Marketing Strategy

     My marketing strategy is based on a model employed by my father in starting what became a thriving Internet business.  He began with one client, The Washington Post, and not a whole lot more, but it turned out that was all he needed.  He went to his other prospective clients and said,
     "Hey, I've got The Washington Post."
     And they all said,
     "The Washington Post, they're pretty important.  This must be a good business.  Maybe we should get in on this too."
     From this he began.  As he took on other influential clients he displayed them to companies in similar fields.  The same thing continued to happen.  Some fifteen years later, the business is going strong and bringing in a steady income.  I'm sure this says something fundamental about human nature.  I couldn't say what it is.  I just know it worked.
     So that is what I would like to do.  I'm compiling a long list of the arts editors at an assorted collection of universities and colleges.  I'm taking down the managing editors as well, all with their e-mail addresses.  If I get that review in the Cornell Daily Sun, I plan on writing to them all and doing just what my father did.  I'll say, though not in these exact words,
     "Look, The Cornell Daily Sun reviewed my novel.  They know a thing or two.  Don't you think you should do the same thing."
    I also plan on sending it to the community newspaper in Ithaca, the Ithaca Times, and to the Cornell radio station, WVBR.  If I can land either of those two, I'll proceed to other radio station and community papers in small cities with universities in them.
     All of this depends on my getting that review in the Cornell paper.  This is true.  But I think I am going to get it.  Also, I can't think of any other way to proceed.  There are so many thousands of self-published books out there, and so many thousands of authors trying to publicize them, it is enough to drive a man to despair.  But I do not despair.  I'm building my list of papers and editors, and if I get the review I'll be ready to roll.  If I didn't truly believe in my product, as my father did in his, all of this would be a waste of time.  Here again I can say positively that I do believe in it.  Cutting Through the Knot (Second Edition) has something to say.  Learning to laugh at yourself lies at the root of recovery from many forms of mental illness.  This to me is worth blogging over and worth making the effort necessary to publicize a self-published novel over.  Humor cuts through the knot, of obsessive rumination, anger, despised self-image, inordinate amounts of fear, and the whole complex of distorted emotions associated with severe obsessive compulsive disorder.  That is a lot of what the book is about.  And I think it says it well.