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Married Sex: Interim Report #1

Jesse Kornbluth

By Jesse Kornbluth
Published: Jun 23, 2015
Category: Fiction

“Married Sex” has been, as they used to say, “years in the making,” and now, on August 25, it will finally be published.

My marketing plan for it is simple:
a) Let my publisher, Open Road Media, do all the usual outreach.
b) Let my digital crew alert a hundred web sites.
c) Let me maintain radio silence until early August.

It’s not modesty that holds me back from talking up the book on this site, Facebook and Twitter. It’s that I’ve seen too many writers post updates about their upcoming books months before publication. Maybe others have more tolerance for endless self-promotion, but it exhausts me; by the time those books are published, I couldn’t care less.

And isn’t the whole point of marketing to make potential readers care — a lot?

Bruce Springsteen had it exactly right: “All the hype in the world is nothing compared to a kid telling another kid, ‘Man, you should have seen that.’”

So the most important part of marketing this book is… the book itself. Some kids read it. And like it. And then tell other kids.

An important word about Amazon: I would prefer that nobody pre-order the book. That’s why there are no “buy” links on this screen — I’d like “Married Sex” to stay happily mired at 3,425,639 on Amazon until August 25. Then, in my dreams, many people buy it. Then I hope the people who buy it will read it — it’s short, just 220 pages, and the pages turn fast — and tell their friends. If all that happens, the circle of enthusiastic readers expands, and a great many people will be saying, “Man, you should read this.”

Finally, a word about the movie. As some of you know, the book was optioned for a film last fall. The veteran actor Griffin Dunne will direct. Nick Wechsler (“Sex, Lies and Videotape,” “The Road,” “Magic Mike” and “Magic Mike XXL”) will produce in partnership with Steve and Paula Mae Schwartz of Chockstone Pictures. As the screenwriter and Executive Producer, I’m pleased and relieved to report that everyone has signed off on the script and it’s going out to “talent.”

I don’t know how to thank this community for all the support along the way, so I’ll hide — for now — behind the smart words of Voltaire: “The secret of being a bore is to say everything.” I’ll write again when there’s a reason or in a month, whichever comes last.