my mom came home for lunch and she brought a friend of the family who is an extremely successful businessman.
apparently when people heard that i was coming home, something i never do, everyone wanted to hang out with me, which is sweet, but secretly all i wanted to do here was hide out, do some laundry, take a few pictures, meet the Chicago buzznetters and bloggers and get the f out.
but best laid plans… and now ive met neighbors on both sides, old neighbors in our old neighborhood, people at my moms work, and a lady who makes my moms bagel every morning – and this is only day TWO.
so dude takes us to lunch at an ok restaurant and tells me that he reads the busblog “sporadically” because of several reasons that he will give me tips on later — uh, no thanks — and tells me that he hasnt yet purchased Stiff but will probably this week and says that he bets there are lots of potential customers that are in the same shoes that he’s in. so to speak, meaning they want it, ive got it, but theres something in the way.
midway through my soup i politely told him that i didnt care if anyone didnt buy my book, that i wrote it so i could give one to my teachers who i dedicated it to, and to my mom who i secretly dedicated it to.
he said, dont you want to sell a lot of copies?
i said, of course not.
he said, jo — my mothers name is jolene — he said jo, whats california done to little tony?
she said hes always been like this, and added, he buys USED clothes!
so dude says, the biggest shopping day of the year is about to happen, more sales are going to take place on Friday and Saturday than in all of the summer days combined. people will be looking for things that they want but they will also want GREAT VALUES. BARGAINS! then he asked me if i ever bought things that weren’t on sale.
lap dances, i told him. and winked at my mom.
but he was right, no, i barely bought anything, but never things that werent on sale unless it was a once in a lifetime situation. like a concert ticket, or bleacher seats, or a power adapter for my laptop whilest on vacation.
so he said, tony you have to put your book on Sale but you have to do it in such a way that people will feel good about the price.
i was all, if people are worried about price then they havent seen the value of the item so therefore price is irrelevant.
he said, true, to a point, but you see value of certain things like plasma tvs or corvettes or – and he looked at me – good clothes, but you dont buy those things. so price does factor in.
have i mentioned i didnt like this person?
but then he presented his really good idea
so what you do tony is you let your readers email you with their Best Offer, like a Priceline.com for your book. if its a ridiculous price like $6 you say no thanks, and perhaps they’ll email you back with a better offer. if you can reach some sort of agreement you send them a bill and ship it out to them.
if you want, he said, you can even negotiate the shipping price, since i see you only ship things Priority Mail, bubba this is a book why not send it Media Mail for $1?
and to prove that even sorta horrible people can have good ideas, thats exactly what im going to do.
for the next 4 days only you can email me at stiff@tonypierce.com and make me an offer on my book. keep in mind that right now CafePress is offering unsigned copies for $19.08 plus shipping and im offering signed copies for $25 plus shipping. so if you want an autographed copy its a tad more.
also during this special timeperiod you cannot specify which cover you want – if you want a certain cover you have to pay the regular price. if you want the dealio price you have to take the cover i send you.
Also, realize i have some copies of How To Blog for sale too, so if you want both let me know and make me an offer, or if you only want HTB email me with an offer.
i will do my best to hook up every reasonable offer, my only stipulation is to be fair, be polite, and dont tell anyone how much you paid.
this is a four day sale only and i wont be able to ship them out till Tuesday at the earliest which is why this sale exists – and because dude had a decent idea.
the paypal invoice i will send you can be paid by credit card, check, or paypal.
now you cant say you dont have anything to be thankful for 🙂
or to punish the fools who dared fly out today, the busiest travel day of the year.
and for some reason im tired. i shouldnt be. i slept on the plane, something i love to do, i didnt even watch the diane lane + john cusack romantic comedy, in fact i even read a few chapters of Buzzmarketing which mc brown has been hyping since ive started at buzznet.