and those potential buyers are better known now and more tightly targeted than ever before. My end of the design job has changed in no small measure, due to the proliferation of digital technology and communications, but…

the core of that business is exactly the same as it was long ago. I remember a famous comedy sketch in which Mel Brooks, assuming the character of the 2000 year old man, holds up a rubber chicken, shaking it and calling out, “You wanna buy dis? It’s a chiggen!” Presented as the moment when advertising was created, this sketch drew a great deal of laughter. it’s still basically the same game, with three players: the seller, the product (rubber chicken) and the buyer. All marketing comes down to these three. Bells, whistles, flashy tools and new mediums don’t change that in the least. All they do is refine the seller’s call. Refining that call for better response, and especially a measured response has created and supported entire industries in the arts, in communications, in printing. The list is long, but the idea behind it is simple: position your product so it can be seen by your prospect, then teach your prospect about your product in such a way that they will be motivated to buy it.

Writers who hope to publish their writing are faced with a sudden immersion into this business. They often rebel against the idea of having to act like a hawker, talking up their book all the time, sending out hundreds of pitch letters. The business of publishing a book is usually seen as not as comfortable as all the work that went into writing it. Writers don’t want to have to be pitch-men. They often see themselves as above that. Besides, that’s why a writer struggles to find a publisher. It protects them from having to don the striped jacket, straw hat and cane, and stand like a sideshow barker, pitching the crowd, right?

Well, not really. Publishers’ Marketing budgets for debut books are generally pretty tame, if not meager. As a result, all writers who eventually want to see their work published need to come to terms with the concept of transformation.

First, a writer gets an idea, then they begin to work with the idea, to see if it could sustain a longer written work. Sometimes that becomes an entire book. There are notes, there are outlines. There are lists of plot devices and character interactive charts. There are references, research notes and piles of correspondence. There are the un-numbered hours of beating on a keyboard, then doing it again, then doing it again. Then fixing it again. Then fixing those fixes. Finally… after the writer’s patience and courage has been tested, after their skills have been stressed and their fingers numbed… they have a manuscript.

This is a magical moment, literally, when one thing becomes another. The idea of a book or story, even the work involved in forming it into a cohesive whole, is still just an idea. Even if it the most artistic, creative idea it remains an idea. But a manuscript? A manuscript – the chief component of a book – is a product. Remember the rubber chicken?

This sudden transformation is something that writers can use, much to the salvation of their psyches. The idea for a book can consume you.

It can become obsession and remove you completely from your life. It can isolate you.

But marketing a product is just a job. Switching hats is a skill that requires practice, so getting used to the idea of your child, the fruit of your labors becoming a lowly product is the best place to start. After that point, you follow the concepts laid down over the centuries. The old concept still works. You polish your goods, you find out who your market will be, you narrow the market down to the most likely suspects, then you position your product where it can be seen.

If you choose to market your product to publishers and agents, it will be the same job, and learning the steps to the marketing dance will pay off when the time comes for that discussion. The one where the publisher’s publicist explains all the things YOU will have to do to get the product to sell. If you choose to self-publish, you’ll just have to learn to wear yet another hat, but in either case, once you’ve accepted your work as product, you can get on with what you need to do, and free up your inner spirit for the next inspiration, the next idea. Every successful company has more than one product, and so should every writer. In fact, the idea of developing new products constantly while marketing existing products is now considered the most productive, profitable road to travel. In business as in the arts, but then, it’s all really about business. At the end of the day, from the time of the seller standing on a stump until now, writers or storytellers, need to know how the marketing hat feels, in order to do the best job for their work, and for their readers.

It’s an old, old hat, with an odd fit. It takes getting used to, but it will serve you well, and your writing and your readers will thank you for taking the time. So, writers, learn to love the transformation. Learn to pare time down into even smaller slivers. Let’s get out there and sell books! Your inner writer can remain at home at the keyboard, where it’s much safer.