The Elegant Suggestion, the Brash Ask

Before I got distracted by municipal politics, the school board election, and wonderful global experiments involving three continents, I talked about writing and selling my books.

Mostly, I talked about not selling books. I tried different marketing tricks both on Goodreads and on Twitter. I had friends engage in virtual festivals of link sharing. At one point, I even said, "I am not asking you to buy my book, but I do hope a few of your friends will like the idea."

The truth is, as much as I prefer the elegant suggestion to the brash ask, the brash ask leads to sales...just not the way people do it on twitter.

When I was a girl, I worked with my parents in their antique business. I was good at sales and I have memories of favourite customers, like the Princeton professor with his exotic New Jersey accent who thought he'd tell me how to recognize hand blown glassware. Sure, that was the kind of thing my parents taught me in the cradle, but it was motivated by joy and excitement. And, he bought the hand blown glass bottle that had also been hand painted with violets.

But here's the thing, the professor was looking for hand blown and hand painted glassware. He valued it. It was an easy sell and I gave him $2 off because he loved it and I wanted him to buy it.

Books don't work that way. I don't think they can. Sure, maybe there is a similar model when an author is completely self-published and goes out to events all the time to meet people and talk to them. But, in publishing models there are just too many people who invest too much time and energy and need to get paid.

And that means we can't dance around making elegant suggestions that you might *love* my books. Instead, we have to find some way to be brash and say, hey, "you like to read AND you've got five bucks. Why don't you just go buy, Dry Stories or Love From Planet Wine Cooler"?