JANE-ITIS

Earlier this week I visited the Jane Austen exhibit at the Morgan Library and Museum. I'm sure I'll be back several times, probably dragging friends with me, before it leaves in March, but I wanted to make my first visit alone.

I get annoyed at people who claim exclusive ownership of a particular book or author based on pereceived expertise or deep sensitivity or something. "You didn't write the damn books," I always want to snap when someone refers to a writer she's not acquainted with by her first name, turns up her nose at "noobs" or otherwise assumes superiority over the average schmo. "They're out there for everyone to read--get over yourself!"

But Jane is mine. She rescued me from a difficult and somewht chaotic childhood and showed me the possibility of order and beauty. she sparked an early intrest in psychology by illuminating the ways people reveal their motives and feelings through language, gesture and dress. In college, I did my honors English independent study on the importance of theatrics in Mansfield Park, wrote a screenplay of the cabinet scene in Northanger Abbey for a film adaptation class, and used Lady Catherine deBourgh as my character study for my acting final. We are bonded in the way, in some cultures, the person who saves your life is considered your soul's guardian from that point forward.

So I resented the hell out of the dabblers who blocked my view of her letters to Cassandra and of the autograph pages of her only surviving manuscript, Lady Susan. They had come to the books through the movies, I imagined, and thought of her works as romantic chick lit. I wanted them out.

The culmination of the exhibit is an excentric film in which a variety of artists and scholars share their reactions to viewing the letters and manuscripts, and their personal responses to her life and work. I watched it with several of the tourists whose presence I so resented.

And a funny thing happened. As we listened to such disparate literary personalities as Siri Hustvedt and Colm Tóibín describe their awe at viewing letters that were written in her own hand, a fragile, temporary community began to build. As a body, we snorted and hooted at Cornel West's assertion that if he met her he would give her a hug--imagine her reaction!--and melted at his response to the question of whom he would invite to dinner with her: Chekhov. Yes! (Though I identified with Fran Lebowitz's confession that she couldn't bear to invite anyone else; she would want Jane all to herself.) We sat up a little straighter when Tóibín suggested seating her between Freud and Jung: such rich possibilities for brilliance and truth, or, more likely, for disaster.

And then it was over, and I left, not looking at anyone, not wanting to spoil the experience with chitchat. But I keep thinking how glad I am to have shared this experience after all--about the magic of great fiction that can entrance generations of diverse readers, and can engender the feeling in each of us of a personal, vital relationship that feels very much like love.

Susan O'Doherty, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist with a New York City-based practice. A fiction writer herself, she specializes in issues affecting writers and other creative artists. She is the author of Getting Unstuck without Coming Unglued: A Woman's Guide to Unblocking Creativity (Seal, 2007). Her Career Coach column appears every Monday on Inside Higher Ed's Mama, Ph.D. blog , and she is a regular monthly panelist on Litopia After Dark. Send your questions to her at Dr.Sue at mindspring dot com.

Thursday + Gregory Huffstutter = The Ad Man Answers

Q:  I am looking into buying remnant Cable TV and radio spots.  Any ideas?  What should I bid if I am doing a reverse auction with Bid4Spots as an example?  Are there any other ways to go after the remnant advertising on my own that you know of?  Thank you for your input.  It is greatly appreciated.

--David Domm

A:  Remnant advertising can be tricky business.  On the surface, it seems easy enough... you're just snatching up unsold space on TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, and websites.

But let's take a step back.

If you want a real-world equivalent to media buying, look no further than the travel industry.  Flying non-stop between LA and NY over Thanksgiving is going to cost a helluva lot more than connecting thru Houston on a random Tuesday. Basic supply & demand pricing.  It’s the same way TV networks charge a premium for "Dancing With The Stars" vs. late night reruns of "According To Jim."

At a certain point – full or half-empty – that Tuesday plane is going to take off from Houston just like that rerun of "According to Jim" is still going to air at 11pm, even if only a handful of advertisers fill the commercial breaks.

If you own an airline and have unsold seats, you can release inventory to outlets specializing in last-minute deals, like Priceline.  Because it’s better to get something for those empty middle seats, right?

In advertising, however, media outlets have a few more options.  For unsold inventory, they can air:

- Station Promos.  "Next week on FOX, don't miss an all-new episode of 'House'..."

- Public Service Announcements.  "This is your brain on drugs..."

