Writing Boots

On communication, professional and otherwise.

Sales Mode: Diary of a Writer Determined to Find a New Audience for a New Book

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Writers who are not famous have to choose daily where to spend most of their energy: writing, or promoting their writing.

Most writers usually choose writing, for two reasons:

  1. They didn’t study literature and writing in order to pitch stories to magazines and to craft book proposals for would-be agents. They went to school to become writers.
  2. Even when their work finds its way into The New York Times or The Atlantic or Fortune magazine … the feedback they get from those huge audiences of strangers is often less meaningful (and even less voluminous) than what they get from their regular readership.

But that’s also one reason most writers aren’t famous. For instance, they’re perfectly happy to be composing Writing Boots post # 4,494—(really)—for their faithful audience of some hundreds or thousands.

However: This inclination to write rather than sell often means the writing doesn’t often find new eyeballs, provoke unpredictable reactions, spark strange conversations, create new communities.

And those are good reasons to write, too.

So that’s what I and my publisher, Disruption Books, are out to do the first half of this year, by pushing my forthcoming book Soccer Dad just as hard and far as we can—through media interviews, podcasts, paid social media, live events. For the love of God, we’ve even made a book trailer (presumably to be pulled behind a BookMobile?).

But when you think of it, it’s a hell of a big job, to introduce a book to an audience of people who have never heard of David Murray, don’t know a Writing Boot from a soccer boot and rightly wonder why some random dude thinks his experience raising a sports kid is overflowing with wisdom they need.

No, not just introduce the book to those strangers: Actually convince them it’s good (even though it’s a yucky old book, which only 16% of Americans read for pleasure). Then, rhetorically strong-arm them into buying a copy, in hopes they open the fucker and actually read it. And maybe (great Scott!) even pass it on to someone they know, who might enjoy reading it too.

I mean Goddamn, right?!

I have no particular sales goals, no numbers in my mind at all. Just by turns grim determination and enthusiastic ambition to do this insanely difficult thing the best I know how: Partly because I and my publisher have a product whose usefulness and quality we deeply believe in. Partly because I genuinely look forward to what I may learn (and maybe even teach) in the conversations that might result. And partly, I’m sure, to make up for years of writing constantly when I might have been selling more frequently.

Because many of my readers are un-famous writers too, I’m going to bring you in on the parts of this process that I think might interest or edify, over the next six months—the book launches April 14 but the promotions will go on well after that—with occasional Boots posts titled “Sales Mode.”

And if I post here a little less than daily over the next half-year, now you know why.

Never Play ‘Risk’ With My Old Roommate Gene (Corollary Conclusions Not Included)

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Had a college roommate my freshman year named Gene. Gene was a real piece of work. Not the subtlest of minds, but could be very funny, very friendly, even charming. Could also decide to tear street signs out of the ground and destroy whole swaths of campus landscaping.

One Friday night, a bunch of us sat down to play a big game of Risk in the dorm room Gene and I shared.

With fake IDs, the boys headed over to the Stop-In convenience store just off campus, going in on a case of Schaffer—a good choice for an eight-hour Risk game, as it was known as “the one beer to have, if you’re having more than one.” But Gene, who had been huffing all afternoon on his marijuana-stuffed “Zeppelin” pipe, picked up a few big oil cans of the boozier Australian beer Foster’s Lager, his favorite. So Gene was in high spirits as we laid down the board, set down the dice and dealt out the cards and started moving our troops around by turns.

We were all having a good time, settling in, but after an hour or two, we noticed something wrong with Gene. See, Gene had a lazy eye, that would only start to wander when he’d had a little too much Foster’s. We didn’t say anything to each other, but we all saw: As Gene’s left eye began to roll, his right eye began to narrow, in a gathering rage. He was losing, though not badly. But Risk requires longevity. And I think Gene’s bongwatery brain was getting the sense that his night was no longer young, and he wasn’t going to outlast this complex battle, by these detailed rules.

There was no warning. (Aside from the eyeball.) Instantly, dice, cards, infantry pieces, cavalry pieces, artillery pieces, Schaefer cans and one still-smouldering Zeppelin: all in the air, suspended in Gene’s enraged scream, the board torn in half and the evening over before anything hit the floor.

I don’t remember what happened after that. It didn’t matter what happened after that. We’d all devoted ourselves to this project, set aside other possibilities to spend an evening following a common set of rules, together. I don’t remember Gene apologizing the next day. But you can be sure we didn’t sit down to play any more games with Gene, ever again.

Boy, I haven’t thought of old Gene in years. Wonder why I’m thinking of him now.

Ten Years Later, and Still a Lot Left to Lose

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The opening and conclusion of my dispatch from the 2016 Republican National Convention, first published here July 22 of that year. I’ve reposted this many times over the last decade—mostly, because I don’t know what else to say. —DM

CLEVELAND—I had a couple of beers before heading over to the Quicken Loans Arena, where alcohol was only served in the private suites. So when I saw a guy with an “America First” sign, I felt just loose enough to ask, “If America’s first, who will be second?”

“The rest of the world!” the guy shouted happily.

We’ve seen what happens when one nation sets itself against the rest of the world.

My dad fought in Europe, in World War II. He wound up in Berlin, and what he saw there, and the rotting death he smelled there, he didn’t say much about when he returned. He said so little, in fact, that his steel-executive father, on a fact-finding trip to assess what it would take to make German industry work again, was shocked by the total demolition and human degradation he saw, two years after the end of the war.

“Bud,” my grandfather said to my dad when he got back. “You didn’t tell me.”

My dad’s response was, “How could I have?”

When Adolf Hitler had spoken to the German people during the Great Depression 15 years earlier, he had convinced them they had nothing to lose. The currency was worthless, the country was secretly controlled by Jews and had been unfairly treated by all its neighbors, and it was time to take drastic measures. Many Germans must have been skeptical that he could deliver them from such dire straights, but even when it’s a drunk who knocks on your door at midnight and tells you your house is on fire, you’re susceptible, however skeptical, to suggestion.

By 1945, the German people realized they’d had far more to lose, back in the early 1930s, than they’d thought. Despite their troubles, they’d still had everything to lose …

We each—still—have everything to lose.