tempting fate and sbd, but not really about either

Have I ever mentioned how lucky I am when it comes to family? I mean my immediate family of course boys, mike. They're the business---and the lights of my life. But I also mean the extended version--siblings, in-laws. It's impossible to do better than the group I lucked into. I love them, like them and even respect them.

Have I mentioned this good luck for me? Now I have. Thanks, Fates. I'd say thumbs up and good job for me. And now I will go touch and knock and kick wood to stop those Fates from changing their minds.

* * *
TWITTER EFFEX

Okay. Monday and it's SBD and I have a book coming out fairly soon, like in a couple of weeks. I'd put up a cover but there still isn't one. I'd put up an excerpt, but I'll wait on that. I think about all the things I'm supposed to do about books coming out, make as much noise as possible (hey, a Billy Mays shout out here! That's what we did yesterday instead of a moment of silence. We had moment of noisy babble and since there were about 9 teenagers in the house, it was quite a moment.)

I have done none of it. I'm not sure why.

Perhaps because this book doesn't fit the others? Or because I'm burned out on promo? Hard to imagine the second. I haven't had any books to promo lately. I think I'm not burned out on MY promo, just the whole noise of it in the world. I don't watch the videos or join the facebook groups, even of the writers I like.

Reading is such a private event and all that promo is so out there nothing but babble, the opposite of reading.

Almost all the twitters I watch and enjoy are basically what semi-famous people are up to and they're promoing each other and I get enough promo from that. I'm talking funny, interesting people like Sarah from SBTB and Ron Hogan and Sarah Frantz and that lot.

But the world really is not much more than pushing oneself or one's friends forward. It's almost as if watching each other and keeping track of trends has replaced everything else including reading, which is what they're supposed to be watching and tracking. I realize that it's just the cumulative noise. Each of them on his or her own is off quietly leading a life and each article is fine, but when the whole group gets together (and I follow hundreds) it's as noisy as a hen yard or a conference of any sort. squawk squawk. I'm not being superior here even if it sounds like I'm raising myself above the squawking. I'm delighted when someone so much as peeps in my direction. But it puts me off trying to wedge stuff in there. My own books, for instance. And it puts me off promo because so much of that noise is look at this! look at this! LOOK AT THIS!

Okay, okay. The other main reason I'm not promoing? I'm not sure about this book. I wish someone I don't know would read it and pat me on the back. There, there, Kate. It isn't a trivial time-waster. Wait, no. I like trivial wastes of time. I aspire to writing good ones. What I mean is I want someone to pat me on the back and say there, there, Kate it's a FUN trivial time-waster.

It would be particularly good if that someone I didn't really know read it and better if that someone was a reviewer. Who twittered about it. Look at this!

Comments

  1. Hmm. Promo and all is fine, but stay the hell away from Twitter. Not only because I hate the damn thing, but you don't want to end up like Alice Hoffman. (A shame, too - I always really liked her stuff, now I just pity her. Decidedly NOT the kind of pity that makes me want to buy her book.)

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  2. I wonder if someone hacked Hoffman's account---it's almost impossible to believe that a writer who's had more than one book out would explode about a bad review.

    Although wait wait wait there was Ann Rice's great Amazonian shitstorm.

    Someone that full of the sound and fury is going to let it out online somewhere.

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  3. You forgot to say the title of your book. You really ARE bad at promo. Sheesh!

    Can't believe they haven't gotten you a cover yet. Maybe that's partly why you don't feel inspired to promo.

    Mike at LSB always tells the authors, why bother trying to stirr up advance buzz, wait until there's a book readers can actually buy and then start your promo work.

    ReplyDelete
  4. yeah, that's the beauty of online sales: you only have to romance the readers and not the booksellers. One is SUPPOSED to do buzz months before a print release. I remember charts and charts of the stuff to do for mass market paperback. I wonder (a few years later) how much of that is still true. Probably none -- and probably none of it mattered back then. All those bookmarks and coverflats and ARCs and . . .

    Sigh.

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  5. And you still didn't say the name of your book. And is it YOUR book or is it SUMMER'S book? I mean, I like Summer, but I like your stuff much better. Summer's such an airhead.

    ReplyDelete

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