Month: January 2018

Selling books isn’t easy. Selling songs isn’t easy. Selling snake oil isn’t easy. What you need is a formula, so they say. I submit that every successful salesperson or entrepreneur, be it an artist or an insurance agent, has discovered or followed a method that led them to their fortunate outcome. Make a certain number of contacts every day. Work 10 time harder than you think you should. Produce whatever the market is clamoring for, even if it’s offensive to you and whatever consumers do not want it.

But I’m a serious writer, not a scientist. What do I know from formulae? Sure, I know my word forms, but that doesn’t translate into anything meaningful when it comes to book sales. I believe I’ve come upon a better way. It occurred to me when I was reflecting back on an old TV show and one episode in particular.

The show is Taxi, a series many will remember from the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. Danny DeVito’s character, Louie, is involved in a short-lived relationship with Emily, played by Andrea Marcovicci. She has realized in therapy that the only way she will love Louie is if he leaves her. If he stays, she will despise him. Unable to grasp the logic in her thinking, he starts to walk out of her apartment. She finds her love for him expanding with each step, but assures him there’s no other way for her to love him. If he remains in the relationship, she says, he will be but a victim under her thumb. His dignity and desirability will blossom if he leaves and never returns. If she sends him letters, her love will remain intact only if he doesn’t answer any of them.

It is upon this premise that my theory of successful marketing is based. It’s about scarcity, the condition that makes gold more valuable than silver and platinum more valuable than gold. The less available a commodity is, the more people will pay for it…the more they want it…crave it. An exception to this rule may be porcelain, as dentists have proven with their sky high charges for dental fillings. But most products follow this pattern. When the apocalypse hits, take note how the street purveyors of toilet paper will become among the richest of the ragged royalty.

Now, what is it that is in constant violation of this supply and demand axiom? Many things come to mind, no doubt, but somewhere on the list must be books. It pains me to make that statement, especially in the sanctity of the written word, but the proof is everywhere. There are millions of books for sale on Amazon and I’m sure I’ve heard of only one percent of them at most. Think about it. For every million books, one percent is 10,000. I would be surprised if I’ve heard of 10,000 books in my entire life. If there are five million for sale on Amazon, I would have to have heard of 50,000 of them to reach one percent. That’s about as likely as me knowing 1000 people in the city of Erie, Pennsylvania, in the neighborhood of one percent of their population. Enough with the numbers, right? Let me make this clear with a quote from Mason Cooley.

“Artistic inspiration ignores the law of supply and demand.”

All those book bargain tables, all those 50 cent garage sale paperbacks, all those library cast-offs are a testament to that.

So, how do we writers solve the problem of low book sales? I would suggest book burning bonfires, but that’s far too political of a statement for me. Besides, what if we chose the wrong books? While dumping a box of Mein Kampfs into the flames, what would become of me if I accidentally mixed in a copy of Gems from Warren Buffett? No, I’m not going there. My answer is much simpler and less heartbreaking. I propose that we writers, artists and aspiring door-to-door salespersons make ourselves and our wares scarce. Taking a tip from Louie De Palma, we figuratively walk out and take our stuff with us. Announce it to the world, e.g. “There will be no more of my books available for the rest of time! I am withdrawing to the country where I will write only for myself and will erase all that I create.” It doesn’t matter if my posting goes viral or my announcement is picked up by all the networks. The Universe will know and will respond. As I have nothing to supply, the people of this world will know a hunger for my work. And as long I am not around to act like a victimized author, they will love me with all their collective hearts.

I’ve never been a great organizer. Organization doesn’t come easy to me. I’m a dreamer with lofty goals, stellar purposes. When it comes to putting plans into action, I’m an excellent starter. I’m also a persistent person with the ability to carry through to the finish line. Organizing a project, however, has been known to separate me from the wheat.

Allow me to illustrate. When I was in high school, I decided I wanted to attend Princeton. I liked the sound of the name. The Ivy League was highly impressive to my sensibilities. The problem was multidimensional. My parents wouldn’t have cared if I went to Princeton or Penn State or Allegheny College or a trade school for wanna be mechanics. In fact, the latter would have been preferred, if I were to be educated at all beyond high school. I don’t think I ever mentioned my goal of going to Princeton. We were at best a middle class family and there were no savings. To make Princeton a reality, I would have needed to organize a strategy to greatly improve my grades. I would have had to enlist help from certain teachers, primarily those in the mathematics and science fields, to bring me up to speed in my areas of weakness. I would have had to develop excellent study habits to make the most of my academic abilities. Then, I would have had to have learned how to apply for a scholarship and done my best to impress those who would grant me one. I wasn’t up to any of it. I didn’t improve my grades. I didn’t take the SAT’s. I settled for going to business school to learn to be an accountant.

When I was 23, I made good on a long-held dream of traveling around the United States. I had this trip in my sights for about three years, but my planning was fairly weak. I bought some camping equipment and a car that was newer than the one I had. I bought it from my used car dealing uncle and felt confident I would have a reliable vehicle to drive around the country for a year. I left in the spring when the weather was still chilly in Pennsylvania and I headed directly for Florida, where I could visit some relatives and stay for a week or so. At my oldest brother’s place, I was showing him something in the trunk one day.

“Hey, you don’t have a jack in here,” he said in amazement.

Catching the wave for a funny comeback, I quipped, “What do I need a jack for? I don’t have a spare tire.”

Although proud of my clever response, I was telling the embarrassing truth. I was taking a long trip without a spare. How do you organize a year’s trip without taking the basics, which brings me to the point of these stories. When you’re charting a journey, it’s best to plan it out carefully.

As a writer, I’ve taken the advice of my teachers and others who suggest we carefully research and outline our stories or books. We know the ending before we start writing and we write from plot point to plot point until we reach bring the story to a conclusion. When I was much younger, I wasn’t as disciplined with the writing process and would paint myself into a corner sometimes because I just wanted to write and didn’t properly construct the piece ahead of time.

In the book A Writer’s Coach by Jack Hart, he states clearly how important organizing is to the process. “Failure to organize produces a long list of consequences: missed deadlines, excessively long manuscripts, formulaic writing, slow and unproductive writers. It may be the most dangerous failure you risk.

“Organization should come dead center in the process, after idea development and reporting, but before drafting and publishing. In their work with writing coaches, Roy Peter Clark and Don Fry report that most writing problems occur in the organizing stage.”

Mr. Hart stresses that “writers who skip over the organizational phase typically find that writing is agony. If you have no guideposts to help you through confusing material, progress can be painfully slow. Every piece of writing degenerates into a stressful series of false starts, detours, and wasted effort.”

This isn’t to say that a writer can’t be spontaneous. If the unfolding plot takes an unexpected turn, feel free to follow it. Let your imagination fly from moment to moment while still steering the vessel to every port. But mapping your way and giving yourself the means to sail along are vital to bringing your hero back from a perilous journey.