The Clash, AI, and Marketing 101, by Josh Stallings

Q:  Do you set aside dedicated time to do promotion for your book and your brand? If so, how much time and what do you concentrate on? If not, why not?

“Siri play The Clash Sandinista! loud.” Give me Topper Headon’s locked tight beat. Strummer’s chord stabs. Give me the fuck-capitalism ethos. To get the label to release Sandinista! as a triple-LP at a cost the fans could afford, the band lowered their royalty rate. Also for the first time they listed song writing credits not by individual members but as written by The Clash, thereby sharing the royalties equally. Pure fuck-the-money-man attitude.

Listening now. Fingers starting to feel the beat of typing. “Charlie Don’t Surf,” is the perfect answer to “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.” The Magnificent Seven turns out that snapping boogaloo that has me dancing with words.

“WAIT. Come on Josh, this is how I answer a question about the business of writing?”

Yep. It all connects… The Clash made Sandinista! as a middle finger pointed at the record business. Strummer said they made a triple album because the record company objected to London Calling being released as a double album. That’s rock and roll baby. Brazen guts, a rock steady beat, three cords, and something to yell about is all you need.

This is the mind set I need to do what I do. Starting a project I need the arrogance of a teenager to block out everyone's opinion and listen to my own. It is audacious to walk  into a dark room, stare down the blank page and say “I will find my story here, and it will be worth the work.” It takes a combination of Evil Knievel’s fearlessness and Iggy Pop’s raw power rage to pull that off… 

“Wait, slow your roll Josh, all that youthful angst and bravado has nothing to do with the business of promoting your work.”

Am I avoiding the question? Hell yes. 

Why am I avoiding the question? Fucked if I know. 

Let me put on my logical professor hat. 

Movie marketing 101: In the before times the keystone of movie’s advertising campaign was the trailer. The greatest effort and money was spent on this two to two and a half minute piece. It played only in theaters. It set the tone for the shorter work that followed. A thirty second spot placed on a hit TV show would be seen by millions more than the trailer, so why weren’t they as important? This speaks to the heart of marketing, it should be aimed at people predisposed to see or hear or read your product. A person sitting in a movie theater is already paying to see movies. They are predisposed to want to see another movie. The studios were also careful to launch a trailer attached to the opening of a film in the same genre as the one they were selling. Confident that audiences will get excited over their new film coming soon. Get this right and the viewers will tell their friends about it. They will evangelize. For the core audience the TV spots were simply to keep the enthusiasm going and as a reminder of the opening date.

Books aren’t movies, and streaming killed that old movie marketing model. Why bring it up? It remains relevant even if the venues shifted. Like movies, books sell by word of mouth, we need evangelized readers. So how do we meet those readers, where are their “movie theaters?” Where they read? Should we be hanging out in libraries looking over shoulders to see what folks are into? Seems kinda creepy. Social media (Twitter and Facebook) was where I was first “discovered.” Back then it worked to connect with readers and critics. Honestly, honesty is gone from social media. Political ideology and lying liars have poisoned the well, we don’t trust each other online, never sure if we’re talking to a writer/reader or a PR AI bot, or worse an AI bot with a neo-fascist agenda.

“What do you think about AI writing books?” My brilliant little sister asked. We were talking about AI in art and literature. If we couldn’t discern it was AI created why did it bug us. I came down on the pro human unionist point of view, 

“If we buy AI books, we take jobs from human writers.” It was true but also a bit self serving. 

My sister dropped, “Maybe the problem is, AI itself has no back story. Take Van Gough, love the paintings and we know his life story. We can study his work and know the man through it. Louise Penny? I feel like I know her. Getting a new Three Pines book is like a letter from an old friend.” 

“Can’t AI crack the old friends logarithm?” I asked afraid of the answer.

“Damn brother, that’s dark. Imagine a new Hap and Leonard book that AI personalized and tailored to the reader's unspoken wants and desires. Joe R. Lansdale without all those bad words and problematic social issues? Or with a heaping pile more of them if that’s your deal. Afraid of gay? Leonard is straight as ruler, well not any ruler, not Julius Caesar, obviously, or Alexander the Great.”

After I stopped laughing, I wanted to ask her if books shouldn’t pull us out of our comfort zones past our petty preconceived notions? But instead told her I needed to get back to my Criminal Minds essay.

Clearly I’m stuck. Here’s why, if I were to spend my time on marketing what would that look like? Shouting BUY MY BOOK in a social media echo chamber? Going to book conferences and connecting with readers? Writing essays on book marketing? These aren’t rhetorical questions dear readers, no, I really hope you have some answers. Any answers.

For now, “Siri play No Shit by Iggy Pop.”

Back to my master plan for literary domination, keep typing as true and real as I know how. Take no shit. Never give up. Demand that every book is better than the last. Remember fellow writers are my traveling companions. Only compete with myself. Push myself to write better. 

