A MARKETING LESSON FROM "THE WALTONS"

I am known to watch several episodes of The Waltons on Sunday afternoons when the show takes its turn in INSP network's Sunday marathon rotation. I wasn't really old enough to watch it when it aired weekly and I'm not sure I would've been interested had I been. But, now, I enjoy watching and reading about times of long ago and with John Boy being a writer, I can relate to his character.

But the last time I watched, I also got a lesson in marketing. Elizabeth and her friend set up a lemonade stand outside of Godsey's General Store. They offered pink lemonade and regular, yellow lemonade for the same price: 5 cents per glass. But neither sold well.

Then Grandpa Zeb had an idea. He lowered the price of the pink lemonade and deemed it only for women and children. He then added a bit of the "recipe" to the yellow lemonade. He also set about letting people know about the special lemonade for men. Of course, after that, the kids could barely keep up with production; the yellow lemonade drained out almost as fast as they could pour it.

This is a great demonstration of how things need to work together in marketing to make a product successful. It sometimes takes some experimenting and tweaking. In this case, it was the product that needed the most revision. Once that was done and a few people learned about the delicious yellow lemonade, word spread and sales took off.

It's amazing what you can learn (or reinforce what you've already learned) just by watching old time TV on Sunday afternoons...

May all your lemons be made into special-"recipe" spiked lemonade!

-The Wordsy Woman

MY NEW PUBLISHED WORDS

Even though my "official" launch date will not be until November 24th when I'll be physically selling, signing, and reading from Missing Emily: Croatian Life Letters at an event for Midwest Writing Center at Southpark Mall in Moline, Illinois, I'm excited to announce the book is now for sale at Amazon.com. As everything gets uploaded, it will be for sale at other online sites as well. And as I pound the pavement, hopefully, it will be for sale at more and more stores in the Quad Cities USA area.

I started thinking about this book about four years ago when Biljana came to work at the same law firm where I was then-employed. I began researching and outlining about a year later. The rough draft was completed about a year and a half ago. And then rounds and rounds and rounds of revisions and editing before starting publication late last spring.

MissingEmily: Croatian Life Letters is the story about how two teenage girls living on opposite sides of the world, one in the United States and one in Croatia, who are dealing with their own turmoil, one of deep depression and one of civil war, find comfort and solace by writing letters to each other in the early 1990s.

The format of the book combining narrative with letters is different from many books and I am not aware of any book which links someone from the United States with someone from Croatia. It is historical in that it covers historical events, namely Croatia’s civil war, but it is was only 20 plus years ago which is part of the point of the story – civil wars or historical events are occurring right now. The book is also different in that it doesn’t neatly fit into its young adult genre; one of the characters is approximately fifteen to sixteen during the story and one thirteen to fourteen which put them into the traditional category of young adult and middle grade, respectively. The subject matter, however, would be categorized more as older young adult by traditional publishers. This is also part of the point of the story – death, depression, and war don’t fit into neat little packages, either. They are messy and sometimes ambiguous. Thus, part of the target market for the book is other adults, like me, who enjoy reading YA books.

To read an excerpt, click here to access the Look Inside feature on Amazon. If you review books for a blog, magazine, e-zine, newspaper (print or web), or other online or print publication and would like a free review copy, please send an email to me at jodie@wordsywoman.com with your name, publication name and URL (if any), physical address, email address and phone number and indicate if you want a paperback or e-book.

Thanks and happy reading!

The Wordsy Woman