Posts Tagged ‘J.D. Salinger’
Last week I was lucky enough to give a talk with my dear high school friend, Leah Wedmore von Baintner, at the New Britain Public Library, our hometown library in Connecticut, about how much the library meant to us:
Today, many business leaders tend to believe that the most profitable way to operate is to establish a relationship with their customers. Marketers use terms like “connection strategy” to describe their attempts to satisfy their customers’ needs and develop loyalty.
Writers have it all over them, and have for a long time, at least based on the one focus group I conducted back when I was 16. I didn’t know anything about business strategy when I and my friends wrote fan letters to a number of people 
we admired back in the 70s. We were bored high schoolers, and our plan was to have a fabulous dinner party to liven up our small Connecticut town. We invited Woody Allen, Rudolph Nureyev, probably Bob Dylan and several other unlikely guests. No one showed up, which didn’t surprise us too much. But what was striking — and made the entire enterprise a huge success — was that all (and only) the writers replied.
I don’t think a single one was thinking overtly about “satisfying our needs” or “developing loyalty.” But they certainly did both, several with a simple postcard. John Updike answered with a question: were we surprised he wasn’t coming? Maurice Sendak had a little printed drawing of a dog on his. Paul Zindel, author of The Pigman and The Effect of Man in the Moon Marigolds, wrote back on blue stationery. Robert Penn Warren’s wife declined on his behalf, as did Thorton Wilder’s secretary. Best of all was the response from J.D. Salinger, who sent a handwritten rejection that called us ‘winsome’ girls. It couldn’t have been sweeter. And it sealed our loyalty, requiring not another word, for nearly 40 years.
As an author myself, I know that books are a strange combination: works of art that are sold as products. But I also know you get very far, in any field, if your connection with your customers is viewed solely as “strategy” cooked up in a corner office. It’s got to come from someplace more sincere and unstoppable – like a reflex — that is found deep inside.
