50 Shades of Marketing

"50 Shades of Marketing" is a satire novel about food discount and speculation with agricultural raw material. Under the surface, it is an analysis of some of the absurdities in the economy, written by an insider who was part of the system since more than three decades.

The story is told by a 20 Eurocent coin and a 1 Eurocent coin. They had fallen to the floor of a checkout cashier and are now stuck in an invisible and hidden location, covered with dust, and with no hope to be rescued. The two coins, Koin, Sr. and Koin, Jr. tell the story, and they complain about the declining importance of cash currency, about the dominance of the financial industry and the stagnation of the real economy.

Walter Schönthaler was born in 1954 in Austria and grew up in a small, remote village named Oed [Engl.: Wasteland] in the alpine area of the Piesting-Valley. Walter was 14, when his father went bankrupt with the family-owned factory. In 1978, he graduated in business management at the University of Economics in Vienna and worked for more than 30 years as CEO and member of the executive boards of four well-known international food and beverage companies. Since 2014, he has been also writing essays and novels and worked as strategy consultant, academic researcher and adjunct professor for international and Austrian universities.