In the digital age, books may seem hopeless outdated. But as a marketing tool, they can generate attention and credibility in a world overloaded with messages.
“The entrepreneur with a book under her belt is no longer a schnook fighting for recognition; she’s a published author sharing her wisdom.” Dyan Machan (“Is a Book the New Business Card?”) writes at SmartMoney.
That dovetails nicely with today’s communications gestalt, which, like social networking, puts the emphasis on sharing.
“You can’t buy attention anymore.” Alex Bogusky, co-chairman of Crispin Porter + Bogusky
Dell has sold $3 million worth of computers on Twitter. Lenovo cut call center activity by 20% by directing customers to a community website for answers. Retweets supporting Susan G. Komen for the Cure resulted in 11,000 visitors to the Atlanta Chapter’s website.
What works in the business world can also work in the literary world. Writers who want to promote their careers might take a tip from Socialnomics author Erik Qualman, who supplied those stats, and makes the case for using social media to drive engagement and sales, in this video.
In 1271 the Polo family took the first step on a grueling journey of thousands of miles, from the canals of Venice through the desert plains of Persia to the fabled court of Kublai Khan. You know the name of that 17-year-old explorer (so does every child who ever hung out at a pool), but do you remember the names of the father and uncle who led the expedition?
Marco Polo’s famous descriptions of spice and silk, of desert raiders and healing springs, have fascinated people for generations. But Marco was not the first in his family to make the epic trip. In 1260, his father Niccolo and uncle Maffeo set out to sell jewels on the lower Volga. They saw many of the same wonders Marco would report eleven years later. Yet few remember them. Why?
Because Marco wrote about the journey.
Marco also put you in the scene. Readers can feel the grit of the desert and the soothing waters of the oasis at day’s end. Those details, along with the description of the clothing and conversations he experienced, turned a travelogue into a fascinating tale. Centuries later, he’s still capturing the attention of readers the world over.
Today we’d describe Marco’s technique as a simple version of narrative nonfiction. Modern writers from Tom Wolfe to historian David McCullough employ the tools of the novelist to create compelling stories. While basing their material strictly on the facts, narrative nonfiction writers seek to recreate the actions, scenes and feelings that shape a country or a company. They focus on ordinary people who do extraordinary things. They put the reader in the scene.
Stephen Covey (The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People) places this ancient principle in a business context when he says one of our highest aspirations as humans is to love, to learn and to leave a legacy. One way to do so is by sharing your hard-won knowledge with others through a memoir. I had the great good fortune to receive a call from a well-respected publisher a few years back that needed a writer for just such a project. The result was One in a Million, the story of a nurse who took her company from the coal fields of Scranton to the Nasdaq.
I’m not comparing her life to that of Marco Polo’s but like the famous explorer she realized that in order to leave a legacy you have to write about the journey. This short video on YouTube talks about that process.
Enjoy the trip.
“Writing is the ability to think clearly on paper,” my boss, Henry Raab, is fond of saying. Update that to include a few more screens and you have a timeless saying. But what if you’re like millions of authors and you’re stumped? Is it a sign of laziness, or chemical imbalance?
Neither, says Mark Ragan, CEO of Lawrence Ragan Communications. In an article entitled “The cure for ‘writer’s block,’” Ragan calls the malady “the inability to think clearly about what you want to say.” While he’s talking to public-relations practitioners and other non-fiction specialists, his advice applies to all types of writers. When people say they have writer’s block, he says, they are dealing with information block. “They don’t have enough detail to make the story flow effortlessly from the brain, or don’t understand the volumes of material at their disposal.”
That’s a very left-brain way of looking at the creative process, one that doesn’t take into consideration emotional blocks, including lack of confidence and anxiety. But since this is blogging and not therapy, we’ll stick with Ragan’s more finite solutions. His tips:
He then borrows a few suggestions from Anne Lamott (Bird by Bird) and others like Natalie Goldberg (Writing Down the Bones):
There’s more, but I’ll let you discover the secrets. Meanwhile, here’s a video from Steven Patterson called “Whine Away Your Deadlines with Writer’s Block.” They say humor helps the juices flow. It might work better than coffee.