How about 28 million YouTube views . . .
Some would call it visibility. If you’re talking books, how about millions upon millions of Youtube views for a reading from Supervert’s Necrophilia Variations. A dozen years ago when that video had two million views, I called it “viral reading.” Three years later, in December 2015, the video had 18.6 million views. So what has this meant for selling the book? Sales of 1,664 printed copies. I thought I had a pretty good idea of what the mashup of media and literature means for monetization. But the truth is, I’m not so sure.
When I asked the author what he made of the book’s exposure, he replied in an email: “Twenty-six million views? Wow! I remember people texting me and saying, ‘Dude, that video has 30,000 views. You’re famous!’ Ha. I don’t know what it means either but I guess it explains why I keep selling my books without lifting a finger to market them.”
“Necrophilia Variations is a literary monograph on the erotic attraction to corpses and death.” — Supervert
Supervert is the assumed name of a writer who uses the techniques of vanguard aesthetics to explore novel sexual pathologies.
