SELF HELP 4

How To Turn Not Very Much Into A Little Bit More

This newsletter is my process of writing a self help book, tentatively titled How To Make Money: Financial Advice For Poets. Read previous letters here.

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Before The Adderall Diaries came out I offered people the chance to receive a galley (advance) copy of the book, but they had to agree to forward it to the next person within a week. The idea was that even in 2009 everybody was already a reviewer. That’s more true, and also less true today.

Then I put together a tour where I gave readings in people’s homes. They had to promise 20 attendees and have a couch I could sleep on. I think I did 90 events in 33 cities this way. Unlike bookstore events, you could do multiple home readings in the same city without cannibalizing you audience since you were really reading for one fan and 19 people who had never met you before.

I got a lot of press in the local weeklies and hand-sold 1,200 books. After the tour I wrote about it for the New York Times. I met a lot of interesting people.

It was absolutely a success for a book published on a small press. Eventually James Franco bought the rights and when they made the movie I got a check for $85000 which I used to buy a house. It’s possible the readings and credibility led to the movie, etc. But there’s no way to know.

I actually took $10,000 less for the book to work with the editor at Graywolf Press. Norton had offered $30,000 to Graywolf’s $20,000. But I liked that Graywolf was a non-profit. And my friend, the poet Nick Flynn, advised me “Go where it’s warm.”

Never, ever, take financial advice from a poet.

Following the tour I was contacted by lots of writers and publishers for ideas on how to promote their books. The problem was, it wouldn’t work to do another DIY book tour. It had already been done. The best marketing idea, I said, is generally the one that hasn’t been thought of yet.

Actually, the best marketing idea is creating a product that people want. The second best marketing idea is having lots of money and connections. And somewhere much further on the list is self-funding a 3 month tour sleeping on people’s couches and selling books by hand.

If I was going to write a business book solely on this topic I would call it Micro-Marketing: How To Turn Not Very Much Into A Little Bit More. It’s a way of thinking creatively about opportunities, and approaching marketing with the same creative passion you put into your art.

The genius level example of this might be Dave Eggers and McSweeney’s, but that’s a whole other story that needs to be written eventually. Aspiring to Dave Eggers level DIY it’s like aspiring to Warren Buffett’s level as an investor. In both cases it probably doesn’t hurt.

But I wanted to make a larger point about the exchange rate of social capital. After the tour an author I didn’t know asked if she could pick my brain about marketing. She had a book coming out soon and she lived in Los Angeles where I was going for some reason. Maybe I was still on tour, I don’t remember. I said if she picked me up from the airport and drove me to SilverLake I’d tell her everything I knew.

I’m not going to name this person but I like them. That’s not the point. She was gorgeous, and she drove a Lexus SUV. Despite her tattoos and history it was obvious she was wealthy. She was married to a famous musician and her story had a lot of shock value. Also, she had a child. I told her I didn’t think a DIY tour would work for her but she said she wanted to do something punk rock. Also, she was going on The View.

Her appearance on The View probably sold 20,000 copies, her book became a best seller. I understand the ethic, and I would be happy to drive back and forth to the airport in this person’s company for the rest of my life. But there wasn’t any point.

Money and connections are bigger than anything you can do for yourself. I think of a YouTube star recently saying that it took years to get his first million subscribers and months to get his second million. The journey to your first million subscribers, or million dollars, or best seller, is usually slow and lots of work. But things are much easier once you get there.

Most of my life I believed that great work would succeed on its own merit. Thom Jones said something along these lines about his stories in The Pugilist At Rest. He just believed if he wrote great stories the New Yorker would publish them. He had to believe this in order to keep going. And it’s important for every artist to believe this, even if it’s demonstrably false.

Without the work we have nothing. And the process of creation, the moments of flow, the times when we are one with the work we are doing (it doesn’t matter what the work is) are the peaks of the human experience. Don’t sacrifice that just because the deck is stacked.

The best thing you can do is to be born into it. Second best option is marriage. Luck is a distant third and relatively rare. After that climbing toward your first million, whatever that means to you, is your ascent. Success is interchangeable. The journey turns out to be the same even if the destination and terrain don’t match.

I believe all of this to be true, and I’m not even remotely an optimist.

Xoxo

stephen

@s___elliott

p.s. For more on the meaning of Flow discussed in this letter I recommend this book.

p.s. 2 I’ll send all paying subscribers who subscribed for a year, or keep their monthly subs at least 6 months, an advance copy of my self book if I ever finish and publish it.

p.s. 3 How a guy traded a red paperclip for a house.