Save time ordering your morning coffee

We all hate waiting in line for our morning coffee, but maybe not as much as we hate messing with our own coffee pots. So here is 10 tips on how to get your coffee just about one-thousand times faster.

1. Order your morning espresso like you you’re in the army. Drink. Temperature. Size. Custom instructions. Don’t make the barista ask you questions, which will add seconds on to your order.

2. Don’t be on a cell phone. Seriously. It’s rude, makes everybody wait, and could get you a mediocre coffee. The service you serve is the service you’ll get.

3. If you don’t recognize the barista, don’t ask for your regular coffee. Not all barista’s know your drink by heart, and many work all different shifts and have a hard time remembering everyone’s drink.

4. Order all your drinks up front. Then the barista can group tasks together and make only one trip if she has to get anything. If you are still deciding on a last drink, let the barista know that.

5. Order loudly enough. It seems strange, but a lot of sound is lost through the gap between the windows.

6. Order from the driver’s seat if you’re at a drive through. It is hard to hear the passenger order, so if the passenger wants something, the driver should be the messenger.

7. If your friend’s drink sounds good, get the same thing the same way. It is faster to get doubles of something than different things: less explanation to coworkers, double the milk, few trips to get things, repetitive motion.

8. Personal mugs. Please have them ready and cleaned out.

9. Have your money ready. I’m not saying you have to add up your order in your head (which is helpful), but just have bills or card ready.

10. Punch card? Have that ready too.

So say that by doing each one of those things saves only one second, then you’ve saved yourself, and everyone behind you, 10 seconds. For six people in line for their morning coffee, that’s a minute. And, realistically, each one of those things takes more than a second. People, lets start changing the world, one cup at a time.

The little blog that could

This is a sad day for this poor blog. The term has finished and Online Marketing is no more.

But that doesn’t mean that this blog is no more. It will be turned into something and that something is

BIG REVEAL

I don’t know yet. As far as I know it will be about coffee and writing (how wonderfully cliché) and the book publishing program. Enjoy.

Expect a new title and images soon. We gotta SEO up this bee-zee.

Time Travel: Publishing 10 Years from Now

So, what is the world of publishing going to look like in 10 years? I don’t know for sure, but I have a few ideas.

There will be a standard e-reader format. And it will be Apple. Sorry Kindle lovers (who knows? Maybe Kindle will run on the Apple platform then). Apple is just so darn sexy, how can consumers help it? Apple runs their music; iPod has become the household name for MP3 player like Kleenex is for nose tissue and BandAid is for bandages. And just like there are different sizes of iPod, books will be read on different sizes of book players, from iPad to iPod to iPhone. I will read mine on my iPhone.

There will still be print books because my mom buys them by the truckload. She consumes those things like pirated TV shows, except that she spends a fortune. Her cohorts do the same, so I imagine that veracious readers of a certain babyboom-shaped demographic are going to want their printed books.

The printed book will last at least as long as the babyboomers, and at least as long as there is Christmas. EBooks make terrible gifts. Square, physical books are easy to wrap and make the giver feel like they are giving something of substance. Printed books are here to stay.

There will be major restructuring in the big publishing houses. Some might collapse, but this economy isn’t great for industries that already have small profit margins, especially when they can’t buffer sales with strong backlists or academic sales. Right now, they’re coughing up blood by focusing on this minute’s bestseller, but like the shallow blockbuster movie fad, people are going to get tired of cheap thrills. There’s going to be a literary backlash felt through the big houses, while the literature is being produced by small publishers, like the movie industry with the resurgence of independent films. Then it will cycle back through when indie becomes mainstream (ie Away We Go).

And I might be there. I might be your boss. I might bring you coffee. Or I might just sell out.

Time will tell.

Can math change your life too?

The last post was for the assignment for the online marketing course to write about some literature that changed my life. But it isn’t just literature that changes me. I may have majored in creative writing but I minored in mathematics. There is something about the way that math works that illuminates my life in a similar way that literature does.

So I’d like to tell you the short version of that the summer before I began college where I took a seminar class on String Theory at Cambridge University. I learned the mathematics of these strings, but what I remember most is not the technical stuff, but that strings break down what it means to be.

Atoms can be broken into protons, neutrons, electrons, into the pieces of those, the quarks and other subatomic particles. To cut again, infinitely small with the razor blade of God, to when there is nothing more to divide, there are strings. These strings are not made of matter, they are energy, and lots of these energies make up everything.

