How To Get Rich
I was looking at Amazon’s top sellers a couple days ago and I noticed that The Davinci Code is still on that list. Can someone please explain this to me? That is one of the most mediocre books I’ve ever read, and I’ve read a lot of ‘em.
It wasn’t really bad. It just wasn’t good in any conceivable way. The writing was plain. The plot was hokey. The whole thing was one big action movie cliché. I would have believed it if you told me that novel was a high school English project by some teenage Marilyn Manson fan.
Even your average Schwarzenegger movie is a bit more believable than The Davinci Code. A cyborg sent from the future to kill Sarah Connor. Ok, I’ll buy it. Self-mutilating Italian monks killing nuns in an attempt to steal a secret passed down by Leonardo DaVinci. Come on now.
My theory is that everyone read that book for the same reason I did: just to see why everyone else was reading it. I personally just had to see why, every time I took any form of public transportation, I saw multiple people holding a copy. Also, I can’t count the number of times I was at someone’s house and saw the hardback version sitting on a coffee table. Now that I think about who lived in those houses where I saw it, I realize that I should have known it was going to be bad. I didn’t expect much going in, but even so I was still woefully unprepared for the mediocrity I would discover.
So basically I, like everyone else, had to see what the buzz was about. That book is so popular that books about it became bestsellers. There must be 100 books out there debunking the “facts” in The DaVinci Code, and just as many backing them up. I’ll try to save you the time and anguish I endured by explaining the phenomenon.
So why is this book so popular? It’s simple. It has a built-in, highly effective, 100% free marketing campaign. It uses the stupidity of America’s religious right to make everyone else curious about it. After it sold a few copies America’s religious pundits caught wind and started bashing it on their TV shows, which made all of the non-nutcases want to know why. More people picked it up, more idiots called it heresy on TV, and more people read it. The cycle perpetuates to this day.
It’s a simple formula and one that might be clonable. Here’s how you do it:
1. Start with a generic thriller novel. For examples on how to do this see Patricia Cornwell, James Patterson, Dean Koontz, Sue Grafton, Mary Higgins Clark, John Grisham, or any other crappy author from the paperback section of your local Wal-Mart. Or, if you don’t feel like losing a few IQ points from reading any of that garbage, just invent a few poorly developed good guys, a few poorly developed bad guys bent on world domination, add in a dead body, and half way through make one of the good guys turn out to be a bad guy. Add in a little forbidden romance and a surprise ending that is really only a surprise to anyone dumber than a watermelon (which most people are and makes the ones who aren’t feel smart) and you’re set.
2. Add religious themes to your book, insinuate that [insert prophet here] slept with a [man/prostitute/camel/etc.] and that proof of that secret, for some reason that nobody can comprehend (and not because it’s esoteric, just because it makes no sense) would enable it’s possessor to rule the world. Note: I highly recommend not using Islam as your religion. Whereas insulting Jesus makes for an international best-seller, insulting Mohammed may get you decapitated. Plus Salman Rushdie so totally did it already.
3. Then, when your book starts selling, sit back and watch as idiots like Pat Robertson unwittingly advertise your book for you. Tangential note to self, start blog about why Pat Robertson and anyone who doesn’t think he is a raving lunatic should be sterilized.
And there you go, your own get rich quick scheme. Just thank me in the credits and maybe throw me a part as an extra in the movie version.
