A Clever Marketing Ploy?

Candice: As an independent worker I have always got my eye out for the next marketing trick or role mostly sent to me via the emails that land on my Blackberry every day.

Recently I’ve been reconnecting via Linked in, as I may be taking a six month break from it all, but I need to keep my eye on what is out there.  As part of that I am in a number of groups, and also receive regular emails on what is going on in the local marketing community.

This week I had one with the following:

“Online Marketing Manager Mike Essex is giving away copies of his first novel, Tethered Twins, to see what it takes to make a book go viral. It can be downloaded for free directly from Amazon http://amzn.to/1boKS0X and is ideal for fans of Sci-Fi or Dystopia like the Hunger Games.”

Hum, I thought, how clever is that.  You have a potential audience of thousands via Linked in who may or may not read this email, then there is a percentage who will click through and a smaller percentage that will download.  But, when you do email or direct marketing campaigns the expected return is often around 3%, so if that works for this it could be 1000 people perhaps.  What a really good way to get the word out there without having to work too hard.

Then I thought, how could Phil and I steal this idea.  Between the two of us we have you lovely blog followers, our own Linked in Groups, facebook and twitter as well.  Surely we could get together a group of people who might want to take up our enterprise?

Ok, fine, but you have forgotten one thing Nolan, you still haven’t finished the bugger!  Yes, I know I know, its on the eternal list.  The one that sits with the kind of conversation I have just had with my parents about what’s next to do in the house decorating front.  I must admit I am at the point where I just want this whole pregnancy thing over, I’m fed up with being ungainly and tired all the time (yes I know I will be tired for different reasons in the future…) but I am pinning my hopes on three weeks grace between finishing work and little person arriving to get some book stuff done (alongside painting etc).  I’m now at the point I’ve stopped telling people Phil and I have written a book as a bit embarrassing that things haven’t moved on. And I’m bored for you reader reading a blog about writing where there is no writing going on.  Come on, we’ve been so slack we haven’t even done a Christmas story this year.

Roll on the 31st December and finishing work and then I’m going to be stealing Mike’s idea.

The Hunger Games.. hungry for more

Candice: This time of year brings to mind a number of things for me, either “whey hey, the football is over” or “oh bugger, I’ve got another four weeks of it and its going to be worse than before”. Well, this year, unless you don’t have a TV you can’t have missed that there is a small tournament going on. I believe it’s called Euro 2012.  So, for the last week or so I have found a new home, our conservatory.  While the other half is watching in the lounge, I have been chilling in the lovely daylight, sometimes with my able furry assistant.  Emanating from the other side of the house can often be heard, “oh, ah, ohhhh”, and that’s not the blue movie he was watching.  Nope, it’s the sound I hate, FOOTBALL.

However, this has allowed me some quality reading time as I have been a bit slack since the return from holiday.  So my first tackle (ha ha) was The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.  Written for a slightly younger audience than I, it impressed me by drawing me in from the word go.  Having read “The Running Man” by Stephen King, a similar premise of someone trying to escape game that involved being killed,I wasn’t sure it could do it better, it didn’t but just approached it differently.  I have to say there wasn’t a point in this book where I didn’t want to know what happened next, and though I had an inkling of the outcome, I wondered how she would achieve it.

I won’t give the game away but safe to say, it all ends well but with a nice twist leading on to book two.  And, though there is alot of violence, the sex is minimal (thank god!).

The characters are well drawn, the main female Katniss is strong but shows some weakness, but doesn’t do anything that makes you think, “oh she’d never do that.”  And the fact she can survive in the environment is built well from the start, rather than her suddenly being an expert outdoors person.  I want to know more about the world they live in, and how the present world became their ‘Panem’.

Book two is on my list, but I am holding back else I will read them all in a month and then feel a bit bereft afterwards.   I also think I’ll make an effort to see the film when it’s on the movie channel to see how that works.

So I have one thing to thank the football for!

Fifty shades continued

Candice:  I posted the other week about a book I had read on holiday, “Fifty shades of Grey”.  I had mixed feelings about is as a concept and so, it seems, did our readers and my Twitter followers.  Autumn made a very good point about sex being necessary to the story,and when I posted on Twitter I got a flurry of “going to read it, don’t read it” and generally a storm of comments both positive and negative.

However, just today, I have spotted a distant facebook friend posting a copy of the cover and saying she is about to start reading.  She lives in London so I told her not to read it on the Tube in case some one is looking over her shoulder!

So what is it about this book that has created such a fuss, and surely it’s not the only one. I feel its abit like “Lady Chatterley’s Lover“, but in that day it would definately have been banned.  Was it just written to generate a furor, or did the writer actually feel that this book was adding something to the world. Don’t forget there are three of them in the series.

Have read around a bit I find it only really became big about a month before I picked it up, though the three books have been out on a smaller print run before.  The writer is English, though the book is set in Seattle, but I suspect that is something to do with the fact it was originally inspired by “Twilight”.  A very interesting route in it seems, a something that makes one think about how by using existing stories someone has been published.  Perhaps Phil’s and my aim for short stories should use inspiration from the programs we already watch as a starter.  I know there is a regular following for “lost girl” which I am a part of.  Could I write something for the main character, Bo?  Yes, I think I could.

All more fuel for the writing fire.

I still don’t know if I will buy another book in the series, I did try in Tesco on Friday but they are obviously more into censorship than Asda and are not stocking it.  I bought “The Hunger Games” instead, another talked about book but for different reasons.

I’ll let you know what I think of that one.