Professor Yves’ first language was Dutch, and he was soft spoken. I sat front row to hear him, to see the curves of integration on the chalkboard, the 12 dimensions of space when I can only wrap my head around the standard four. What would it even mean to be a part of dimension seven?

“Nothing,” he said. “You are in it, and you can’t even feel it. It is like this.” He snapped his fingers. “And not like that, because even that is too much.”

This math explodes my definition of religion, what God is, because if God is energy then he can be these strings and make up everything. Or these strings, which governed the Big Bang, Yves said, could be God, and God could have exploded the universe to expand infinitely.

To see a graph stretch towards positive and negative infinity could be the stretch of time, back for forever and forward for forever.

Comma, Comma, Comma

Literature that changes my life does so in bits and pieces. I think about the papers I wrote as an undergrad, and that I may not have gotten an A-plus-plus on them, but that I still think about “The Sounds of Shakespeare” and comparing and contrasting Jimmie Santiago Bacca, a prison poet, with Billy Collins. These papers on poetry changed the way I think.

So lets talk poetry. It is not just the poems, but the dialog that surrounds them. Take “Death be not Proud” by John Donne. It isn’t the poem that changed my life, but the way it was placed within the drama W;t. In W;t, the protagonist Vivian Bearing, a foremost scholar on John Donne, and who is dying of cancer, recalls an old conversation she had with a professor over her own not so A-plus-plus paper. The argument was over a semicolon in the line

“And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.”

The professor argued that scholars believed Donne had meant there to be a comma in the place of the semicolon. Vivian argued that the copy the library had available contained the semicolon. All of the copies in the library at my undergraduate university contained the semicolon as well. The professor insisted on the comma because a comma is but a breath, whereas the semicolon is the closest thing to a full stop without actually becoming a period. The comma is the barest breath between life and death, the barest transition from one existence to the next; it is the reason why W;t is W;t and not Wit.

This changed my life in two ways. The first was the way I punctuated. Before, punctuation had been a mechanical feature of my writing. I used periods because they were socially acceptable ends to sentences. Now I consider the poetic nature those little marks and use them consciously and not because my high school teachers evaluated me on writing mechanics.

The second change occurred a while after I studied the poem and play in class. The spring after I studied W;t, my friend Amy was diagnosed with cancer, and she was gone just a few months later. Like that.. She was a full spirit, an old soul, and she was gone without the full pause of a semicolon. I think of Donne’s comma and how just like that friends and family are gone. Just like that, I’ll be gone too.

DEATH be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell'st thou then;
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more, death, thou shalt die.

Brew to Bikes Keywords

These are the keywords from the previous post on Brew to Bikes.

Brew to Bikes
Portland
Local Business
Artisan Economy
Microbrew
Indie Media
Fashion Designers
Urban Planner
Artisan Home and Garden

iPad vs Kindle: I Don’t Want Another Device

I go out to eat conveyor belt sushi a lot. And the last time I was there I saw a man at the belt using his chopsticks correctly, drinking wine, and reading a Kindle: a great stereotype of the Kindle reader. If I had a Kindle, that’s probably what I would do with it too—read on the go. I would read it at the gym, on the bus, waiting for a doctor’s appointment, or maybe even at home. If I were still an undergrad, I would love to have all my textbooks on the Kindle so that my backpack wouldn’t be so heavy and so that I wouldn’t forget to bring my book to class all the time.

Although, if that were how the Kindle would function for me, then I don’t know if I even want it. It would be just one more device that I would try to shove into my purse—forget the backpack, I’m not an undergrad anymore—and god knows I can barely snap it shut right now. I don’t even think I could fit the 7 ½”x5”x7” Kindle in there. Then what about the iPad when it comes out? I’d need to cram that in there too.

The thing is, I already have an iPhone that reads books. It also plays music and makes calls, wakes me up in the morning, and can stream videos from NBC. I pay extra for the Internet on it, and I don’t want to pay another $200 plus books for a Kindle, or upwards to $500 for the iPad and a separate Internet fee on top of that. I just want my one piece of hardware that I am investing all my money into that can do all the things I want. Kindles and iPads are neat, but really, I don’t want them.

