What’s new in the last five days: More good healing work which again I can’t talk about. I can say that I’m very grateful to be doing the work that we do. And Sheryl and I are always bringing each other along as well.
Again, through the magic of editing, I am once again not bitching about the ad we placed in the Good Times and then had to remove. I only edit myself when I think I should. And right now I think I should.
On another front, I got a nice email or two from Clytia Fuller who works for Bookshop Santa Cruz. She’s in charge of the bulletin board postings there, and I had requested to know why my flier had been consistently turned down, and why the bulletin boards are labeled “nonprofit only” when there are tons of for profit ads there.
I looked Clytia up online: she also does a Folk Music radio program on a local public radio station. I hear it’s a good program but I don’t remember the specifics or I’d give her a plug here.
Anyway she very politely answered my questions-- she said she thought our “events” were too expensive and also that they might not be of interest to “the most public.” So, that hurt. We’re not totally mainstream but then neither is folk music; and that’s worth promoting in my opinion. If a concert is too expensive maybe you just don’t go, but you might still want to hear about it. I wonder how many folk music fliers hit that bulletin board?
As to being expensive; we work on a sliding scale, we’ve also worked purely by donation for two months last year and in addition we gave away fourteen sessions for free. I don’t know how she got the impression we’re too expensive. “Events” aren’t currently our specialty: we only did one last year and it was a free talk. Our fliers do look professional, maybe we just look expensive.
All that is besides the point though-- they get too many fliers to post them all so they have to make judgments. I’m told I’m not the only person upset about being rejected. Clytia concluded that if the bulletin boards at Bookshop Santa Cruz didn’t say “for non-profits only” when there are quite a few for profit ads up there, that they might avoid so many hard feelings. That was indeed my original complaint. Apparently the real criteria is that non-profits get posted first, then the rest of the space is filled in with lower cost services and events; but it’s all according to what Clytia can determine by looking at the fliers and it’s also subject to what she thinks is a good or popular thing to post. I very much appreciate the feedback from Clytia, and none of this is personal. The gist of my complaint there was that the “nonprofit” thing wasn’t true, so what was the real deal? Was there one person in the back room choosing fliers based on their personal preference? There was and there still is. Bookshop Santa Cruz may have already updated the criteria but I don’t know how they are going to do it without indicating the obvious, which is:
“We post whatever we feel like posting.” Maybe they could follow that with “no whiners.”
Ironically we have submitted fliers elsewhere where the criteria was just that upfront: if the business owner likes it, they post it. If they don’t, they won’t. And I never ever had a problem with that. For some reason I seem to get, um, just plain nuts sometimes when a thing strikes me as not true, not fair, or hypocritical. That still doesn’t mean I’m right and somebody else is wrong, it just means that something got my attention and I decided to speak up about it.
PS, calling one’s business “nonprofit” doesn’t automatically make it more worthy as a public service, sometimes the opposite is true. Bookshop Santa Cruz is a for profit institution, does that make them bad?
When I get a chance I’ll go by there and see if they put better criteria on the bulletin boards. I’m curious now to see how they handle it even though we aren’t doing any fliers right now.
I don’t want to be one of those people who just bitches but then doesn’t have a good solution to a problem. Actually, I’d rather be a person who doesn’t bitch a whole lot but just jumps straight to the solution. I’m working on that. Lately I’m bitching a lot and something is wrong there.
In the meantime Sheryl and I are about to launch into better ways of doing our work.
Sheryl has published two books and has at least one more in process. I’ve published a lot of fiction and several articles and I kind of miss publishing. When it comes to the spiritual work theres a lot to be said rather than simply waiting for a client to ask the right questions.
I figure that I’m on the verge of a more proactive approach to getting things done. All that stuff with the Good Times, again, I'm not talking about it. Things change and heal and get better. I don’t know why I tripped out so much about a bulletin board-- except to say that marketing ones business can sometimes be a frustrating thing.
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