After all, I had not run into anyone yet at the other screenings.
How wrong I was. From the director of My America, Peter Hegedus, to the famous zombie filmmakers the Spierig brothers, anyone who is anyone in Brisbane was there. Mark Hartley was a wee bit nervous in front of a savvy audience that wanted to see what he'd done to the intellectual baby spawned by Trash Video's own Andrew. Of course, Trash Video is now defunct and Andrew is instead doing a PhD on the original subject matter: Weng-Weng, Filipino secret agent.
It was a highly entertaining documentary, told in classical Hartley style: talking heads interspersed with archival clips illustrating the sound bytes. It was all good fun, especially the competition to count the amount of breasts featured on the film. Everyone got it wrong. It was 182.
Among the moviegoers there were a few other writers, filmmakers and film students who I got talking to and ended up repeating everything I had heard at the National Young Writers Festival regarding e-book publishing. Forget Vanity publishing. We're talking Smashwords here.
Smashwords is a website that has created a unique platform. They turn your text manuscripts into the right format for any e-book reader and then publish it to the relevant retailer's website, as content ready to be bought and downloaded. All for a very tiny commission, particularly compared to what book publishers take in royalties.
My own friends, Peter H and Axel Grigor also asked me about other digital content vehicles like Twitter and blogs. After reading, re-reading and listening to Yaro Starak talk about creating relationships of trust with other bloggers and other Tweeters, I finally get it. It's about a tribe of like minded individuals who don't plug a product unless they believe in it and do so only in an impartial manner, whether they get affiliate marketing out of it or not.
So, my own take on this all is based Yaro's blog, Entrepeneur's Journey: go read other people's blogs, go read other people's Tweets and interact with them. It's a conversation. Social media is just that: social. It's not a one way street, like traditional advertising. You want an audience? Win their trust first. Show them you're one of them first. The rest will follow naturally.
Sound like a lot of work? Then don't blog or Tweet. If you wish to have no readers, then write all the time but you'll get no traffic. If you want your stuff out there being read by other people, then make it interesting to them, talk to them. Listen to their needs. Pretty simple stuff really.
Now, back to Machete Maidens, Unleashed! It all started out as The Search For Weng-Weng. It is now a major motion picture. I'm really glad I took up Veronica's invitation now. And for the record, I paid for my own ticket.
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