Do “The Hustle”… (Readers Digest Version
24/11/2024 § Leave a comment
I guess I keep trying to craft my writing to impress the editors of The New Yorker with my overinflated and slightly honest, though understandably involved, and supposedly not-ready-for-prime-time non-fiction, writings. Some—friends mostly—have noted they have the attention span of a butterfly, clocking in at under a minute per read session. Can I send them a skinnier, condensed version? How they know what a butterfly understands and how short their attention span can be is beyond me, or perhaps I have not smoked enough of the stuff formerly known as Mary Jane, the evil weed?
For those, I churned the full-on, full-fat text of the Do “The Hustle”… post into ChatGPT and asked OpenAi to make the blog post buttery smooth for those who don’t have the time to spend trying to decipher my humor and understand the sales messaging I subtly sprinkled in so as not to appear needy and wanting.
_______
We’ve all seen those TikTokers boasting side hustles that supposedly earn hundreds of dollars per hour. Most of the time, their hustle is you watching their videos. But it got me thinking—I already have something to sell: books!
Look out! Marketing schmutz below!
My book Mud Folio is a collection of unsung lyrics—poetry with a musical twist. It’s earned praise from notable figures like jazz singer Ann Hampton Callaway, pianist Ramsey Lewis, and Gang of Four drummer Hugo Burnham. The latest edition features 30 new lyricals, perfect for composers seeking inspiration or a new lyricist to collaborate with.
The blurbettes are on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and I think you can even buy the softcover (on the left above) and the hardcover (on the right) on Walmart.com, though not in the stores.
Buy yours today! (Jump through the links below to also read the fantabulous and copious marketing verbiage before ChatGPT homogenized it.)
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Walmart | Boston Globe Feature for the first edition in 2013
And in the esoterica department?
Inspired by our high school campaign to elect a mannequin as class president, Don’t Be A Dummy is primarily blank pages with room for your own musings. This tongue-in-cheek coffee table book has “endorsements” from personalities like Eddie Murphy and Eddie Izzard.
Get your copy today!
(Again, those obviously fictional blurbettes can be found through the first two links below. Walmart has very little marketing schmutz online. This is perhaps just one reason books don’t sell well there unless they are best-sellers, cozy murder mysteries, by a Kardashian, or religiously themed.)
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Walmart |
And slightly a bit more practical?
A humorous nod to Mao’s Little Red Book, this lined notebook is perfect for notes, doodles, or starting your own revolution. A favorite among my old classmates! (How ChatGPT hallucinated that I have no idea. As the text below was shoved into the machine and I clearly state how many I have sold to date.)
Here’s the postcard I created to hand out at our recent High School reunion, hoping to boost sales. I believe I have sold two so far. So it’s up to you to raise that total to the height of the Great Wall.
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Google Books |
More to come?
Got a manuscript or some wild ideas? Let’s make it a book. Contact me and watch this space for future releases.
And for the uninitiated, the title? The Hustle is a nod to the iconic disco hit. Here’s a clue from YouTube.
_____
(And ChatGPT praised itself on its work, with the addition of an exclamation point to drive home its fine ability to churn and skim the full-fat text: “How’s that? Short, focused, and still keeps your humor intact!”)
The Marketing Dance: Doing The Jerk part Two
15/08/2014 § 1 Comment
In The Marketing Dance: Doing The Jerk, our last bloggette, I dissected the wrong way to get anyone to be interested about you and your stuff on social networks; where you act like those cheap commercials on Late Night TeeVee with the announcer yelling at you: “Wait, WAIT, there’s more…”
Mud Has Been Flung
14/01/2013 § 4 Comments
When the mad dash ended, publishing the Mud Folio after all, I wanted to feel exhilarated, complete, full of a high of some sort instead of an exhaustion compounded by a nagging feeling something is wrong, unmade, or maybe incomplete. Could there be a tiny bit left out? A wrong word in a bad place? A better picture to be used? Often, I go searching for the problem, soul searching the piece and myself; what have I done, could it be better, proof-reading, and tweaking. Usually a fool’s errand, as whatever problem I am looking for probably never existed. At least I should know by now how to finalize one of my own projects and fling it out there as soon it is finished. With a deadline looming and the possibility of a check in the mail, I can bear down on the project and “get ‘r done.” My own stuff, where I can diddle and review and it’s for free, coming to the end, finding where the finish is and stepping over that line, that turns out to be tough.
A few nights ago, I flung the Mud Folio files across the line and here it is, finally published. The 190 pages, comprises a compilation of my, mostly unsung, lyrics. Not complete mind you, full of the lyricals up to a point. Since, month by month, I am adding piecework to the unsung lyrical market, there are now quite a few doggedly recalcitrant lyricals to find their way into the second book of Mud. Seeing how long this one first one took, if I were you, I wouldn’t wait up nights for Mud Folio Dos to hit the book stands. I started compiling the first bugger back in New York during my former life in the film business, sometime in the mid to late ’80s.
Resume? Resume? I Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Resume!
