This one idea might make you actually like gimmicks.

At first I was absolutely shocked to find out a controversial book leaked to the web. The book is called How to Murder Your Life, and the author is Cat Marnell, who is known best for XOJane . . . and being a "drug addict ex-beauty editor."

This is another one of her drug- and sex-journeys in the form of a personal essay nonfiction piece. It sold for around $500,000 USD, which wasn't the highest offer.

This is extremely high for a first-time author with a nontraditional format.  And it was leaked to the web? This seem to interesting to be true, and in fact, I started putting the pieces together and came up with an entirely new hypothesis. 

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Excerpts, outlines, drafts . . . a lot of his flooded online somewhat to Marnell's surprise, but then she added a little bit more to the web seen by this Huffington Post article (click page below for source). 

At first, it seemed really cool, and I thought this kind of exposure would be terrific for an upcoming author. Then I started thinking about how all the controversy about her drug addiction came off a bit gimmicky. Soon I was led to believe someone was pulling the strings on this "leak", focused on benefiting the book's success. I saw things like this:

Personally, I think Marnell wanted everyone to see these snippets. It's not too far of a stretch from the way I sample out excerpts of my books to encourage reads to look at the entire novel or collection. Plus, it's cool to share a little bit of the works for free, just to see how readers respond. 


I honestly think that's what we have going on here. We have a controversial writer putting together an equally controversial book in a a nontraditional form (which is cool but noted for provoking a large cult following), and now this controversial information leaked out in a controversial way for a noteworthy sum. And now everyone knows it's worth the half-million dollars. The books already selling itself before it's printed. 

That's just my little guess. Am I wrong?

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