#ThrowbackThursday: My MPub Application from 1998
This week I found the perfect thing for #ThrowbackThursday, it’s the digital component of the portfolio that I submitted for my Master of Publishing application in 1998. The fancy, online editing tools of today were not available then. Here’s me showing off to the 1998 applications committee, and the 4 marketing lessons applicable today.
Throwback Thursday is a trend on social media sites such as Instagram, Twitter and Facebook where users post older photographs or things (often from their childhood) with the hashtag #ThrowbackThursday or #TBT.
This week I found the perfect thing for #ThrowbackThursday, it's the digital component of the portfolio that I submitted for my Master of Publishing application in 1998.
It's embarrassing in lots of ways but, having recently been on the admissions committee for the 2015 MPub cohort, I think I'd admit myself to the program even today. What do you think?
The video complemented my printed portfolio, which was organized in the same order as the video so that the video could be a table of contents or sneak peak or quick look for the busy application committee. Marketing Tip #1: Always think of your audience!
The tools available at the time were Photoshop, Illustrator, Director and Premiere. The video opens with a tv spot I did for the zoo in Winnipeg (fake project: demonstration of my hand-crafted filters and photoshoppery), then some magazine ads for a local cycling company and a telecom (fake projects wherein I show off my photography and photoshop skills), and a poster for the chapbooks I was producing as Jesse James Press (actual project). And the chapbooks themselves, which I either edited or edited, designed, produced and marketed. Last is my 3D media project which is of an Uhu Stick racing across a desk while pushpins try to knock it off. I forget the tool I used at the time but it predates the Maya program. Marketing Tip #2: Video and images are important components of any “look at me” message. (And don't use copyrighted content.)
In 1998 I was finishing my Masters in English, writing my thesis and running Jesse James Press out of my 1-BR apartment. Jesse James Press was Jesse Simon (great designer and writer), Scott James Montgomery (talented comedian, writer and actor who went on to Second City, CBC's The Hour and a slew of other gigs), James Sherrett (writer, editor, marketer, future husband), and me (the Press: writer, editor, promoter, production, and everything else that runs the show). Marketing Tip #3: Keep good company.
In our first season we published 6 chapbooks then Jesse, James and Scott all went off on grand adventures and I stuck it out to publish another 3 on my own. By 1998, we had published 9 chapbooks and had publicity coverage in Geist and Broken Pencil. James and I were working with McNally Robinson and Heaven Art and Book Cafe on author events, we had 2 open calls for submissions and, among the many we received, there was 1 submission from a guy in prison who did magazine letter cutouts for ransom note poetry (which we did NOT publish, although we did get a PO Box afterwards).
At the time of my MPub application, Jesse James Press had just won a Manitoba Literary Prize for Up in Ontario by James Sherrett, which would go on to be a full-length novel published by Turnstone Press in 2000 (Amazon). Marketing Tip #4: Never underestimate sheer gall.
So, do you think I can publish? Would you have let me into the MPub program?
