Companies use the internet to market quite a bit. But I wonder if they ever prepared for the unexpected.

To illustrate this, I'll use my wife and I. We're going on vacation later this year, and my wife used the internet to book our hotel. The hotel had an excellent website, etc - all very nice.

So later on, my wife is reading reviews of the hotel written by other travelers. She begins to get a nagging feeling. Not because the hotel got bad reviews - it didn't. But people were mentioning the construction the hotel was doing in adding another building, and how noisy it was. How cranes and loaders and everything else were operating at 7am.

Suffice to say, we cancelled our reservations and booked another place.

I wonder if the hotel factored the internet in thinking about construction?  Now I'm not sure how you can build something quietly, but I'm pretty sure you can build without waking hotel guests at 7am.

Ten years ago, this wasn't a factor. Word of mouth was (largely) actual spoken words. Ten years ago, my wife would have never heard about any else's experience at the hotel. Or, if she did, it would have been from a friend or relative who stayed there last year and loved it (before construction was going on.)

I'll bet the hotel never thought about this. Never thought about the word of mouth aspect of the internet as it relates to things like noisy construction.

Interesting, huh? 

I have read through the entire book.

The publisher did an excellent job of keeping my voice, tone, and personality. It's very close to my manuscript, which pleases me to no end.  To me, there's little point in writing if someone is going to change it. I don't mind them editing me when I start two paragraphs in a row with "now" or something like that, but otherwise, I'd rather what I wrote be left alone.

And thankfully, that's exactly what the editor did. She made the book better. It's polished, but it's still me. Awesome!

Is all writing the same? Of course it isn't. And it shouldn't cost the same, either.

I think the following says a LOT. It's part of a conversation I had the other day with a prospective client:

Client: "Why is your price higher than  some others I've seen? I saw a site where I can get web content for $50 per page!!"

Me: "Did you call them after reading their site?"

Client:  "No"

Me: "Well, you called me after reading mine. What does that tell you?"

So my website writing got an action. The cheap web copy didn't. I would say that's worth quite a bit, wouldn't you agree?

Have a nice weekend!!

A group of TV advertisers are resorting to pretty slimy form of trickery with their advertising and sales pitch.

The advertisers in question are the slicer / dicer / cleaner / handy dandy gadget type advertisers. They usually have a hype-filled one-minute commercial, and then, at the end say "and you can get yours for only 19.99.... BUT WAIT.... Call now, and we'll throw in a SECOND one for free. That's TWO slug trail removers for only $19.99"

Obviously, I made the product up, but my point should be clear. They throw in a second one for free. Ok, that's not so bad. So what's the slimy trick?

The trick comes in when you order. A computer recording takes your order, and asks you how many you are ordering... they fail to mention they want to know how many SETS OF TWO you are ordering.

So the commercial says 2 slicer dicers for $19.99. The computer voice asks how many you want. You say "two", thinking one, plus the free one. 

They then send you TWO ORDERS OF TWO.

They basically get a double order from almost everyone. And, it's such a pain in the ass to send something back via mail, most people say "oh well, I'll just give one away".

Pretty slimy, huh?

Anyone need a magic slicer?

Back cover approved - it's a lot like the "about the book" page on the book website (www.danfurmanonline.com)

I was hoping for it to be released late this month - no such luck. It'll be shipped to the printer next week, where apparently they still use Ben Franklin-era hand-set printing presses. I say this because it'll be in stores late July at best. And more like August, to be honest.

Ok, Ben Franklin joke aside, I'm really excited. Oh, I'd have liked it to be a spring release, and summer has so many distractions, but who's complaining? I'm getting a book in the bookstore. Another month is nothing, really.

So sit tight - I've talked enough about this book - it'll be worth the wait, I promise!!