A  new commercial for HP printers has a background song with the lyric: “It ain’t what you do; it’s the way that you do it.”

Gen X and Y probably think  HP was clever for writing the song. But us matures and boomers know that it was recorded decades ago by Benny Goodman, who played clarinet as well as sang on the track.

An article in the United States Postal Service (USPS) magazine Deliver (10/12, p. 13) shows a dimensional direct mail piece with the word “Mofo” imprinted on the outside.

Are the USPS and the marketer who sent the mailer unaware that “Mofo” stands for “motherf–ker”?

Another nail was hammered into the coffin of print this week. The event: Newsweek announced that after 80 years, it will end its print publication in 2013.

Editor-in-Chief Tina Brown said: “We have reached a tipping point at which we can most efficiently and effectively reach our readers in all-digital format.”

For me, this is another sign of the world going to Hell in a handbasket: I want my magazines and newspapers on paper, not on a screen. I don’t see a happy future for me as a reader, especially with Kindle e-books outselling paperbacks and hardcovers.

DM News, a marketing trade publication, criticized Trojan this month for not integrating social media into one of its promotional campaigns.

“The Trojan brand hasn’t tweeted in more than a year” said DM News, apparently in shock.

Maybe Trojan hasn’t tweeted for a year because they have better things to do than social media — like investing their time in marketing that actually generates a positive ROI.

Why do your clients make so many revisions to the copy you wrote?

“No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else’s draft.”  –H.G. Wells

Why this is so I have no idea ….

Slogans I don’t like:

1–Farmer’s insurance: “Bah-be-bum-bum-BUM-bum-bum.” Just stupid and not even catchy.

2–Dos Equis for its Most Interesting Man in the World campaign: “Stay thirsty, my friends.”

Yes, I know they want us to stay thirsty for Dos Equis beer.

But to literally stay thirsty, you would have to AVOID drinking their beer or any other.

I was taking a break from writing, noodling around on Amazon, when I came across a most amazing item for sale: an action figure of marketing author Seth Godin.

Godin, who is fairly famous, is the author of Permission Marketing and dozens of other marketing and business books.

Try as I might, I could not envision why anyone would want a Seth Godin action figure … except Seth Godin and maybe his kids.

Would you?

Now I’ve seen everything!

I publish and sell e-books for fun and profit, and I usually hire freelancers to write them for me.

My questions are:

1–If you are a freelance writer, what do you get to ghostwrite an e-book. Is it worth the effort?

2–If you are an Internet marketer like  me, how much do you pay your writers? Do you think that’s a fair wage for all the work involved?

3–If you self-publish your e-books to Kindle or other platforms, does it pay off for you economically?