Shameless
You & Me
Between you and me....
Dear friends,
On Linkedin there was a question. “What creativity means to you?”
I wrote “Read one of my creations Here
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474980357686
Next day I got comment for my post “Shameless self promotion!”
I have not yet replied. My reply will take more than one A-4 page. I was not annoyed nor were my feelings hurt. Here is my reasoning. It is different. Like HOT tomato chilly sauce.
Creativity is not what we claim; creativity is what others find in us. Jivan.
If you are a creative person you want to show you creation to the whole world. For a creative person (writers, artists, painters etc) first he looks for appreciation for his work. It will give him satisfaction and confidence to excel in his respective field. But when he had to spent hundreds even thousands of USD minimum you (he) will expect to recover your expense. It is common practice for all the creative people to use social net work to promote their creative work. What is wrong with it? Without popularizing your work how do others know about your work or even sell your ‘creativity’? When you spent money to get your fiction published it is your responsibility to recover your money.
Once publisher take money from you to publish your fiction he made his minimum profit. It is impossible for any publisher to promote the entire book they publish. If your book is too good then readers will recommend to their friends.
Here are few examples...
Most of us like James Cameron’s movies. AVATAR cost him Rs 1200 cores. Ask him how much millions of USD he had spent on advertising for AVATAR.
Indian movie ROBOT was made at the cost of one hundred and sixty cores of Indian rupees. Sun movie (T.V net work) telecast ten T.V channels. They had spent sixty cores of rupees only to promote ROBOT. If any other producer had made ROBOT he would have hanged long ago.
In India it is a common practice in movie field spending quarter to one third of movie budget to promote ‘magnum opus’. History tells us hype or star value alone can not save the fate of movie. As a ‘writer’ I would say when it comes to movie it is the story concept and the way it was presented to the audience make money. There are good stories made bad movies and bad movies (story) made good money! Blame it on presentation by director.
Heard about aggressive marketing? You will find it on T.V commercials. Ask your marketing manager for more about cut throat business.
Millions and millions of fictions are available though the net. When your fiction got published across the seven seas how do you expect to promote your book? After spending hundreds of USD do you leave it to fate? Sorry, I am an atheist.
There are writers who make out a living by writing novels and fictions. In my case I wrote fictions so that some other day I would love to work for movie version of two of my sci-fi and one graphic driven horror fiction. I would like to design web page (concept) running title, design sets, and work with digital artists. I love digital manipulation and creating surrealistic look for scenes. If I recover my money it will help me to publish my other fictions buy selling ‘Eternal Love’.
On most of the social net work you will find people displaying their work. It is not a shameless self promotion. How do you know about the other person’s creativity? In this material world it is also a business opportunity. You had seen book signing ceremony at the major book stores. Why? Because publisher had spent thousands of USD to market your book and they want to recover their money at any cost. Where as a ‘Chotta Motta’ writer like me trying to promote his book thorough social net work is not a crime.
We all see hundreds of advertisements all the time on news paper, T.V and movies. Do we purchase everything we ‘see’? Naturally we do not buy what we do not want or required. Most of us read book review on newspaper or net still we do not buy unless and until we like the story concept or presentation. Some time so much hype is created by the publisher for a famous author’s book. But after reading critic review we hardly feel like wasting our precious money.
I do not see anything wrong with promoting our ‘creativity’. If we do not promote our ‘creativity’, who else will do it for us? You....?
Friend,
jivan