- Bonus or Make-Goods for existing advertisers.  "We're sorry, Mr. Clorox Bleach Media Buyer, but your commercial on NFL Sunday didn't air correctly, so we're going to throw some freebies your way..."

It's in the media vendor's best interests to hang onto their inventory until the last possible deadline, hoping it will get sold at normal or slightly-discounted rates, knowing they can always fall back those station promos or PSAs. If a large advertiser unexpectedly pulls out, you might luck into a spot on "Dancing With The Stars,” but it's far more likely you’ll be airing in that 11pm "According to Jim."

Because most remnant deals are struck mere days before airdate, you need to be nimble to manage the negotiation process and back-end metrics.  Direct marketing agencies often specialize in buying remnant inventory (here's one I've worked with and can recommend), and have buying programs that measure ROI, like "Cost Per Sales Lead."  Experienced remnant buyers also have pricing history with the media vendors, and may place several accounts at once, leveraging their overall spend to secure further discounted rates.

But if you want to strike out on your own, a reverse auction like Bid4Spots is a great tool.  Reverse auctions are the opposite of eBay, which has a starting price for goods/services with potential buyers bidding up from there.  In a reverse auction, it's the buyer posting their advertising budget, dates, markets, and CPM goals (cost-per-thousand impressions), then the sellers (aka TV stations) bidding against other networks wanting to dump unsold inventory, with the lowest rate winning the transaction.

As a buyer on Bid4Spots, your strategy doesn't involve bidding per se, but establishing budgets and CPM thresholds high enough to attract desirable sellers, yet low enough to make the stations work hard for your business.  As a starting point, you can use these ballpark CPMs (not scientific, just guidelines based off experience) then whack 50-75% off.  You'll have to experiment with different budget levels and CPMs to find a sweet spot.  If you really want ESPN and TNT on your media buy, and you're only getting C-SPAN to bid for your budget, you'll need to adjust your strategy. 

GoogleTV is another way the lay person can place their own media.  In this case, it's a forward auction where you're bidding against other advertisers for station inventory.  The only downside is that most of GoogleTV's inventory is limited to DISH satellite subscribers (13 million households), with only a few networks (CNBC, Bravo, MTV, USA, MSNBC) available for purchase across their full cable universe (95 million households).

The web is a fount of remnant inventory, with ad networks specializing in packaging banner ads.  If you're willing to let the network run your advertisement across hundreds of websites – filling up quotas of unsold space – you can achieve major cost savings.  But if you’re not careful, it could mean your banner ad for “The T-Bone Lover’s Cookbook” accidentally winds up on Vegan.com.

That’s the risk of buying remnant.  Your creative needs to be ready to go on a moment’s notice, and you may not have time to check if the environment is the best fit for your message.  Plus, you need to have your funding secured and be willing to open up your schedule to non-prime placements.

Working with a trained media buyer would likely save you money and headaches in the long run.  Media people speak their own language, and the process is more complicated than calling your local ABC station, asking “So… got any spots on tomorrow’s ‘Flash Forward’ that haven’t sold yet?”

Gregory Huffstutter has been punching Ad Agency timecards for the past dozen years, working on accounts like McDonald's, KIA Motors, Suzuki Automotive, and the San Diego Padres. His first mystery, KATZ CRADLE is on submission while he's working on the sequel. The first 100 pages of his novel are linked here. For general advertising questions, leave a comment or send e-mail to katz @ gregoryhuffstutter dot com with 'Ask The Ad Man' in the subject line.

Linktopia (with the help of Judge Page) and another trio of links. 

Love it, hate it, or just don't care about it, but if you are looking for publicity you should at least be looking at Twitter.  Guy Kawasaki shows you how he tweets for business here.

Nikon teamed up with Ashton and his Twitter popularity to start a new promotion with a video hook.  The rest of the story at brandweek.com is here.

Staying at brandweek.com because here's the story on an app promotion (do you remember months and months ago when we kept saying mobile was going to be bigger than anyone could imagine) that with a little tweaking would have been a great fit for publishing. You might have seen the spot, here's the  story.

CBS Sunday Morning just did a story on the food trucks in Los Angeles and how they are drawing crowds via Twitter (one has 44,000) followers and it makes us wonder (not for the first time) how authors/publishers can do something similar. All these people showing up at different spots to get food they love could be meeting authors they love... or lots of other things.. what if publishers created events to give out samples in one spot one day in one city.. and what if... Here's a link that that came after the Twitter story in the Spring.

