HOW IT WORKS
For some bizarre reason people keep asking me why I do not mind negative publicity, in fact seem to welcome it. So let me explain how the system works.
We can divide people into four basic groups. The first, and by far the largest, is totally indifferent. They are not going to care about me or my product one way or the other. It does not fit any need or desire in their lives. That may change in the future, but for now they are, for all practical purposes, out of the system. Therefore I do not have to worry about them.
The second group is my fans. For them I can do little, if any wrong. No matter what anyone says or thinks about me, they are always going to like my stuff and buy almost everything new that I create. These are the people I really work to keep happy even it means that in doing so I create the third group.
The third group are people who hate me and everything I stand for and they include a lot of people other than deranged ex-girlfriends. This group comes with the territory because there is no way that you can accomplish anything of value in life without making enemies and if you say things that violate perceived norms you can make quite a few of them. These people are not going to buy my product no matter what I do so I can ignore them except on those occasions when I can have some fun at their expense. Or, when I can use them for free PR because it is inevitable that some of them will not be able to resist attacking me.
The fourth group is the expanding market. These are the people who may be interested in me and my work but, for some unfortunate reason like living in Timbuktu, have never had the opportunity to have heard of me. This is where the enemies come in.
You see, no matter what anyone does, somebody is going to like them and if the right people really do not like him, the other people will find the mere fact that folks get all upset about him a cause for curiosity. And curiosity is what brings in readers! So it follows that the madder I can make certain folks, the more likely they are to condemn me from the rooftops. That will annoy their neighbors to the point where they will start reading my material and buying my books just to spite the pompous fool who is telling them what a bad person I am, even though I really am, by any standard of conventional (read boring) morality a very bad person indeed.
I just had that happen a couple of weeks ago. Some deluded madman attacked me on a Yahoo group and the next day I had a couple of dozen new readers and sold a whole bunch of books and two videos!
I like having enemies. They make money for me.