How To Sock Puppet Your Way to Fame In 90 Days

[megwrites]

A story about an author who "faked" a publicist in order to get published..

The opinions regarding this story on my f-list have ranged from outrage to "wow, that's clever!".

Sorry to say it (well, actually I'm not but I'm being polite here), I fall squarely with the people who think it's clever and aren't that outraged about it. I get why people would be outraged, but frankly I don't agree.

The fact is that while the publicist may have been fake, the book, the author, and the quality therein were not. No one was deprived of anything substantive. Okay, so he changed his name and pretended to be someone he wasn't. But the book was real. The quality of the book was real.

It's like saying you're mad because the guy who sold you your vacuum cleaner at a really good price said he was Steve from Pittsburgh when he was really Fred from Knoxville. You still have your vacuum cleaner at the price you desired, so what does it matter? The vacuum cleaner and the money you paid for it were genuine. And if he said he was from Pittsburgh because he saw you were a Steelers fan and knew it it would make you more inclined to listen to him, that's just good salesmanship.

So long as his product, his price, and his promises were genuine, I have no issue with it.

And I think getting freaked out over the sock puppetry is actually a bit disingenuous, really, especially for writers.

The history of writing is storied with people who have assumed names and put on personas so that they could get past an obstacle and allow their stories to be heard by people who would other wise be unwilling. People have switched genders and race and all sorts of thing for the sake of their stories. They just did it on the other side of the line. Do I need to begin with how many women authors have had pen their works under male names just to have someone even consider them worth reading, much less publishing? I didn't think so.

My real reason for not being at all outraged is a little less poetic, however. When someone finds a way to beat The System at it's own game, I cheer.

The fact is that you can be the most brilliant writer ever and never see print. You can do everything right and fail miserably. So, obviously doing right isn't the point of this industry or business. So long as publishing is based on business rather than merit, I don't see where anyone has room to bitch when someone plays the game better than they do.

The fact is, publishing is a business and this guy found a better way to place his product. Now, given, he was good at it and it was a triple lundy off the high dive which few (if any) should attempt to mimic, but he did it.

He knew what he was doing and he wasn't trying to run a scheme. Nobody was defrauded.

The facts are these (as they say on Pushing Daises): The publishing industry isn't going to be nice to you. They aren't going to be fair. They aren't going to hand you anything. They are not going to look out for you. Writers face everything from agents who really are just running scams to publishers who don't pay them fairly.

So, yeah, you have to look out for yourself. The publishing industry gets theirs, so you gotta get yours - to put it crudely. This is the business world, baby. Dog will eat dog.

Publishers and agents have bent more than a few writers over a chair, so I have no problem with a writer very skillfully making them grab *their* ankles for once.

As for me, I have no intention of trying to execute this kind of smooth move. I don't know a damn thing about marketing and I know that I just don't have the right kind of sensibilities for it. I already know that I need to have an expert (an agent). But if I really thought I had a grip on what to do and how to do it? I might give this a whirl.

Comments

[fiction-theory.livejournal.com]

"The end justifies the means" is an idea that's been around for a long time, and no doubt will continue until the earth is a dying ember.

I think you've misunderstood. That's not at all what I'm saying. Because if I was, then I'd have no issue with what the mother did and I'd buy her argument that the essay itself was good on it's face and not required to be true.

After all, getting all that for her child at the cost of a lie is - in a Darwinian/Machiavellian sense - laudable and ingenious.

It's more an issue of what went into the decisions that both parties made and what was necessary for them to think that their actions were okay.

Obviously this author had to sit down and do the work a publicist would do, and I think he did it - not in an effort to quickly gain something for himself, selfishly - but because he wanted to have the opportunity to do honest work. When he thought up the idea, he would have had to calculate the risk to his career, and whether he could be a good fake publicist. But who's feelings got hurt? Sure Simon and Schuster weren't thrilled about his ploy, but they weren't *hurt*. I believe a rep from S&S stated pretty much that in some other article I read about it.

The mother - if she did stop to think - must have sat down and disregarded the feelings of soldiers and their families and the contest and all the other contestant and her daughter and the harm it would do to her daughter. People were genuinely hurt over this. People felt betrayed. She would have had to sit down and think of the thing that is most likely to evoke pity in our society today, and probably discarded such ideas as cancer or AIDS or what have you. She would have had to look at the situation from a predatory stand point.

