The practical upside to the writer’s night life is that his name is in constant circulation—no small consideration at a time when the publishing industry is in retreat. The national chain Borders, once accused of cannibalizing independent stores, is itself floundering. Growth of book sales has slowed, and traditional outlets for book criticism are disappearing. This summer, the Los Angeles Times closed its stand-alone book review section, leaving only three papers nationally with separate sections devoted to book criticism.

In this context, it seems hardly accidental that Rushdie is out and about. “You’ve had a lot of writers who have extended their franchises by being in the papers,” says Paul Wilmot, who runs a New York public relations firm. Rushdie is “continuing to write, but the book world is tough. It’s hard to sell books these days. Whatever anybody can do to further sales is a conscious strategy.”

To help execute that strategy, Rushdie relies on a circle of well-placed friends and publicists who enable him to work the room. Louise MacBain, the philanthropist and publisher of Art and Auction, invites Rushdie to speak at her Global Creative Leadership Summit, an annual forum show­casing intellectual leaders. Random House, which has published Rushdie’s books since 2001, has its publicity team working on The Enchantress of Florence and sent the author on a 45-day national book tour. Rushdie himself has hired an independent marketing and P.R. firm to bolster the Enchantress effort, which is not an uncommon arrangement in publishing. In fact, it was the independent publicist Kimberly Burns who wrangled Rushdie’s weekend in Los Cabos as part of the larger effort to acquaint the public with the author. Her client didn’t “care so much about promoting a resort,” says Burns, but “it was an opportunity for him to talk to people who read his books.”

Over the years, Rushdie has also developed relationships in the fashion and film worlds, which grant him entrée to New York’s glitzier gallery openings and movie festivals. The writer’s three-year marriage to Lakshmi only deepened these connections. Andrew Saffir, for example, met Rushdie through Lakshmi and now routinely emails the author with invitations to the Cinema Society film-premiere parties that Saffir hosts. “He’s a New York notable, a mover and a shaker,” Saffir says.

Mingling clearly agrees with Rushdie. At Las Ventanas, over a dinner of roasted sea bass with saffron aioli, he talks with a sunburned couple from Houston who are celebrating their engagement. They eagerly pepper him with queries: How did he get his vocabulary? At what age did he leave India? Did he really hide out at Bono’s house in Ireland during the fatwa? At both dinners, Rushdie answers all of his guests’ questions (no, he never hid chez Bono) and chats easily about everything from his mid-’80s visit to Nicaragua’s Sandinista revolutionaries to his favorite tennis players.

Yet with only two paying guests the first night and six the second, Rushdie’s payoff, beyond a few days’ respite, seems small. (A handful of hotel employees and a wine writer are also here.) Copies of The Enchantress, which the resort ordered to give away as souvenirs, were held up in Mexican customs, and some attendees don’t know what the book is about. To drum up attendance for the cocktail party and dinners, the hotel has slipped letters under guests’ doors, but most just aren’t up for it. “We have zero interest in attending,” says Michael DeBaecke, a wine merchant from Philadelphia who is vacationing with his wife. “We’re just here to chill. I have a feeling we’d have to be ‘on’ for that, and we’re kind of off.”