Check out Susan Perry's article about my work on Psychology Today

Am I too sensitive?  Or are agents actually behaving badly?  And why should I bother?

Sick of Writing

Dear Writing:

No, you’re not too sensitive. Rejection hurts, and being rejected repeatedly, especially in a way that makes you feel ignored, insignificant, or invisible, can be demoralizing and, as you say, disheartening. I don’t think the agents are necessarily behaving badly, either, though. They are swamped and shorthanded. They’re doing their best to wade through towers of queries, synopses, and manuscripts. If they took the time to write to each author, it would be another year or two before they got to yours, and they would never actually have time to sell a book. It’s easy to say, “don’t take it personally,” but how do we accomplish this? On last week’s Litopia after Dark, we discussed the negativity study. Dave Bartram commented that at one point in his writing career, he had become so embittered by rejection that the bad feelings contaminated his joy not only in writing, but even in reading: he couldn’t walk into a bookstore without thinking, You bastards! Dave said he had needed to learn to compartmentalize—to separate the act of writing from the effort to be published—in order to rediscover his motivation to write. This is not easy to accomplish, but it can be done, and it is essential for serious, sensitive writers. Try keeping your submission materials in a different place from your writing paraphernalia. If you perform both activities on the same computer, file your WIP in a separate location from the finished work that you are submitting. If you write in the morning before breakfast, submit in the evening after dinner. Don’t look at email, google agents, or compose submission letters while taking a break from writing: keep the two realms as discrete as possible. When the form letters do come, say to yourself, “It’s not personal—it’s just business.” Remind yourself that these people don’t know anything about you, and may not know much about literature—even if they’re highly successful, their area of expertise is sales. If it helps you to feel better (and this really does help some people), perform a ritual—burn the rejection slip in the bathroom sink; shred it and then flush it down the toilet; write FU all over it in red pen; or edit it for grammatical errors and stylistic awkwardness. Then put time and space between this unpleasantness and your exercise of your vocation. Perform a different ritual before sitting down to write: sprinkle lavender oil around the room (to dispel negativity), chant softly to yourself, “Art is Everything,” or read a favorite poem or passage. Remind yourself that this is what it is about: slipping into this imaginative space, creating work of beauty and meaning, discovering and honing your true vision. The rest is just buying and selling—exciting and fun when it goes well, but nothing to do with your core.

This is a lovely lovely magical book that is perfect for children and for grown up children too. Suza Scalora is a photographer whose work graces magazines and ads... but here as in her other books she creates fantasy proof of angels with a lovely narrative. Buy it for someone you love.

Just because everything is different doesn't mean it all has to change.

An alternative and very creative way to set up a book tour.

An article about Burberry and branding. Smart company. We need to really think about branding in publishing. Not in the old way - its not about a publisher tweeting - you can't create brand excitement by just existing. You need to understand what makes a brand important - and that's standing for something. Which doesn't fit publishers except for a very few, Hard Case Crime, Harlequin (but only only only for romance novels). When you tarnish a brand it takes years to shine it up again. 

Authors are the brands. Great when you have giant ones that operate like mini companies (Clive Cussler, Patterson, Nora Roberts, etc). But how do you turn the levels under that into brands? 

That's the million dollar question. Any idea

Linktopia (with the help of Judge Page) takes a look at brands and clips some coupons.

...technology isn't killing advertising--it's helping it to evolve...

It's about your brand and you can find out about it here.

A college that has set itself apart from its competition will have greater success in a more competitive recruiting environment, and be in a better position to compete online as well.

Give a read and decide if you see some similarities to, ah, you'll figure it out.  Continue reading here.

An online coupon for 16% off used games at Gamestop.com and a printable coupon for $3 off a 12-piece meal at KFC were the most popular coupons in September 2009

Some interesting information on coupon use at marketingcharts.com 

The full story is here.

Is there a lesson here?

MAYBE IT’S NOT YOU

Hypersensitivity to rejection is a common complaint among writers. We all know that the odds are against any particular novel, story or poem being published; that editors are far from infallible; and that it’s in part a numbers game—it’s often necessary to resubmit repeatedly before work is accepted. Yet so many of us—including those whose writing does get published—register rejection in an intense, visceral way that makes us forget, temporarily, all of the positive feedback we’ve gotten over the years. They’re right; we are nothing; our work is garbage; we should just give up now.

