Merciful Flush… not selling dick

My friends blow. Really, they do. Almost without exception they have completely underappreciated what a great book I have produced. You see the whole thing with putting out a book is using the present technology to promote it. It’s all about exponential marketing. The premise is that 10 of your best friends will each tell 4 of their friends who will then tell 4 of their friends. And so forth. As you can see that immediately leaves 160 friends told and only 1 step away from 640 being in the know. But before you get all excited about my prospects let me stop you right here and throw in the proverbial monkey wrench. What if, hypothetically, some of those original 10 don’t tell anyone. Let’s say that they not only delete the original message pronouncing to the world the publishing of said book but do so with a shrug and a rolling of eyes.

There is no 40 or 160.

Don’t they realize with technology today I can track what became of my original message asking their assistance in this little endeavor? Not only can I see they deleted it but I can tell that they did so with the aforementioned shrug and the heavily-implied eye rolling. Without them starting the ball rolling the ball just sits there. My ball is just sitting there.

In my head I had imagined by now that the 640 had already become 40,090 and any minute now I would be fielding offers from every publishing house and talk show in the Western hemisphere. But no. My 10 turned out to be 2 and those 2 told nobody.

I am at 2.

Do you realize how little attention publishers and talk shows pay to books that have sales of 2?

Do you realize how close I was, in my own head, to 163,840?

I hear about it all the time, how things go ‘viral’. Things much less brilliant than my writings, much less deserving of attention and praise. But no, 8 of my ‘friends’ decided to drop the ball, my ball, which might indicate movement but in fact makes the ball just sit there. I guess we can assume my ball is not perfectly round and might be underinflated.

Reading that back seems to indicate that the problem might therefore lie with my ball and not my friends but the fucking ball is just a metaphor for my book and my book is neither not round enough or underinflated. Listen, if I can’t even use a metaphor without you jumping to the conclusion that I’m somehow placing blame for the lack of success of my book on the book when in fact it should lie with the exponential lack of enthusiasm demonstrated by my chums then you’re no better than my so-called ‘friends’.

Who’s side are you on anyway?

Let me explain, when I offered up a few ideas as to why a ball wouldn’t be moving despite the fact that it had been dropped I was not trying to use roundness or inflation as metaphors for possible deficiencies in my writing. Just because I use one metaphor doesn’t mean that every subsequent image I use is tied somehow to the bigger picture. Sometimes a ball just flops down and sits there and it’s nobody’s fault.

Except my friends of course.

If instead of 10 becoming 163,840 they become 2 which then in seemingly no time at all remains 2 then clearly the blame lies with those 10.

If somebody I knew wrote a book I would be falling all over myself to read it. I wouldn’t even care the genre, I would just be interested in what was going on in their head while they weren’t with me. I would actually be curious. Not so with my friends. There is a distinct lack of curiosity when it comes to Lance Manion. The worst part is that they don’t seem like the type of folks who are lacking in curiosity in other areas, I must conclude that their lack of interest lays squarely centered on me.

So now I’m in the market for more Lance-centric friends. Of course, you’re not eligible because at this point you know too much and I would just perceive you as just trying to jump on the bandwagon that is Merciful Flush. Any minute now it’s going to start rolling, fueled by the exponential growth thing I’ve heard so much about, and the last thing I want is a bunch of people who don’t appreciate me for just being me. You understand right? No hard feelings?

Good. Just know that my old ‘friends’ will not get a seat either. I’m nothing if not petty.

I only wish they read my blog so they could understand what they’re going to miss out on.

This bandwagon is rolling right the fuck over them. Believe that.