Apple-Obsessed Author Fella

How Not To Market Or Promote Your Shit

(early warning: contains a great deal of caps lock)

The goal of promoting your work is to entice people to be interested in that work.

It is a soft hand in a silk glove.

Possibly stroking my neck or, if I’m really into it, working mah nips.

Your promotional efforts are not a fist punching me in my junk drawer.

Example:

I am not really a huge Star Trek fan, but fuck, I’m interested in seeing the newest one because despite the 87 different teasers, trailers, commercials, teasers-for-teasers, teasers-for-trailers, trailers for featurettes about the making of the teaser trailers, it looks pretty cool.

Except, there’s this half-ass transmedia campaign called ARE YOU THE 1701 or something which is about, I dunno, blah blah blah the Enterprise and something-something Instagram and — you know, whatever. Every once in a while I am compelled by a truly inventive trans- or social-media campaign, but this one, ehh. Yawn. Snore. Poop noise.

NOT THAT IT FUCKING MATTERS because while I’ve never signed up for this campaign nor have I ever intimated my interest online anywhere at any point I continue to be assailed by marketing emails from this campaign. Which, you know, in the grand scheme of First World Problems is not a particularly big one, true. And here you’re saying, “Well, just unsubscribe, you lazy douche-sicle,” and I’m like, I’M TRYING TO DO THAT BUT IT WON’T LET ME. I give it all the email addresses I currently possess — including the one it sends its emails to — and it’s like, “Nope, we don’t have that shit on record, sorry, please enjoy more of our Star Trek spam HAR HAR HAR.” Then it belches in Klingon and shoots a phaser up my pee-hole.

It makes me mad enough I want to hate-avoid the film. Which isn’t fair to the filmmakers or the movie or the movie theater people or anybody except whatever insane promotional programmer ensured that I’m getting email from Paramount about crap that I didn’t ask for —

AND CANNOT ESCAPE.

Here’s the lesson: marketing and promotion should never be a kick to the face. It should never be unearned or unasked for. It should not be unavoidable.

This goes to any website that has anything that auto-plays ever. Sound. Music. Movie. Animation. If I’m sitting here at the ass-crack of dawn, sipping coffee, and I go to your website and get a blaring loud commercial for fucking Floor Wax and it wakes my toddler up I will find your house and shit on your pets.

This goes to all you authors out there who randomly DM people on Twitter: HEY PERSON I DON’T KNOW I GOT THIS BOOK MOVIE COMIC GAME KICKSTARTER BLOG POST THAT I THINK YOU MIGHT LIKE FOR NO REASON BECAUSE I DON’T KNOW YOU LET ME UNCEREMONIOUSLY HAMMER YOU ABOUT THE HEAD AND NECK WITH IT.

This goes to all your authors who spam me with: “Hey I think you might like my blog post on writer’s block / self-publishing / bacon enemas / donkey shows / blargleflargle [insert link I’m never going to click here].” At first I’m like, “Oh, are they actually talking to me,” but then I see they’ve sent the same goddamn message to 150 other people oh, and they follow like, 35,000 people and yet I’m not one of them.

Pay attention:

Unwanted and invasive advertisement doesn’t work. We skip past commercials. We close any window that pops up that tries to elbow its message into our brains. Marketing and promotion needs to seduce us, and it does not seduce us with a hand grenade to the face.

MY RANT IS NOW OVER YOU MAY RETURN TO YOUR HOMES.

P.S. JUST TO REITERATE WE REALLY DON’T NEED 184 DIFFERENT TRAILERS FOR YOUR BIG SUMMER MOVIES I’M LOOKING AT YOU IRON MAN 3