The author was not a predator, merely an opportunist.

Charities *are* businesses, imho. I don't think you can separate the two.

Charities may have to borrow from a business model in order to operate, but they are most definitely *not* businesses. Businesses are for the sole benefit of a few, set up to service no one but themselves. Their entire purpose is to make more money, to make someone (or a select group of someones) rich by exchanging a good or service in transactions meant to be to THEIR advantage. The point of a business is that, in every transaction, the business comes out ahead of whoever else is part of that transaction (clients, customers, competitors, etc). Businesses operate on no principle but ambition.

Charities - and this is the ideal - do not operate to their own advantage. They are meant to benefit a cause by trading a good or service in order to help someone, regardless of whether it makes anyone rich. The point is not to gain an advantage. Charities operate on *actual* principles such as generosity or sheltering the homeless or feeding the hungry or what have you.

But I wouldn't trust him, character-wise, in business dealings or other transactions, because he has shown himself to be duplicitous.

My trust of him would depend on meeting him and hearing what he has to say about his decision and deciding whether it was done with a laughing sort of cynicism or if it was done thoughtfully and with an inkling of humility and respect for the fact that he was taking risks.

[affinity8.livejournal.com]

Of course the author was motivated by self-interest and gained from the fraud. He wanted his book sold to a major publisher. There's always the underlying, "I want people to benefit and enjoy my writing" but unless he donated all of his income to charity, he's benefiting financially from that misrepresentation, and from the publicity around the incident.

Also, because publishers have limited publishing lists, someone else who might have had their work submitted for publication but did not lie is squeezed out of consideration.

There are number of charity trusts that operate for the sole benefit of their trustees and have come under increasing government scrutiny. And there are charities whose operating expenses far exceed their services to the poor, needy, etc. Club Libby Lu, the sponsor of this contest, isn't a charity anyways. It's a business geared to the tween market. The concept and persona of Hanna Montana itself is a business, of course.

I think it's a very slippery slope to look at the outcome of a situation and decide, in hindsight, whether it was ethical or not. As individuals, we can not see into the future, nor predict the full ramifications of our actions. So I say, don't lie. Don't commit fraud. The mother and her daughter are paying for their fraud, which is entirely appropriate. As for the author, only time will tell.

[fiction-theory.livejournal.com]

Of course the author was motivated by self-interest and gained from the fraud. He wanted his book sold to a major publisher.

Yeah, but the publisher also had every opportunity to pull out if the book wasn't good. After all, if he'd sent them a crap book, he could have faked being the world's best fake publicist ever, he wouldn't have gotten the deal. He did what he said he was doing. He was selling them a great book. They agreed. Because they edited it and published it and it's getting them (and the book and the author) publicity which doesn't hurt them any.

Obviously the product was good on it's face. The mother and daughter's product was not.

I don't know that you and I are going to come to agreement on this, though I think you bring up good points.

There are number of charity trusts that operate for the sole benefit of their trustees and have come under increasing government scrutiny.

True, but as I said, that was an ideal, generalized example. There are bad charities and good businesses which could make both of my examples false.

Club Libby Lu, the sponsor of this contest, isn't a charity anyways.

I'm aware but it was a charitable operation, and meant at least in some ways to BE a limited time charity. Yes, I do know that it benefited the company with good PR (or was intended to), so and so forth.

I think it's a very slippery slope to look at the outcome of a situation and decide, in hindsight, whether it was ethical or not

It wasn't the outcome so much as the decisions and what had to go into each action that puts one in the "good for you" column and one in the "dude, that was so uncool" column.

I think malice and disregard for human beings and their feelings went into the mother's decision. I think she said, "haha, I can get those tickets, suckers. Baby, tell 'em your daddy died in Iraq!" and I think she either didn't think or didn't care about the harm it would do, and the harm was obvious.

I think the author's decision was without malice. From what I've read, it seems to me that he hopped over a hurdle the best way he could think of, because he really thought it would lead to something positive that, even at it's worst, wouldn't hurt anyone. And that's where I see a difference. It's not the outcome (after all, this ploy could've flopped at any time and we could be laughing at this guy) so much as the decision making.