Byzantine Publishing – Marketing Reaches out to the Public (Part 2)

The conference room was crowded but quiet.  Purposely, Constantine had ordered palace slaves to leave blood stains and a few severed body parts scattered around, carried over from previous meetings.  Motivation was an ongoing issue even in his palace.

“Here’s the way I see it,” the Emperor began with a dangerous look challenging someone to dare disagree.  “First off, the damn book is too damn long: too many pages and too many words.

“We’re already under pressure from the scribes’ and monks’ guilds.  They’ve filed grievances about poor lighting and pasty gruel.  And they’re unhappy about some of the work rules, like no talking in the scriptorium and the chastity business.

“As it stands, if we try to force the issue and shove this work down their throats, we’ll face job actions and a sick-out.  I'm working to void the monks' collective bargaining agreement with the bishops, but they're a bunch of pussies...sorry, I meant to say good Christians, who are afraid to hurt anyone's feelings.  A new labor contract's been pending for years.  But it's impossible to negotiate when the union rep is under a life-long vow of silence.

Since we can't count on wage reductions, we’ve got to trim the book down by half; more is better.  At this point we’ve got like twenty or twenty-five Gospels, running A to Z, from Ananais to Zakron.  And who the hell is Simon the Zealot?  Does that sound like someone who's credible?  Or Joseph the Senator?  Eurion the Splay-Foot?

Christ Almighty...you got your first tier Apostles, second tier Apostles, and a long list of bush-leaguers.  Then you've got to include author bios, a glossary, an index, a bunch of repetitive narrative, and three friggin’ pages of acknowledgements.  Ridiculous.

"And listen up everyone...any book that comes out of this will have just one acknowledgement, and that's me!" The Emperor roared, paused, and then calmly continued: "Now see how easy it can be to simplify things.  There's your starting point.

“Now first off, let’s figure out what we need.  Forget what we have.  Marketing?  Any thoughts?  Are you with me?”

Well-dressed, stylish, slick, and supremely confident, Leo Kanzalatkis, a former used chariot salesman, could sell sand to Arabs.  He had his own numbers...and ideas.

“Thanks, chief," Leo began smoothly, turning to address the team.  "We’ve run a pair of focus groups on a full version and an abridged version.  First there were problems with the size.  The full size book is hardly portable and can’t be read in bed without a couple of slaves to prop it up.  Otherwise it risks squashing readers’ balls.

“Second ranked concern was about price point.  As the chief said, we’ll never make any money on a large volume.  Most literate prospects are priests but those sales represent highly discounted corporate contracts and complementary give-aways.  It’s essentially a loss leader we use to build sales to non-clergy like princes, scholars, and rich merchants.  A lot of these prospects are actually illiterate, but like a new chariot or blue-eyed Circassian slave girl, it’s just something you own to impress neighbors, colleagues and competitors.  No one’s going to try to read it, but there’s still a limit to what they’ll pay.  Too high, and soon as our version comes out, I’d expect to see a bunch of poor quality, abridged knockoffs out on the street, undercutting us in the illiterates market segment.

“And the tight-ass book sellers are already raising a stink.  They say they can’t figure out where to shelve it in their stalls:  is it gonna be Fiction?  Non-Fiction?  Childrens?  New Age?  And regardless, they all demand big promotional budgets.  They say all the First Testament copies are in remainder and they’re not breaking even on storage costs for excess inventory.

“As for the book itself, honestly, initial reviews aren’t good.  Starting with the original content, a hundred sets of galleys went out and early feedback is not promising.  First off, some complained how it was hard to follow the narrative at the beginning if you hadn’t read the First Testament.  Then reviewers who had actually read the First Testament were full of complaints about the lack of action, you know, battles and slayings and begatings and other naughty bits in the galleys.  We have to admit the First Testament has scale and grandeur with descriptions of exotic places, bloody wars, manly heroes, and sexy chicks, you know, like Delilah, Jezebel, and Bathsheba.

“The Second Testament starts slow.  It’s sort of a memoir or biography, you know, and can’t really be any more exciting than its characters.  And look who we got:  Mary, the Madonna, who’s a virgin.  Yeah, right, that’s believable.  Joseph, the biggest chump of all time.  And Jesus.  He’s kind of this hippy guy, if you know the type:  underachiever, slacker, loner, and apparently dateless.  Lucky he didn't have a big 'L' henna'ed on his forehead.  Almost impossible to say whether he inherited the chump gene from his step-father or if he was high on mushrooms or bud.  He’s too cool for school; all that shit.

“Later on we meet Mary Magdalene, the good-hearted ho.  Could have included some explicit flashbacks, but instead we end up with a character one reviewer suggested was Jesus’ beard.

“Now I know we have millions of my fellow Greeks in the Empire, but I don’t think the Byzantine public is ready for a gay protagonist.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

It’s true Mark and Matthew tantalize us with a few verses about Salome, but that’s just a sidebar of JC’s story.

“Jesus’ posse?  Weak characterizations.  Whimpy personalities.  Rather talk than fight.  I wish he’d had a fun-loving, ethnic side-kick, but wasn’t in the cards.”

Leo looked back over his notes...he had the Emperor’s ear and wanted to make the best impression.

“The whole trial and crucifixion thing comes off well, but the focus group still preferred a Samson-type ending, you know, with Jesus jumping down from the cross and kicking some Roman and rabbi ass.  Consensus was that, as written, the ending is too enigmatic.  One reviewer accused us of setting up the audience for a string of sequels, just to stretch out our payday.

“And one last thing:  caravan from the east brought in a thousand copies of some shit called the ‘Tao Te Ching’ or ‘Chink’ or something like that.  It’s getting good word of mouth right now.  Hot cake time.  It’s like fifty pages and a closet full of Chinese slaves could crank out a hundred copies a day.  Keeps the transport costs and wholesale price low.  That's our competition at the moment...”

Constantine, volatile at the best of times, was red-faced.

“Wait a minute.  You’re saying now we’re competing with cheap imports from Asia?  I can put a stop to that you know.  I am the Emperor, the friggin’ Augustus, in case you forgot.”

“You are the big enchilada, boss.  But in this case, cat’s already out of the bag,” Leo shrugged.

Constantine sighed.  “Just the same, it won’t be the last time.  Summon my generals right after this meeting.  They’ve got some more conquering to do.  Marcus Abacus, can we write off the cost of this army against income from the book business?”

The accountant scratched his chin, pulled on his beard, and nodded.  “Sire, certainly we can write down direct costs related to the publishing subsidiary, but we’d have to include any loot and slaves brought back on the asset side of the ledgers.  Please, just remind the generals that I will need all their receipts, travel reimbursement forms, and Form DD/XLIVs reporting plunder sold or retained.”

continued in Part 3 of 5