On Being Pro -- Looking in the Mirror
May 12, 2000
7:19 a.m.
Since some of you actually took me up on my quip about talking about marketing today, I guess I will. (my penance for being glib, eh?) Marketing. Jeeze. Where to start. I think I'll start by describing what happened when I got home from work yesterday. I had worked late, meeting with a co-worker from our Memphis facility then taking him out for the dinner I owed him. It was 9:30 or 10:00 when I came home. After a bit of discussion and whatnot about our days, Lisa showed me a list that Brigid made up. It had row upon row of figures with dollar signs, and a few cryptic notes along the side. Things like Keep My Room Clean -- $2.00 a day. My first thought was "Wow. Labor doesn't come cheap these days." [grin] "You should have seen her on this one," Lisa said, pointing at Keep Play Room Clean -- $2 a day. I looked up at Lisa and waited for her to finish. "I said, 'But Brigid, you don't hardly go in there.'" I'm sure Brigid gave a big smile at this point. "I know, Mama. That's the beauty of it!" "We're not paying you $2 a day to keep something clean that you don't use." I'm sure Brigid's smile went away at that point. As Lisa told me this story, my eyes went down the page, looking at numbers and columns and final tallies that had been circled. Brigid had put some work into this, and had multiplied and divided and basically examined the situation from a few angles. Pretty good for an 11 year old. The problem, of course is that she had forgotten to examine the problem from the perspective of the people who mattered. (that would be Lisa and I, for those of you who aren't really following along). That's what marketing is all about. Good marketing is about being able to see the world from the eyes of the people you want to persuade to do something. Ad agencies are paid to come up with these absurd ideas they get, and they get them from estimating what the general public will find interesting or entertaining. If they're right we get the Budweiser lizards. If they're wrong ... well ... since I try to be mostly about positivism and optimism, we'll not go down that path. So, how do you market a story, huh? Here's where I need you to take a leap of faith. You see, I don't think I writer really markets a story. Yes, stories appear to be what we have to sell. And, I wouldn't really argue with you if you take me to task on this point. But there's a much bigger picture. From the writer's perspective, a single story does not make a career. From the professional magazine's perspective, one great story does not make an issue. And one great story from a writer goes not make for a long running audience. What we're really marketing when we submit a story, is ourselves. We're marketing our name. By constantly submitting the best work we have at the time, we're telling editors that we're working, that we're trying hard to please them, and that we're dependable for another story. By adequately preparing our manuscript, we're telling our editors that we care about their needs. When someone asks for something in a specific format, and we give it to them in that format, we're marketing our skill set. (Feels like a performance review, huh? "Ron follows rules gud -- check.") This is an important point that I think new writers overlook or ignore. It's a whole package, you know? Professionalism goes both ways, and the way a writer goes about business says a lot about that writer. Professional writers turn down deals that are not a win for them, and they try to find agreements that are wins for the market in question. Professional writers send stories they think the editor will buy. A professional writer generally reads a publication first. (Note, I break this rule ever now and again, myself--but I try pretty hard to at least take a gander at pretty much every magazine in the business at least once ... it's not hard to do, really ... just head out to a convention and stick your nose in the dealers room) A professional writer works for money, but understands the market well enough to judge when a lower paying sale is a positive thing. A professional writer understands that a professional editor most likely wants to be able to say she launched a career. She also wants to build a devoted core of readers. Both of these last two items mean she'll be wanting to find someone she can buy more than one story from. A professional writer understands the perspective of a professional editor, and uses every contact with every editor as a way to market their capability and dependability. I mean, seriously, when I'm hiring software developers I look at more than their code. The flipside of this is that a professional writer uses his understanding of what a professional editor is as a measuring stick. Professional writers tend to want to work with professional editors. All this said, I should finish by saying that it's okay to be a new writer and make a lot of mistakes. And it's okay to be a semi-pro writer and not aspire to a life-supporting career in the field. It's still a free country, despite the Miami thing, and you get to pretty much choose which career path you want. But remember that there are people out here like me who treat this thing fairly seriously. We're not mad at you for your approach. We're not judging you down for it, either. What we are doing is trying to build a career. So, this morning, I asked Brigid to come downstairs. We talked a little. I mentioned her rate card. She smiled sheepishly. "Oh, it's okay," I said. "But let me ask you something?" She paused with sleepy stuff in here eyes. "What's in this deal for me?" "I don't know." "Here's what I want you to do, all right? You think about it for awhile and try to answer that question, Once you've figured out what's in this deal for me, you come back and we'll talk, okay?" She nodded and gave me a hug. Then she went upstairs to fix herself breakfast.  So, like, do you include a SASE? Daily Persistence is © Ron Collins |
|
Still no response from the other mags... |
BACK TO 
|