Space For Sale, Space Sold

In hard-copy or online, that's what we do. That's what we all do and always have, in some shape or form. We have blank space for sale, and we sell it with a clever application of stick-on text and graphics. Furthermore, we power up a measure of that in most of our daily actions, in print or out of print.

You want to receive all you reach for in this world? I'm told to think marketing. I agree.

Check your ego the moment you awaken. I'm told that, too. And I'm seeing it work for me.

And there is more.

I'm obviously in the writing business, and I'm often not believing my good fortune when King eneca runs another pack of my blather, never asking me to submit something else, or suggesting that perhaps I've finally launched myself straight off the roof in a headfirst dive at the cement parking lot.

So it seems to be a bit of a neat trick to observe oneself unloading all trace of ego and attacking the latest and greatest opportunities to market oneself and one's wares. It's a type of stepping outside oneself and honestly and accurately judging one's work and knowing when it's got a shine and magnetism, and when it's crapola.

The first step is to recognize that, and to let the world know that one is ready and willing and able to charge full-tilt into the world of marketing savvy. (Did I say that right?)

According to a relative, this is hen's-tooth rare in the world of novel writing. Oh, that manuscript is my precious baby AND DON'T YOU TOUCH MY BABY! Or, "I recognize it's your baby, but I see so many freakin' baby pictures, I'm too toasted to tell which one is about to blossom into a best-seller." Well, maybe the literary world has to somehow have a structure that'll recognize the fire and drive in an author as well as his or her baby.

Maybe I shouldn't speak for my relative. I have a safe and secure job, and he's still scrambling to enter the world of book publishing, despite some track record and experience with a nonfiction work.

Gee, is the world of novel authoring as fictitious as the product? Maybe it's his place--and not mine--to decide to be that snarky. Or not.

--K.H.

Caught In The Inter Net

My editor, King Seneca, suggested I write a book, and thanks to the electronic planet we now live upon, we have a problem rarely voiced.

I'm guessing I checked in on a literary agent's blog and found some screwball formatting of text and images, and reported same. Considering how much I see and do on that internet thing, that is my best guess. I got an apology, and I'll accept it with grace, but I have no definitive idea why I received one.

In the age when visual text communication was all of the dead-tree style, there was the editor's cut-and-paste, and the dispersal of multiple copies of their handiwork, at once wide-reaching and limiting. Print eight thousand copies and you had around eight thousand readers. They digested your production, right down to all the whoopsies. Sure, a misprint caused chuckles and some ridicule, but only to those readers. Thanks to the internet, however, the entire world can see your screw-ups.

Then again, there's so much online, relatively few may see the results of your sweat equity, and it can be corrected literally in a flash.

What a colossal two-edged machete this Internutty thing is.

I suspect that the biggest and most widespread online entities hire folks whose entire goal is to minimize errors electronically cast out from pole to pole. Catchy appearance is always required, and so is not embarrassing oneself when one is implying crisp professionalism. And this stuff is far more complex than the cut-and-paste of eight pages daily.

You know what I think?

I think that, despite the grand and glorious opportunity for an eye-crossing hodge-podge where crisp layout belongs, there's also the broad opportunity for readers to give this stuff a pass, then go on. I like to think that the web-thing gives more readers more chances to show their grace and forgive and forget the gremlins too easily loosed upon them.

You think it's tough to bop out a daily rag on time and reliably ready for the corner hawkers? At least you're doing the same boring thing on a daily basis, so you're probably going to get relentlessly good at it. Just try a non-time-critical one-shot that doesn't present itself well to your intended audience because they're doing something freaky with their browser software, and you're using the simplest and most common and trouble-free gear, so you never see what the problem is.

Wow, did I ever get to babbling, there.

I need a really good editor.

--K.H.