Question: What number am I thinking of?

THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT: Authors, do not send out your manuscripts until they are ready. Agents and editors will remember, even if they don't know that they're remembering. I'll explain.

Whenever I see the fractal pattern of an MRI, I am reminded of how I felt standing at the lip of the Grand Canyon.

On real MRI film, I recognize the amygdala, the frontal cortex, and the hippocampus, but that's about it. People who study the brain can learn a bit more, but there is still a limit to how much they can process, and how detailed they get. How long would it take to sort through all of the millions of neurons that fire while you decide if you want to watch "Fear Factor" or "Dancing with the Stars"? But computers can do it in real time.

I listened to an interview on NPR of Orson Scott Card yesterday, and he said that if he knew what story would get a response like ENDER'S GAME, he would have written it. Card has been extremely successful, so it's hard to feel bad for him, but I know what he means. As a writer, you want to touch people and connect with them. If you're not doing that, you might as well write textbooks. Textbooks on brain imaging, perhaps.

Check out this video of an fMRI of a brain watching the trailer for "Avatar". Amazing, huh?

What images illicited the strongest responses? The alien? The kiss?

Will we put people in an MRI and watch their brain while we read our entire book to them? Our editor might come to us and say, "Cut this paragraph. The test listener wasn't engaged. And Ch. 7 needs a bump. Can Wanda slap Gregory then? Or they could have sex. Either one."

The funny thing is that the first fMRI done was by researchers trying to understand "The Pepsi Challenge" blind taste test (and now Pepsi, according to this *wink* article, is done with trying to change people. Thanks, Jeff). Researchers wondered why people would continue to drink Coke if some of them liked the taste of Pepsi better. They discovered that emotions help process decisions. I don't drink Co-cola anymore, but I still think of it fondly, because my grandma loved a snickers bar and a coke. LOVED them. Together. And when I think of Coke, a tiny part of my brain accesses my memories of her. EVERYTHING we look at gets checked against our previous experience.

It's a little tricky ethically. Input changes brain chemistry. Would you like it if someone wanted you to buy Miracle Whip and injected dopamine into your brain so you'll put some in your shopping cart? Watch this (ten seconds will be plenty to get the gist. Miracle Whip is the new beer.) and tell me if that's not the intention. In the comments below the video, however, people- apparently young people- are a little, shall we say, confused about this new direction, and someone compares Miracle Whip to orthopedic shoes. In other words, "Don't bother, MW. You're not cool." Neuromarketing says it doesn't matter too much what the hipsters say, the association between MW and cool is being made.

Are we ruled by these associations? No. Are these associations bad? Not necessarily. But think about this:

At the marketing meeting hubby went to, the speaker, Steve Whigham, told a story about a marketing guy who approached a bum and gave him ten bucks to let M.G. write the bum a new sign. The bum agreed, and M.G. left for an hour and then came back to see how the new sign was working. The bum gave him his ten bucks back and told him how great the sign had worked- instead of the usual $6-7 a day, he'd made $60. And what did the sign say?

"What if you were hungry?" Simple empathy.

Is marketing reminding us of things we already decided or manipulating us? I don't know.

For Thursday- my first experience with Sonic and a new game system with a foil hat. Yep. It reads your mind.

Answer: 1984

Can't get enough?

Sky writing

I apologize for not getting this out yesterday, but I'm sick and have the same bedtime as my kids until I feel better.

I did some brainstorming on marketing. Skywriting is my favorite. How I would love to look up at the beach and see my first scene written in one mile high letters (that's the size of the letters, not the altitude. Really.) It's almost dramatic enough for this writer's ego. Perhaps if the entire throng of beachgoers were taking notes, slack-jawed and/or teary-eyed…Oh. Hello. I forgot you were here. Ahem. Sorry about that.

I said last time that the average person is exposed to 30,000 advertisements a day (according to marketing guru Steve Whigham). How do you get your book to stand out among all of those? And WHAT has to stand out? Do you need a bright yellow cover? An Oprah's book club sticker? (Yes. Give her your soul. She will sell a lot of books and your soul will get time with Dr. Oz and Dr. Phil, so your soul will be self-embracing and in a happy place, surrounded by Oprah's favorite things.)

Let's talk about Oprah's book club. Love it or hate it, a recommendation from Oprah sells. Why?

Steve claims that 95% of decisions are emotional (based on brain-imaging studies- more below on this.) So how does Oprah make us feel? I notice four basic responses.