Please, No Online Purchasing

I get so many messages in my email inbox every day for different websites and products, but I don’t really have time to check them, let alone buy anything from them. So when I was asked in my online marketing class if I had ever bought something from a email direct marketing campaign, I had to stop and think for a moment, and when that moment was up the answer was no.

At least not that I can remember.

The thing is, those junk emails back up in my inbox into the hundreds and envelop all the good emails I’m supposed to read (sorry I missed your Olympic opening ceremony party, Haylie). I hardly even look at the junk ones I want. Sometimes I browse through emails from Sephora, who let me know that I could pick up a birthday gift (free) in stores, Urban Outfitters, and Anthropologie. I like that I get a Sweet Tomatoes email, which comes with coupons, but since I get coupons mailed to my house and I don’t eat there frequently, I rarely open their emails.

I would much rather like to touch the physical object that is my purchase. I only order online if it is a must have, or something I can’t find elsewhere. My last online purchase was a grey jacket since I had been unable to find a grey jacket I liked in the physical world over several weekends of shopping. I would rather purchase a physical object than have the excitement that getting a package brings. I have limited funds that have to be spent carefully, and I weigh out all properties of an object right down to tactile impressions.

If I had seen the grey coat in the physical world before I bought it, I might not have since I don’t think it is thick enough. If I had seen the book on online guerrilla marketing that I purchased for the online marketing class, I probably would not have gotten it either because the paper is that of a child’s cheap coloring book.

So maybe I have never purchased anything from a direct email marketing campaign, but I have gone in store because an Anthropologie email promised the biggest sale of the season. It wasn’t. I didn’t buy anything even though I went to more than one physical Anthropologie store, but it got me in, and that’s probably what they were hoping for anyway.

Am I a Blog Idiot?

Yes. I don't understand why on the last post the blog applied different fonts to everything. I just want one font, please. And I don't understand why it changes the font after I post it. Or why I can't do a global font change. One font per entire blog. Please?

Write, but do it Green: Part 1

In my Ooligan Press work group, I have been charged with the task of researching how writers can be more sustainable in their craft. I haven’t done that research yet, but there are a few things floating around in my own head. So, this is the first in a series titled Write, but do it Green.

I don’t think this series is going to be in logical order, so Part 1 is the global search. Now, I’m not talking about replacing all your double spaces with single spaces, or when you change the name of your main character from Charlotte to Keri. I’m talking about getting rid of the big writing NOs.

Big Writing NOs

Adverbs

ing word endings

Nondescriptive words

Using a find and highlight system for these words can save a lot of paper in the hard copy editing processes. Whatever can cut down on hard cover copies is always more sustainable.

Adverbs:

Adverbs can lead to weak writing because they are used in place of metaphor and vivid description. Used sparingly, they can add to style and could be used in the voice of the character if that is the way they speak.

Nondescriptive words:

No-no words tend to be vague and wishy-washy or overworked and cliché.

It

Very

Get

Almost

Kind of

A little

A bit

Rather

Roughly

Maybe

Due to

Somewhat

Sort of

There were/was

Worthwhile/Worth while

In terms of

As yet

And/or

Irregardless

Utilize

Unique

Transpire

Thrust

The truth is

The fact is

The foreseeable future

Along these lines

That: If the sentence can read without the word “that,” then cut it.

Can: In some instances, cut “can.”

I can see my sister walking to her car.

I see my sister walking to her car.

Do not cut “can” if it shows the ability to see as in

Now that my sister has moved her car, I can see the puddle of oil her car left.

Weak Verbs

ing
1. The ing ending slows down speech. Changing sentences so that there are fewer ing endings speeds up the action.

2. Simultaneous action: ing action can lead to simultaneous action. "Opening the door, Katie came inside." Actually, she can't do both at once.

I search for each of these elements and then ask the document program to highlight them in different colors.

Here’s my system:

Yellow: Adverbs (search for “ly”)

Bright Green: Ings

Turquoise: It

Pink: That

Red: No-no words

Blue: Smile (a writing pet peeve; I hate when characters smile)

Teal: Can

What’s Been Cut from Brew to Bikes? I’m scared!

I’ve only read the pre-edited version of Ooligan Press’s forthcoming title Brew to Bikes (Fall 2010). I love it. Here we have, in concise book format, a guide to Portland Oregon’s local artisan economy. People don’t ordinarily think of Portland as a place of diverse commerce, and typically if they do then they imagine an overdone, artistic expression of hippiness, but that is not the case with many of the local businesses found in Portland.

