Birth of a Saleswoman

I never like it when someone is trying to sell me something, but I signed up for a 3-day marketing seminar for this week at a hotel near LAX.

Today I dipped my foot in the water to test it.  

The emails I've been receiving sound as if they'd been written by Donald Trump:

Hello RockStars:

I’m heading over to the hotel in the morning to help supervise the set up for the EVENT OF THE YEAR!  This will be, by far, the best RockStar Marketing BootCamp to date… EPIC!

Words like "epic" make me want to run in the opposite direction as fast as I can.  On the other hand, I'm writing a book, and I need to market it.  

I showed up, reluctantly, for my first lessons in marketing.  

Truth be told, this event was not marketed as a seminar (my sort of gathering).  It was designated a "bootcamp."  Macho.  Military.  Lots of action.  

"You're killing it" was a constant refrain as various stars gave six-minute pitches of their products.

Despite my skepticism, I quickly recognized that Craig Duswalt has some good tips.  For example:

• Write in your blog every day--not once a week.
• Set up an e-commerce system on your blog.
• You must have an opt-in box on your home page.
• Your email address must have the name of your business or book.

I had to laugh when some of his tips involved just slipping your book onto the shelves of a bookstore or donating it to a library.  It reminded me of last summer when I slipped six or seven copies of my pro-choice book on abortion into the library of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville, Tennessee.

I'm relieved not to be pushed into doing anything that seems too blatantly selling myself.  In fact, the whole approach seems to be "Take what you like and leave the rest"--just like AA and Al-Anon.  

If I actually do even 20% of the recommended steps, these classes will be worth the money.  It was a small amount of money, anyway, a donation to KPFK, a local independent radio station with this course as the free premium.

Everywhere I see various forms of one phrase: change your life.  Apparently everyone wants to change her life, or his, or hir/their.

The similarity to born-again Christianity is striking.  No wonder the Way preached by Jesus took off as it did--he was selling "change your life," and that's the recommended approach for selling anything, from a car to a bottle of water.

Anyway, I published a blog post today.

Craig says to end every blog post with a call to action of some kind.  So here it is:

Go to Amazon to buy your copy of Abortion,  My Choice--God's Grace: Christian Women Tell Their Stories (Pasadena, CA: New Paradigm, 1994).

And look for my forthcoming memoir: Can You Be a Christian and a Feminist?