7-40 Challenge | Round 4, Day 11
Malcolm Gladwell opens The Tipping Point with the story of Hush Puppies. A dying shoe brand — almost pulled from production — that exploded into a national trend because a handful of kids in Soho started wearing them. The company didn’t cause it. They nearly killed the brand. The tipping point happened because the right people found the product in the right place at the right time, and it spread from there.
I need to find my Soho people.
I have a five-star review on Amazon from a guy I went to high school with. We haven’t spoken in almost thirty years. He found my book off a single Facebook post, read it, and left a review comparing it to Brandon Sanderson and Robert Jordan. He said he put everything else down to read it. He wants the sequel.
One Facebook post. One reader. Thirty years of silence, and the book broke through it.
He’s not the only one out there. I know that. The problem has never been the product. Every person who’s read Phase Defiant has told me they couldn’t put it down. The problem is that almost nobody knows it exists.
I have a how-the-heck-do-I-get-this-in-front-of-people problem.
Gladwell’s point isn’t that Hush Puppies were great shoes. It’s that tipping points have structure. They don’t happen by accident — they happen because conditions are right. The right people, wearing the right thing, in the right neighborhood, at the right time.
I’m a storyteller who wrote a book. I don’t know where my ideal readers gather. I just know the book is good, and the few people who’ve found it agree.
So this week, I’m not trying to sell to everyone. I’m looking for my Soho — the small group of readers who will grab this book and not be able to shut up about it. I don’t need a million of them. I need a few in the right place.
I’ve spent five months building things I believe in. Now I have to learn how things spread.
David Willis 