1. Loyal Oprahites- want to be able to send her emails about the book, detailing how the book changed their lives, their children's lives, their neighbor's life. These people consider Oprah a close personal friend and REALLY want to meet her. They take her recommendation as seriously as if she were their priest/minister/best friend/psychiatrist/medical doctor rolled into one. They have learned how to read because Oprah suggested it.

2. Casual Oprahphiles- tune in every once in a while, maybe thumb through her magazine in the checkout. She says some interesting things and most of it is pretty good. These people have read at least one of her other book picks- possibly because their book club picked it- and they're willing to give her recommendation a chance. They like how they feel after watching Oprah- grateful that their life isn't so messed up, hopeful and ready to put their life in order, serious about fixing the ills in the world, etc.

3. Oprah Indifferents- Think, "Crap. She recommended another book. Everybody is going to read it and be talking about it, so I should, too." A lot of 'book people' may fall into this group. (In a parallel example, the buzz around Dan Brown's "The Lost Symbol" has made some people read it, just so they could weigh in) This is, as are the rest of my Oprah categories, merely conjecture.

4. Oprah Reactionaries- WILL NOT read a book because she recommended it-but they won't be buying the books, so I only mention them. But they exist, as evidenced here.

Notice that these categories are related to identity (If I read these books, I am a good, caring person. Oprah said so.) Reactionaries have an opposite though equally strong emotion, which I will call non-identity. (I will not become a sheep in Oprah's herd.)

So you can send Oprah emails every day until she asks you on the show, you can drop leaflets from planes (think propaganda drops during WWII), stick flyers on people's windshields, tables at cultural events like fairs,tattoos, blogging, spamming, become best friends with the indie (independent) bookstores within a twelve-hour drive of your home, etc. Lots of people spend a lot of money looking at what motivates people to buy.

Did you know supermarkets use video of customers to measure time spend in a store, time standing in the aisle waffling about what to buy, observing what products people go straight for (and thus should be advertised outside, since by the time they get inside the decision is already made)?

I've wondered why they stick books like "Coffees of the World" and "The Ultimate Tulip Guide" in the entry way at Barnes and Nobles. Marketing people call it "decompression", and the purpose is to ease us into the shopping experience, to let our brains adjust. I think they use those books to give us some easy decisions. To give us confidence that we are in control. It reminds me a bit of a lobster trap. Here's another trap-

"Often a customer struggling to decide which of two items is best ends up not buying either. A third "decoy" item, which is not quite as good as the other two, can make the choice easier and more pleasurable, according to a new study using fMRI carried out by Akshay Rao, a professor of marketing at the University of Minnesota. Happier customers are more likely to buy. Dr Rao believes the deliberate use of irrelevant alternatives should work in selling all sorts of goods and services, from cable TV to holidays." (From this article in "The Economist")

So, the ideal situation would be to have a table with your book, the bestseller comp book, and a decoy book, like "Famous Quidditch Matches in Hogwarts History" or "The Life and Times of Dr. Carlisle Cullen". You'll have some fans that will pick the decoy, but most people want to relive the emotion of a golden book. They've already read the golden book, the decoy is out, and that leaves your book. Which looks pretty interesting, actually. In his email newsletter, "Daily Kick in the Pants", David Farland says this:

"In fact, most purchases that most active readers make are based upon the fact that the book resonates with other works that they have enjoyed. The readers almost never make a conscious connection, but it is there.

"As I mentioned the other day, we choose the category of fiction that we do because we are looking for a certain type of controlling emotion in our work. The word "genre" doesn't really explain what we're doing when we choose our fiction. Instead, the sections in the bookstore ought to be titled "Wonder, Romance, Drama, Intrigue, and so on...

"Sometimes the resonance that induces us to buy a book comes from the cover. My own fantasy novels have covers by Darrel Sweet. Sweet of course is famous for doing the covers for Terry Brooks and Robert Jordan, two of our best-sellers of all time. So when readers look at my novels, they are immediately reminded of books by those authors."

I can see what he means. The publishers are very aware of cover art and what it conveys- hence the recovering of Wuthering Heights to look more like Twilight. More on this Tuesday, including how to make a living as a bum. Really. It's a good gig.

What emotion do you read for? Some possibilities- Adventure (like Dan Brown), romance (Stephenie Meyer), humor(Dave Barry), wonder(J.R.R. Tolkien), drama(Jodi Picoult)? Does it change?

What did one book say to the other one?
I just wanted to see if we are on the same page
Can't get enough?