Years ago Carly Simon had us all “Anticipating” Heinz ketchup.  Today, my published paperback “is making me wait” for this is the week the first 10 copies of my book are being rushed to my house.  I have 100 addtional copies coming, but I didn’t want to pay Fedex to get them here absolutely positively overnight.

While I wait I realize “We can never know about the days to come…
But we think about them anyway”  and I wonder if it is meant to be or if I’m “just chasing after some finer day”

These days the magic and mystery of book publication, record and even movie production have been replaced by software and hardware that let you create your personal masterpiece one high quality professional piece at a time.  Anybody and everybody can distribute anything on the internet.  So we are forced to find new ways to make our commodity seen, heard or read by someone other than friends and relatives.

Thus it is imperitive that we anticpate the challenge and not get too caught up in what books, records and movies with our name on them used to mean in “the good old days”. 

Because we have chosen to be the producer we are now responsible for selling our work.  

As much as I complain about it, I have voluntarily taken on the busyness of publishing and marketing my book.   So I decided to stop fighting it and embrace the task.  I have turned my creativity loose in anticpation of my publication’s release in traditional book format by:

1. Having T-shirts made with my book cover on the front stating “I M Considering SomeplacElse”

2. Purchasing some bulk USB Jump Drives, loading the earbook and ebook in two formats onto them AND creating recyclable packaging that will return $3 profit on a 10 dollar sale.  (The 1G jump drives alone retail for $15)

3.  The day the paperback is released I will alter the e-book to ask for the $5 price AFTER the last page is read. (Currently users can only read the first chapter for free).  About one in ten downloads have resulted in a sale and I have already made enough money to fund this entire project.  At this point, I am ready to take the chance that readers will be at least if not more likely to pay after they read the whole ebook.

4. Because 95% of book buyers want paper if I want a lot of people to read my book, I have to make it available to them.  However, I have set the retail price at 19.95, twice the ear book e-book package price and four times the 3d Page turning e-book price.   Even heavily discounted, the reader must “consider” the possibilities afforded merely by allocating their resources, someplace else.  

Item four is a marketing strategy that reflects one of the principal themes of my book, thus merely talking about the price of the book will allow me to “sell” it’s contents in the same conversation. 

I don’t know if I can recommend these strategies to any of you or if any of them will even work, but while you are longing for the delivery of your next book, don’t just wait, anticpate.