Post #28 – Women’s Memoirs, Book Business – Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler
In 1902, Rudyard Kipling published his tale of “The Elephant’s Child,” and within that story
is the following poem:
“I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.
I send them over land and sea,
I send them east and west;
But after they have worked for me,
I give them all a rest.”
Journalists know these “serving-men” as the Five Ws (and one H). I thought it would be fun to let these six basic means of information gathering help us build an Internet marketing plan. What follows isn’t intended to be comprehensive. In fact, it’s such a big topic that I’ve decided to roll it out in the course of writing several blog posts. In this piece, I’ll provide an overview and explanation of how we use the Five Ws and One H to dig into our subject and find our platform. Posts to follow will examine each in detail.
I started this topic about three weeks ago with a guest post on Helen Ginger’s Straight from Hel blog. As I explained there, two articles—one from the Los Angeles Times book section and another from The Daily Beast–caused me to focus on the challenge most memoirs face: getting noticed in a crowded field (and therefore selling well). The current popularity of memoirs, while good for the genre in general, makes a strong marketing strategy essential to sales.
In yesterday’s post, Matilda gave us an excellent explanation of platform and how it delivers sales. You might want to review that first; here’s the link to “You Already Have Readers for Your Memoir.” Your platform is something you’ll definitely want to leverage. But maybe you’re uncertain of your platform. Determining the who, what, where, when why and how can help you with your inquiry.
Differentiate Your Memoir
You need to start by asking six sets of questions:
What is your message? State it, briefly and clearly. Are you sure you’ve gotten to the very core of your message? For example, you might think your book is about life with Dad after your mother died and he came to live with you. In fact, those last five years were hell because your father’s grief was so inconsolable that he declined into clinical depression. Perhaps your real message is more universal than your story. Your memoir may serve as one example of a bigger problem. You can speak knowledgeably about your story, knowing its place in a larger canvas.
Why did you write this memoir? Because memoirs are our personal stories, part of the why is to serve your own needs. Is it healing therapy for you? Are you honoring, telling or recalling the story of another person (family or friend)? Since this is a memoir, you’ll be telling the story in terms of that person’s connection with you, the inspiration on your life, etc. Why is it you’re telling this story? Are you celebrating your life?
When does your memoir take place? Well, obviously, it takes place during your lifetime, but you need to define that time as specifically as possible. Even if you are looking back on an event that occurred before you were born, you will be reflecting on its impact on your life…remember it’s your memoir. So let’s look more closely at the when. Is it about a particular time in your life (e.g., your teens, college, your 50th wedding anniversary, your divorce, the year of postpartum depression you endured…well, you get the point). Maybe you’re recalling VE Day, the last year of your life together before your spouse passed away, the Christmas your life changed forever, and so on.
How did the events unfold? This is your opportunity to take your story apart and look at the subplots. How did this (whatever) happen to you and the people you are writing about? You’ve certainly done this in the process of writing your memoir, but perhaps some of that was unconscious. Now you need to dig into your own story as if you are an investigative journalist coming across the story for the first time.
Where does your story take place? In some respects, this is the easiest question to answer. But now I’m going to ask you a question: Did you go back to your home/street/state/city/ country/site of an event in the course of writing your memoir? Did you identify the people and organizations still connected with your where? That’s what you need to do now.
Who will benefit/enjoy your memoir or subject? Once you have dissected your story by asking the other five questions, you are ready to start listing demographics and names of groups of people, organizations, etc. that will benefit and/or connect with your story. Now you’re starting to build a platform.
So let’s get started
In my next post, we’ll take apart my hypothetical memoir and determine how answering each of the questions above helps not only define our platform but understand how we can leverage that platform in order to sell our book. The game plan that comes out of this exercise will be our marketing strategy, which will then enable us to create a series of sales tactics.
To make the exercise more vivid and specific, I’ve created a hypothetical memoir that I call All For the Sake of Cheap Lobster. It is the story about my move from Connecticut to a small fishing village in Downeast Maine (that part is true). I knew my life was about to change, but I had no idea just how much.
“You’re in for a real culture shock,” my attorney told me as I took possession of my 1870-vintage farmhouse. Truer words have never been uttered, and it started on that day when I wrote one modest check to buy my house outright, complete with two-story barn and three acres of land all within a five-minute walk to the ocean.
And so began two years of renovations…from the roof down to the electrical wiring. I guess most people would have rented a place to live while such extensive work was being done. Not me. I moved in, along with three cats and a dog, and stayed put throughout the project. When the upheaval, plaster dust and longing for my old life wore me down, I could always rely on a 3-½ pound lobster to buoy my spirits.
But my attorney was right; it was quite a shock. It still is today, almost seven years later. It’s also given me a new perspective on my own life and many things I took for granted.
We’ll begin building a platform for this fictional book later this week. Stay tuned.
Memoir Getting Read
memoir genre
memoir book marketing
memoir
building a book marketing plan
setting book sales tactics