I have discussed this phenomenon with clients, friends, and my own psyche in terms of personal insecurity, confusion of self with work, and the tendency to catastrophize. I think all of these factors are relevant. However, a reader sent this article describing a study that suggests that our subconscious minds are much more attuned to negative messages than to positive ones. The explanation the experimenters offered was intriguing: “Clearly, there are evolutionary advantages to responding rapidly to emotional information. We can't wait for our consciousness to kick in if we see someone running towards us with a knife or if we drive under rainy or foggy weather conditions and see a sign warning ‘danger.’”

So maybe the horror we feel on opening that dreaded thin envelope doesn’t spring from a history of childhood rejection after all. Maybe it’s our highly evolved subconscious protecting us against the dagger inherent in the words “not quite right for us.”

Something to ponder, at any rate.

Susan O'Doherty, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist with a New York City-based practice. A fiction writer herself, she specializes in issues affecting writers and other creative artists. She is the author of Getting Unstuck without Coming Unglued: A Woman's Guide to Unblocking Creativity (Seal, 2007). Her Career Coach column appears every Monday on Inside Higher Ed's Mama, Ph.D. blog , and she is a regular monthly panelist on Litopia After Dark. Send your questions to her at Dr.Sue at mindspring dot com.

That seems to be the message.

 I think I'm getting paranoid. 

Last week PW picked all male best books of 2009. 

As readers of this blog know sine 2005 Oprah has picked all male bookclubs bks. 

Now looking into it after reading an article about him and thrillers in the NYT Glen Beck seems to picks mostly all male thriller writers to interview on his show. WTF??

And an all female list like the Orange prize won't fix this. Women need to be integrated. 

Can't believe I'm writing this in 2009 - can you?

An interesting little nugget of a paragraph in Shelf Awareness today....

Book apps now top game apps as the most popular category downloaded to iPhones. Flurry, an analytics firm, has published "a report which shows that games were the number one category of apps downloaded on the iPhone every month from August 2008 until August 2009," the Telegraph reported. "However, in the last four months, book apps have exceeded the popularity of games apps--with one out of every five new apps launching in October having been a book. In September, games apps were overtaken by book apps for the first time."

Linktopia (with the help of Judge Page) looks at going live, social women, and just how much is a chapter worth?

Diet Coke is not the only brand going live to garner attention. Marketers including Burger King and Adidas are warming up to real-time Web content, mirroring a shift in digital media away from asynchronous communication and content delivery (e.g., the sending of e-mails and watching posted videos) towards instant feedback and interaction. 

Continue reading here.

"And they are very loyal. If they discover something they like, they tell their friends about it. Women were social networking way before Facebook."

Find out what they are talking about here.

Simon & Schuster has begun selling individual e-chapters of its "You" series of books, written by Doctors Michael Roizen and Mehmet Oz

So the question is, how much would you pay for a chapter? Continue reading here.

Dear Dr. Sue,

I've been pretty fortunate as a writer. Very soon after I really started writing seriously (late in life, after several different careers and many disappointments), I got an agent and got published.  Then I got published again. Then I moved into a different genre and have one book published, another on the way, and am about to sign a contract for two more.

Sounds like a pretty good affirmation of my ability, yes? Well, nonetheless, every time I sit in front of my computer, or even think about writing--which I do every day, and am pretty disciplined about--I get a panic-stricken feeling that I don't know what I'm doing. It doesn't go quite as far as making me feel as if I've lost the ability to string words into a sentence, but nearly. I feel as though the books I have written and am writing are strange creatures that came from another planet, and I don't understand them or how they came to be.

I'm a very intellectual person with advanced degrees and the ability to think critically about writing and other subjects, but I can't seem to wrap my brain around applying any of that to my own work. At least, that's how it feels. I suddenly find myself asking myself what constitutes a good novel? Will I be able to pace it so that it works? Are my characters shallow and formulaic? How on earth do I fix them? What is voice?

In short, I feel as if everything I thought I knew has vanished into the mist or is hiding out of sight, eluding me the more I try to find it. And yet, I keep writing, sure that I'm probably polluting the literary world with worthless drivel no one will want to read.

Why are reality and perception so many miles apart for me?

Sincerely,
Lost

Dear Lost,

Without knowing more about you, it’s impossible to discern your general level of self-esteem. However, your assessment of your intellect, your depiction of the gap between reality and perception, and your ability to keep writing despite your doubts suggest that your overall confidence level is high, so I’ll address only the specific concern about your writing.

