The Marketing Whore

Street_walker_two_4

I feel like I’m dialing for dates. I’m surfing the net for writing groups and bookstores – looking for places to talk about my book when it’s published. Talk, give free workshops – I’m available! This is what happens when your book is about to be published. The official pub date for Courage & Craft is in October but you can get it via Amazon on August 30th. (Don’t worry if you forget those dates, the marketing whore will remind you.)

Here’s the truth: there’s something that feels creative about this part of publishing. Not to mention the high of being the helpful writer for your publishing company.  I love my publishing team at New World Library – the editors who have evaluated my every word, the publicity department that’s getting me gigs around San Francisco in October. I feel blessed and at this point would do back flips for them.

But I know the day will come when I actually have to get on a plane or drive some place and give this talk, or teach this mini-workshop, and I won’t be able write because I’m selling, I’m schmoozing, and worrying about maps and parking and what to wear. And about five minutes into whatever I’m saying I’ll be sick to death of the sound of my own voice and thinking I’d rather be home watching reruns of the Sopranos but no, I had to go publish this book. Frankly this isn’t my favorite part of writing.  Writing and teaching, yes, and figuring out the marketing angle can be fun – but to go out and sell my book like pancakes or a used car, this isn’t the best part.

But it’s reality. If you want to be published, and you do get published, you too will go through this. On a scale of bad things going on in this world, the difficulties of publicizing your book are like minus zero. But think about it, plan for it, and add it into the equation.

I have a friend whose first book was published two months ago and she just emailed me: “I was picturing a marching band coming down Ventura Blvd. with two baton twirlers holding copies of my book in celebration.  What’s coming down Ventura has been a mix of EVERYTHING….It’s not the publishing that’s at all important, I can see that now.”  (And she got rave reviews and an ad in the New Yorker!)

So be prepared.  And read Carolyn See’s wonderful book, Making a Literary Life. “It’s just another part of our demented fantasy” she writes, “that once we write the book, we are done with it; we can sit and think for a while and then go on to write another one. In reality, publication demands an almost Janus-faced split in your personality three months before and three months after your publication date.”

Be ready to turn into a sales person – and meanwhile, love the writing part.

  5 comments for “The Marketing Whore

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *