Propel Your Creativity Forward and Achieve Financial Success: A Guest Post by Publisher and Writer Ron Gavalik

Yay for guest posts! It’s been so long!

Here’s publisher extraordinaire, Ron Gavalik, to introduce you to his newest project. If you’re a fan of the Emotobook Revolution, then he needs no introduction. Still, though, for the rest of you… his bio follows the post.

 

Propel Your Creativity Forward and Achieve Financial Success

Ron Gavalik

 

As a publisher and marketing professional, I’ve always found it vitally important to ensure creative professionals possess the correct tools to market their work to the right kinds of audiences. I’ve enjoyed a long and fruitful career ensuring the success of businesses, but also multiple fields in the arts. I take a lot of pride in sharing that learned experience with others.

Unfortunately, I’ve met so many creative people who honestly believe they’ll never make a secure living by pouring passion into their work. That kind of cynicism is sad and frustrating, especially when I know for a fact that it’s not true. We all require housing and plumbing to sustain life, but it’s creativity that gives our lives purpose…and talented creators perform a necessary function in our society. It’s my job to make sure they earn a high middle-class income.

That’s why our team assembled Financial Success for Creative Professionals, the first of its kind marketing plan that’s guaranteed to drive your long-term success.

In the modern era, writers, artists, performers, models, photographers, musicians, and crafters face two real challenges when it comes to selling their creative products and performances. The first is contending with an oversaturation in the market, where so many indie creators are now selling their work to the masses. The second and more important challenge is gaining the marketing knowledge to break through the chaos and build a significant fan base that leads to achieving a secure revenue stream.

Because of the oversaturation, consumers are only willing to invest about 5 to 10 seconds viewing a creative product or performance on a website or at a tradeshow. If they’re intrigued, they’ll stay longer to absorb more of the experience and begin to build what’s referred to as an emotional investment. That happens when something about the product or performance you created pleases the sensory pathways of the brain and a person is compelled to become part of the experience, such as making a purchase.

On the other hand, if the consumer doesn’t emotionally identify with your work in a few heartbeats, they’ll navigate away from your website or walk away from your booth. Their psychology will register your product or performance as a negative experience and you’ll never see them again.

In that brief 5 to 10 second moment, the potential fan stands on the shore of a river while your work sits on the other side. You must persuade the consumer into building a bridge (emotional investment) to cross the river and then obtain your creation. That’s no easy feat, but when we understand how to brand a creation and then present it properly to potential fans, it’s easy to achieve the needed connections with hundreds of thousands of consumers.

How do we do this? Exposure. The marketing plan shows us how to attract the right kinds of consumers, referred to as target audiences. These targets must be exposed to a properly branded product or performance over and over again for their minds to build the bridge across the river and purchase your work.

Financial Success for Creative Professionals provides you the tools to drive hundreds of thousands of target consumers to your creations. You’ll also gain the ability to brand your work in a unique category that eliminates competition. It’s that created perception of your work that raises you above the chaos of so many indie writers, artists, musicians, and performers in the world.

The marketing plan is delivered to you in five-parts to achieve long-term success. You’re walked through expert marketing theory as it applies to the arts. You’ll construct your public marketing structure. The plan then drives your media marketing initiatives to win support of social media followers, the news media, and others. You’ll diversify income from multiple sources into your one checking account. Don’t worry; it’s not that complex. You’re given easy to follow checklists for daily, weekly, and monthly initiatives that respects your artistic time. That’s the guaranteed formula that will achieve you the true success your passion deserves.

Now that you’ve been given a glimpse of the proven marketing plan, it’s my hope that you’ll take your creative career seriously and allow your work to raise the quality of life in potential fans around the world. If you pour your passions into each project or performance, you must propel your career to the next level, realize your full potential and achieve success.

Let’s make it happen.

Good hunting.

