Day 5, Bill Ruesch recession-recovery diary

Dear Reader,

Some may wonder if I’ve been sitting on my hands the last two years. My previous blogs could lead you to that conclusion, but you’d be wrong. For a quarter century (doesn’t that sound painfully long?) I semi-specialized in direct mail printing. Most of my customers were either DM agencies or in-house marketing departments of companies communicating with their customers through the mail.

We all know what happened when the recession hit and companies en masse pulled back on direct mail. We could see it coming. The Internet was making promises of delivering tons of new business at a fraction of the CPM. The post office, thinking in government logic, decided to bump up their rates to solve their cash flow problems. This awful triad of recession-fear–the Internet rainbow–and postage costs all but killed direct mail.

I said we could see it coming and we could, but no one thought it would happen so fast. It was literally almost overnight. One day DM was thriving, the next, BOOM the bottom dropped out.

In an effort to prepare my business for the coming crash, I had already been looking in new directions. I asked myself what I love, and determined that I love books. Wouldn’t it be nice to help authors print books and get samples for my personal library in the bargain? Yes, but moving into new markets takes time. It requires making new connections, and building trust.

To shorten the time I decided to begin blogging. I reasoned that the Internet would provide me with a minimal cost platform. It does, but the competition for attention is overwhelming.  I read somewhere that 17 thousand new blogs are started every day–e v e r y day.  That’s over 6 million a year!

There are many, many Internet “gurus” that for a fee, promise to show you how to drive readers to your site and earn you more money than God while you are sleeping peacefully on your yacht. I don’t know about you, but I shy away from these kinds of promises. I may be old-fashioned, but I truly believe that if it sounds too good to be true it probably is.

The problem still remains, how do you make an impact on the Internet when the odds are so staggeringly against you? The answer for me is to keep chopping at the tree. No one knows how many cuts it will take before it topples, but for certain it will never come down if you don’t wield the ax.

I was half-watching Stephen Colbert on television yesterday. It was his final show for this year. He spoke about the recession and at the top of his list of suffering industries was printing. Boing–he got my attention. Finally, the world has started to recognize how badly damaged we have been. In a way that is ironic, because printing created the Union and is the backbone of  history. And yet, when filling out a form or survey and the question is asked, “What industry are you in?” you won’t find printing. It’s like we no longer exist. I sometimes feel like Mr. Cellophane from the Broadway show Chicago. Hey world, printing is an industry. We do exist.

Printing, Publishing, and Observations

A friend called the other day. This is the same friend who introduced me to blogging almost a year ago. He said that my blog posts aren’t like other blogs. He finally figured out the difference, he says that I’m not writing traditional blogs, I’m more of a columnist.

Sometimes it is about the observations.

I’ve thought about it and believe he is on to something. My posts tend to be longer than what other bloggers do. I tackle subjects outside of my “stated purpose.” Maybe that is true, and perhaps the search engines get confused when they send out their crawly spider things, and they go back and report that my printing and publishing blog includes the economy, big business, and social injustice. It makes it hard to nail me down.

“Government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

The last honest president?

I can’t help it. Maybe it is my maturity–I am sliding into senior citizenship quicker than I want to admit. After a certain age, you start realizing what you knew before, but only philosophically. You have seen enough, and experienced enough, to know that life isn’t fair. In my case, I truly know that life isn’t fair, but I haven’t given in. I still believe that it isn’t too late. I believe that if people gather in large enough numbers they can make the government listen. Is that naive? I suppose so, because millions of citizens contacted their representatives and the White House begging them to withhold TARP funds from ailing banks. Those millions had zero impact. For those financial institutions, the recession is over, and they can double their executive compensations, but for the rest of the country the recession they created continues. Mortgage foreclosures are still happening at an incredible rate. Is this “Government of the people, by the people, and for the people?” –Abraham Lincoln

We want it, but the government denies us.

