I was interested in improved marketing for books and media I have produced. There are 8 titles on our sales list at this time and a ninth in progress now. Here is a recent sample of production:
I have had a web presence since the 1990s, with near-daily additions since and continuing while I am able to do so. I produce a product called “Weather Report” each week for web and consulting purposes. This week’s edition is:
The three books in the photo include (Cocktails) a biography of Rear Admiral “Mac” Showers, the last of the WWII Hypo Station codebreakers who worked for Joe Rochefort. Mac went forward with ADM Chester Nimitz. The second book was fulfillment of a promise made long ago to edit publish an exciting sea story by the man who lived it, LCDR Ed Gillfellen. He was snagged from the Navy Intel team in Japan in 1946 to be the XO of the last IJN Battleship Nagato. Job? “Get it to Bikini so we can blow it up with the atom-bomb.”
What the three books sample is the Defense Change from WWII Victory to the End of the Cold War. We have forgotten the passions of the time. There was an enormous struggle in process after the War. The War and Navy Departments were being disbanded. Both Cabinet positions would be subsumed to one Defense seat. Reporting to him would be Army, Navy and a brand spanking new strategic Air Force to impose a new world order. The CROSSROADS tests were intended to demonstrate that a navy was no longer really needed. Ed’s mission was to steam Nagato to Bikini for the atomic test series to assess her performance against nuclear blast. It is first a great sea-story then a horror show.
Like many participants in Operation CROSSROADS, Ed passed young, possibly a result of his nuclear exposure. What was unique was that his story was held privately due to classification, which was only officially released in the Clinton Administration. He knew he was dying when he secured my commitment to get it published. The one on the bottom is my story about the 1989-90 USS Forrestal (CV-59) Med Cruise in which we provided the backdrop to the Malta Summit that many peg as the end of the Cold War. It is intended to show how significant change to end a conflict more than 40 years old affects the participants. Some laughs ensue.
Above is the latest. What is in work now continues some of the military meme. “A Little Travel Music” is in the production process and was written as a serving member of the Office of Legislative Affairs whose responsibility included managing Navy support to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. It includes the issues that required visiting places of interest to policy.
Generally, there was a Caribbean Crisis, mostly Haitian, with visits to DomRep, Haiti, GTMO, Grand Turk Refugee Camp and ships underway. The aftermath of the Serbian war required European destinations in a NATO context. Asia? Taiwan, Tokyo, Thailand, Burma, China, both Koreas and the subtle impact of the trip that supported formal ending of the Vietnam War, release of a Burmese Nobel Laureate from house arrest, and the start of the Agreed Framework nuclear negotiations in Pyongyang.
I understand a military-legislative-national policy market scheme is small, but might include the three or four intelligence alumni organizations and others. I would like to get a sense for what you might be able to tailor to that market.
The book list also has non-military topics, including “Stones of the District” which was an account of detailed visit to the locations of America’s First National Monuments, the 40-boundary markers of the original District of Columbia. That one was pure fun. Given the current level of street uncertainty it might not be possible these days.
– Vic