To would be writers and otherwise...
Created | Updated Nov 7, 2005
Many sites ask for advice on getting published. Here is a REAL Confederate Yankee's take on it:
Want irony? A writing friend dared me to write the most out-there, psycho murder novel known to man. After all he said, everybody except Steven Hawking, Carl Sagan, Enrico Fermi and me hate physics books. Well, as for the psycho-murder book, I sure did. Yes, as a joke, with a take-this, screw-you, visceral vengeance. I went "hee-hee" as I sent it to him, just waiting for the reaction. Damn if he and many others loved it! Go figure. It was the best writing lesson of my life. I’ll tell you if we ever commiserate and scheme up a way for more people to get published by a major.
Now for the gems you requested:
1. Never use that trite word, "gem."
2. Get a bullhorn, a real big one--a car rooftop model, and set up in front of Doubleday. Don't stop until they read your book. You'll be on the news too.
3. I am a pilot. Jump in your Cessna 182 with 5,000 copies of, say, your 1st two chapters. Fly over downtown Atlanta at 4:00pm and start distribution--but it's pretty technical and all--you know, the airplane thing. Yes. Start slinging them out of the window. Now, start praying. Look out the airplane window. That's news helicopters chasing you down to "go-live" for the afternoon news. "Yes, Jim, we see him, yes, he is still throwing what appears to be papers out the window..."
Yes. I said pray--pray that you get arrested for simple littering. With luck, you will be on the national news too. Think I am kidding? Try me.
I did the airplane littering thing for a friend who owned a real loser of a pizza joint and it helped because it caused a traffic jam around his place. It helped, for a while. Poor guy would have killed himself, but he couldn't afford to buy a bullet or mozzarella cheese or semolina flour or a gun at Wal Mart (they are all sold in the same shopping bag no less) but he was just eat-up with smartness and came up with a real good alternative plan. Queer as a three dollar bill, he put on a white wedding dress and hung himself from a pipe in his pizza restaurant so his lover/partner would find him in the morning. I was absolutely appalled. Imagine him wearing white after he'd been to all those men's rooms at the truck stops what had all those well-used glory holes. Anyway...
DATELINE ATLANTA!
DESPERATE, SUICIDAL AUTHOR
THROWS BOOKS OUT OF AIRPLANE WINDOW!
The next day. "Hello? Is this the desperate-suicidal author? It is? Good. This is the Oprah Winfrey Show calling..." Click. I hate Oprah Winfrey and her guests "sharing" and "emoting," going on and on about their porpoise hugging stories. It's down right disgusting, worse than a Tupperware party.
SPECIAL BONUS NOTE ONE: Most artistic types couldn't sell their own mother a pumpkin at Halloween and that is the crux of the problem. Fortunately, I don't suffer from that malady. Not me. Selling, yes, business itself, is an art form. Ninety-five percent of people mentally, Hell, physically too, couldn't annunciate even the simplest of offers to a stranger. Yes, physical. They would be visibly shaking. Then when someone said no to their pumpkin, they would go home and cry.
4. Send press releases, but use the secret. My secret. Hire a guy to do it in a clown or gorilla suit--No! A Hitler suit!--or no one will give a shit about your pathetic press release. Done my way, they will always be saying, "you remember that crazy dude in the Hitler suit... yeah, and he brought donuts for the whole office? Did you eat one? I did. Yes, I'll admit I am not above eating a Hitler donut."
5. Have your gorilla or better yet, your Stalin this time, go and offer to be a guest on a radio talk-show. Ever been to a radio station? I sure have. Lots. Talk about having your bubble popped. Boy is this honeymoon over. It's one room with cheesy shag carpeting on the walls and a spit covered microphone. I think they call it the studio. Well, they have that one room and all, plus a dozen others with sales weasels hustling radio commercials. On a slow news day, they will put even a fake author on the air. In fact, that will be the punch-line, and they will tease it all day long.
SPECIAL BONUS NOTE TWO: See the almost cult classic: King of Comedy starring Robert DeNiro. It explains these theories perfectly.
So, in all sincerity (or is it?), there you have it. Artists can't sell and door-to-door vacuum salesmen can't write. That's why it's always called the "starving artist sale." Learn to combine the two and you will be a secret weapon. No, forget it. You can't "learn" either skill. It's like being gay, like my friend above. One is just born that way, but not to hear the Southern Baptists tell it. They claim gayness can be cured and they have huge, self-righteous, bible-thumping goons ready to do just that.
I would never play the lottery because I'm just so damn smart and I love calculus and probability theory and it told me not to. But the luckiest thing of my existence was to be born with both the above skills and this sentence is proof positive of that fact because I think--no, I KNOW--I am not being even the slightest bit immodest in saying so. And if you say no to my pumpkin, I'll sell it to your neighbor for a nickel just to piss you off. Then I will picket in front of your house. Then I will mail you a pumpkin pie. I'll have one of my minions cast pumpkin seeds upon your lawn--at 3am. See you next pumpkin Fall, pal. Then I'll squirt weed-killer on your grass at 4am--in a special pattern. Then, slowly the weed-killer will do it's job because it hates your grass as much as it does your weeds. In two weeks your front lawn will read "I hate pumpkins" in bare, nude dirt. Before I am through, you will want ten pumpkins. But I will make you buy twenty.
Anyway, our printing factory could print a million of any one of my books (see website) but that is "the kiss of death" with the major publishers. We do however, print millions of local and regional magazine rags. And I just love the smell of ink in the morning. It smells like... uh... oh yeah, money.
