Communication Now and Into the Future

The key to marketing success is communication. You may have written a novel to rival Gone with the Wind, but if no one knows about it...well, it won't sell like Gone with the Wind.

Communication is an art. One I'm not too good at. I have trouble communicating with my relatives. If I ask my husband to pick up a certain item at the store, chances are he'll come dragging in something entirely different. Understand that this is the one who's closest to me on earth. Someone who loves me and wants to please me.

Why would I think a complete stranger would care what I have to say? It doesn't help that the means of communicating today isn't one I'm expert at. Ha! If I gathered everything I know about the internet, including facebook, twitter, and websites, it probably wouldn't fill up the standard size thimble.

But communication is essential, and it's methods are changing, so if I want to sell my books, I'd better grab on and learn fast. Who knows what will be next. Maybe the entire way we write books will change. Readership is declining, and at some point someone will ask why and give the reader what he wants.

People are becoming more visual. They don't want to take the time to sit down and read a book. Let's face it, some of them don't want to think. (Not my readers or yours, but some.) Imagine the state of publishing in the twenty-fifth century. Instead of writing words, we may be creating images--movies, producing them right on the screen.

That sounds like fun to me. Instead of actors acting out a script, we can create our characters from holograms, choosing the voice, the hair, body type, eyes, mouth. It should be great fun. We'd give the characters the words to say, of course, the action to do, the thoughts to think. Perhaps they'd do that while staring off into space. We wouldn't have to do a lot of dull research. Just select a place and time from a list and plunk those characters down in their setting.

The readers (viewers?) would select the book (movie?) of their choice and enjoy on their little mobile screen or their big wall-to-wall theater. Their choices would be limitless.

Whoa! We writers would be faced with the same difficulties in selling our books. How to make ours stand out. There's no way to get around the need for good communication. Do you think they might allow us to create our own commercials with those futuristic books (movies)?

Since I'm not likely to still be on earth during the twenty-fifth century, I'd better stick to learning how to communicate in today's world, from word of mouth to the internet. These are the techniques I'll be researching and blogging about during the month of April.