Brew to Bikes discusses everything from local microbrews to Portland’s tech industry. I didn’t read anything about those two. I skipped those parts. In my limited time, I focused on several areas that interested me: Portland’s indie media, coffee industry, and fashion designers. I liked that Brew to Bikes expresses the real struggle of someone trying to thrive as an artisan in Portland, especially in a down economy. The book doesn’t glorify these local businesses as thriving green alternatives to corporations, but that these people choose to do what they love over cutting corners to make lots of money. However, because Portland isn’t typically a center for big businesses, smaller, more free thinking and artisan versions of fashion, coffee, and book publishing can stay afloat.

I’m scared for those three Brew to Bikes chapters. I know so many pages and sections have been cut out and consolidated, and I hope that those three are still intact. I have already used the chapter about Portland artisan coffee to become a better barista myself, and in my marketing project for my fake barista book. From the chapter on fashion I decided that I want to get married in one of those artisan wedding dresses. I learned about new bookstores that I need to visit and about the emerging zines-scene, and so many things I want other people to learn about too.

I can’t wait to see the edited version of Brew to Bikes to see if what I considered essential the editors did as well.

--

Possible Key Words:

Brew to Bikes

Portland

Local Business

Artisan Economy

Microbrew

Indie Media

Fashion Designers

Urban Planner

Artisan Home and Garden

We’re all Rich Here

I was out with my boyfriend, Ben, his mom, Deb, and step dad, Jim, for dinner the other night. Jim was late. It was pleasant until he got there, but then, like always, the conversation turned to politics. He is about as conservative as conservative gets without being religious, and Ben’s mom is not far behind. Whenever Jim talks about politics it fires Ben up and makes me concerned as to whether or not I should marry a person that says, “Whoever voted for those bills does not deserve to have a job.”

They don’t? Then watch me get unemployed, mister. And you didn’t even vote in that election. You’re fired too.

I’m not going to talk about the specific bills and what they mean. They’re a damned if you do, damned if you don’t sort of thing.

I’m concerned about the lack of compassion. My conservative would-be-family say things like, “I was a democrat until I saw how much the government was taking out of my paycheck.”

So what, guys? I think of government like a service that you’re buying: you’re buying an education for your children, you’re buying roads to drive on, you’re buying mail delivery, you’re buying firefighters to stop your house from burning down, and you’re paying the cops to catch the bad guys. It’s not perfect, there is internal loss like at any company, but we must have it. Those people have wages that need to be paid.

I’m rich. I have over twenty grand in student loans, and make $9 an hour plus tips, drive a car with a chunk missing from the bumper, and shop at discount stores. Deb and Jim drive cars that have voice commands and own three houses between them. And they don’t want any more money taken out of their check. I’m sorry, but we’re all rich here, living in house with fewer than three spiders at a time, and no dirt floors, and clean drinking water.

Buck up.

Can Macmillan dam(n) the Amazon?

I remember the first commercial that I ever heard for Amazon: I was in my bedroom as a child, listening to the radio. I don’t remember it exactly, but Amazon said that it had giant warehouses full of more books than would fit on the moon.

I, being a young child with an active imagination, imagined one giant moon-sized warehouse and tried to pinpoint where in the United States they would put it. The whole idea seemed amazing to me, a person who loved books and only had access to the library. Imagine: I could get the next book without worrying that it was checked out, or being put on the library’s new book waitlist!

But what Amazon meant to child-Tanna is different than what Amazon means to big me. Amazon would be more fittingly named Nile, because that’s exactly what it is (although Amazon works too, Nile is a more accessible metaphor): a visible river channel (of products) through a part of the world (industry) that everyone relies on. There may be tributaries, but they aren’t the main focus, and you can’t take barges and cruise ships down a publisher’s website to buy books. There isn’t the capacity to handle that traffic. The Nile is for the big dogs and the consumer.

However, like the Nile has a monopoly on Egypt, Amazon appears to be gaining a monopoly in the book industry. It is so huge that publishers can’t ignore it as a major vendor, and only the big guys like Macmillan could get away with putting their foot down on the price of eBooks. Amazon couldn’t even care one iota if student-run Ooligan Press stood ground on eBook pricing.

