I Am Oz, the Great and Powerful!  Who Are You!

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Tomorrow, I have an appointment to talk with a marketing expert.  Someone who gets paid to say how to market a book so that people will find it and want to buy it.  What are my expectations?  Surprisingly, I’m not expecting miracles.  What I’m hoping to do is learn what the limits and parameters are for this kind of service.

For instance, what is the reach of this business?  What is the specificity?  I’ve been led to believe by everything I’ve read that Amazon and Google can target ads to someone based on what they want to buy right now.  Well, okay so how much does it cost to target only those people?

Another thing I’m interested in is pricing.  Obviously the lower the price of something the more people will be willing to buy it.  So, there is probably an optimum price for maximizing profit.  But what if you want to maximize the number of people who read your book?  Is zero and option?  And is some minimum price just as good?

And I want to know if these experts are well-acquainted with right wing readers (my target audience).  After all, I’m not selling to the people who read “A Handmaid’s Tale” or “Woman on the Edge of Time.”  Those people would be rooting for my villains.  So, I want to know how specific they can get with the audience that they are reaching as potential readers.

Also, I want to know if they can tap into expert critical opinion to tell me ahead of time whether my story even has potential to interest a large audience or not.  They might be able to convince me that I’m attempting the impossible.  That piece of information alone would be extremely valuable to me.  I mean, sure, I’m just like every author.  I love my creation and think it worthy of an audience.  But maybe I’m very wrong.  Knowing that ahead of time could save me a lot of money and pain.

So, I’ll spend tomorrow collecting my thoughts and writing down questions to ask the “Wizard.”  One thing I’m interested in is how important a cover is.  Sure, a glossy cover with a sniper on a building above an Antifa riot would really hammer home the story better than just a text but what is the actual difference in sales?  Could I compensate by dropping the price to $0.99 for a few days or weeks to get word of mouth?  After all aren’t most books now e-books?  Do people need a cover when they’ll be reading the “book” on a Kindle?

And finally, I’m intrigued by the idea of running a Kickstarter to try and drum up funds and give the project visibility before the book is even up for sale.  I recently watched Larry Correia run a Kickstarter and he’s gotten $250,000 in advance sales.   Now I’m not kidding myself.  He’s got an enormous fan base already so there’s no comparison but still, the “GoFundMe” site has high visibility for whomever uses it.  So, I’ll ask about that too (even though I think I know what the answer will be).

So that’s what my Thursday looks like.  Maybe after tomorrow I’ll have a new perspective on selling my book.  Or maybe I’ll be even more confused than ever.

MA Sanctuary Activist Springs into Action (and Rolls Into Pond)

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Upton MA is a suburban town in Central Massachusetts with a good sized pond within the town limits.  It must also have some illegal aliens and some sanctuary activists within the the town too.

“An anti-ICE protester failed to pump the brakes as she jumped out of her car to confront agents at work.

The unidentified motorist’s failure to put her car in park sent the SUV rolling into Pratt Pond next to the cemetery in Upton, police said.

“That sucks,” an ICE officer can be heard saying on the video.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were actively arresting a suspect that day, Sept. 8, as part of Operation Patriot 2.0, the Trump Administration’s name for their newest surge in immigration enforcement in the Bay State.

Upton police said the driver saw two ICE vehicles stopping an illegal immigrant, and she pulled her SUV over, jumped out without putting it in gear.

The fire department had to tow it out, police added, and she was cited for unsafe operation of a vehicle. Upton police have yet to release the driver’s name.

The video shows her car mostly submerged after rolling down an embankment into a pond located at Lakeview Cemetery.

I guess everyone learned some kind of lesson that day.  Even the fish in the pond.

