tl;dr
What I can’t afford to do — and I deeply hope you guys also won’t even attempt to do — is to live in a world of unlimited access (in- or outbound) that requires you to pretend anyone who happens to trip over your doormat should get precisely the same attention, respect, interest, and focus as Real People You Know. They come first. Scarcity. It’s a real thing.Holy shit.
Would somebody please get Merlin and Gary Vaynerchuk into a room together and broadcast the conversation? Better yet, do it on a stage somewhere so I can attend in person.
Sure, family and in-person friends probably do deserve our first wave of priority. I’ll give you that much. But…
I’m a card carrying member of the cult of Gary, and the rest of what Merlin said right there, that’s absolute bullshit - especially to someone who’s currently authoring a book and hoping people will buy it. It’s almost 2010 and you’re telling me that you aren’t going to treat every person on the planet like a potential customer? That’s just fucked up. Even if your goal isn’t to make money (Don’t fuck with me, Merlin. It is.), it’s simply a smart thing to do - for your craft, for your business, for your life: to listen to criticism from all sources, and to accept anyone that takes time to contact you. You don’t need to like what you hear and you don’t even need to respond (but you should). But by acting like you don’t care what they are saying, then what you’re telling them is “I think I’m better than you and you are worthless to me.” Do that long enough and the only people left who will want to buy your book will be your wife and any friends that you haven’t arrogantly dismissed.
I want to tell you a little story (two, probably):
My wife and I decided to refinance our home to help reduce our mortgage. Two kids, my wife’s going back to school, and every bit helps. I talked to Steven Starr at Bank of America’s corporate mortgage office. He was great. He got us a great loan rate, was responsive to my calls and emails.
Our documents arrived after a few days, I filled out all the forms and faxed them as requested to an office in Buford, GA. Normally the fax machine prints out a page that reads “SEND SUCCESSFUL” or “SEND FAILED.” Not this time. So I called the Buford office, left a voice mail for my account coordinator and waited. And waited. I called again the next day. And two days after. I called a total of eight times over six business days. Finally I found a real human on the other end. She transferred me to a manager’s voice mail, and two hours later I got a call back from the account coordinator. She apologized profusely, told me they were really backed up, and that she hadn’t gotten the fax. She asked me to fax them again. I did.
I used to follow Merlin on Twitter. I used to follow Fireland and Coulton and some other people, too. Then it got to be too much. I sat refreshing Twitter like some mouse waiting for the next morsel to come. So I unfollowed a ton of people, and now my Twitter is way more manageable and contains mostly feeds from people I know in real life. It’s nice.
But here’s the thing: would I call Merlin or Fireland or Coulton two times every other day if they didn’t respond to one of my @replies? Would I expect them to? Of course not.
I expect a certain amount of access to Bank of America. They’re a giant corporation. They have people. If they don’t have enough to answer customers’ phone calls, they can (and should) hire more. And they’re dealing with some pretty important shit. My house, for one.
Do I expect the same access to someone like Merlin? Jonathan Coulton? Leo Laporte? Of course not. Mostly because none is a giant corporation with the ability to hire scores of people to man phone lines and email accounts. And if you expect an individual to provide you that kind of access, then, respectfully, you’re stupid and arrogant.
It’s okay. Most people are.
Which brings me to point two: to consider every person on the planet as a potential customer means you have to sacrifice a great deal. In absurd terms, it means someone like Merlin would have to write his book using simple pictograms because a vast number of people can’t read. Not to mention the different languages everyone speaks. In practical terms for a writer, assuming an English-speaking, literate audience, it means you have to write to, at most, an eighth-grade education level. And really you should target a fourth-grade reading level. If you’re willing to do something like that, then good luck and godspeed. I’m not.
Too often people are willing to compromise, to alter their work for a broader public. Perhaps it’s what they’ve been taught by places like Best Buy, Sony, Microsoft and other big corporations. But I don’t see how that reflects pride in your creations.
We people who make things are individuals. We’re craftspeople, not manufacturers. The manufacturing, whether that be of widgets or of brand, should be left to companies large enough to do such things.