Amazon’s business model is different from big five publishers since it doesn’t have to rely on authors, and their royalties, to make money. It does not have an editorial team like the major publishers, no book design team, but just relies on heavy discounts and whatever crap self-publishers will pay Amazon to sell their books for them. Publishers can’t compete. What this means for the publishing industry is that the big five are going to have to join forces and become the book behemoth that parts the Amazonian waters (and mixes the metaphors).

If Amazon values books below market cost, like they did in the Wal-Mart Wars of ‘09, then publishers can’t compete with Amazon’s business model. That’s not good for anyone, and until Amazon becomes a publisher with acquisitions through marketing departments, they need the publishers to keep making books. Hopefully, Macmillan can stop the Amazon and make eBook publishing profitable for all publishers.

Apartments that Suck and then Rebrand

The past two weeks I have been transferring units in the same apartment complex. That isn’t as terrible as moving fifty miles, but only in that I didn’t have to pack my car like a 3D jigsaw puzzle; there is still the same amount of hefting boxes. And this was a surprise transfer. Had my boyfriend, Ben, and I known that we would be moving a week into the new school term we would have boxed up and cleaned during the Christmas holiday. No such luck.

This transfer is an example of good marketing on the part of the apartment complex. They re-branded their management image to save their little tails.

So let me tell you something about this complex:

1. It isn’t run down. There are ducks and a walking path.
2. The location is excellent near the apex of two major freeways, and is exactly halfway between my work and my school, and my boyfriend’s work in another direction.
3. It is near lots of restaurants, entertainment, and shopping, and if the area’s establishments aren’t enough, we’re only a short hop from downtown Portland.

Perfect.

Except few things. Our first unit molded over right after we moved in. So we worked with the management and they transferred us. As soon as we were transferred, they changed their minds about being nice, and despite an immaculate cleaning job, we didn’t see a cent of our security deposit. When I visited Howard, the manager, he said the place wasn’t clean because we didn’t pull the stove and fridge out. Fine. I’ll give him that since we didn’t, but that doesn’t mean he can pocket the whole deposit. When Ben went to talk to him, Howard said that they should probably keep these issues between the men from now on.

After that, just a week into the new lease we were already counting down the days until we could move out. As the year rolled around, we got a notice for a lease resigning event with a $100 resigning credit. Ben and I went to check it out, but we were still pretty sure that we were leaving.

The new manager, Jenn, took one look at our unit, said we were overpaying, and found us an upgraded unit for $100 less a month. And two months free rent. And two weeks to move out of our old place. And she checked the old unit to make sure it was clean enough and told us not to pull the stove out. She was willing to work with us, and was there to help us instead of looking out for the best interests of the complex.

Now we are happy and willing to stay. We even turned around the old apartment early so they could re-rent it faster.

In marketing, the best interest of your business is the happiness of the people using your service. If they aren’t happy, they aren’t going to stay with you, and can choose from a million other people offering the same service.

This seems basic, but so many places don’t give a shit about you when you walk in. They consider your business a dime a dozen. It isn’t. Your dollar counts. Use it to vote for good service.

Brand v. Product Marketing

The difference between product marketing and brand marketing is that product marketing is about a physical thing and brand marketing is about ideas. Publishers rely on both, and I wouldn’t say that they are equally effective, but are two separate, necessary things. Publishers typically focus on the physical book object as a means to market their product, but if they have the ability to create a brand, either around their press or the book, they should do so. They are missing a critical aspect of marketing—unless of course the book appears on Oprah or The Daily Show.

My book marketing project for last term was to create a brand around my book by mock-marketing a fake book about my life as a barista and all of the sexy, intriguing, scary, and funny aspects of the job. The book was not to have big print run, so the publisher’s hope was to make sure that the audience knew that this title was legit, and did so by creating a brand around it.

The strategy was to use social networking on MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter to sell the author as the right person to write this book. The brand I created was that the author is a funny person with a big personality that someone would want to spend 240 pages with. By giving the author a favorite coffee drink, pictures of her doing the barista thing, and coffee oriented readings and events, the author became a real person with knowledge of the industry.

Likewise, getting a book a slot on a major TV show also pegs the author as an expert since the audience sees them explain the book’s content.

The marketing of the physical product is more straight forward for publishers. Every aspect of editing through design lend to the marketing of the book. The type of paper markets the book, the binding, the size, the cover, the back cover copy. This is what publishers know how to do. They are grounded in the physicality of the object, and they’re all more or less good at it. This aspect of marketing is still very important because it is what the consumer can feel and pick up. Branding is beyond physical, and could be just that tipping point in this slow economy that a publisher needs.

