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It’s a well-known concept among hardcore marketers that economic downturns and recessions are the worst time to cut back on marketing. While it seems logical to cut back on all expenses during economic difficulties, the truth of the matter is financial downturns frequently offer your best opportunities to grab market share. Why? Because your competition is busy doing the logical thing and cutting back on their marketing.

It seems the state of Georgia and New York City are taking note of this marketing concept and making a move to draw in tourists. On July 10th, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Georgia is making more than $1 million in grants for state tourism development through their Georgia Tourism Foundation. The grants aren’t going specifically to history organizations, but they are in the mix including the Augusta Museum of History.

Likewise, I’ve commented recently that with gas prices skyrocketing, now would be a perfect time for historic sites to try to pull in local tourists. Especially since many of us tend to miss seeing local sites in favor of trips to other places. New York City is doing just that. They’re encouraging people in the area to “Go Local” and visit the many tourist sites within the five boroughs of NYC.

I hope somewhere along the way, we get to hear back how successful these endeavors are. Maybe they will inspire other communities and organizations to do the same.

Eric Wittenberg is an accomplished Civil War author, cavalry authority and fellow blogger, in addition to his day job as a lawyer. Eric has more than a dozen published books to his credit, including his newest One Continuous Fight:
The Retreat from Gettysburg and the Pursuit of Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, July 4-14, 1863, and more than two dozen published articles. Eric is often called on as a speaker on the subject of cavalry and as a guide for tours.

A couple of months ago, Eric published a really good series on his blog titled “Things I Wish I Knew Then But Know Now.” The series discussed the lessons Eric has learned over his years as a published book author. The series inspired me to do an interview with Eric about marketing history books from the author’s point of view. (BrandingFire Note: I’ve never been a published author, but I have several years of experience on the distribution and publisher’s side of things.)

 
BrandingFire (BF): My friend, author Dan Miller, has told me several times that authors need to be prepared to do their own book marketing. He says that unless your name is John Grisham or Stephen King, publishers just aren’t going to invest the time and money needed to market a book properly. Do you find this to be true?

Eric Wittenberg(EW): Sadly, it’s absolutely true. The truth is that most Civil War books don’t sell sufficient copies to give publishers much of an incentive to invest a lot of money into major marketing campaigns. There are, of course, exceptions, as occasionally a Civil War book will hit the bestseller lists—Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals comes to mind immediately—and then the publishers will spend the necessary money.

 
BF: I know you’ve gone to the trouble of putting up your own websites to promote your books. Is this something you’ve always done?

EW: No, it’s something we started in 2006 with the release of Plenty of Blame to Go Around: Jeb Stuart’s Controversial Ride to Gettysburg.

 
BF: Do you build your own sites or do you hire out the job?

EW: I have no competence for that sort of thing, so it’s much better for me to hire a professional to do that work for me.

 
BF: When you put up a site to support a title, what is your goal for the site?

EW: Sell books and spread the word.

 
BF: How long do you leave a site up?

EW: Good question. I actually haven’t had to address that issue yet. Plenty of Blame continues to sell well two years later, and as long as it does, we intend to leave the site up.

 
BF: Have you tried any book marketing tactics that didn’t work? If so, will you share any?

EW: I have found that taking books to Civil War Roundtable meetings generally doesn’t work well. There are only a few I’ve encountered where people are hardcore book buyers, while most just don’t care.

 
BF: What other marketing tactics do you find to be successful?

EW: Honestly, there is no substitute for word of mouth marketing. Having someone say “this is a great book and you need to read it” is without question the best marketing tool that there is. I try to encourage that sort of thing as often as I can.

 
BF: How important do you think author signings are for promoting a book?

EW: I think that they’re critical. People like to collect signed first editions of books, and in-person signings are the best way to meet the public and sign for them. The location of the signing and the promotion work done by the sponsor is, of course, critical. If nobody knows about, it’s a waste of time, but if the promoter does a good job of getting the word out, a good book signing can be one of the very best ways to sell books that I know.

 
BF: You and I first became acquainted through your blog. How important are blogs in book promotion? Any advice to authors considering or involved in blogging?

EW: I have found that blogging is a great way to make and maintain contact with the readers of my books, and I have also found that it’s a great way to remind people of one’s work. If authors feel that they have something to say that’s not just shilling their books, then I would definitely encourage them to try blogging. In September, I will have been blogging for three full years, and I have a large contingent of regular readers. It never ceases to amaze me how many people invest their valuable time into reading what I have to say each day.

 
BF: How much do you consider the marketability of a subject before you write a book on it?

EW: Some of my projects are carefully calculated to try to select topics that I know will sell, but others are strictly pursuing things that interest me, nothing more, nothing less. As an example, this week, I decided to tackle a tactical treatment of the June 10, 1864 Battle of Brice’s Crossroads, and in part, I selected that topic because I know that books on Nathan Bedford Forrest sell well, and I’d like to make some money on the one of these projects.

 
BF: Do you have a set marketing budget before you start promoting a book?

EW: No. It all depends on the book and how well I think it might sell.

 
BF: My personal experience with publishing is that going through traditional mass market distribution channels is very difficult. The discounts distributors like Ingram, Wal-Mart, Barnes & Noble, etc. are steep and leave little room for profit. Has this been your experience?

EW: Not at all. To date, all of my work has been published by conventional, commercial publishing houses, and I wouldn’t even consider a publisher that didn’t use the traditional mass-market publishing channels as the primary means of getting books out there.

 
BF: What methods of distribution have you found more effective than the “mainstream” ones listed above?

EW: To be honest, none. Short of selling books on the Internet, I can’t think of another means of selling books that is more effective.

I’d like to thank Eric again for kindly contributing his time and experience. If you haven’t read his blog, The Rantings of a Civil War Historian, you should. You can also find Eric’s books at major bookstores, including Amazon.com. I should also mention that Eric and author J. D. Petruzzi are leading a tour at Ted Alexander’s Mother of All Gettysburg Seminars on July 23-27. If you want the chance to have Eric and J.D. give you a personal tour of some of JEB Stuart’s cavalry ride during the Gettysburg campaign, you should sign up ASAP. It’s filling up fast.

If you are into history and marketing historic sites, you really should check out Heidi Glatfelter’s blog Marketing Early America. Heidi has more than a decade of marketing experience working with non-profits and she’s really connecting that experience with her passion for history and pumping out some good information for anyone involved with history-related organizations.

I didn’t know Heidi until I ran across her blog a short while ago, but I’m happy to find someone out there who shares my passions for history and marketing and is trying to be a beacon to help guide these worthy groups.

Now, GO, READ, COMMENT!! Be heard!

I ran across a nice site called Cultural Heritage Tourism run by (again) The National Trust for Historic Preservation. On their site, they list the Five Principles for Successful and Sustainable Cultural Heritage Tourism. It’s worth a read. The third principle - Make Sites and Programs Come Alive - really hit a cord for me.

I’ve mentioned before that I think a great way to connect people with your brand, no matter if that brand is Coca Cola or Daughters of the American Revolution, is with stories that are meaningful to them. New online technologies are making it easier and easier to tell those stories, be it through websites, blogs, video, podcasts, Twitter, Jaiku or any number of other technologies emerging daily.

Someone Who Gets It
I’ve found one guy who “gets it”. And he’s in a place you might not first think to look for him. He’s 8th Grade teacher Eric Langhorst. He’s so passionate about using technology to teach history that he maintains a blog about it and does speaking engagements on the subject. And his passion for history and teaching the subject are so contagious that others are noticing. Mr. Langhorst was just named the 2007-2008 Missouri Teacher of the Year. (Perfectly fitting that he podcasted about it.) In addition, he was awarded the 2007 Governor’s Humanities Education Award. (Congrats to him!)

Check out his blog here. I’ve subscribed. He may be officially teaching 13-year-olds, but I know I can learn a lot from this guy!

Who inspires you? Where do you go to learn how to better promote your organization or tell stories that fan the flames of passion for history in other people? Add a comment to this entry or give me a shout out and tell me about them.

Here’s a great blog post from the Brooklyn Museum on how they did a recent test with Twitter. While the result wasn’t a resounding success, they should be roundly applauded for having the guts to test out an idea. I hope they get the opportunity to do it some more. They also deserve massive kudos for sharing the results on their blog. Heck! While we’re at it, I’ll throw them a high five for even HAVING a blog!

Great job, Shelley Bernstein & the Brooklyn Museum!!

Here’s one that definitely needs to be filed under “It’s a Small World”. I recently blogged about how Which Wich feels the love from their customers. In a very cool move, the president and founder of Which Wich, Jeff Sinelli, commented on the post about how they LOVE their customers. He also pointed me to their blog, which I had to check out.

You see, I’ve loved Which Wich since they opened up their local store. I keep two of their sandwich bags on my desk (I know, I’m strange). Once is from one of my first sandwiches there. The other is one with franchise information. I won’t be getting into a franchise anytime soon, but I really love the place and the concept and was enamored to learn more about them. I even read articles on Mr. Sinelli and hoped to meet him some day, to at least say hello and thanks.

My chance may come soon. When I read the Which Wich blog I saw a post about getting a free t-shirt. Since free is my favorite price, they had my attention. I read that someone had set out on an adventure to have all 51 varieties of Which Wich. The shock came when I realized I know the “someone“. Chris and I worked together at the same company for two years.

Here’s the really cool thing: Jeff Sinelli, or someone on his team, apparently has alerts in places like Google so that he’s notified whenever someone writes about Which Wich on the Internet. (Hint: If you’re not doing this, do it TODAY!) That means Mr. Sinelli can find people who are hot for his restaurant and fan that passion into a roaring fire. It also means he can head off customers’ troubles and deal with them immediately… and personally. Mr. Sinelli found out about Chris’s adventure and called Chris to support him in his endevor.

The Which Wich folks have even created this limited edition t-shirt (scarcity = demand) in honor of Chris (love your customers) and have offered them free to customers (love your customer… and collect their contact info). In addition, Jeff Sinelli and some of his team will be traveling to Nashville, TN to have lunch with Chris and 50 of his closest friends (love your customer, event marketing… & good PR) to celebrate. This is all such freakin’ great marketing that I almost can’t stand it. But it’s not normal, everyday, ooh-I-feel-icky, fake marketing. This is passion-for-your-brand, love-your-customers, open-the-lines-of-communication, un-ordinary marketing. I’ll be at that lunch, and I just want to shake Mr. Sinelli’s hand and say, “You and your team are awesome!” And to Chris Thomas I say, “Congrats on being the first one into The 51 Club!”

Now, I ask again, do your customers love you that much? Do you love them that much?

BTW, just found out the shirts are all gone.

It’s not new, but it’s an interesting and creative use of type. BBDO (an ad agency) in London designed this coaster for Guinness. (If you don’t see anything special, look at the bottom portion of the beer glass. You can click on the picture to see a larger version that is easier to read.) Sometimes, just a bit of creativity can make a thing remarkable.

I’m surprised I haven’t seen anyone selling something like this.