What's your price for selling out?

And what do you do to monetize?

What would it take for you to “sell out”?

I’ve been thinking about this question in light of the revelations that a group of right-wing online personalities had been paid millions of dollars through a Tennessee-based front company to spread Russian propaganda. The participants include some of the biggest names of the sector (Tim Pool, Dave Rubin, Benny Johnson), and the payouts were as high as $100,000 per video.

While it is undisputed that the money came from Russian interests (two of whom were indicted by the Justice Department) and that the videos produced furthered Russian propagandistic aims, the online personalities claim that they are unwitting victims of the scheme which put millions of dollars into their pockets.

You see, they’re willing to spew Russian propaganda without being paid by the Russian state, so this is more like a tip than a payoff. Similar logic has been applied to the lavish gifts Supreme Court Justice Thomas has received from Republican mega-donor Harlan Crow. Those gifts come because of a shared affinity for curtailing the individual rights of non-billionaires, not as bribes to rule a certain way.

I guess this isn’t actually a case of selling out, then. We would never consider the possibility that Donald Trump could “sell out” because he’s already fully corrupt. There’s nothing that’s not been sold or for sale, including the sovereignty of the United States of America.

Maybe this is a better example of someone “selling out”?

That is comedian/actor/podcaster Russell Brand kneeling on stage in supplication to Jesus Christ while Tucker Carlson (another eager Russian propagandist) bows his head in reverence. Brand’s brand for much of his career was a free-thinking leftist hedonist, but more recently he has turned toward the right and now has apparently embraced Christianity not because, having burnt through his previous persona, he has found that this is the audience he can monetize, but out of a sincere change in belief.

Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha.

Maybe I’m being unkind to question the sincerity of Brand’s conversion. Perhaps he just hasn’t gotten to Matthew 6:5 yet, “And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.”’

As I think about it, I suppose it’s wrong to call Brand a sell-out too, as it would presume his previous persona was sincerely held.

Maybe we’re past the point where it’s even possible to sell out.

I look at that money the right-wing podcasters received, willingly, unquestioningly, and wonder if I would do the same, or more accurately, under what circumstances would I do the same?

It’s easy to never be tempted to sell out if you have nothing anyone else is willing to (over) pay for. My personal moments of selling out have been very limited, confined to working anonymously on a couple of truly awful humor books for a book packager, work for hire which paid well, relatively speaking, but not life-changing money and left me feeling bad afterwards, and glad my contributions were uncredited.

After the arrival of ChatGPT, when I’d drawn a little attention to myself as someone who could speak knowledgeably about teaching writing, I had one get-to-know-you call with an edtech person working on some writing-related software that seemed as though it had a high potential for future selling out, but as the vision for the project was described, it sounded like something I hoped would fail because it ran directly opposite to the values I believe in when it comes to writing and teaching writing.

I told this person this and they were very nice about it, even suggesting that I could come on board and help steer the project towards my preferred point of view, but it really seemed like I was setting myself up for a very nice paycheck combined with deep frustration and alienation.

But nice paycheck and life-changing money are not the same thing. If this guy had said he was going to pay me six-figures a month for 10 hours of work a week, I might have been sorely tempted.

Instead, I started thinking about what became my next book, More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI. (Have I mentioned it’s available for pre-order?)

The only people in the education space aside from the edtech and textbook publishing companies I loathe are philanthropists like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, two people I’ve spent thousands of words assailing for the harm they’ve done to education.

When it comes to education, there is only one side to sell-out to, and it’s not mine. There is a raft of conservative school reform think tankers on Twitter who have been repeating the same shit about how to fix schools for decades, and despite their favored policies being enacted, we have only seen problems get worse.

These people also are not sell outs. They’re hacks, willing to parrot a message as long as they paychecks keep coming. Maybe they’re sincere believers on top of collecting their sinecures, but either way, they suck.

This brings me to a book I want to highlight this week, The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers by Josh Cowan, a professor of education at Michigan State.

Cowan is interesting because he was once a cautious optimist when it came to the “school-choice” movement, but as he looked at the educational results, and the extreme cost inefficiencies, including funneling millions of taxpayer dollars to unqualified providers and even some actual nut cases, he started digging in to the subculture. The result is The Privateers.

So, no sell outs yet. Just hacks, culture warriors, and profiteers.

It’s interesting to consider how the notion of selling out has shifted over the course of my life. There was a time in the 90s where selling out was synonymous with being popular and making money. Nirvana were viewed by some as sell outs because they sold millions of records. Selling out was not cool, not authentic.

I think a number of things happened to shift the culture when it came to notions of selling out. For one, the anti-sell out crowd was consciously cultivating an anti-popular aesthetic, which by definition would be niche.

For another, the economics of the creative arts changed. Letting your song be used in a commercial was once anathema, but over time it became a way for smaller bands to make enough money to keep chugging along. If you were taking corporate money to keep doing what you were going to do anyway, you were using them, not the other way around.