First, most writers don’t believe they know what they’re doing. This is natural, because none of us actually do know what we’re doing. As you know, writing a novel is different from building a cabinet or knitting a sweater, as challenging as those activities may be. There is no pattern for a novel; no way of doing it “right” or even, often, knowing when we’ve succeeded. Each new work presents its own challenges, and in that sense we are all beginners every time we sit down with a new idea. Most writers find it necessary to fight through those feelings of inadequacy and incompetence repeatedly—it’s just part of the process.

Second, though, very few of us are as skillful or knowledgeable as we could be, and in that sense our insecurity is also reality-based. Writing novels that sell is a fine accomplishment, but not necessarily an indication that you are working up to your full potential. Consider taking a class or joining a critique group. You may find that you benefit from others’ wisdom and critical evaluation of your work. At the very least, you can share your feeling of insecurity and discover for yourself that you are far from alone.

Susan O'Doherty, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist with a New York City-based practice. A fiction writer herself, she specializes in issues affecting writers and other creative artists. She is the author of Getting Unstuck without Coming Unglued: A Woman's Guide to Unblocking Creativity (Seal, 2007). Her Career Coach column appears every Monday on Inside Higher Ed's Mama, Ph.D. blog , and she is a regular monthly panelist on Litopia After Dark. Send your questions to her at Dr.Sue at mindspring dot com.

I'm going to start tweeting/blogging about bad book ads.  Good ads too when I see them.

Today's a bad ad day.

IMHO there's no excuse for lousy creative. 

Good books... great books... deserve great ads. 

 This is the problem with saving money - perfectly lovely people in publishing who don't know how to do a good ad write the ads for books. 

 You can make toast is a toaster without much education. But you cannot make a souffle without some lessons or a really good recipe. 

 Ditto with ads. 

 90% of the ads we see today for books are toast. I love Audible - I am a member of Audible - I'd work with them on ITW projects - but have you seen the TV ads they are spending so much money on? Nothing provocative or imaginative about them. Think for a moment about the magic of listening to a book while you are on a boring commute. 

 Take Target- today in the NYT online they are spending mega dollars advertising four books. Anyone looking at that page on a normal screen can not read 3 out of the 4 titles/covers of the books they are advertising.

Linktopia makes stops at Fast Company and The New York Times this week. We start with finding out what Disney marketing is up to.

(Cross-posted at Mama PhD)

One of my clients has written a book that is about to be published. It is an excellent book -- beautifully written, with interwtined themes that reverberate long after the narrative ends. The book was recently reviewed in a distinguished publication with an online presence, and my client sent me a link to the review. It was outstandingly positive, the sort of review that makes you want to run out and buy the book, and I congratulated her heartily.

"I don't want to seem ungrateful," she responded, "but look at this." She showed me another review from the same publication, of a male colleague's book. While my client's book had been described enthusiastically as an engaging, fast-moving read (which it is), her colleague's was discussed in respectful terms, lauded for its profundity and depth -- descriptors which also apply to my client's book.

"It's because he's male," she said. And a perusal of other positive reviews seemed to support that.

I haven't read all of those other books, of course, but unless women are writing only fun fluff and men are writing only deeply profound and important works, something is fishy here -- possibly the same phenomenon MJ Rose points to in her continuing tally of male vs. female representation in Oprah's Book Club (current tally: of the 19 book club titles Oprah has chosen since 2003, 17 are by men).

My client is an adjunct, with no interest in the tenure track. And the review will almost certainly drive sales. But it's hard not to wonder how many careers are made, or broken, on the basis of the "importance" of one's output, as decided by evaluators who may read through the filter of gender.

Susan O'Doherty, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist with a New York City-based practice. A fiction writer herself, she specializes in issues affecting writers and other creative artists. She is the author of Getting Unstuck without Coming Unglued: A Woman's Guide to Unblocking Creativity (Seal, 2007). Her Career Coach column appears every Monday on Inside Higher Ed's Mama, Ph.D. blog , and she is a regular monthly panelist on Litopia After Dark. Send your questions to her at Dr.Sue at mindspring dot com

Thursday + Gregory Huffstutter = The Ad Man Answers

This week, The Ad Man is happy to bring you a Q&A with a man who’s enjoyed 24 straight bestsellers on the New York Times hardcover list… Stuart Woods.

After an early career in advertising – at notable agencies like Y&R, J.Walter Thompson, and Papert Koenig Lois – Woods sold his first novel, CHIEFS, in 1981. CHIEFS was later made into a TV miniseries (now available on Netflix) and subsequently won an Edgar award from the Mystery Writers of America.