Failing all that, “Siri play Ziggy Stardust.”

 Ziggy played guitar…

Let It Bleed

Did you ever have any doubts about your decision to be a writer?

by Paul D. Marks

Every minute of every effing day!

The end.

Well, the end of the first part.

The Other Part:

I think every writer—at least this version of EveryWriter—has doubts about our decision to be a writer. It’s like those Facebook memes that go around: This is what my friends think I do as a writer. But what we really do is toil in the salt mines of our minds. I’m not saying it’s the down and dirty work of toiling in real salt mines. But it’s also not as easy as some people think.

Like Red Smith said, “There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.”

That’s all there is to it.

My writing life has been all over the map. From op-ed pieces to radio scripts and script doctoring to short stories and novels. And though it’s always been a roller coaster, I was always glad to have the opportunity to express myself and be creative. Despite the idiots one sometimes has to deal with.

I like the writing—not so much the biz side of it.

So let’s talk about the...

...Doubts and Reasons to Quit:

1) No one really understands what you do. I made my living rewriting other people’s scripts and optioning my own spec scripts to various people. One of the hardest parts of my film work was that, as a rewriter, there was no screen credit, so my dad could never figure out what I did for a living—and certainly didn’t understand how it all worked. Couldn’t take his friends to Westwood and show them my name on the silver screen. That was frustrating, but not as frustrating as dealing with some of the personalities. But did that (no screen credit) make me doubt my decision to be a writer? Hell, no. I just started writing short stories and novels. You get credit there...most of the time.

2) No one respects what you do: I once had a producer threaten to send his friends in the Mossad to get me when we argued about a script I was working on for him. I was warned about him before I started, but I thought I’m a brave soul, I’ll give it a shot. He’d hired me to write a script based on his idea—then hated everything I came up with, even though it was exactly what we’d talked about, but it wasn’t him, his writing, in every nuance. Hell, he should have written the damn thing himself... But he couldn’t and wouldn’t. No he’d rather just threaten me. So, of course, I sat up every night with night vision goggles, a CAR-15 (it was a while ago), flame thrower, a couple-a cruise missiles (Tom Cruise Missiles ‘cause he could protect the hell out of me) and an AWACs circling overhead, and lay in wait for them to swarm the hill behind my house. A .50 cal would have been better than the CAR-15, but since they never came I guess it didn’t matter. Maybe they’re still on their way and I seem to have misplaced the CAR-15. But did the Mossad threat make me doubt my decision to be a writer, hell no. I just bought myself a new Kevlar vest.  : )

3) Everyone thinks they can do it better: And then there was the Golden Turkey Leg. I had a spec script that dealt peripherally with Voodoo, but it wasn’t “supernatural”. Another producer wanted to make it more mystical, scary, more Voodoo-ey, sci-fi, sleazy, seedy, make-Ed-Wood-look-like-a-genius-bad, and to that end he wanted me to add something about some golden object that was magical and mystical and for want of a better word I called it “the golden turkey leg”—well, not to his face. He also wanted me to bring a character back from the dead—now that’s Voodoo...ey—turning a pretty good thriller into a grade Z schlockfest horror story that would even make Roger Corman at his cheapest cringe. Then, as if it couldn’t get any weirder, he knew the “perfect” guy to do the theme song: Michael Bolton. And when I say he “knew” Michael Bolton I mean he really did; they were buds or something. And no offense to anyone who likes him, but he’s just not my taste. Give me Ian Gillan and Joey Ramone. So maybe I’m glad that that one never got out of development hell. And he wanted Armand Assante (whose name he kept mispronouncing as “Assant,” leaving off the “ay” at the end) to play the lead. He would have been great for the part when he was younger, but I had nightmares about the producer approaching him, mispronouncing his name, and the actor being so offended he would refuse the part. Then to top it all off, my wife and I were at a toy show in Pasadena (one of my hobbies is collecting old toys) and we ran into said producer, who’s there with his wife and kid, maybe around six or seven years old, selling old dolls. So, he asks me to look after said kid, who at least was a sweet said kid, so he and his wife can walk around the toy show, unfettered. The worst part is he wasn’t even selling the kind of toys I was looking for. So in addition to working on screenplays, I’m also a great babysitter, I just don’t cook or do windows, except Microsoft Windows. And another one bites the dust, another one that never made it to the silver screen, but at least I got paid. But I plan to turn them all into novels someday. They’re already “outlined,” as the screenplays are sort of like outlines. Were this producer’s ideas better? Well, if you like Golden Turkey Legs, I suppose so. But did that make me doubt my decision to be a writer? Hell no, I’m a glutton for punishment.


Reasons to Stay:

Because you can’t do anything else, literally, despite the BS. So you just open that vein and let it bleed.

Or as the Clash said, “Should I Stay or Should I Go”—“If I go there will be trouble, And if I stay it will be double.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQnCVBertf0