When your books don’t sell what can you do?
You might try writing better books.
You might get serious about a marketing plan.
You might change careers and toss it off to experience.
Or . . .
You could do what the big boys do: Give interviews to popular journalists.
The problem is what big name journalist would consider interviewing a no-name book author? None, of course.
These days the big boys don’t have to give many interviews. Their publishers announce the upcoming release of a new book, toss in a little spice, and it’s an instant bestseller. The author has established his or her trust with a large trove of devoted fans.
But people have always had a soft spot for underdogs. Likable underdogs.
How can an invisible author, assuming he’s a decent fellow, exploit this fact?
Here’s what I recommend: Interview himself.
For example, I’ve written a novel that exposes the fraud of the federal reserve. Okay, but why should anyone read it if they (1) already know about the fraud of the federal reserve, or (2) couldn’t care less about the federal reserve or its alleged fraudulent nature?
Here’s where I, the author, could add some spice.
I would say: Look, if you want a straight accounting of the FED, its history, why it exists, why it’s politically untouchable, there are scores of readable, insightful, truthful books available. My personal introductory favorite is Rothbard’s What Has Government Done to Our Money? Gary North has written a spirited but grossly neglected What is Money? I also love G. Edward Griffin’s The Creature from Jekyll Island — couldn’t put it down. Ron Paul’s End the Fed is a must-read if there ever was one.
As thorough as they are in most respects, none of these books suggests a way to butcher the beast, other than to educate the voting public about the FED’s diabolical character. An angry public sometimes gets things changed on a local level. But on a national level, in matters where there is not much immediate pain, it hasn’t happened. The money people are forced to use may be counterfeit in some theoretical sense but it still buys things. Don’t rock the boat. Let it be. Besides, the political class is too dependent on the FED to ever consider getting rid of it. The FED’s counterfeit money pays for their wars and boondoggles, and keeps them elected. The FED long ago bought the economics profession, so there’s plenty of opaque “theory” supporting its existence.
But as Guido Hulsmann argues in The Ethics of Money Production, monetary inflation has an insidious affect on one’s soul. The acquisition of something for nothing tends to separate in one’s mind the idea of production as a necessary pre-condition of consumption. Counterfeiting the FED way is absorbed in the national debt and seems totally harmless to people alive today. With state-incited Armageddon constantly on the horizon why concern ourselves with our progeny? Does anyone other than Austrian School economists and a handful of gold bugs worry about legal counterfeiting and growing government debt?
The war against the FED therefore is fought with a minuscule army. And who leads this army? At one point congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul was commander-in-chief, and his effort to end the FED was picking up support to the point where in 2012 then-FED chair Ben Bernanke gave a series of lectures to counter the free market arguments of Paul and others.
The FED has proven to be politically indestructible — almost.
The fight against the FED needs a great leader. I decided to portray one in my novel,The Flight of the Barbarous Relic. What made him especially effective was his job at the time of the revolt. He was the perfect inside man, none other than the FED’s top gun, the lord of interest rates — the FED chairman.
It matters little whether he was an apostate or an imposter. What matters was his position in the world of money and how he dramatically brought the world’s attention to the noxious character of the US central bank.
It’s fiction but it’s a presentation of what might be and ought to be.
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George Ford Smith is the author of nine books, includingDo Not Consent: Think OUTSIDE the voting booth,The Flight of the Barbarous Relic,Eyes of Fire: Thomas Paine and the American Revolution, andThe Fall of Tyranny, the Rise of Liberty. He is also a filmmaker whose latest work bears the same title as his most recent book, Do Not Consent. PLEASE WATCH IT AND VOTE!