Guest Contributor – Ed Brault – 01OCT2025 – Military Revival

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Been a long time coming. I saw the “Social Laboratory Syndrome” creeping through the military for over thirty years. The worst started with Obama’s purge of true warfighters and replacing them with careerist toadies who would rubber-stamp his social agenda. Then the loss of standards in dress, fitness, and appearance, and the transgender idiocy. When Biden came in with his policies and appointments of deviants to high office, I was glad I was retired. Now we have leadership that knows what the military’s job is and will enforce standards, performance and mission…at ALL levels. I admit I had put on weight in my later years, but I could still pass the PT tests, and I worked out every day, and could keep up or surpass the younger troops, even working for three hours in a Level-A HAZMAT suit in 90-degree heat.
I’m waiting to see how many of the perfumed princes at that meeting put in for retirement.

Updates and Comments

Chemist

“Full disclosure: I have never served.
But I have to believe that the PT standards are different for a logistics specialist than for a Special Forces operator.
So if you have some middle age spread but still can pass the PT test for your specification – that’s all Pete is asking for.
And I think that’s fair.
We’ve all seen the videos of the 110 pound female cop trying to control a 300 pound ‘roided up perp and they are not pretty. (The videos, not the cops. Or the perps.)
But I hope to never see the day when a 200 pound jihadi starts pounding on undersized US servicewomen.

If this makes me a misogynist – then the definition is wrong.”

 

Jess

“My brother was in the Air Force, looked good, not carrying any noticeable weight, achieved Staff Sargent, and was over ten years in service, but was worried because he was notified his weight, and waist size, need to lower or face being removed. That was in the eighties. Seeing some of those in the military over the last few years made me wonder what happened to the discipline, since many looked way beyond anything resembling an effective military member demanded thirty years ago.”

No More Dudes in Dresses

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Pete Hegseth gave “the speech.”

And it was a thing of beauty.  He said everybody had to get in shape including generals and admirals.  And he said women will have to pass the male physical fitness standards.

That was remarkable.

Then he said unless they were in special forces, men would have to shave.  That was pretty good.

Then he declared the end of DEI, dudes in dresses and all the rest of the woke nonsense.  And he said that there would be no more exceptions to the rules so that racial and gender “firsts” could be celebrated.

Music to my ears.

He justified all this by saying that every parent in America whose sons (or daughters) were joining the military should know that their children will be surrounded by Americans that were completely qualified to perform the mission and maximize the prospects for success and returning home alive and safe.

Wow!

So, I’ve been waiting for decades for someone to finally say these things.  Clinton and Bush and Obama and Biden all “celebrated” the freak show that the woke military became.  Pushing weak, unqualified women into combat positions and promoting people just to be the first woman or minority or gay or transgender individual to reach some rank or responsibility.

But does this mean we won’t be getting anymore “Admiral Rachel Levines” going forward?

But more importantly what happens to all those women in combat roles when they fail their PT exams?  Where will they end up?  And will there be any useful work for them to do in non-combat roles?  These are important questions.  Our federal government is a bloated bureaucracy and the military is part of that.  There isn’t room for the military to be some kind of make-work organization for people who can’t find a place in civilian life.  We want strong, smart, dedicated and hard-working people defending this country.  And most importantly we can’t afford to make it a work program for men who think they’re women and women who think they’re men.  I’ll have to say, of all Donald Trump’s many exciting and innovative policy initiatives, straightening out the military may be my favorite.  To my mind the corruption of the warrior role in our society is the most dangerous and disgusting aspect of the woke agenda.  For that reason, this initiative of Hegseth’s is extremely timely and barely in time.

I’m curious to see if this speech, all on its own, results in any resignations or retirements among the upper brass that were represented in that audience.  Specifically, I wonder how many really obese generals will just give up and retire rather than lose the hundred pounds they’d need to shed to conform to the height to weight requirements of the military.

I want to follow up on this incident going forward and try to identify whether his dictates are being faithfully obeyed and what tangible results they produce.  To that effect if any of you guys who were military know of any sources for information on how the military is changing (or staying the same) please put information in the comments and I’ll try to follow up on this post with updates.