The so-so 1997 movie Addicted To Love, which starred Matthew Broderick and Meg Ryan, has many great lines of dialog. However, one scene in particular has stuck with me, because it has many interpretations, especially in marketing.

French/Turkish Actor Tchéky Karyo, who plays French Restaurateur Anton Depeux, is asked whether or not he ever misses France. His answer is a clear “non”. (I won’t quote the exact language here, as it is slightly graphic.)

Why is he not homesick? Because in France, he’s just another smoke-shrivelled, over-sexed critic. He’s like every other Frenchman (except the lovable and self-effacing Jean Reno), and therefore, he has no way to impress jaded French women.

But in America, his Frenchness is valuable currency. People eat over-priced mediocre food served in his well-decorated restaurant. His biting remarks are funny. He can seduce a woman by reading her the phone book in that accent. He has found his niche.

Going outside your area of expertise – in fact, getting as far away from it as possible – may be a way to creatively market your book in a whole new market. Everything that was once old is new again. The pendulum will always swing back. And people will always want what is farthest from their starting position.

My friend Liz Gaige of Market Navigators just released her July marketing newsletter. Her cover article this month gives some excellent tips for real-world direct mail marketing. I find it interesting that her “rules” for direct mail apply equally in the online world when using permission-based eMail marketing [PBeM]. I strongly encourage you to read the entire article.

As Liz states, “It is possible to increase the likelihood of success if the foundation is well laid. The best approach is not to take any of the many variables for granted and to carefully craft each element of your program.” How right she is – and yet how often to do we follow that advice?

Liz gives 5 bullet points of what makes a great direct mail offer, and another 5 specific tips and tricks that cut right to the point. This article reads like a step-by-step for high-class PBeM. Thanks, Liz!

Thanks to all who came to my presentation on Thursday evening at the eWomen Network on June 12th in Surrey. I’ve just made updates to the Private Resources Page as promised, and will be adding more cool stuff all week – what’s there is really just the beginning. There are two eBooks on the way for certain, plus other valuable items. Click here to see the current updates, and enter your password that was given to you on the white postcard at the dinner. The password is case-sensitive, so please enter it as you see it on the card. (Missing your card? eMail me and I’ll fill you in.)

Didn’t attend the dinner, but want to see the page? Call me at 1-866-907-4084, or email me for more information.

Working virtually often works extremely well in the Author – Editor relationship. I was recently made aware of a new escalation of this creative working concept by a friend of mine in the music business.

Adam Wakely is a pretty cool guy. He’s a talented brewmaster, has a devastatingly wicked sense of humor, and is a very talented musician to boot. His kids are following in his footsteps, and they will be able to make use of music technology in ways that Adam is just beginning to explore for himself.

Check out Adam’s latest successful experiment: a virtual band called Strange Trax. Adam and his band-mates Natalie, Adamz, Pooch, Beradley, and Web of Destress (where do these drummers get these wacky names, anyway?) have never met in real life. Adam’s brother Aaron is the final band member, who lives in the same town as Adam, but other than that, the entire band is virtual.

All the music is written, revised, practiced and recorded in different locations, including Canada, the USA, and the United Kingdom. Adam used his skills as a Master Music Editor and Recorder to make it all come together. I can’t believe how cohesive the sound is – not only inside each track, but between the tracks themselves. They have a consistent style, which is what it takes to snag and keep a following.

As the site states, “Is this a new step forward for the music industry? A new way of making music, with space and distance no object?” For all the writers who think that distance is an obstacle to making their book happen, think again. I sing a little, and I’m a lousy pianist, but man, can I edit.

For many years, I’ve been a subscriber to the newsletter (now turned blog) of Elliot Masie of the Masie Center, an eLearning thinktank based in Saratoga Springs, New York.

I like Masie – he’s got a clever, out-of-the-ordinary way of looking at the way people learn and communicate. Masie is a very readable writer, and he communicates complicated ideas in a simple and easily-assimilated manner. He might be a training nerd, but he does it with style.

Therefore, I was pleased today to receive the most recent edition of “LearningTRENDS“, his newsletter. His headline? Follow him on Twitter as he participates in the Harvard Kennedy School event on Presidential Leadership Competencies.

