Every tattoo tells a story (Continued)

Almost three years ago, I had a chain and cross tattooed around my neck.  I was inspired by an old cross I once had which had become worn over time, but it was my niece's baptism that put it into motion.  One of my pet peeves is seeing people with crosses made of gold and diamonds around their neck.  The cross, or crucifix, was a method of execution two thousand years ago.  I'm rarely caught entering a church, but I do know that Christ was not all about the bling.  About ten years ago, I bought a cross made of leather and pear wood.  It was simple and plain.  My son use to chew on it when I held him, as a baby.  I could think of nothing better than to have it tattooed around my neck once it had become broken beyond compare.

It was almost 100' F, on a sunny July morning.  I was a walk-in and was lucky enough to be seated right away.  It lead to some very interesting conversation.  Other Christians wonder why I don't go to church.  Atheist's wonder why I even bother.  I'm not hear to change anyone's mind, but I wear my tattoo proudly and never mention a word of it to anyone curious enough to ask.  "It's between me and God", I'd generally be caught saying.

My tattoo is finally finished.  Mike Bee (from Bound for Glory) put in the final touches and added color.  It's amazing!

I think this would be a good marketing tool for selling my book mainly because, I'm not the type of guy who likes to bring up the fact that I'm an author in regular conversation.  I feel very awkward even trying to say nice things about myself, so my "Elevator Pitch" has always been lacking.  I've spent the entire 30 seconds stammering before ever saying anything about my book.  My logic (which may be way off) is that people always comment on tattoos.  Another fact of life (like it or not), is that people do judge a book by it's cover.  I'm thinking that if they like the tattoo, then they'll like the book cover.  At that point, the awkwardness may be alleviated and I'll just be able to tell them that the book is a Sci-Fi\Fantasy that reads like a movie script.  It's a story about a magical fantasy planet in which wizard's dominance is about to fall to the high-tech might of cyborgs and robots.  Who knows?  Maybe they'll even buy it?

Marketing - What makes sense to me?

I definitely can't be confused with a marketing expert, but recently when two friends released their first album I thought they might not be reaching their entire audience.  I wrote to them a facebook message from my iPhone and I thought my fingers were going to fall off.  The following day, I had some things come to mind that I forgot to mention.  Keeping in mind that I am a writer and they are musicians, we naturally have different methods for marketing, but I came up with a few ideas which can be useful for most of us.

• Know your audience - What do they want to hear, read or watch?
• Know your competition - What are they doing to reach their fans?
• Know your material - Is there some facet of your work that differs from or is similar to anything?

Whether you're in the stone age or the information age, you need to address these points.  The following part has to do with timing, location and current trends.

• Don't wait until your book is published, album is released, openning night at your play (whatever) to begin marketing.  You want to think about these things at most a year before publication.

I finished the first few edits of my book in 2008 and felt that it was ready for an agent.  Before I did that however, I registered the domain Alorya.com.  I joined MySpace to get into the social media movement. I even did the unthinkable and became sociable around the office.  I expect to be published in the next few months.  Get something... anything... on every form of social media and interface you can (afford) and begin talking to people about your work.  If you're not proud enough to talk about it, who will be?

• Your competion should be the established greats of the current era in your genre.  If you're a musician, Mozart is not your competition.  If you're a writer, Frank Herbert is not your comptetion.  Find out how your competition is reaching their audience and then adopt/improve on it.  Do they use the web?  Do they use PodCast? 

I looked at Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman and Troy Denning to see how they reached their audience.  I obviously don't have the budget to compete with them from a marketing stand-point, but it was a great place to find some ideas.  (Hint:  Follow them on Twitter).

• Try to set yourself apart from everyone else.  Find something unique about your work and put a neon sign around it.

"Buy my book", "Check out my book" can really be annoying.  Don't turn yourself into a salesman, just try to spread the word that you are a member of the industry and you can contribute. (Kind of like this article, right?).  The unique part of my book is that I took real life events and exaggerated the hell out of them.  What's unique about that?  Well, they're MY life events.  That's pretty unique.  I never expected to write the first or best of anything.  I'm just trying to tell the story I started writing when I borrowed a few sheets of paper from a nurse, when my son was still in the hospital after he was born.

Special Thanks to Matthew Ashdown for helping clear these points up for me.