overview

overview | one-sheet | take aim | m.k. jackson | backgrounder | q&a | images | reviews | request review copy | downloads

download EPK (2.2 MB)

aim for the middle: how to achieve happiness, success, and love through the unbridled power of mediocrity
by m.k. jackson

The satirical takedown of the self-help industrial complex that proves a life of realized adequacy is far more fulfilling than one of elusive excellence.

audience

• Adults seeking realistic approaches to personal growth

• Fans of humorous nonfiction

• Readers dealing with transition or reinvention

comparable titles

• The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*ck by Sarah Knight (2015)

• Stand Firm: Resisting the Self-Improvement Craze by Svend Brinkmann (2017)

• F*ck Feelings by Michael Bennett & Sarah Bennett (2015)

• The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson (2016)

• How to Be Fine: What We Learned from Living by the Rules of 50 Self-Help Books by Jolenta Greenberg & Kristen Meinzer

book information

Title: Aim for the Middle
Subtitle: How to Achieve Happiness, Success, and Love Through the Unbridled Power of Mediocrity
Author: M.K. Jackson
Publication Date: December 10, 2024
ISBN (Paperback): 979-8-9851041-1-0
ISBN (eBook): 979-8-9851041-0-3
Page Count: 286
Price: $14.95 (Trade Paperback), $2.99 (eBook)
BISACs:
HUM012000 - HUMOR / Topic / Business & Professional
HUM000000 - HUMOR / General
SEL000000 - SELF-HELP / General
Distribution & Availability: IngramSpark

elevator pitch
Aim for the Middle is a satirical guide that challenges self-help culture’s obsession with constant improvement, arguing a data-backed case that success and happiness aren’t achieved by chasing excellence, but by choosing the more sustainable middle ground of mediocrity.

synopsis
Aim for the Middle: How to Achieve Happiness, Success, and Love Through the Unbridled Power of Mediocrity by M.K. Jackson is a ribald takedown of the self-help industrial complex and its impractical one-size-fits-all methods.

After surviving two brain surgeries, divorce, a layoff, financial collapse, and the death of his mother, Jackson was forced to rebuild his life from the ground up.

Unmoved and unconvinced by the boilerplate high-effort, low-return self-improvement playbook, he sought an alternative to the relentless goal setting, journaling, affirmations, and getting up at some ungodly hour just to do it all.

What he discovered was liberating: The Mediocrity Principle—scientific evidence that mediocre performance isn't a failing, a deficiency, or even laziness, but humanity's default condition.

Freed from the burden of exceptionalism, Jackson developed a more realistic philosophy: that a life of realized adequacy is far more fulfilling than one of elusive excellence.

Blending memoir, satire, and cultural commentary, Aim for the Middle chronicles Jackson's meteoric rise to the middle, making the case that authentic success, happiness, and love are found not by endless effort to overcome our limitations, but by understanding, accepting, and even embracing them.

author profile
M.K. Jackson is a Los Angeles–based writer, humorist, and self-described
existential fatalist.Blending sharp satire, profane humor, and unflinching
emotion, Jackson writes about mortality, grief, ambition, self-delusion, futility, and failure, through the peepholes of nostalgia, and absurdity.

key selling points

• A satirical takedown of the self-help industrial complex and its relentless demands for improvement.

• A counterargument to the cult of excellence for anyone exhausted by investing more and getting less in return.

• Get more of what matters by wasting less on what doesn’t.

• Irreverent satire, absurdist humor, and deeply personal memoir in a book that takes mediocrity far more seriously than anyone reasonably should.

Purple Prose Publishing LLC

purpleprosepublishing.com
info@purpleprosepublishing.com

P.O. Box 421572, Los Angeles, CA 90042