Read These Books If You Want To Sell Out
At least, I think you should. I don’t really know anything about selling out.
I’m no expert at selling out.
In fact, I’m just as much a novice at selling out as you are. But I want to deeply know its intricacies and crevices. I want to know how selling out is fearfully and wonderfully made. Forge on and see if we can sell out. These books will show us the way.
This seems to be the uber text. Selfies of a person who is literally selling themselves. The selling out was never a question, only an identify for this one. Plus, there doesn’t seem to actually be anything to “read” here anyway…so even the truth of selling out is front of us, it’s actually far away. Or something.
2. “The Sellout” by Paul Beatty.
From what I understand, this novel is totally legit commentary on the “way the world is now” and it runs loops around not only its subject but readers, too. Fear not, I haven’t read it yet either.
3. “Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator” by Ryan Holiday.
Written by the former PR head of American Apparel, you know this is a guy who knows how to do massive coverups while also selling out the female body for the sake of clicks. I mean a lot of the tactics in here are really unscrupulous which isn’t surprising — I just couldn’t believe someone had the temerity to pull it off. For real, I generally like Ryan Holiday and he’s probably a little ashamed of himself for how some of this came to be. Still, if you have any illusions about how the PR machine pulls the levers, this book reveals all the tricks behind the curtains.
4. “A Million LIttle Pieces” by James Frey.
If you’re going to sell out, you might as well go all the way to the top. You remember this guy? This book was his “rehab” memoir that turned out to be partially fake. But if you’re selling out, who cares because he got all the money right? Book still has ⅘ stars on Amazon, so there you go.
Hey, this memoir is real (I think) and I’ve never read it but — I was reading a story about Cheryl Strayed about “Wild” and there was a photo of Cheryl Strayed wearing a Bob Marley shirt during her little adventure and I thought to myself: I am not the type of person to wear a Bob Marley shirt or an artist of that caliber, that mixes some sort of popularity with a little bit of artistic merit and so because I am not the type of person to be into slighty-off mainstream interestes, then I will not have the capability to write a book with the potential to sell out. Moral of the story: Listen to Bob Marley if you want to sell out and be in college dorms for the rest of your life.
6. “Ask #GaryVee” by Gary Vaynerchuk.
I really like Gary Vaynerchuk especially for marketing and stuff, and if you want to sell out, it’s going to take a little work. You can’t just flip a switch and then be an automatic sellout. You’ve gotta #hustle with #hardwork. Gary is the master at this really, so check out this book.
7. “Writing Movies for Fun and Profit: How We Made a Billion Dollars at the Box Office and You Can, Too!” by Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant. If you’re going to sell out, you might as well go all the way and make a billion dollars. I read this book a few years ago and really don’t remember what it was about or what movies these guys made. Doesn’t matter. They made a billion dollars — and that’s what you’re looking for, right?
8. “How To Write Fan Fiction That People Love” by Daphne Dangerlove: I totally just typed “how to write fan fiction” into Amazon and thought something would definitely come up. Point is, if you want to sell out then you need to write the next Twilight or Hunger Games and hopefully you end up with Divergent or The Maze Runner or at least a shot at a CW show. That’s not gonna happen with your own ideas. You better copy someone else’s, which is what I recommend to people any way (copying that it is). The best way to sell out is not to create something new, but to regurgitate something old. Get with it.
9. “The Corrections” by Jonathan Franzen.
If everything above kind of disgusts you, but yet you’re midly intrigued than you might be a good candidate to tastefully sell out. This is like when you write a book that will appeal to New York editors and publishers and MFA directors, even though you don’t really want to write a book that appeals to any of them. You’re going to have to hit certain beats — the Northeast, summer homes, estranged marriages, well-off white people, guilt about indulging children, but then indulging them anyway. The Corrections is really good at all of these things. And it’s actually a compelling read (seriously).
Conclusion
All of these books will give you the jumpstart you need to selling out. Remember, selling out is within your grasp especially for those that tap into the mainstream, which is usually problematic for artists, but good luck anyway.