Everything I Learned as an Undergrad I Could have Concisely Read in The Elements of Style

I just finished The Elements of Style for my book editing class. It was the best writing book I’ve ever read, which made me mad. Where had this book been this time last year when I was writing my undergraduate thesis in creative writing?

In my writing classes, I had a notebook where I carefully wrote down what the professors said were writing dos and don’ts. When thesis time came, I combed through the entire big fat notebook for pearls of wisdom and compiled them into a logically ordered list. I revised my creative work based on that list.

The whole process of pearl farming was time consuming, frustrating, and when I was finished I felt like I had consolidated the worth of my student loans into a four page—single spaced, 12 point Times New Roman—document. As part of my thesis, I edited the document and gave it to everyone in class as reference material. What I should have given them was a copy of The Elements of Style by Strunk and White, and a free afternoon to read the short book.

I had no formal grammar training in my creative writing program, no editing class, and I wish I had. In fact, I’d had no grammar lessons since middle school. I knew what sounded good, and I knew there must be rules and style guides, but I didn’t know how to go about finding them. I thought that’s why I was going to school, to learn these secrets that I found out today are concisely bound into a book that I can slip into my purse.

So, read the book if you haven’t already. My list might be worth my undergraduate education, but The Elements of Style is worth my graduate study.

Is Something Better than Nothing?

Although most of the online book sales are through online book retailers like Amazon, there’s no loss for a publisher to try and market books on their website. Maybe they lose the cost of hiring the person to build the website, but as the old adage goes: something is better than nothing.

If a publisher is getting only dollars on the book by selling traditionally through bookstores, then even if they sell only a few books directly from their website they make a greater profit. If they earn $2 on a book sold through Amazon, and $6 on a book that they sell directly, then selling directly is equivalent to selling three books through Amazon.

This would be true for other niche publishers like Timber, who have a corner of the horticulture market, and Underland Press, who specialize in underground dark fantasy. Timber and Underland both have done a good job of creating attractive websites where consumers know that they are getting high-end products with the content they want.

However, the lack of direct sales should affect the manner in which publishers present their websites to the general public. As they stand, most publisher’s websites act more like an insider tool for ordering books for one’s mother. I might send her to Ooligan’s website to pick out book she might like. So she might surf the site, but the general public does not. Why would they even go there when Amazon is a staple?

If publishers can offer something different than Amazon, or even physical bookstores, then they can probably see more web traffic and more direct sales. Publishers that provide extras to their market, such as educational materials to teachers on W.W. Norton and Co.’s website, or ways to buy in bulk, could drive direct sales. They should take advantage of the poor economy by increasing their online marketing towards direct sales, not backing off.

That is, if a publisher actually wants to improve direct sales. Perhaps they shouldn’t. Unless they are a self-publisher or a niche press, maybe they should let the big dogs, wholesalers and distributors, handle their sales. If a large portion of sales came directly through the website, then the publisher would need a system to handle all of the requests and probably a customer service department.

This costs money and would distract from the publisher’s overall focus of making physical book objects. With the added costs of direct sales, the publishers might as well pay the people who have streamlined the bookselling process and pick a different audience to target on the website instead of the general public.

Punctuation Still Counts in Country Music

When I was working at the drive thru coffee stand on Saturday with my co-worker, Renee, who loves country music, the song “It’s America” by Rodney Atkins came on. It begins:

Drivin down the street today
I saw a sign for lemonade
They were the cutest kids I’d ever seen in this front yard
As they handed me my glass, smilin thinkin to myself
Man what a picture perfect postcard this would make of America!

Although I’m mad that my childhood lemonade stands never made any money, that’s not the problem I have with this song. Neither is the dropped g at the end of the ings. Fine. I get the accent has been written into the lyrics just in case we forget Atkins has a country twang.

My problem is that the line, “They were the cutest kids I’d ever seen in this front yard” is ambiguous. Does he mean that of all the times he has driven by this yard, and of all the kids he has seen in the particular yard, that these are the cutest ones? Or does he mean that these are the cutest kids that he has ever seen in his life, and that they happen to be in this front yard selling lemonade? As it stands, I am inclined to believe the former.