Want irony? A writing friend dared me to write the most out-there, psycho murder novel known to man. After all he said, everybody except Steven Hawking, Carl Sagan, Enrico Fermi and me hate physics books. Well, as for the psycho-murder book, I sure did. Yes, as a joke, with a take-this, screw-you, visceral vengeance. I went "hee-hee" as I sent it to him, just waiting for the reaction. Damn if he and many others loved it! Go figure. It was the best writing lesson of my life. I’ll tell you if we ever commiserate and scheme up a way for more people to get published by a major.
Now for the gems you requested:
1. Never use that trite word, "gem."
2. Get a bullhorn, a real big one--a car rooftop model, and set up in front of Doubleday. Don't stop until they read your book. You'll be on the news too.
3. I am a pilot. Jump in your Cessna 182 with 5,000 copies of, say, your 1st two chapters. Fly over downtown Atlanta at 4:00pm and start distribution--but it's pretty technical and all--you know, the airplane thing. Yes. Start slinging them out of the window. Now, start praying. Look out the airplane window. That's news helicopters chasing you down to "go-live" for the afternoon news. "Yes, Jim, we see him, yes, he is still throwing what appears to be papers out the window..."
Yes. I said pray--pray that you get arrested for simple littering. With luck, you will be on the national news too. Think I am kidding? Try me.
I did the airplane littering thing for a friend who owned a real loser of a pizza joint and it helped because it caused a traffic jam around his place. It helped, for a while. Poor guy would have killed himself, but he couldn't afford to buy a bullet or mozzarella cheese or semolina flour or a gun at Wal Mart (they are all sold in the same shopping bag no less) but he was just eat-up with smartness and came up with a real good alternative plan. Queer as a three dollar bill, he put on a white wedding dress and hung himself from a pipe in his pizza restaurant so his lover/partner would find him in the morning. I was absolutely appalled. Imagine him wearing white after he'd been to all those men's rooms at the truck stops what had all those well-used glory holes. Anyway...
DATELINE ATLANTA!
DESPERATE, SUICIDAL AUTHOR
THROWS BOOKS OUT OF AIRPLANE WINDOW!
The next day. "Hello? Is this the desperate-suicidal author? It is? Good. This is the Oprah Winfrey Show calling..." Click. I hate Oprah Winfrey and her guests "sharing" and "emoting," going on and on about their porpoise hugging stories. It's down right disgusting, worse than a Tupperware party.
SPECIAL BONUS NOTE ONE: Most artistic types couldn't sell their own mother a pumpkin at Halloween and that is the crux of the problem. Fortunately, I don't suffer from that malady. Not me. Selling, yes, business itself, is an art form. Ninety-five percent of people mentally, Hell, physically too, couldn't annunciate even the simplest of offers to a stranger. Yes, physical. They would be visibly shaking. Then when someone said no to their pumpkin, they would go home and cry.
4. Send press releases, but use the secret. My secret. Hire a guy to do it in a clown or gorilla suit--No! A Hitler suit!--or no one will give a shit about your pathetic press release. Done my way, they will always be saying, "you remember that crazy dude in the Hitler suit... yeah, and he brought donuts for the whole office? Did you eat one? I did. Yes, I'll admit I am not above eating a Hitler donut."
5. Have your gorilla or better yet, your Stalin this time, go and offer to be a guest on a radio talk-show. Ever been to a radio station? I sure have. Lots. Talk about having your bubble popped. Boy is this honeymoon over. It's one room with cheesy shag carpeting on the walls and a spit covered microphone. I think they call it the studio. Well, they have that one room and all, plus a dozen others with sales weasels hustling radio commercials. On a slow news day, they will put even a fake author on the air. In fact, that will be the punch-line, and they will tease it all day long.
SPECIAL BONUS NOTE TWO: See the almost cult classic: King of Comedy starring Robert DeNiro. It explains these theories perfectly.
So, in all sincerity (or is it?), there you have it. Artists can't sell and door-to-door vacuum salesmen can't write. That's why it's always called the "starving artist sale." Learn to combine the two and you will be a secret weapon. No, forget it. You can't "learn" either skill. It's like being gay, like my friend above. One is just born that way, but not to hear the Southern Baptists tell it. They claim gayness can be cured and they have huge, self-righteous, bible-thumping goons ready to do just that.
I would never play the lottery because I'm just so damn smart and I love calculus and probability theory and it told me not to. But the luckiest thing of my existence was to be born with both the above skills and this sentence is proof positive of that fact because I think--no, I KNOW--I am not being even the slightest bit immodest in saying so. And if you say no to my pumpkin, I'll sell it to your neighbor for a nickel just to piss you off. Then I will picket in front of your house. Then I will mail you a pumpkin pie. I'll have one of my minions cast pumpkin seeds upon your lawn--at 3am. See you next pumpkin Fall, pal. Then I'll squirt weed-killer on your grass at 4am--in a special pattern. Then, slowly the weed-killer will do it's job because it hates your grass as much as it does your weeds. In two weeks your front lawn will read "I hate pumpkins" in bare, nude dirt. Before I am through, you will want ten pumpkins. But I will make you buy twenty.
Anyway, our printing factory could print a million of any one of my books (see website) but that is "the kiss of death" with the major publishers. We do however, print millions of local and regional magazine rags. And I just love the smell of ink in the morning. It smells like... uh... oh yeah, money.
