Books for Better Creativity 04: The Perennial Seller by Ryan Holiday, Part 3/4: “Marketing - from Courting to Coverage, Pushing to Promoting”

What if marketing your music, book, etc, wasn’t stressful? What if it could be easy and fun, actually adding value to your life rather than sucking your soul out of your eyeballs?

In Part 3 of The Perennial Seller, Ryan Holiday offers wonderful and counter-intuitive advice on how to spread the word about your artwork. It doesn’t have to be painful. In fact, marketing can be a lot of fun when you approach it the right way.

You just have to work hard and understand how the game works. Understand that nobody else will do it for you, it’s up to you if you want the big rewards of a successful art career.

Disclaimer

The views represented in the book do not necessarily reflect my own.

This is a way to learn from the perspectives of others, which happens best when we challenge our own beliefs. I present this information in as politically neutral a way as I can.

In these posts, “Quotes” are direct quotes, “Notes” are notes from the book’s ideas, and “Personal Thoughts” are my own ideas.

Part 3: Marketing - from Courting to Coverage, Pushing to Promoting

Quote: “We are fighting not just against our contemporaries for recognition, but also against centuries of great art for an audience.”

Personal Thought: This reminds me of a Kanye West quote: ”When I think of competition it’s like I try to create against the past. I think about Michelanglo and Picasso, you know, the Pyramids.”

_{Source: HASTAC.org}

Quote: “[Marketing] is not only how you ensure your work will find an audience when it launches, but also how it will continue to find and have one as time passes. Marketing is both an art and a science, and must be mastered by all creators who hope their work will gain traction.”

Note: Nobody else will care as much as you do… so you need to be the biggest champion of your work, especially with the annoying stuff like marketing.

Personal Thought: It’s not about enjoying marketing - it’s about using marketing as a useful tool to create the change in the world that you seek to make.

Note: Start planning by thinking about your situation relative to the market - put your ego aside. It’s ok if you aren’t in a good position yet, just be humble and honest about it. For many of us, nobody cares about our product at first.

Note: Besides, you still need to work on marketing even after you develop a fanbase.

Note: Marketing can work in many different ways - example: Steven Pressfield’s The Warrior Ethos - a very slow start, only 50 copies sold in the first month, but the marketing strategy was designed to build it as a long term “annuity” - and now it sells 1,000+ per month.

_{The Warrior Ethos by Steven Pressfield}

Note: If you think about it, most of your favorite stuff was recommended to you by friends. Word of Mouth is how perennial sellers spread.

Quote: “Today it takes five seconds to get something up and for sale online - that means a launch date is a choice rather than a logistical necessity. You might think this makes launches less important, but thats not so - from a marketing perspective, a proper launch is essential.”

Personal Thought: The first thing that happens when you rush to release your art is that the launch window gets ignored / you don’t have proper marketing. It’s too easy to hit “upload,” and too hard to wait and set up the proper launch. The challenge is to overcome this and actually set up a good marketing plan for release - it takes patience.

Note: When you approach marketing, take time to make a list of all resources available: Relationships (personal + professional), money, favors owed to you, platforms, and anything else. “Ask the world for help.” Use your social media, including personal, to see what opportunities might be lurking in the shadows.

Note: When you do the above exercise, write the info down. It’s not enough to just think about it, you need to quantify it on paper before you act. If you don’t have enough resources, you may be best off waiting and building more relationships.

Note: Artists like musician Soulja Boy and author Paulo Coelho (sp.?) uploaded their own work to piracy sites because they found it was effective - both were very successful, Paulo has sold 150 million+ copies by now.

_{Soulja Boy. Source: Pinterest}

Quote: “What is the right price for a perennial seller? This is going to be controversial, but my answer is: As cheap as possible without damaging the reputation.”* One Example: Bic Pens

Note: Being endorsed / championed by an influencer is one of the most powerful things… but you don’t ask directly. You need a great product and to make people aware of it in a careful way… when you do it right, the shout-outs will happen.

Quote: “I’ve always found that a critical part of attracting influencers is to look for the people who aren’t besieged by requests.”

Personal Thoughts: The above strategy has worked well for me too - I don’t reach out to celebrities, but I do make valuable connections with influential and interesting people who are just below the radar.

Note: Endorsements are less about getting brand-new fans, and more about social proof to convince your “maybe” fans who are considering whether or not to try out your thing.

Quote: ”Much of the press that people chase is ephemeral and ineffective, yet expensive and time-consuming to get.”

Personal Thought: This book confirms my belief that most traditional PR is an utter waste of time / money. Successful products/artwork attracts press coverage, not the other way around. Blogs don’t move a lot of sales these days.

Note: If you really DO want to pursue PR, start small. Aim for your target fans and small blogs that will be delighted to hear from you.

Note: To get covered in mainstream media, look at popular yet small stories (i.e. - what random shit is getting covered?) and pitch similar stories. Example: Ryan saw a story about a woman who measured her heart rate during sex, so he had one of his clients, a band, give fans heart rate monitors to wear during a concert.

_{Smart Watches gained notoriety when people began using them to measure heart rate during adult activities like sex and drug use.}

Personal Thought: In other words - pull a media stunt! Just because it’s obvious doesn’t mean it isn’t good. The best stunts are usually ridiculous, so you probably need to be willing to fall on your face a few times to learn this method.

Quote: “As an effective tool for a product launch, paid advertising almost never works. It’s far more effective when theres already a considerable audience or sales track record.”

Note: The more momentum your product has, the more valuable paid advertising becomes. This is paradoxical but also kind of nice - it means if you have a low budget and no audience, it’s actually totally fine to not be paying for ads until AFTER you get traction.

Final Thoughts

Patience, patience, patience! The last thing I want to do after finishing a song is to wait for six months. But if that’s the best way to have it reach people, it’s so worth it.

This part of the book gave some really valuable and counter-intuitive opinions on art marketing. There’s a lot of confusion and noise on this subject around the internet. It’s good to have some common sense for once.

In the next post we’ll cover the final part of this book, “Part 4: Platform - from Friends to Fans and a Full-Fledged Career”

Question

What marketing tactics have been effective for you so far in your career?