Does Funny Ever Get Old?

Here's a press release we are using with Gene Perret's new book. It's basically a self-test challenging you to discern between old jokes and new ones.

According to Gene Perret, funny is funny, and what people are laughing at today is much like what people were laughing at yesterday, "We think because a gag is old, it’s old-fashioned. That’s not necessarily so."

In case you doubt Perret’s qualifications to make such a judgement, consider the following: Perett was Bob Hope’s head joke writer for more than a decade, he has won three Emmys, he has written and produced numerous situation comedies including Three’s Company and Welcome Back Kotter, and he authored the book comedy writers have used to break into the industry for more than 25 years. Proof in point: Joe Medeiros, head writer of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, says, "My career all started because of [Perret’s] book."

Think you can tell old jokes from new? The following is a list of gags about marriage. It’s adapted from The New Comedy Writing Step by Step, Perret’s newly updated edition of his classic tome. See if you can tell which are dated and which are current.

a) I chased a girl for two years only to discover that her tastes were exactly like mine. We were both crazy about girls.

b) Marriage is an adventure—like going to war.

c) Getting married is like sitting in a tub of hot water. After you've been in it for a while, it’s not so hot.

d) Marriage is forever—some days longer.

e) Always get married in the morning. That way if it doesn't work out you haven’t wasted the whole day.

f) I love being married. It’s so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.

Have you read them carefully? Have you made any decisions? Are some definitely old? Some definitely new? It’s hard to tell the new from the old, isn’t it? Here’s the skinny:

a) This gag is attributed to Groucho Marx—definitely old school.

b) This one’s from G. K. Chesterton—even more old school.

c) This is a Minnie Pearl line, so it’s not exactly current.

d) This one is only four years old. Perret wrote it as the title for a joke book about marriage.

e) This one is from Mickey Rooney, who’s not exactly knocking ’em dead in today’s comedy clubs.

f) This one is from Rita Rudner—definitely today’s comedy.

If you want to write comedy, or just add humor to anything you write, you could do worse than to pick up a copy of Perret’s The New Comedy Writing Step by Step: Revised and Updated with Words of Instruction, Encouragement, and Inspiration from Legends of the Comedy Profession.

Author promotion

Offering a free item with a book's purchase and coupling that with a time-table to create a sense of urgency as David Meerman Scott does here is a good book-marketing idea and needn't be done at the book's launch.

Any excuse (a Wall Street Journal review, for instance) could prompt such an offer.

Scott's set this up to raise his book's Amazon.com rating for one day—a strategy book marketing gurus seem to have taken on as conventional wisdom—but no one has explained to me what this might do for the book in the long term.

We "owned" Amazon for 3 days in a row by having the #1 selling book out of all of Amazon's titles. This brought us a lot of attention.

But, we have seen other of our titles dip below the 200 mark and we pretty often have a title in the top 25 writing books and we haven't witnessed any media stampedes to cover these books because of it.

All authors who want to sell more of their books can profit from using ideas from those like Scott who are great self-promoters. The big thing in promoting a book is to do many things over a long period of time. If the marketing gods smile on you, eventually you'll reach the tipping point and the book will take on a life of its own.

—Steve Mettee

After the Book Expo

Thursday I took in the Publisher's Marketing Association's "Graduate School" one-day conference. At first it seemed a tad expensive, but as always, the two or three things I took away from it were worth the time and money.

I enjoyed spending time with other publishers, people who share the same concerns, interests and challenges I do. As a matter of fact the relative isolation independent publishers work under was a recurring theme during the open discussion periods. Another was that all of us are looking for new out-of-the-bookstore markets for our titles. Strangely, very little came up about digital publishing, in its many guises, the current topic in many publishing articles.

One of the most open and giving speakers there was Steve Piersanti, publisher and president of Berrett-Koehler a book publisher out of San Francisco. BK is best known for excellent business books but they also publish BK Currents, books that "advance social and economic justice" and BK Life, books that "help people create positive change in their lives."

Piersanti is likely unique in the world of publishing executives in that he works from nearly exclusively from home—and has since he founded the press in 1992. BK has a staff of about 20 which Piersanti oversees. He says working from home allows him to do the editing which he loves and also eliminates the daily commute, which he didn't love when he worked for Jossey-Bass.

I found a number of things Piersanti told us about BK interesting:

• BK has sold more than 1,600 subsidary rights
• BK has had 27 books that sold over 100,000 copies and 3 that have sold 500,000 plus
• One out every three titles sells more than 20,000 copies
• Of the approximately 20 BK employees, 9 are in sales and marketing
• BK doesn't pay author advances
• BK acknowledges the people and organizations that help BK to be the success by listing them in the back it its catalogs—everyone from the company they use to print postcards to their insurance agents.

Last night we ate Thai with Dave Husley, vice-president of sales and marketing for Sports Publishing. I'd met Dave once before and am impressed with his clear-eyed appraisal of the many opportunities book publishing offers. He has a sound grasp of what it takes to move books and a deep knowledge of where to do it.

Afterward, we walked at least a hundred blocks to the PGW (Publisher's Group West, a distributor now in transition due to it's parent company's recent bankruptcy) party. An invitation only event, it was held in an old theater at 23rd and Lexington. A large dance floor fronted the stage with cash bars on either side. A band was scheduled to start at 9, but, just before, I asked Josh and Dave how they would feel about finding somewhere quieter where we wouldn't have to sit theater style and have our conversation drowned out by loud music (I'm afraid my years of owning a rock and roll club fulfilled my need to have my eardrums assailed by decibelly dangerous music.)

We ended up at the Wheeltappers, a local pub where we continued our conversation solving all the world's problems over a couple of brews.

—Steve Mettee