I also believe it became more accepted to want to do stuff, and if that stuff came with money, so be it. Dave Grohl, drummer in Nirvana, front man for Foo Fighters is a great example of a Gen X figure who did an end around on the selling out discourse by being sort of omnipresent when it comes to unapologetically doing things that others might pay you for.

Selling out did not have to be an act of insincerity, but could instead be the opposite.

It occurs to me that we’re so far past the era of selling out that we must be in a different phase. I want to call this the era of monetization. The ne plus ultra of this era is Taylor Swift, who has figured out how to generate revenue from all of her activities and do so in a way that her fans are not only comfortable with, but supportive of with their purchasing power.

It was estimated that merch sales during the Eras Tour averaged $40 per attendee. Lines were so long that some folks monetized their willingness to wait by collecting fees for buying goods for others.

Writers don’t have as many opportunities for monetization, though we are often encouraged to embrace this ethos. One spectacular fail on this front was bestselling author Colleen Hoover’s attempt to sell an adult coloring book themed to a novel about domestic violence.

Very few writers not named David Sedaris can do an event that people would pay to attend. There aren’t that many writers who can get a lot of people to show up to a free event for that matter.

Instead, we writers are encouraged to publish a newsletter where our readers can support us directly. Substack also urges everyone with a newsletter to also start a podcast as a route towards additional revenue. I find the need to monetize exhausting, so I generally opt-in just enough to keep the train chugging along. There are seven fewer paid subscribers to this newsletter than there were at the start of the year. The metrics Substack shows me suggest I’m supposed to care, but unless that number drops precipitously, in which case I may not be able to “afford” to write the newsletter anymore, you won’t see me freaking out about it.

I am definitely open to monetization if it is the thing that allows me time to write, but as I’ve written previously, I preferred the era when writers were bundled together in publications, as opposed to being set free in the pursuit of individual monetization. I don’t think monetization is particularly good for writers or readers

I don’t know that I am willing to sell out my principles, even for the kind of money those right-wing podcasters got, but if there’s some wealthy person out there that agrees with everything I say, and is willing to give me gobs of money while leaving me alone, please do feel free to get in touch.

Links

This week at the Chicago Tribune I compare Elizabeth Strout’s new novel Tell Me Everything to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

At Inside Higher Ed I wrote about how and why students have embraced a transactional mindset towards school, even though it doesn’t make anyone happy or help anyone learn.

Speaking of students and transactional mindsets, at my

Engaged Education

newsletter you can read my Q&A with

Josh Eyler

about this new book, Failing Our Future: How Grades Harm Students and What We Can Do About It.

How Grades Harm Students And What We Can Do About It

The big talk in my circles this week was Ted Chiang’s New Yorker piece “Why A.I. Isn’t Going to Make Art.” When I first read it, I was certain I was going to be noodling on it here this week, but then I read some offerings by others and realized I didn’t have anything particularly fresh to say that isn’t already in my book, which you should definitely pre-order. I do recommend

Lincoln Michel

’s thoughts “Art Without Intention.”

Bustle is prepared to tell us the best “33 New Books for the Fall.”

This is a story to watch: Franklin Leonard created the :Black List” a survey which produced a list of the best unproduced screenplays in order to help writers without industry connections get better visibility. Four-hundred movies have been produced from the “Black List.” Leonard is now turning his attention to books.

Via

McSweeney's Internet Tendency

, this week’s literary-themed humor: “A Reminder to Submit Your First Week Attendance to the Registrar, in the Style of Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses” by Ben Steere.

Recommendations

1. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
2. Leepike Ridge by ND Wilson3
3 .The Rise and Fall of Mount Majestic by Jennifer Trafton
4. The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall
5. Over Sea, Under Stone by Susan Cooper

Vic K. - Westover, MD

This is a special request because these are the book that Vic reads aloud to his daughters. I’m going to try to give him something he might not know: The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett.

1. Also a Poet by Ada Calhoun
2. Now is Not the Time to Panic by Kevin Wilson
3. Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead
4. King by Jonathan Eig
5. All About Me by Mel Brooks

Karen R. - Beverly Hills, CA

For Karen a book about romance and Hollywood and the romance of Hollywood: Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter.¹

Who is ready to sell out? Who is frustrated by the difficulties of monetization? Share in the comments.

Just a head’s up, Mrs. Biblioracle and I are off for a trip to jolly old England this week (my first time), so you may not see anything in this space next week if I can be convinced to fully vacate my brain while on vacation. If you have any recommendations for a couple of London tourists, share in the comments.

Take care,

John
The Biblioracle

1. All books (with the occasional exception) linked throughout the newsletter go to The Biblioracle Recommends bookstore at Bookshop.org. Affiliate proceeds, plus a personal matching donation of my own, go to Chicago’s Open Books and an additional reading/writing/literacy nonprofit to be determined. Affiliate income for this year is $89.30.