Dear Rosco,
(If that’s really your name.)
Thank you for all your emails. It’s a thrill to read, each day, how enamored you are with my books. So thrilled, in fact, that I’m sharing your exact words with my readers.
Like your recent invitation to Reese’s Book Club, when you wrote: “I came across ‘What Papa Told Me’ and was deeply moved by its heartfelt and powerful tribute to your grandfather’s extraordinary journey of survival, resilience, and hope.”
The next day you pivoted to “90 Lessons for Living Large in 90 Square Feet,” noting “an interesting angle around how it’s a unique approach to small-space living.”
An interesting angle, eh?
Your name changes as often as your flattery. Yesterday you were Rosco. Before that, Rurban, Tathly, Niiamah—names that sound like Astro, the Jetson’s dog, trying to talk. Once you even borrowed a real name, impersonating a Senior Commissioning Editor at Pushkin Press.
You almost had me there.
It finally dawned on me why I get sucked into your emails. It’s the same feeling I used to get opening an American Family Publishers’ envelope. I knew it was baloney, but still I had hope as I read Ed McMahon’s letter.
So, for the purpose of this letter, I’m going to assume you’re a real person, Rosco, and share with you how similar the steps I take with your emails are to the ones I used to take with Ed McMahon’s letters.
1. Open the envelope
The AFP packet came with a personalized letter saying, “You may have just won five or ten million dollars!” I may have won? Of course I kept reading. This is how I feel when your email’s subject line is: “Feature Opportunity: Oprah’s Book Club.” What author wouldn’t open that?
2. Find the stamp sheet
With AFP, I’d hunt through the packet for the sheet of stickers with my name on it. With you, I skim for the compliment… with my book title on it.
3. Peel and stick the “YES” sticker
I’d press my personalized YES sticker onto the entry form, grinning like a winner already. With you, Rosco, after you ask: “Would you be interested in having your book featured with the Brain Worms Book Club community?” and I write back, “Sure, I’m interested.”
4. Select magazines
I knew it was optional to order magazine subscriptions, but it was implied it helped my chances. I’d flip through the catalog, placing stickers on anything that caught my eye. With your emails it’s when my eye reads: “I have a quick thought that could be worth exploring. Are you open to hearing it?” Yes, I’m always open to a quick thought. I’m just less open to paying for one from someone named Rosco.
5. Mail it back
I’d slip everything into the AFP return envelope, hopeful about my chances. Same feeling I get when I hit send on a reply to you, half-believing you’ll get me into Reese’s (or Oprah’s!) Book Club by Friday.
However, in not one of your dozens of emails, have you shown me that you understand a word I’ve written. And, Rosco, here’s the thing: you can’t understand Half In by knowing there was a 34-year age difference. You need to know what it felt like to be 23 and in love with someone 34 years older.
And you can’t understand What Papa Told Me by knowing it’s about my grandfather’s survival in the Holocaust. You need to know what it was like sitting across from him, asking about a past he’d spent decades trying to forget.
That’s the difference between spam and a real letter. A real letter tells me something about the person who wrote it.
So, Rosco, and whoever will show up in my inbox tomorrow, instead of telling me you were “deeply moved,” tell me something that isn’t on the back cover. That’s the mail I’m waiting for.
With love (and eyes sharp as knives, ready to spot your BS),
P.S. Rosco, I’d still like to know if you thought there was a better place I could have stored the toilet paper in my tiny studio.
P.P.S. And to the rest of you: did you ever fill out one of these sweepstakes forms? Tell me I wasn't the only one who believed I could win five million dollars off a sheet of stickers.
SONG OF THE WEEK
Junk Mail by the Circle Jerks
An outfit picked out, eh? Love that! Did it sparkle? Yes, our time gets sucked up with "unsubscribing." It's like playing Whack a Mole. But nothing like a bath to soothe all that away!
Great choice for the song of the week!