25/10/2012 § Leave a comment
Well, of course you do, but aim to have a boatload of material so you don’t have just your resume to show prospective employers. And then, during your first job, find time to do your own thing, by any means necessary, so that you don’t really need that resume after that. I landed the second job of my career with the film production house, Second Story Television without any resume at all. That was because I started that company with a few friends after gleaning enough experience and connections from working at a small film production company/ad agency based on the famed Madison Avenue in NYC. And jobs after SST were mostly pulled in from my network of friends. That’s the key and the underlying thought behind this bloggette: building your career, yourself, again, by any means necessary.
Rubber Rodeo: How The West Was Won / Eat Records / Second Story Television
Marketing OneOH!One: Break On Through To The Tangential Side
17/02/2012 § 4 Comments
When I interview interns for the Ted Kurland Associates program, which I oversee here at TKA, more than a few want to know if they are going to work directly with the agents, or with management, as if the marketing side of it were tangential to their education, not only as an intern at TKA, but as a whole to their career. Of course, working with the artists is more interesting than working with the pictures of the artists; getting into the thick of the business of music is really the key to their understanding of the booking process. I know that, which is why I try and give them face time with the agents.
Artists just starting out, you may have a real career where you can afford to shave off a nice percentage for a manager; a manager who understands all this tangential business kind of stuff and can honestly oversee a marketing crew who can use all the bleeding-edge tools-of-the-minute in order to shoot your career into the stratosphere, and, even more important, keep it there. Before you get there, here is one basic term you need to understand. It’s not too hard to get, though I am perplexed when starving artists don’t even have this tool tucked under their belts. Perhaps that’s why starving artists are starving?
The marketing term for today is AUDIENCE.
As in those people who want to hear your music. To get gigs, you must have a loyal fan base. Clubs want to fill their rooms with paying customers so those customers can buy drinks, eat food, pay for all the stuff that gets labeled as “overhead.” Don’t even expect to be considered by a promoter at a large club unless you have an audience that can minimally fill his room.
Mud Folio, Almost Here
19/10/2011 § 2 Comments
It’s been a hard slog to get this sucker, THE MUD FOLIO, published in book form. A real book, with spines, a cover, cut to size, even an ISBN number and a UPC code, not the PDF download that’s up there now.
Why? Well, while I figured out a nice looking layout for an 8.5 x 11 page print-out LULU prints their trade paperbacks at 6 by 9 inch, a bit of a different ratio. If I wasn’t so anal, I’d just change the page dimension in InDesign and be done with it. But, I had to tinker, then the tinkering didn’t look right. Then life got in the way, and now, just about THREE FREAKING YEARS later, I am ALMOST done. Not yet, but almost.
We’ve had a few hiccups along the way as well. I added them on a timely basis — updates as they happened rushed to print, “copy, boy!” — to The Mud Folio page on Facebook, which I know you’ll “like” ASAP so you can get all the up-to-the-minute info on publication dates, and news and reviews, and future attempts at humor. (I sure hope we get us some reviews. I sure hope you can get the humor.)
Now, all in one place, here’s what’s happened to us to throw us off course, delay publication, fray nerves, and otherwise make us ready for those many Fridays when just one beer would not do. Though not first in the long list of detours, that Okie Poetry Slam was perhaps the hairiest of all.
BOOK BURNING
« Read the rest of this entry »
A Letter Each From Yoko, Hunter, & Sublette
20/09/2011 § Leave a comment
Yoko Ono, yes that Yoko Ono. I was her product manager at Rykodisc and worked intensely with her over the course of releasing the Onobox and her solo albums (and those duo Unfinished Music albums like TWO VIRGINS that she created with You-Know-Who). And yes, Robert Hunter, lyricist for the Dead. And yes, Sublette, Ned Sublette. Who? Look him up. When Rykodisc was being pulled to NYC by Chris Blackwell, I decided to get a raise and a better position instead of going back to the Big Apple with no raise, no cost-of-living increase, and no moving allowance, and in the lowly position of PM. Lowly, as they were trying to de-Rykodisc Ryko at the time with tighter marketing budgets and other de-naturing parts of their new Palm/Ryko bidness plan.
Listen To Your Parents And Then…
29/08/2011 § 5 Comments
Full disclosure here: I’m a parent. My eldest is currently at Boston University and another one who will be college-bound in a few years. I would love for both to land a job directly from one of their internships; with their freebie work acting like one long interview process. That would be very cool. And it happens. I’ve seen articles outlining the successes, where to apply for these programs and how students should consider doing that very thing in order to streamline their career path. I also know parents push their children to look for internships at prestigious companies with this very idea in mind. Don’t do it. For a whole cartload of reasons. Or at the very least, don’t expect anything and carry on like you will never get the carrot of the job they are dangling in front of you. Because you might not.
You Don’t Know Anything and Your Ideas Are Worthless (No, Seriously, Get Used To It…)
23/08/2011 § 8 Comments
In your first job (out here in the business world) there will be times when people are not going to listen to you. Many times. Or worse, tell you how wrong you are to your face, if not in an all-caps email that gets circulated throughout the company. Get used to it because it never ends, even when you get that so-called “experience” under your proverbial belt. For whatever reason, and there are multitudes of them that I could not possibly list here and stay within my allotted 400 words. Let me just say the personal successes and failures of your co-workers and, most importantly for today’s blog, YOUR FUTURE BOSSES, gives them their own specific, personal tunnel-vision that you cannot expect to fully perceive, much less fathom. « Read the rest of this entry »
tapedave 