Selling Out Is a Good Thing
Seems I’ve been at this publication war for over five months now when it has actually been much longer than that. This iteration is just the heightened shock & awe phase. In thinking about this, I have wondered who or what could possibly constitute the makeup of the ENEMY.
It is apathy. It is 5-second sound bites. It is shortened attention span. Could you imagine anyone today actually sitting and reading something as monstrously huge as War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy? The first published edition contained 1,225 pages. We have books that big come out and do well, but they are the exceptions.
The average page count of the top-10 books on the current NY Times best sellers list comes in at 429 pages. That is 35% of the War and Peace page count. Almost a third of the size.
So, when my recent poetry collection Newspaper Reading came out in August of this year, I thought it would be perfect. It clocks in at a whopping 116 pages—only 113 if you take out the Acknowledgements and About the Author pages.
In Part IV of this series, I mentioned that I had a book signing at Barnes & Noble Bookseller in Rogers Arkansas. It went great! The store manager ordered 20 copies of my book and had them on display at the front of the store when I walked in 30 minutes early that day. After five hours, I sold out of my books.
Front of the store on November 18, 2023
Here’s the kicker: I sold around 75% of the copies to people I’d never met or knew before. This exemplified cold call selling. Of course, that means people I knew or that followed my writing made 25% of the purchases. It thrilled me either way to say the least.
That means it is good to sell out. The store manager said he was immensely pleased because it meant the book/author had traction. It is now being held on the shelf. Since that day over a month ago—seems like just yesterday, to speak in cliché—I have even had people tell me they picked my book up at the store. This is just the beginning. No time to rest on my laurels.
And I sold out. Of a poetry collection. Few people read poetry for pleasure these days. They often associate it with the torture of school assignments and required reading. I thoroughly enjoy it myself. The other day, I picked up a Chocolove milk chocolate candy bar. An excerpt of the Paul Laurence Dunbar poem Invitation to Love was printed on the inside of the wrapper. I had never read it before. Great poem whose author I will now have to check out.
A NY Times bestselling author even stopped by my table and visited with me during the signing. He said my first signing at Barnes & Noble was impressive. He didn’t purchase one. That would have been great. I’m not printing his name here because I did not get permission. The whole experience reminds me that I will sell out.
I remember back a few decades ago when I “partied like it was 1999.” A good friend of mine had rented a couple of cabins at Holiday Island in Eureka Springs, Arkansas—the location of my first novel—for New Year’s Eve. Some of the guests were members of a hardcore heavy metal band.
During the conversations that evening, only mildly impacted by the consumption of alcohol, it came out the band members considered that an iconic band they once loved had “sold out.” I hit them with a shocker. I told them I would have sold out as well. The horrified expressions on their faces told me what they thought of that. An adulteration of the pure artistic aesthetic.
They finally saw my point after I explained it to them, even if they still disagreed with it in application. If you sell out and write or perform something that is commercially viable, then you can enjoy the fruits of your labor and write or perform what truly sparks your passions.
Saying that…I just released a book of poetry and am compiling another collection to come out in 2024 titled tentatively Sin of Nothing Done. I’m probably not going to retire from my day job by writing poetry, but it is what I love.
Take care. I need to get back to writing.
