“Itâs my own fault for not paying attention and reading a graphic novel that adapts existing stories.
Iâm not a fan of that act because I think it often ends up feeling like a cash grab, a way to repurpose existing material and sell it again. Which I donât begrudge anyone. God knows Iâd sell the same book a hundred times to the same person if I could.
In fact, a couple years back I can up with this book/scam called âThe story that sold 1,000,000 copies.â It was a book with the same one-sentence story in it printed one million times. If I sold one copy, I could, from that day forward, claim Iâd sold one million short stories.
The problem is that I could not figure out a way to legibly print a very short story 1 million times within Amazonâs print page limit. I created MANY a questionable InDesign file in pursuit of this goal, and while I havenât given up, I would say itâs an idea that may never see the actual light of day other than being buried in a Goodreads review with a tenuous relationship to the story Iâm telling.
I could just lie and tell everyone I sold a million stories. Who can stop me? And is that lie really very different from the lie Iâd be telling by selling one copy of one book with a million repeats of the same story?
Yes and no.
No because, well, while selling the copy would be technically true, I know exactly what Iâm doing and why itâs still a lie.
Yes because I am a believer in the occasional healthy scam. I think it keeps things interesting. Like some sort of feline fish.
A healthy scam must:
-Be truly harmless. The worst harm that would befall anyone would be purchasing one of my books because the person was fooled into thinking I was more popular than I was. This seems unlikely and even at its worst, harmless.
-require an amount of work that almost makes the scam not worth it, so the scammer only makes off with a very marginal profit/gain/spoil.
-Not involve dragging any friends or acquaintances through the mud with you (unless theyâre 100% in the know and on board).
-not involve an exit in a special vehicle. In movies this is usually getting on a helicopter with a briefcase full of a thing thatâs money that most people have never heard of (some kind of Bankerâs Super Bonds or some shit), and in real life the vehicle is likely a pink Cadillac.
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