Marketing 101

My book, Every Purpose Under Heaven, is nearing the point when my agent will be presenting it to a publisher. Beyond the fact that I am ecstatic that I won’t have to do that, my illusions about agents have been sorely put to the test.

I thought all I had to do was write an excellent book, get an agent interested, and then sit back. Wrong. Even though my first book, Extraordinary Things, was selected as a finalist for an award, I still can’t rest on my laurels. My agent requested that I work seriously on developing a marketing plan for Every Purpose.

At first, I convinced myself that I had no idea of how to develop a plan. I thought of marketing as a catchy slogan and massively repeating ads on TV—sort of like snake oil selling from the back of wagons (the kind that got you tarred and feathered), convincing the gullible that they couldn’t live without whatever you were selling.

It took me a while to understand that wasn’t quite going to work with selling a book unless the author is famous and tantalizes the reader with promises of secrets—usually sexual although massive fraud can also work—to be revealed only within the pages of the book. My book, needless to say, had neither of those, so I was left wondering what marvel of Madison Avenue mumbo-jumbo (remember the book title: “From Those Wonderful Folks Who Brought You Pearl Harbor”?) would convince someone to part with the money to buy my book.

I had and have no doubt that Every Purpose Under Heaven is a good book—maybe even a great book. But when it came to convincing people to read it, I was out to sea.

Then it came to me that it wasn’t a problem of marketing that I was stuck on—it was a problem of how I thought about what marketing is. When I took a course from the Small Business Association some years ago, one of the things that the instructor impressed on us was the need to shout our services from the nearest rooftop. Having a great product was very nice, but not as nice as having people know about it. When I thought about that, I could see that I needed to redefine marketing—or more practically—refine how I thought about it. This necessitated my going back to basics of Marketing 101. Marketing, it turns out, is matching product with audience need. Of course, that need sometimes has to be created. It was only then that I adopted an entirely new definition of the field.

I now understand that marketing is when people apply makeup to appear years younger when applying for a job. Marketing is writing a solid and engaging resume to beat out others applying for the same position. Marketing is scenting a house with the smell of baking cookies when it is being shown to prospective buyers. Marketing is dressing in one’s best clothes when going to shop at the mall. Marketing, in other words, is putting one's best foot forward, understanding that the competition is vast and organized, and resolving to offer something that no one else can.

Once I saw this, I was able to write the marketing plan for my book. I rather wished I could use the words “searing,” “passionate,” “unforgettable,” and “seductive.” It’s a little hard to do that when you are writing about learning compassion at the point of death. I suppose I can try: “Every Purpose Under Heaven is a searing expose of what happens at the point of death. Experience the seductive passion of passing on with the help of morphine into the unforgettable experience of life after death.”

For those not quite convinced by my purple rhetoric: you might check out my website at http://www.dmdeluca.com/ in the weeks ahead and see what I did.