Since then, Woods has penned over 40 novels – including 16 in the Stone Barrington series alone – and is now contracted for 3 new releases per year. His latest in the Holly Barker series is HOTHOUSE ORCHID.

-----

Stuart, you were already an established author before this whole Internet thing came about. At what point did you feel the need to start an author homepage?

In 1996, when I first heard about websites.

Was that funded by your publisher at the time?

Nope, and it still isn't.

Given your advertising background, how involved do you get in your publisher’s marketing plans?

I tried at first, but they didn't want to hear it. The budgets were so small, compared to the advertisers I had worked for.

Most new writers are expected to spend a percentage of their advance towards advertising efforts. After 40 novels, are you still expected to kick in for marketing your own books?

I've never heard of this practice. It's the publisher's job, and they should do it without screwing money out of their writers.

Which media types have you noticed works best for driving your book sales?

My current publisher believes in spending most of the budget below the line – i.e. on placement in bookstores, etc.

I don’t see any Stuart Woods book trailers on YouTube… but there is a guy who does video reviewing your books before plugging his own. What do you think of this subversive tactic?

I never look at YouTube or the other web crazes. As long as he puts my book first…

What’s your take on social media? You have fan pages on Facebook, but I can’t imagine writing 3 books a year leaves a lot of time for Twittering.

I have no take whatever on it.

Your covers have a very distinctive type treatment, going all the way back to “Palindrome.” Was that your influence or your publishers? Given your different series and stand-alones, did you feel a need to tie all your novels together?0

I have cover approval, but they usually come up with the idea. It just evolved, I think.

In the past, you’ve recommended aspiring novelists should take a job that requires them to write 1,000 words a day (advertising, PR, etc), to teach how to write when you don’t feel like it. Does that advice still hold true today? Do you feel like modern life – texting, instant messenger, e-mail – has stunted the next generation of writers?

Yes. Probably.

After living through the ‘60s NY Ad scene, have you been following AMC’s “Mad Men”? If so, how true is that show to your recollections of the time? Fess up… did you have a wet bar in your office?

I got my first job at BBDO in November of 1960; that's spot on for Mad Men, which I enjoy. I don't remember a bar in anyone's office, but there were a few bottles in bottom desk drawers.

Thanks, Stuart, for taking time out of your busy writing schedule. Here’s hoping the next Stone Barrington novel makes it twenty-five straight bestsellers!

Gregory Huffstutter has been punching Ad Agency timecards for the past dozen years, working on accounts like McDonald's, KIA Motors, Suzuki Automotive, and the San Diego Padres. His first mystery, KATZ CRADLE is on submission while he's working on the sequel. The first 100 pages of his novel are linked here. For general advertising questions, leave a comment or send e-mail to katz @ gregoryhuffstutter dot com with 'Ask The Ad Man' in the subject line.

. In what might be one of the most ironic statement I've seen from anyone on the price war debate for undercutting the price of books, Shelf-Awareness.com posts this comment today:

Arsen Kashkashian, inventory manager at the Boulder Book Store, Boulder, Colo., writes:

Perhaps the price wars are really a positive thing for independent bookstores. We are looking at canceling our orders from the publishers on these books and ordering them from Amazon, Wal-Mart or Target. We will save almost $10 per book on some of the titles. I figure we can cut our billing by close to $1,000 and offer our customers significant savings while still maintaining a healthy margin. If these companies want to become wholesalers at a loss why should we discourage it?

Linktopia (with the help of Judge Page) gets a recap on "Free", sees what Google is up to with ads, and finds that publishing isn't the only business slow to mix traditional and interactive marketing.

...what customers are willing to buy is far more important than what you're willing to sell. Guy Kawasaki has a post at openforum.com on Chris Anderson's Free concept and links to a video keynote so you get it straight from the author. Continue reading here.

Brandweek brings us up-to-speed on Google and banner ads.

Google believes it can isolate how much of search and site traffic increases can be directly attributed to banner ads... The full story is here.

At Forrester they are talking about what they heard from many companies at a recent summit

...one of the greatest challenges for interactive marketers today is getting support and cooperation from theri traditional brand marketing colleagues.

Have you heard that anywhere before?  Keep reading here.

