(note: all of these go out in The Daily Rumpus email, but not all of them are posted on The Rumpus)

I’ve been subscribing to Bob Lefsetz email letter ever since about eight people forwarded something he had written about me. He writes about marketing trends, or actually marketing opinions, mostly around music. Yesterday he sent a note about the dying music business. I can’t say I care about the music business, what I’d like to know is what’s going to happen to the musicians.

I’m curious about marketing these days. That curiosity always pays off with Malcolm Gladwell, but not with anyone else. All these marketing blogs have a lot to say about what you should do with your money, the “new media”, the death of bookstores, listening to your customer, etc. You know who makes a lot of money? People giving advice about how to make money, how to build “tribes”.  These people are preachers and if you believe in their god you can join their church and purchase their bible.

When I started the lending library, allowing anyone who wanted to read The Adderall Diaries to get an advance copy if they promised to forward it to the next reader, I got a lot of phone calls from publishers interested in trying something similar. At the Book Expo I was surrounded by publishers who wanted to get their books reviewed on The Rumpus. But I can see exactly how many books you sell from getting reviewed on The Rumpus. It’s not many. And the lending library was like having a job in customer service. You have to stay on top of people continually or they won’t forward your book. Some people still haven’t forwarded the book, and the lending library ended months ago. It only makes sense if you want people to read your book. Because of the lending library four hundred people read my book before it came out and I was able to go to those people and ask if they would like to host a reading in their home.

My advice to authors is ask your friends to host readings in their homes. My advice to editors is if you’re looking for someone with a “platform” you’re not a real editor, you’ve already become, as Philip Roth would say, the type of person you would have once felt sorry for.

I enjoyed Jami Attenberg’s piece yesterday. This makes sense, you write a book for the three girls at the bar. When “the author” says “that’s why I write” he means, I write to connect. I write to be desired, to be listened to, to be less alone. If one of them is a musician they might also write a song for you and in this way you can have everything.

Well, not everything. Because for one thing it’s impossible to write a book that everybody likes and for another the corollary to having everything is wanting more.

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