Eight Days and Counting

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Today Evelyn and Leah, who, here at MEIER, hold the lion’s share of online outreach for our books in their strong and capable hands, reminded me that we need to be in touch with the Bloggers who so generously held their reviews of The Season of Second Chances until Launch Date. It’s almost upon us.

The outreach has been kind of incredible. Evelyn spearheaded it – finding folks who love books, or appreciate the work and regeneration of renovating a home, or who just delight in home design – with a handful of folks who were simply basking in a kind of luxurious, hands-on-generally-chic-style. She read them and got to know them and let them know that she appreciated their work and their point of view.

When you begin to talk about Internet, Social Media, Outreach and Bloggers – it all seems kind of theoretical at best, and shallow, technological and cold, at worst. But this has been an awakening for me. When we talk, here at MEIER, about the human metabolism of consumers, and the fact that the Internet does little to change that, we’re reminding ourselves of the human equation and it grounds our work. It reminds us that people still behave like – people.

This outreach, as we’ve done for The Season of Second Chances, turns out to be just another way of touching people. In this case, people very much like me. And, as it happens, people much like Leah and Evelyn.

We decided that the Bloggers were being so generous in their responses, that we should include, with the books that we sent, handwritten notes – here in the era of cyber-transmitting. In fact, it brings up something Wendy Goodman noted in her piece about our office in New York Magazine– that in the face of high-technology, our response here at MEIER has been to go Edwardian – with our behavior (the writing of books, the design of our office, the fact of our shared lunches and steady conversation and values). And many of the Bloggers have reacted to just that. Handwritten notes by the author. Who’d have thought? Well – actually – I think – many of them would have done the same. And that’s the point.

It’s not that we’re Luddites. Quite the opposite. Harish Rao, here at MEIER, probably knows as much about Internet Outreach as anyone in America right now. Ben and David Goodwin are not far behind. And Evelyn just attended the South by Southwest conference and found that we are far ahead of the rest of the publishing industry in our outreach and understanding of how to slice and dice the kind of narrow channels we need to fish in to get results.

But once you get through the ‘how’ and the ‘why’ – on the other end of the equation, there are people. Very nice people – who, if you’ve done your job right, appreciate what you have to share.

And, in our case, what we have to share is rather emotional and warm and supportive and real. It’s the opposite of the shallow and cold response you think you’ll get when the word Internet falls from your lips.

So – today, eight days from publication, we are opening the gates to the new friends we’ve made, and the connections we hope to keep up through the years – with the books that will follow and the ideas we have for how to celebrate and express ourselves authentically and beautifully – one project at a time. Imagine standing at the door and saying, Welcome!