My Inner Crack Whore

Zestful Blog Post #98

So last week I talked a bit about the demands of marketing / promo and the fact that an author must—somehow, somehow—strike a balance between it and everything else. In a way I feel I have a tin ear for it. For instance, today I cannot bring myself to give away e-copies of Left Field exactly as I promised last week. I said I’d give away copies to two lucky winners, selected at random, among those who posted a comment or sent me an email.

As you will see if you look back, three Zestful Writing Club Members (which I consider you all) left comments, and a few more got in touch via email.

I considered claiming that the random number generator malfunctioned and awarded prizes to everyone, but the truth is, I can’t let anybody down. So if you left a comment or emailed me, you’ll get a book. (Some of you I have email addys for; one of you I messaged on Google+.) I guess if like fifty people had signed up I’d have to stick to my original plan, just because of the sheer administrative time involved. But maybe not.

I recently read something by a marketing expert who works with authors. We know that lots of authors don’t do adequate promo. This person said he thought those authors are ‘arrogant’ and they feel promo is ‘beneath them’. I suppose some are and do.

But for me, and I suspect for many others, the reasons are two:

1) Marketing is a skill set. To do anything well—or at least halfway decent—you have to learn it. This requires, in my case:

            a) admitting you have a problem;

            b) committing to change;

c) learning the skill set;

d) applying the skill set. Which takes a boatload of left-brained effort, which is counter to the right-brained effort of creation us authors committed ourselves to long ago.

[Sometimes it all feels so desperate...]

2) The plain fact that most of us were brought up not to boast, not to thrust ourselves forward, not to make lofty claims for our work and actions, not to be insincere. I prefer to let my work speak for itself. Except that its voice—confident but quiet—gets drowned out by the digital cacophony, and so needs help.

It is literally a physical and emotional struggle for me to do promo. I confess this not to elicit pity but to share a baffling thing. When I force myself to update my Amazon author page, or log into my (currently pathetic) Goodreads profile, or even type a post onto Facebook or Twitter, or do any other sort of putting-my-self (and-work) into the world, or even JUST READ AN ARTICLE about how to ‘interact with readers’, my stomach drops a little, my palms sweat, and my heart starts to pound. I really don’t know what the emotion is: fear? If so, fear of what? Failure? Success? Is it that my brain hurts because I have to use the left part instead of the right? I cling to my membership in Mensa and my history as a part-time college math tutor, to convince myself that I have at least some working left-brain molecules.

Regardless, I will continue my quest to get good at marketing and figure out ways to do it that don’t make me feel like a crack whore. Or perhaps I simply need to embrace my inner crack whore. I bet she's a nice person, once you get to know her.

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Dude, You're Screwed

Zestful Blog Post #91

Before I get into today's real blog, I want to let you know about a live online appearance: Next Wednesday, Feb. 11 at 8 p.m. (EST) I’ll be doing a Google Hangout with Andy and Rev on their Cocktail Hour. If you add them to your Google+ circle you can watch and listen live. (Handy link here: https://plus.google.com/+CocktailhourUs1/posts)

How it works is the url is available as soon as the thing goes live, so if Cocktail Hour is already in your circle, you can just go there at 8 next Wednesday evening and take it in. I'm sure I'll be brilliant. And aided, no doubt, by a Tanqueray martini, very dry, up, olives.

I'll be talking a bit about Left Field, but if you have any questions/issues you’d like me to discuss about anything, let me know either by commenting on this blog or sending me an email. (esims at elizabeth sims dot com, no spaces and use the punctuation marks you would normally; this is to defeat web spiders that search for email addys in blogs and then sell them to online porn stores, Nigerian royalty, etc.)

Now for the next installment in EPH (Elizabeth’s Publishing History):

10) Dude, You’re Screwed

Last week I wrote about the vagaries of the marketplace and cover design re: my debut mainstream novel, The Actress. I failed to mention that, just before the hardcover came out, I was informed by the Macmillan/St. Martin’s Minotaur marketing team that henceforth, Twitter would be the way we would all build community and do reader outreach. I found this dismaying, as I had detested Twitter as soon as it started to emerge, and had vowed never to establish a Twitter account. The insubstantialness of it, the quick shallowness of it, repelled me to the core. I had had my own web site for years, and had acquiesced to Facebook. (And I stuck with FB, even though they totally betrayed me; I had signed up early and written entertaining entries in the ‘background’ section of my profile, only to have FB delete all that when they changed their business model. Bastards. Bastards.)

But I dutifully established a Twitter account and made an effort to promote myself and my work without seeming to promote myself and my work. What a ton of fun. To this day social media is still a struggle for me, mostly because I’m like, Who in God’s name wants to hear my opinion on anything? The world is already full of blowhards. I’m supposed to be another one, only more entertaining?

However, I’m currently feeling a bit more dispassionate about it, like, OK, it’s business, try to find a sincere way to do this. I’m working on it and will write more about this subject in the near future.

Before returning to my narrative, I might add that when it came to promo for The Actress, I did all the normal stuff: announced the book on my web site, sent out newschats to my email list, printed up bookmarks to give out wherever I went, set up a signing at the Mystery Writers of America booth at Book Expo (and was invited to MWA’s late-night cocktail party at The Edison in Los Angeles, a great place to feel cool), went to and spoke and taught at other conferences and workshops, etc. But the Great Recession was a tough opponent.

As far as I knew, the paperback of The Actress was in production; it had been put up on Amazon for pre-order with the new cover I showed you last week. The release date was March 31, 2009. Two weeks before that date Cameron called. “I have bad news,” she said. “Minotaur pulled the plug on the paperback of The Actress.”

Since this was business and not a death in the family, I didn’t get emotional. But I knew exactly what had just happened. “So that’s it, then,” I said. “I mean, that’s the end of my career with Minotaur.” As a former bookseller, I knew how important it was for an author to be in paperback. The hardcover is your calling card, but the vast majority of your sales come from your paperbacks. Remember, at that time e-books were an unknown quantity in New York publishing.

Cameron said my editor told her that she’d fought and fought for the paperback at whatever meeting, but ultimately there weren’t enough advance orders from booksellers to justify an initial print run.

After I’d digested that news for a few days, I phoned my editor. I asked if there was any chance they’d reverse their decision if sales of the soon-to-be-released second in the series, The Extra, were above expected.

“Well, no,” she said. “There’s just not going to be a paperback of The Actress. We might run one next year for The Extra if the hardcover does well.”

[Here again we have a blonde facing away from us, but this one's definitely better than the original cover for The Actress.]

“OK,” I said. The gauntlet had been thrown down. I asked if Minotaur would help me set up a book tour for The Extra. I knew they wouldn’t pay my expenses, but I wanted their publicists to get my foot in the door at bookstores, and hopefully provide some co-op marketing and signage. The answer was yes.

More next week.

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