Dear Dr. Sue:

As I watch my 81-year-old mother slip slowly into dementia, I'm starting to feel like the equivalent of the daughter who starts running five miles a day after watching a parent have a heart attack. I'm desperately afraid of losing my mental faculties, and I find myself... I guess the only way I can put it is hoarding intellectual experience. I've always read constantly, skimmed the Times every morning, and kept up with the New Yorker. Now I'm subscribing to a few other book review publications and reading constantly online to keep up with the literary website I've started; I spend time administering and managing the site, writing for it, solicitingn work from other people. I keep a journal. I write stories and essays, every once in a while entering a contest or submitting to anthologies. I keep up with online communities, both social and book-oriented. I still read all the time, and I've started writing small reviews of what I read.

This on top of a fairly demanding editorial 9-5 job, a full-sized house to manage, a partner to interact with, pets, an almost-grown child, a reasonable social life, an exercise schedule, and eating healthy home-cooked food to keep us strong. 

It's not like I'm unhappy with any of this, or that I feel like I'm doing things incompletely because I take on too much. But I can't quite shake the feeling of hoarding--what my mom is doing with old plant pots and pill bottles, I'm doing with books and periodicals and writing. If I could take a class, I'd do that, too--fortunately (I think), there's just no time. There's precious little fat to be trimmed in my life--I don't watch TV, play computer games, or use Facebook. I do get some mental downtime when I'm walking with my dog in the mornings, but I wonder sometimes if that's enough--I find what I steal the time away from is sleep, waking up early with my mind working. Not with anxious thoughts, but ideas, projects, things I want to write down.

And I acquire WAY more books than I will probably be able to read in my life. It's my way of bargaining for time, I suppose--I can't die/lose my marbles until I've read them all--but I wonder if thatisn't a bit nutty in itself.

Obviously it's disturbing watching my mother's decline--I think that's pretty normal--and I feel like I'm channeling it into productive action. I've been prone to anxiety at other stressful times in my life, and this seems to be another form of it--but a productive form, which makes me happy and gives me a feeling of accomplishment, so that's good. But I also feel burned out, like the feeling of play in my creative life is suffering. There's this underlyingn feeling of "there's not enough time!", which I both relish--it's a motivator--and find really exhausting. Any thoughts?

--Collyer Sister

Dear Sister:

As Leonard Cohen might say, I've been where you're hanging, and I think I can see how you're pinned. Life suddenly seems too short to waste a moment--yet the effort to seize the day becomes increasingly, well, effortful, until life begins to feel like a miles-long "to-do" list rather than a series of peak experiences.

It's great that your anxiety takes such a productive form. Reading, writing and interacting are far preferable to medicating with  Scotch and Haagen-Dazs while watching Judge Judy. Even so, it feels like anxiety to you, and it sounds like anxiety to me, and it seems to be impairing your ability to derive full enjoyment from the many riches your life offers.

George Burns famously said, "I can't die--I'm booked!" But he did die, and so will the rest of us. Nothing we can do will alter that. And most of us will go through a period of cognitive and/or physical decline. 

Try focusing some of your productive energy on planning for this eventuality. Do you have life insurance? Disability? If you do become demented, how do you want your loved ones to handle your decline? Are they aware of your wishes, and comfortable with them? What is the legacy you want to leave them? Do you have loose ends to tie up, or spiritual or religious issues to reconcile? If these questions are too anxiety provoking, consider talking to a professional.

Collecting and hoarding often represent attempts to control the uncontrollable. Paradoxically, though, we can attain our real power and peace by letting go.

This parody in the New Yorker hits a little too close to home. You'll laugh till you cry.

Linktopia (with the help of Judge Page) peeks at research on consumer attitudes, how Toronto showed the indie movie biz is really changing, and speaking of movies, how we find out about them even with the web dominating our lives might surprise you, or maybe not.

The objective of the research was to gauge current and projected consumer attitudes, perceptions, and usage of mass media (magazines, newspapers, radio, TV, and the internet) relative to reported past and expected future behavior.  

MarketingCharts.Com has the full story here.

The old independent market is over. A new one will take its place. But we are smack in the middle between the end of one paradigm and the start of another, and it’s a scary place indeed.

Anne Thompson has a look at the independent movie market. Continue reading here.  

Even with 86 percent of moviegoers venturing online every day, most first learn of new films the old-fashioned way: TV commercials and in-theater trailers.

Keep reading here for the rest of the story.

