THE POWER OF NEGATIVE PUBLICITY

You are a reader. In an attention economy, I can make a living if I hold enough eyeballs. I'm hoping you're a writer that will write about me and bring more eyeballs here. Thank you.

It is in my higher interest to be entertaining. I had to remind myself that negative publicity is very entertaining.

Ever read CrapAuthors.com? These jokesters take pride in their ability to destroy a book and its author. Last year I had the dubious distinction of being a featured author on CrapAuthors (see link). Of course this happened about the same time I was being slammed on an Internet board where I had been the subject of a feature interview two months earlier (RINF.com). I was scared. RINF was scared and they changed the intro to my featured article to distance themselves from me.

I had heard the adage "no publicity is bad publicity." But, my confidence stumbled as I read comments on boards like:
"...makes a great gift for someone you dislike."
"I would use this book as toilette paper...but I'm afraid my ass would give me hemorrhoids in protest."
"...the literary equivalent to nails on a chalkboard..."

My sales had been steadily rising but these words would surely grind everything to a halt. I had heard the adage "no publicity is bad publicity." But, I didn't truly know it would work for me.

A couple days ago I made a goof and sent an email to my entire list that was meant for a list of 60. I addressed about 4,000 people as "Dear Non-Buyers" Woops. Not only was this rude to folks who had just invested in Think Two Products Ahead, it was a notweworthy error that made a few online marketing boards. To those authors...THANK YOU!

I was scandalous.

The title of this essay let’s you know what happened…my sales went up. I mean way up. I had been averaging selling 20 books a week. I sold 300 books the week the Crap Author review went up, more than any other promotional stunt I had yet to pull off.

Here’s how I handled this media event—I fought back. When somebody made a vacuous criticism of my book, I asked my detractors to elaborate their perspectives. If I didn’t hear back, I’d spell-out their inaccuracies.

I used the opportunity to email other authors and explain what was happening to me,--In the following three weeks, I was invited to contribute essays to two books that were published this year.

In replying to readers, I learned that harsh criticism encouraged my fans on those forums to step forward and plead my case. Readers would plead my case when I kept my replies short and SWEET. The testamonials of these fans outweighed the criticism of my detractors.

I made mistakes. I learned to take the high ground. When somebody sassed me and I was sassy back, my quote haunted me from site to site. Google is a powerful tool allowing me to indentify possible target audiences. However, Google also allows spurned readers to locate where I'm currently posting.

Allow me to recap, by being the focus of extreme scrutiny, my immediate sales went up and I’ve secured future exposure. Not bad. Publicity is good. Bad publicity may be even better. But the important lesson is to stand up tall when there is a media event going on. In hindsight, the smartest thing I did was to recognize and call out a media event. I went around emailing folks about my media event which helped sustain, validate and actually increase my media event.

In an attention economy, readers are gold, regardless of what they are reading about you.