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Thursday, March 25, 2010

Books Debunking an Inspirational Book Video That's Making the Rounds

Posted by Paul Constant on Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 11:20 AM

A ton of people (most recently Slog tipper Steve) have sent me a link to this video that's making the book blog rounds. It apparently started as a presentation in a marketing conference and then went viral on the liternet. If you'd like to watch it without my commentary, do so now. I'll discuss it, and why I haven't posted it on Slog before now, below the video:

I'm just not that fond of the video, to be honest. Leaving out the egregious "of" that is added in on the rewind (Call me nitpicky, but it's a huge mistake for a video that is basically one gimmick to fuck its one gimmick up,) it doesn't make any goddamned sense.

What is the point of the video? If you turn illiterate people upside down, they'll become readers? That's not the point; the down customer and the up customer are clearly two different people. The down customer will never buy a book, period. And the traditional argument that publishers buy into (which I don't agree with, but this would definitely require a whole other post to explain) is that fewer people are reading these days; this video says nothing about that.

I guess the statement is supposed to be that if you look at something in a new and different way, you'll find a new and different approach, but that's not illustrated in this video either; the up-customer seems to be anti-e-book and anti-new in general, except for her willingness to market the book for the publisher. So if you look at something in a new and different way, you'll find that the same old approach you've always used will work just fine?

It's just a bit of brainless feel-good marketing frippery, and some meaningless razzle-dazzle, which is what the video itself is supposed to be decrying. I don't mean to piss on the feel-good publishing parade, but this video is total bullshit.

Comments (9) RSS

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It's also a completely unoriginal gimmick. Which, I guess is kind of appropriate, given that it's the publishing industry.

Posted by Julie in Eugene on March 25, 2010 at 11:44 AM

Wow. You realize that "brainless feel-good marketing frippery" is mega-redundant, right? It's all right there in the word marketing.

I was wondering why, as she read the roll the first time through, that the emphasis seemed all wrong, like she was reading it in the wrong order or something.

I have a powerful suspicion that no one involved in the production of this video has read a book since college, if then, or anything longer than an article in Vice Magazine. A roomful of Nathan Barleys, in other words.

Posted by Fnarf

on March 25, 2010 at 11:44 AM

I'll be on the lookout for places to use "frippery".

Posted by matt! on March 25, 2010 at 11:50 AM

@3, tangential to Paul's topic, but "frippery" is indeed a fine word. My grandfather used the similar word "flummery" to refer to anything pleated, tufted, fringed, tasseled, etc. that my grandmother used to dress up the house--pretty much anything but leather upholstery and roll-up windowshades. Checking the dictionary, it seems as though frippery might have been slightly closer to what my grandfather was getting at, and flummery to what Paul intended--but either is a tasty choice. Maybe Eli or Brendan or whoever's been doing the occasional etymological posts will pick it up.

Posted by rob!

on March 25, 2010 at 12:18 PM

I cannot stand by while the good name of Fripp is being diluted to mean nothing but "wankery".

The man is a staple of our times! Our times are not puncuated by wankery!

Posted by bconnolly on March 25, 2010 at 12:20 PM

I'm all for British accents in theory, but man, some of them are so annoying. "I dohn cahhhh"? "Lady Gargar"? God almighty. My ears are crying.

Posted by starsandgarters on March 25, 2010 at 1:00 PM

Just wanted to say thanks for introducing me to the word frippery! That's just made my day.

Posted by Toad in the Hole on March 25, 2010 at 2:12 PM

That's odd, I watched the video, but I still don't know how to sell books to people.

I do, however, know how to compare Lady Gargar and Ghandi.

Posted by iflurry

on March 25, 2010 at 4:34 PM

You're missing the entire point of the video, as consumers we're bombarded with bullshit all day long, and if you read even half the posts on consumerist (and really, only half cause the other half is complete shit) you'd understand that there's a large group of consumers extremely pissed off about the way artists are treated, the way media is sold to us, and the ways the industry wants to slow down or stop the movement to digital because of pirates...ARRRRRRG they ruin everything don't they?

It's not that I don't want to buy shit, it's not that I don't put a value on art, I just like a very specific kind of art that I don't see advertised to me anywhere. Couple the fact that many of the largest corporations we have donate to political funds, like Comcast and it's defense investing or AT&T and it's war mongering, there's no accountability to marketing. While some may say it's impossible to hold advertisers accountable, I'd just call those people lazy. It's not that I don't want to give good ideas money, but when the iphone values 3000 ifart applications over a NiN "f bomb", and there is little to no alternative, there's a huge base of people desperately wanting for something big to happen in publishing. We need a culture of creativity and sharing, not litigation and mass advertising. Maybe it's an ideal fantasy world no one should expect, maybe someone will see this demand and meet it.

Posted by watchout5