For those of you not already on board, Twitter is a handy-dandy little website that allows you to broadcast one-liners, or “headlines” of content to a a list of your subscribers. It’s another one of those things that falls into the category of Social Media Marketing. People can subscribe via email, or even on a cell phone. We’re only talking about a short string of text – messages are capped at 140 characters, so most people will stop and read it, even if they don’t have time to read your blog.

The caution here is that Twitter must be used carefully to avoid “burning”, or over-messaging your subscribers, and making them want to leave the list. It’s about serving the needs of people who have taken the trouble to sign up to hear what YOU have to say.

Masie announces, “If you would like to get a taste of RealTime blogging, I am using Twitter to send all-day-long “blog” objects: quick notes about comments from Joe Klein, David Gergen, Ken Blanchard, Rosabeth Moss Kanter and more.” He calls this “small-burst blogging”, and invites people from all over the world to listen with him on this important leadership conference.

By following him on Twitter, I received several stimulating headlines throughout the day that made me stop and think. Items like “How will you create an environment for innovation within your leadership team?” and “Evaluate your campaign as a case study in leadership — success, failure, personal learnings” can easily apply to almost any business leadership situtation.

So, I’m taking note: THIS is how Twitter should be used. To stimulate, to question, to inform, and most of all, to keep people wanting more. Masie understands the needs of his audience, and he has really maximized the use of this channel. I’ve seen some really poorly-utilized Twitter feeds, which turn into personal rants about the weather, or comments about being unable to get a taxi. What does your reader really need to hear about all day long? Industry news? Updates from a conference? Cool new products you’ve seen at a trade show? Only you know what will be of greatest benefit to your readers. So, unless you’re the weatherman, no rants about the rain.

Jeri-Lyn McCrea, the Author of Words in Action, has offered to fund scholarships through a partnership with Rotary. It works like this: any Rotary club worldwide can place an attractive ad banner on their website that directs people back to a custom web page, where anyone can buy the book. When a book is purchased through this link, our system calculates a payment of $5 per book for that club. Simple.

Does your Rotary club want to sign up for this program? Click here to apply. The qualifications are that your club must be able to cash a check in US dollars, and you must direct the funds back to a scholarship that meets Jeri’s specifications.

Jeri explains… “To align with Rotary values, and those of my book, this scholarship would benefit students who exemplify the characteristics of action, effort, determination, courage and dedication. Therefore, using the existing Instructor jury process already in place by many of the local Rotary clubs, the scholarship would be given to the student who displays the best consistent effort toward his or her future goals. It is not necessary for this student to achieve a high GPA. It is only necessary that this student applies their best, consistent effort.”

For more information, or to apply for a scholarship in your area, call me at 1-866-907-4084.

Let me take a moment here to throw a plug out for Zebra Logic, and Mr. Rob McCrea. Rob specializes in hard drive recovery. When you think all is lost, it isn’t. Call Rob, and he can recover stuff you didn’t even want him to. Rob claims a 97% success rate, and I believe him. He worked wonders for me lately on a recent project.
ZebraLogic.ca is based in Cloverdale, BC, Canada. Call Rob with your hard drive problems, at 1-866-MY-ZEBRA.

One of the things I love the most about my job is that I get to become very involved in the lives of my clients. All of my clients are very interesting and complex individuals, and as a student of human nature, I’m always enthused by the idea of getting to know an interesting person on a very deep level, a level that perhaps not many others have. Over the course of the project, we do seem to develop a relationship that resembles that of a tightly-knit family.

Whether it’s stories about whacky things that happen to nurses, the worst thing that somebody has ever found on a previously-believed “dead” hard drive, or the moment when a client asks themselves a profound question that shapes their writing for years to come, I enjoy being there to hear all of it. It shapes my own writing, and my impressions of the world around me.
Editing is really about objective observation. We see the errors in grammar and punctuation that writers don’t, because we’re not emotionally invested in the material. (Or at least, we shouldn’t be emotionally invested.) When I realize I’m really starting to like a client and become friends with them – a difficult thing to avoid – I start to lose my objectivity. I’m then on dangerous ground, because I can best be an advocate for my client when I can see their faults, and help to correct those faults before the manuscript goes public.

But like any solid family, it’s interesting that we are usually able to find a solution that perhaps takes some compromise, but makes everyone happy in the end. The basis of a relationship that supports that is trust. I work hard to earn the trust of my authors. I offer them support in any way that I can – and I am always looking for support on their behalf. I want to be the best editor I can be for them, because they are doing their best to write a great book for their readers.