About Us – Mitchendising

About Mitchendise:

Hi, you can call me Mitch.  I have created this site to teach anyone how to merchandise their ideas – or shall I say MITCHENDISE them.  

So, you have this GREAT IDEA that will make you a ton of dough, but for some reason you just can’t get it out of your head and into the proper format to send to a publisher; or you already have sent it to the 3 publishers that actually accept unsolicited manuscripts and have only received the standard “don’t quit your day job letter”.  

Oh, you’ve written a picture book.  Why didn’t you say so, that changes everything.  Now you don’t even have to send it to the 3 different publishers, because none accept picture book submissions.  But your characters are animals you say?  Just think of the merchandising opportunities, right?  Sorry, but your options are dwindling very fast.  Animals as characters are decidedly disliked by publishers.

“How do you know?” you may ask.  Been there, done that.  Don’t believe me?  Check out my first rejection letter.  I went ahead and fuzzed out the name of the publisher, as I have nothing against them.  Turns out, the further I read about the submission process and types of books publishers want, the less they applied to my ideas.  The odd thing I always thought was that if one were to go into any bookstore and look at the picture books, a lot of the more popular ones seemed to be using animals as the characters.

Ok, now what?  Well, let me introduce you to one of the best parts about the internet.  You, YES – YOU, can publish, promote, and merchandise your own books right in your own home without even going through one of those self-publishing companies.  The great thing about this is that it is applicable to a lot of ideas, not just books.  You have a great idea for a short video or short movie or even a full length movie.  You can create it and distribute it on the internet for nothing more than time, a little bit of know-how, and some over-the-counter software.  

That brings us to Mitchendise!  Here, you will find out step-by-step instructions from actual projects to show you how to do things.  Enough of the dummy and idiot books, and those software discs only gather dust in your desk.  Here you can read and follow along without any investment on your part.  Take that $30 that you were going to spend on that book or software and save it until you are ready to do something.

You can start from the beginning, skip ahead, or review any posts as necessary.  All our postings are archived and available for review anytime.  No subscription necessary.  We are going to start off slowly until we build some readership, then post more often.  Also, this allows all our readers to take their time setting up and thinking about the possibilities and brainstorming their ideas.  This initial process is one of the most important parts so we don’t want to rush things.  A little foresight and taking our time initially will pay in the end.  

So, if you are as fed up with calling yourself a dummy or an idiot and buying all those books only to get nowhere, follow along with the rest of us and get read to Mitchendise.  

Hope to see you there, and hear all about your process.

Mitch 

Its not merchandise, its Mitchendise!

MORE:

“Mitch” is just my handle for this site.  My real name is not Mitch.  I have written several blogs over the years and have now consolidated several onto this site.  Mitchendise was a branding type of idea so I used the handle of “Mitch” for its posts.   You can view more about me and my blogs on the About Us page on Johnny Optimist.

I have read many marketing books and merchandised several websites.  I have also read many marketing websites and continue to follow several.  One of the problems with merchandising, is that normally you have to be published / working with some large company to get product made.  The other alternatives used to be going down to the silk screening shop and getting shirts made.  Now there are a ton of opportunities on the internet where your fans can go to purchase merchandise without you investing your capital.  Then it becomes a marketing exercise instead of a logistical one. 

Obviously I have created the “mitchendise” for my 5 blogs, but I have also created mitchendise for several other websites.  Be sure to check out my Johnny Optimist site if you would like to learn more about me.