Perverted Psychology 05th October 2010.

Before I get into next the next topic, let me just say I am not some kind of pervert – my sense of humour definitely is, but I’m not, and the author I’m talking about knows this as well.

I spoke yesterday about one of our authors on a downer thanks to the insensitive if not outright prejudiced approach to her work by one of her college tutors. She was down for another reason, completely separate from her college woes. Her books with us, simply haven’t been selling – at all, not just not well, but at all. Given how highly I regard her writing, as does my business partner and the editor who worked on them for us; this is not a quality issue. It has to be down to marketing.

There are of course five parts to that, the sites it’s sold on, our marketing, the book cover, the book blurb and the author’s own promotional activity.

Earlier in the summer we changed the covers for her, feeling this was the biggest factor holding them back, but this has had no effect. Our own marketing, and the sites we sell on are changing too, increasing dramatically over the next couple of months. This leaves the blurb as something we can target together. Currently we’re looking at that.

That’s a digression; the problem I was addressing was her “downer”.

Maybe because it was Sunday evening and I was a bit relaxed or maybe I was simply tired but I decided to take a different tack with her, apply some “reverse” psychology, or should that have been “perverse”. I’m not sure. Anyway, before I stopped to think I came out with something bizarre.

“If you don’t stop getting down on yourself, I’ll swim across the pond and personally spank you.”
Now, I don’t know about you but the idea of a man almost old enough to be her grandfather carrying out such an action should bring about some spluttering indignation and outrage. Instead she giggled and went silent. After a minute cringing, wondering how I could repair the damage, she came back on line and told me that had certainly broken her mood.

I’m fairly sure she’s not that kinky so it must have been the idea of someone, as old as I am, as unfit as I am, swimming the Atlantic was preposterous enough to make her laugh. At least I hope so.

So there you go, a little applied “perverse” psychology can work wonders, although I’m going to have to watch my own mouth in future, I’m so glad she took it as the joke it most assuredly was.