This may be a country song, but punctuation and clarity still count.

“Nonsense,” Renee said. “No one else cares except you English types. Everyone knows what he means.”

Ok, so maybe we can give Mr. Atkins the benefit of the doubt about these cutest kids. Maybe. But I won’t. He should know better, or at least be able to afford a song editor who does. And so should Renee. She may work at a coffee stand on the weekends, but during the week, she teaches America’s fifth graders.


It is Unambiguously America

Driving down the street today
I saw a sign for lemonade.
These were the cutest kids I’d ever seen, right here in this front yard.
As they handed me my glass, I smiled, thinking to myself:
Man, what a picture-perfect postcard this would make of America!

How would you change the lyrics?

To see the music video with the unedited lyrics:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f33KzjrjTg0

Publisher’s Website Audiences: Concise vs. Random

So Publishers: if you’re going to have a publisher website, what the heck should it do for you? It isn’t enough to simply have one. When I made my publisher site for my fake book in my real marketing class http://baristapb.yolasite.com/, it was to create a brand around the book, its author, and its publisher. Branding is easy for a single book—you can go for humor and personality.

However, for an entire publishing house, the website needs to be created with their potential—or at least target—audiences in mind. One publisher that does a particularly swell job is W.W. Norton and Company http://books.wwnorton.com/books/index.aspx. The website has a clean look with clear navigation for their audiences. Their website targets an academic audience by providing textbooks and literary fiction with corresponding course materials.

Educators can copy study questions straight into their lesson plan. Giving away free information offsets a book’s price and increases net worth. My mother taught high school English when I was a child, so I know that writing lesson plans and grading papers takes up a lot of a teacher’s weekend. Any device that adds even one free hour to a Saturday may tip the scale in favor of buying a classroom set of W.W. Norton’s In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyall Mueenuddin.

One audience that was absent from W.W. Norton’s website was that of the potential author wishing to submit a query letter or manuscript. That doesn’t mean that the information isn’t there, but if it is then it wasn’t meant to be found easily. The publisher probably doesn’t want blind submissions and instead only wishes to work with literary agents.

The publisher Random House http://www.randomhouse.com/, however, does explicitly state that they will only work with agents. Potential authors may not be a target audience, but they are drawn to Random House’s website. Random House (snarkily) suggests several agents an author might contact:

“If you would like to have your work or manuscript considered for publication by a major book publisher, we recommend that you work with an established literary agent. Each agency has manuscript submission guidelines. You may wish to refer to The Literary MarketPlace (the LMP), a reference guide that contains a listing of literary agencies. It can be found in most libraries.”

Random House has strengths and weaknesses in its random philosophy. It can diversify project choices, not commit to any one genre, and can take on projects that are experimental. Fine. Good for them. They are big enough not to need a market niche. Although, if a niche audience is defined as a small group of like-minded people, then Random House must have a random audience, a large group of people with different interests. That makes it hard to target their website to any specific audience.

Their website is hard to navigate because it the shear volume of things on it. It pulled here and there, and I clicked links I hadn’t intended in hopes of finding the information I sought. Sometimes I found what I was looking for, sometimes I didn’t. The audience for Random House is hard to determine. Good thing they have imprints.

Guerrilla Marketing Pretest

Last fall in my marketing class I tried to come up with some guerrilla marketing techniques to drive traffic to my book’s website. We’ll call what’s below a pretest to Guerrilla Marketing on the Internet by Jay Conrad Levinson, which arrived in the mail yesterday, that I have to read for Online Marketing this term.

The Pretest

It is one thing to have a website. I did when I was 13 and my friends loved it, but no one else saw it. However, when I’m marketing a book it is with the hope that my efforts will help sell the book and my friends and mother already have a copy. There are methods to get other people to come to a particular website; some are free and some are expensive. Below I focus on the free ways because book marketers have small budgets.

1. Have a blog. A real blog boosts Google relevancy numbers. For Baristas I would have a blog about what happened at the readings, updates in the coffee industry, and stories not shared in the book. There are directories to which a blog’s URL can be posted that also boost a blog’s relevancy and bring readers to the blog. This particular graduate project did not work on the timescale of a blog.

2. Post comments on other people’s blogs. Making intelligent comments with a link to your website can bring viewers. I posted a response to the blog, “An Espresso to Grind: Should you tip baristas, and if so, how much?” and could have put a link to my website at the bottom if I had one at the time. I could post comments on other barista blogs where they tell stories about their experiences on the job.