We are still in the throes of health care reform. In survey after survey, the American public proved we overwhelmingly  support  the public option. The percentages range from 61% to 77%. The public option is a no-brainer. We want it. Why then do our representatives continue to insist that the public option is dead?

Do you smell the stink of sellout?

Let’s think about it–the citizens want it, congress doesn’t. Where is the disconnect? It stinks of sellout. Someone owns the congress lock stock and barrel, and it isn’t the citizenry–is it? I’m willing to bet everything I own that the final health care reform bill will do more to benefit the health insurance companies than the people. It’s just like the prescription drug plan. The government said it was for the old folks and it is, a little bit anyway, but the real winners were the pharmaceutical companies. It has made it possible for Senior citizens to pay the high drug prices with public money. How do the drug companies benefit? People who couldn’t pay for their medicines before, are now able to. They hit the jackpot and the pharmaceutical executives are smiling all the way to the bank with their bonus money, perks, and lavish lifestyles, while the rest of us are destined to pay more taxes. What, you don’t think you pay more taxes, you do, it is just deferred. It is called the national debt. Someday the piper will come calling, and then we’ll find out what deficit spending has really cost us.

The lucky ones are those who are gone before the collapse.

Like I said, I’m sliding rapidly into senior citizenship, and maybe, just maybe I won’t be around to witness the final collapse because of all this selfishness, greed, and foolishness.

Talk about trying to catch the train after it has left the station, the big publishing houses are just now looking into Internet and network marketing.  The Internet hit the publishing industry like a runaway freight and it wasn’t truly respected until upstarts like Amazon, and Google were seen riding off into the sunset lifting their glasses of champagne high into the air.

Even now Amazon is leading the book selling revolution with electronic books. What are the traditional guys doing? Mostly moaning about how book sales are down (is that true Amazon?), and gnashing their teeth about how foot traffic into bookstores has decreased.

This is why I say if you go the traditional route your chances of success are very slim.  I’ve read that a new title will get a whole 30 days of shelf exposure before being flung into the discount bin. Or even worse, having their covers ripped off for return credit and the book destroyed. You have to make a big splash early and fast to survive.

Chew on this thought–what if you published your own book and you could take the time it needs to build its audience? What if you controlled the presentation, marketing, and distribution? AND, instead of getting a 10% royalty earned fifteen times as much? This is the essence of self-publishing.

I’m not saying that everyone is ready, willing and able to do what it takes to be a self-publisher, but what most don’t know is that it is easier than you might imagine. You can build yourself up and become an industry thought leader in six months without even leaving home. Blogging makes it possible. The Internet makes almost anything possible. I know–I’m doing it. I started a blog last January (it’s July now) and I’ve had nearly 11,000 hits so far, and my monthly totals are going up, up, and up.

Why am I doing this? Exposure. Name recognition. I haven’t even published my books yet, but before I do I’m laying the groundwork. I’m networking and making world-wide connections daily. That’s so cool I can hardly stand it. If you scroll down the right side of my blog you will come to a yellow map of the world. Click on it and see how far and wide my words have gone.  I even have a language translator so that they can read what I’ve written in their own tongue. Technology–don’t ya’ love it?

Social Networking (web2.0) is flipping the whole book marketing system upside down. It used to be that you would sell books and then people would come to know you. Now people can get to know you and then you sell books. Which method would you rather use?

I’ve been following T.A.P. (The Author Platform) to learn the ropes of blogging and social networking.  Without this guidance I would be lost. TAP very clearly shows the path to follow and gives very valuable tidbits of information along the way. I can heartily endorse it because I use it. Oh, and by-the-way there’s a No Risk 15 day FREE trial too. What could be sweeter? Just click here for more information.

What do I get out of it? I get a little slice of the action, it’s true, but more than that I get the satisfaction of knowing that I’ve helped my fellow self-publishers, which is the same reason I have for creating The Red Hen Association of Self-Publishing Authors (click here for more information). I believe that we all benefit if we strive to raise the bar. We can do that by producing better self-published books, and selling them smarter than the big guys.