Conservative Book Marketing vs Progressive Book Marketing

When it comes to the mass marketing of ideas, the conservatives have been embarrassing the progressives for years. I attribute this to the simple fact that it is easy to rally around the simple battle cry, "Nothing new!" That's it. Any change is the enemy. Fight all that's not here already. Simple.

Whereas, the progressive battle cry--"Push forward!"--is inherently tangled with a difficult question: "Push where?" Addressing the question of what to push toward trips up progressives and we stumble over the best course forward. This has hindered our organization.

The organization of the conservative side, however, must be admired. Take book publishing for example. The conservatives have--what looks to me to be--an assembly line of book marketing. They place a book at the beginning of the conveyor belt and slowly and methodically it is duplicated and sent off to conservative organizations that buy 10,000 copies at a time: book clubs, corporations, media outlets, schools, religious organizations, etc. In this way, a small number of buyers can make book sales numbers huge--and instantly huge. Once the books sells well enough, bookstores and other media outlets take notice and begin reporting on the book's sales. The books get stories on the news, the front tables of bookstores, reviews, etc. This begins the positive feedback loop that creates a New York Times Bestseller and gives a false impression that the country has a "conservative majority." It's genius, and--being a progressive book publisher--I'm jealous.

Progressives have no such organization for book promotion. We publish a great book with a strong and intelligent progressive message and then push and slog and scratch and fight to get recognition. There are no progressive book clubs (save one, but it's new), no corporate buyers, no media outlets ready to shill for us. It's a struggle to get the message out into the world.

True, in recent years, the blogosphere has been a forceful player for the progressive movement. If a book takes root in the blogosphere, making the New York Times Bestseller list can seem easy (as in the case of 2004's Don't Think of an Elephant by George Lakoff). But the blogosphere is fickle, and run by mostly progressives with their own ideas about how to shape the future. It's impossible for one book to capture the general rallying cry of "Push forward!" Push where? We all have our own ideas. And many of us respectfully disagree.

To illustrate this dilemma of small, progressive publishers, I've put together this video. Enjoy!

And if you're interested in helping David battle Goliath, the book cited in the video, Robert Kuttner's Obama's Challenge, is available here. Use (and distribute) the following code to get a huge discount from Amazon: RGVTUIQY

Thanks.

J.S. McDougall is the head blogger at Chelsea Green -- a news site and book publisher covering the politics and practice of sustainability.

Follow J.S. McDougall on Twitter: www.twitter.com/chelseagreen

Comments

[Michael57]

I sure do wish you geniuses at Chelsea Green would stop trying to steer business to Amazon. You already shot yourself in the foot with every other bookseller in America, and your excuses for why you did it have not held up (for instance, despite your claims that only Amazon could get the Kuttner book out in time for the Convention, Ingram pushed 40,000 copies of the Palin bio out over the weekend after she was announced).

If there is a bookseller in America whose business model is antithetical to progressive values, Amazon is it. They refuse to collect sales tax, so they starve communities of revenue. They ship single books to customers, along with plastic and cardboard, instead of assembling them in retail centers where people can shop them, so their rating from the carbon coalition is consistently zero.

Chelsea Green needs to stop applying the lipstock, the pig is wearing enough.

[zedthewizard]

the marketing goes well beyond books and to the obama campaign itself. republican surrogates are often looking young women who smile and don't BLINK -- remind you of anyone. both men and women reps stick to talking points, interrupt rudely with a smile; and meanwhile, the democratic people keep thinking the referee must be getting all of this. if you don't win the arguments, then how are you going to win the election.