Dear Dr. Sue,

How is one supposed to work and take care of a family and eat decently and exercise and interact with friends/family/partner and keep the house presentable and have some reading time every day and still have a fulfilling creative life? Not schedule oneself 20 minute blocks but really sit down and do the work? Barring enough wealth to be able to pay someone else to do any or all of the above, which invalidates the question.

And not a really good question because I know all the usual answers -- negotiate a set period of time that's MY creative time and enlist the partner/children and lower my standards as far as eating well or keeping the house nice... but what if you for one reason or another have a life where there's reeeeally little fat to trim already?

—Overwhelmed

Dear Overwhelmed,

I don’t actually think you are supposed to do all this. I don’t think anyone is. My totally unscientific opinion is that for the most part, we have not evolved rapidly enough to keep pace with the demands of the electronic age. The effort is making everyone over 30 nuts. (The gene for the extra brain that allows people to IM, talk on the phone, reprogram their ringtones, and do their homework at the same time doesn’t seem to have popped up until around 1980.)

This is not to suggest a return to the good old days, whenever they were. A hundred years ago, people had the leisure to write and read long, rambling novels because “non-people,” often denied the privilege of learning to read and write, cooked their meals, scrubbed their floors, and took care of their laundry. Fifty years ago, it was possible for a segment of the population to hold down a demanding job while enjoying a full social life, because another segment was home performing unpaid home labor and childcare and doing all the emotional and social work necessary to keep the place lively. And so on. There has never been a Golden Age that wasn’t also a Crap Age for a large number of people.

Even so, this is ridiculous. Computers were supposed to even things out; to allow regular schmoes to enjoy some of the privileges of the rich and appropriately gendered by minimizing drudge work and freeing up everyone’s energy and time. Instead, we have the illusion of mastery, engendering the expectation of both enhanced results and constant access, all while digesting a constant stream of new information.

Yet people do read, and write, even those who hold down jobs and raise children. From my observation of clients and friends, most highly productive artists share at least a few of these behavioral habits:

1.   Ruthlessness in prioritizing: They let dust bunnies the size of Kansas grow under the bed or even the coffee table. They never defrost the freezer, and they wash dishes only when they run out of clean ones. They don’t cook. They never buy clothing that needs to be hand-washed, hemmed or taken in. They don’t return social calls from people they don’t like. They don’t keep up with the news, except for the Sunday paper or to prepare to vote. They don’t get into casual conversations in the grocery store or health club; instead, they’re writing in their heads.

2.   Seasonal thinking: To everything there is a season, etc. Farmland is more fertile when crops are rotated. It’s better to eat salad in the summer and potatoes in the winter. Whatever metaphor they use, productive artists understand that they are not computers, programmed to spew out 500 words a day year-round. They need to spend some time recharging their batteries, either in restful solitude or in festive company; some time thinking and dreaming of the next work; and some time having the experiences they will write about later on. In the longer term, this can mean taking a break or cutting back when the children are small or the spouse is ill, then plunging back in when the time is more propitious.

3.   Unplugging: The fact that the technology is available doesn’t mean we always have to use it. Some writers find it useful to disconnect from the internet and turn off their phones for a specified number of hours during writing periods. Some train themselves to check and respond to their email once a day. Many don’t watch TV; instead they read to relax.

4.   Self-acceptance: They don’t compare their output or their lifestyles to those of others. They don’t apologize for not having read every new book or seen the latest film, for keeping a messy house or not giving dinner parties, or for not yet having finished the novel. They find ways to be there for their loved ones when it matters most and assume that these loved ones will understand their failure to adhere to protocol. They don’t waste time or energy, in other words, on self-flagellation or even self-measurement. They keep their eye on the goal and just keep inching forward.

Most of us just aren’t that dedicated and single-minded. We get distracted; we get guilted into doing things we have no business wasting our time on; we push and berate ourselves when we should relax and enjoy, and we veg out in front of the TV when we should energetically follow the thread of an idea. So we probably need to start with #4 and work back from there. Remember, it’s not you, it’s everything—but you’re living in the midst of everything, and to get anything done, you probably need to filter some of it out.

Susan O'Doherty, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist with a New York City-based practice. A fiction writer herself, she specializes in issues affecting writers and other creative artists. She is the author of Getting Unstuck without Coming Unglued: A Woman's Guide to Unblocking Creativity (Seal, 2007). Her Career Coach column appears every Monday on Inside Higher Ed's Mama, Ph.D. blog , and she is a regular monthly panelist on Litopia After Dark. Send your questions to her at Dr.Sue at mindspring dot com.