 

Ron Gavalik’s Bio:

Ron Gavalik is the author of Financial Success for Creative Professionals and has over 20 years of celebrated experience in corporate and creative marketing. This former Director of Communications has assisted private, nonprofit, and artistic organizations achieve success through grassroots experience marketing initiatives. Gavalik is currently the Publisher for Grit City Publications and creator of the innovative Emotobooks fiction medium. He holds a B.S. in Marketing Communications from Point Park University and an M.A. in Writing from Seton Hill University. His work in the arts has shaped success for countless creative professionals who seek financial independence.

 

 

The April Emotobook Catalog Launch!

That’s right. It’s here. Finally.

If you follow me on Twitter or Google+, you already knew that. I’ve been harassing people all day about it. It’s pretty exciting stuff so you can’t really blame me.

Here’s what you do:

1. Visit us at Grit City Publications.

2. While there, check out our three NEW emotobooks. I edited the science fiction/romance serial, Swing Zone, by Jodi McClure and illustrated by Zach Revale. It’s a fantastic story and it’s already getting great reviews. I also edited the fantasy single, Lingering in the Woods, by Cynthia Ravinski and illustrated by Loran Skinkis. This one is cool, too: it has a shaman, a demon, and a witch. I don’t know what else fantasy fans could ask for, really. Also check out Will Kosh’s single, Suburbians (also illustrated by Loran Skinkis.) I didn’t edit this one, but fellow editor Rebecca Hoffman did, and I have faith in Will so I’m sure it’s awesome. I can’t wait to read it.

Don’t forget about the serial that started it all, Grit City by Ron Gavalik. Issue 5 features Zach Revale’s artwork and editing by yours truly.

3. Collect them all!

 

Thank you all for your support.

That is all.

Oh yeah this is my Saturday night

I’m actually going to skip boring you with the details of my weekend. They’re not exciting. You should know that already, because I’m blogging on a Saturday night. The truth is, I had to check the calendar on my laptop to verify that it was, indeed, Saturday. Say no more, right?

During the past few days, I’ve spent some time with a couple of the stories set to release during our catalog launch in April. Formatting them. Reevaluating placements for artwork. Proofreading. Again. And working on some synopses that (hopefully) will make you all KILL to read them.

Because you’d kill for a good story, right?

It seems like these stories have been in the illustrators’ hands forever, but that’s just my impatient inner enthusiast talking out of turn. And needless to say, this artwork was worth the wait. I’m super happy with the way everything turned out, which is getting me geared up for all things emotobook.

And all things blog. Like this one. And like the several other ones I run. But especially this one. It needs a makeover. Maybe just something subtle. I… don’t know yet. BUT one thing this blog definitely needs is a better blogroll. I have this crappy list of links on the left sidebar that I haven’t updated in years.

For a while, I was visiting over 100 blogs. I didn’t have time to give everything my full attention, of course, but I wanted everyone I knew to discover these resourceful sites and network with all these people- these fellow writers and creative souls. But having long lists like that is a huge turn-off.

If every blog had a button, I’d snag them all instead. Not a hundred of them. Maybe ten. But maybe I could create a page for other blogs and include whatever photos or logos I can for them. My question is, what would you like to see? What kind of presentation would make you most likely to check out those links?

I’ve learned so much about blogging just from doing it and from reading other people’s blogs over the years. I’ve read countless articles on how to blog successfully and I’ve helped people set up their blogs and websites. I’ve taken document and web design classes. This is very obviously not apparent by looking at this particular blog, but I do know something about this stuff. Not the technical stuff, but the other happy nontechnical stuff.

Tomorrow I’m supposed to help a friend create a blog. I figured I’d show him some of mine so he can see different styles and layouts on different hosts. But as I’m texting him, giving him solid tips for blogging success, I realize I don’t follow most of it. At all.

So the first thing I need to do is try some kind of schedule so I’m not posting so erratically, start posting some more substantial stuff, and then maybe attempt some kind of organization.

Any suggestions about organization or content?