PERVERSE MARKETING FANTASIES - DO I DARE ACT THEM OUT?

                 FLIRTING WITH THE DARK SIDE

I am feeling surprisingly intact and balanced despite the fourth rejection of my memoir. This is a struggle which I am fully committed to waging and winning. And doing so in a manner which lives up to my own high standards. And yet....

Having been assured that my content and form are "compelling and interesting" my conclusion is that the key to publishing success is convincing a publisher that my work is likely to be a best seller or slightly less.

So what's the template that convinces publishers that an unpublished author {discounting several articles} has a probable large selling potential? Voila! The answer is two words: Marketing Magic.

After reading the top seven books in marketing my book and culling 57.5 pages of detailed notes and applying the essence of them to an 85 page marketing plan, I was certain I had the marketing thing aced. So much for the best laid plans of an aspiring, grandiose, first time author.

So back to the drawing board {please excuse the cliché}. Plan B equals question mark.  Indeed before last night there was no plan B. This was because I had thought before I submitted my memoir  to four publishers,  I had covered every conceivable, reasonable, time tested marketing themes. Therefore, how could there be a plan b when I believed I had already covered the entire marketing your book alphabet from A to Z?

Hooray for the personal unconscious. With the problem of plan b on the tip of my consciousness I fell asleep. I know that when I refer a difficult problem to my personal unconscious for guidance it stimulates a mysterious but concrete something or other the net effect of which is turning on my creative process. TI know that it is turned on when I become highly attyuned to relevant data as in newspapers, books, movies and the likes. Thus I was not surprised to note in the New York Times this morning two highly relevant articles intimately related to marketing schemes.

Both articles referred to confessions by two people that have had the effect of a bomb dropping on the Empire State Building, instantaneously electrifying the whole world drawing mass media attention. Talk about schemes to generate free publicity!

The first of these was the confession of Gunter Grass considered, up to yesterday, to be the undisputed icon of German moral authority. His confession was identifying a small previously overlooked detail that when he was 17 he was a soldier in the SS. BOOM! Today he is still pure for many but tainted by the many who feel betrayed by his hypocrisy. He  is now the dirtiest of the dirtiest for this large group of  shocked and traumatized ex-admirers.

The headline in the New York Times reads: "Gunter Grass's admission of what he did during the war has Germany abuzz."

 A careful reader might asked, would have motivated this fallen hero to confess this crucial biographical detail at this precise time in his space/time continuum on this earth plane somewhere in between his birth but now much closer to his eventual death?

Death wish you might first speculate. The man is crazy. The next headline in the story supports this self destructive point of view. It reads: "Suggestions that a country's conscience is now obliged 'to shut his mouth.'"

But read on there is more than meets the eye. {Oh not another cliché.} In an attempt to explain his motives "the German writer Walter Jens … said "It is very impressive and moving to see an old man coming to terms with his past."

Indeed, Mr. Grass … who "…himself appears to have been taken aback by the hostile reaction to his confession" said: "It is surely an attempt by some people to make me a persona non grata," he told the German news service, DPA." {In marketing this interview is is referred to as a press release}.

Author Grass continues: "That is why I am grateful that there are also discriminating opposing views. I can only hope that some commentators now read my book carefully."

READ MY BOOK!? What book is he referring to?  Coincidentally, it just so happens that he has a MEMOIR about to come into the bookstores. Critics have indicated that  his delayed confession is nothing more than a publicity stunt. The article concludes: "While this explanation {calculated marketing ploy} may seem farfetched {to who, not me} Mr.Grass's publisher, Gerhard Steidl, has nonetheless brought forward the publication date of  "Peeling the Onion" {his memoir} by two weeks. The book goes on sale in Germany on Wednesday.

HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

The second confession is that of a school teacher who said he is the killer of Jan Benet. However there appear to be a few minor problems. For example any one who was involved with this case knows nothing about this man.  And among the other oddities of detail is this one: he has been doing research for a book he is writing.

I am certain you all know precisely what is in the part of my mind I would characterize as perverse. Perverse means "to turn away from that which is right or good."

So I have had this nagging fantasy that I should call a press conference tonight after I am done working for the day to announce some predicatbly explosive secret. Probably best I confess a number of them as I am as yet an unpublished book author. My problem is that I am remarkably squueky clean.

Wait a minute. When I was in my senior year of High School I began cutting classes and lied about the reasons for my absences. Do you think this information would be enough to attract the attention I apparently need to convince a prospective publisher this author  (me) will have a big enough market to take a chance on him.

Let's see shall I settle for a $50,000 advance or insist I will take no lower than six figures. You see that there is no perfect ending to this article. No sooner than I solve one problem then I am faced with another.

How many copies would you like to buy? And please tell your friends. And have their friends tell their friends.

See you later I'm going out for a hamburger and maybe a press conference for dessert. I sincerely hope see you at Barnes and Noble, preferably at the memoir section.

UGH! Back to reality. So much for perversity.