3. YouTube videos. I wanted to give a reading and post on Youtube but I didn’t get the chance. If I wasn’t so YouTube illiterate, I would either record readings at home, or have my intern record the readings I gave at coffee houses and post them to YouTube. There would of course be a link to the website.

4. Article submission directories. I would have an intern crank out a few short articles, have an editor look them over, and post them to directories to boost website relevance.

5. Link directories. They are sometimes free and sometimes not. I would try and post in the free ones and assess my marketing budget for the paid locations.

6. Email signatures. I didn’t do it with my Ooligan address, but on my other email address I included a message at the bottom saying, “If you have a moment, visit my fake website for my marketing class and leave a comment on the contact page. I really appreciate it.” I also provided a link. If it was real website I would be a little less obtrusive about it and probably have a line that said, “Check out our new title: linkToTheNewTitle.com.”

7. Twitter. Learn to be an excellent tweeter.

8. Myspace. Basically dead, but people can be friended if they belong to the target audience or have interests similar to the book’s subject matter. It also lets current friends know what is going on with the book through the blogging feature.

9. Facebook. Facebook is used to post regular updates about events and fun, personable things happening in the author’s life that may or may not be related to the book. This keeps the author’s brand fresh in people’s minds.

10. Guerrilla Tactics.
• I see postcards left around campus for various events and websites and sometimes check them out. I would create a catchy postcard and leave them around different lounges.
• I could also put up fliers on community boards in coffee houses.
• I could slip bookmarks into related titles at bookstores (including those books that are just coffee recipes).
• I might also leave the book at different coffee houses hoping that they get picked up and passed around.
• Dutch Bros. Coffee gives out free stickers and I could write the website on the back and pass them out to people or leave them around the same sorts of lounges that the postcards could be left at.

11. The last thing is that it is ok to give information away for free. If people trust someone as an expert they are more likely to buy from them later because of product trust. And if the free stuff has a logo on it, all the better.

I Just Had to Buy a Marketing Book

During my first quarter in the Book Publishing Program at Portland State University, I was immersed in marketing through Kent Watson’s Book Marketing class, through creating the marketing materials for my Intro to Publishing mock press, and through 4 credits in the Ooligan Press Marketing Work Group.

Marketing was new to me, and overwhelming at first, but as I became more immersed, I began to enjoy its creativity. I found guerrilla marketing in Kent’s class particularly intriguing. It is free (my budget), and it works. For the final project, I made it integral to my book marketing plan by researching and developing my own guerrilla book marketing techniques. That’s why when I read the reading list for this quarter’s Online Marketing class the book Guerrilla Marketing on the Internet by Jay Conrad Levinson stood out to me. Here I had been bumbling about with guerrilla marketing when there was a whole book on how to do it.

However, there were many books on the reading list, and I thought I should do my research before I ordered my book. I don’t know a lot about Twitter and why it is a big deal, so I thought a Twitter book would be great. When I logged on to Amazon.com to look up the book description for Twitter Revolution: How Social Media and Mobile Marketing is Changing the Way We Do Business and Market Online by Warren Whitlock, the book description was short and focused solely on Twitter. That’s fine, I do want to know more about Twitter, but I want Twitter placed within a broader context of online marketing and be able to apply the entire book to my own pursuits. The short book description did not imply that that would be my reading experience despite the book’s ambitious title.

Insufficient book descriptions were as bad as the over-bulky ones. I abandoned long, unbroken blocks of texts after reading about a line and a half. I preferred book descriptions that combined shorter paragraphs with bullet point lists for the topics covered in the book.

Decision time came down to two books: the original Guerrilla Marketing and The Age of Engage: Reinventing Marketing for Today’s Connected, Collaborative, and Hyperinteractive Culture by Denise Shiffman. This second book focuses more on theoretical aspects of marketing whereas Guerrilla has a more practical flare that I hope I can make use of in my own marketing campaigns. However, The Age of Engage did have 100 fewer pages, a fabulous selling point for the grad student on the go. I really wanted to choose Guerrilla, but Molly, who sits next to me in class, said she had already ordered her copy of Guerrilla, and I didn’t want to look suspicious choosing the same thing. But I chose it anyway because I really want a book I can use long after this class ends.