Storytellersunplugged

For someone who tries to make his living selling lies, nightmares, and flights of fancy, I hate drawing attention to myself. I didn’t like it when I was in kindergarten, I didn’t like it when I was in grade school, I didn’t like it any better once I hit high school, and now, as age 50 has become less of an abstract concept and more of a sentient being with recognizable features and questionable breath, I still cringe at the prospect of “self-promotion.”

Were it not for the urgings and irrefutable logic of my wife, Lucy Snyder (who’ll have more than a few words on this subject come the 26th), I’d be holed up in my office, creating my lies, nightmares, and flights of fancy while functioning under the antiquated notion that the work and the work alone will be sufficient to gain the attention of readers, editors, and publishers; just get the book out there and — if it’s of any quality whatsoever — the rest will take care of itself.

I’ll give you a moment to stop laughing and shaking your heads in pity.

Ed Gorman — who is in my opinion the finest American writer working today — had the following to say about self-promotion (and not being one to try and improve upon perfection, I offer his words with no paraphrasing): “My pleasure as a writer has always been the writing itself. That’s the real reward. The business side is just that — business. Not a great ordeal. But not much fun, either, especially the self-promotional aspects that have now become so necessary. For writers like me — and there are a lot more than most folks realize — self-promotion is an embarrassment. For writers who enjoy it, great. But for those of us who’d rather stay home and write … not so great.”

I have come to accept, as Ed stated, that self-promotion is a necessary and sometimes embarrassing evil in today’s publishing world, and while I find that, the more I engage in the practice, the less embarrassing it becomes to me (sometimes it’s even — gulp! — fun), there remains a part of my psyche that feels like a huckster, a reiver, a flim-flam man, a carnival barker with megaphone fused to his mouth as he shouts above the din:

“Step right up, ladies and germs, and see for yourselves the wonder that is this writer’s books! Pages filled withterror, paragraphs overflowing with poignancy, sentences aglow with sensitivity — he’s got it all! You say you want the shivers? You say you want to be on the edge of your seat? You say you want romance, adventure, thoughtful characterization and maybe a little food for thought once the last page has been turned? Then you’ve come to the right place! Here’s his latest, and what a corker it is — can’t'cha tell just by looking at that cover? You sir, and you, ma’am, you look like discerning readers to me, so what say you? Who’ll give me 5 dollars for this book that I know you’re gonna love? 5 dollar 6 now 6 dollar 6 dollar, 6 dollar 7 dollar give me a holler 7 dollar who will pay it at a 7 dollar book? I’ve got 7.50, 7 and one-half dollars, a pittance, my friends, a mere pittance for the hours of terror and tears between these covers! You’ll shiver, you’ll sweat, you’ll be nervous and terrified; you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll drink coffee….”

Yeah, there are times it feels exactly that way. So I have come to accept — if not completely embrace — the task of self-promotion.

So let’s say you’ve decided to take the plunge, to give in, to surrender to the unavoidable truth that, in this day and age, one must promote one’s work with all of the energy, precise targeting, and intricate planning of Patton’s North African Campaign; you’re ready and willing to use all venues and tools at your disposal. Great.

But make sure you ask yourself one important question: where do you draw the line? How can you tell when your attempts to “…get the word out…” have stopped being informative and intriguing and have taken on the characteristics of cyber-stalking your book’s potential audience?

I subscribe to the newsletters of several writers and publishers in order to stay abreast of their upcoming appearances and / or new releases, but lately — especially in the past 6 months or so — some of these newsletters have gotten … well, kind of pushy, even obnoxious. Booksellers who send out notices about new releases and special deals on a seemingly daily basis; writers who urge you to buy not one, not two, but threecopies of their latest book; one for yourself, one to give to a friend in order to help “…spread the word…”, and the third (and I’m not making this one up) to simply leave in a public place so that someone who otherwise wouldn’t bother picking up the book will snatch this unguarded copy, take it home, read it, and become an instant fan, thus keeping the Domino Principle in motion by (say it with me) “…spreading the word.”

Street teams. Web sites. Blogs. Banner ads. Podcasts. Book trailers. Message boards. Newsletters. Discussion board announcements. Webcams. MP3 downloads of Chapter 1, or Chapter 4, or Chapter 13 (once the writer finishes paying for his or her website, webcam, podcasting equipment, and extra bandwidth needed to support the potential on-line traffic). Even this wonderful venue, Storytellers Unplugged, is a form of self-promotion for the writers who participate in it (although so much more is discussed here than just so-and-so’s new book, and that is what makes this an invaluable resource for writers and readers alike).

The methods and media available to someone for promoting their new book are dizzying.

But there are writers out there — and we all know this, even if it’s never spoken aloud — who spend more time and effort on self-promotion than they do on actually writing a good book. I have found this out the hard way. I have on 3 separate occasions been duped into purchasing and reading an at-best journeyman-quality novel because said writer dazzled me with a great book trailer, or an attractive website, perhaps an intriguing (and misleading) description of the novel’s premise, or offered a free on-line excerpt from the novel that turned out to be the only 8 decent pages in the damn thing.

Here is what I have learned via my wife about self-promotion; when it’s done correctly, when it’s done tastefully, when one takes the time to research the best on-line sites where a banner ad will have the maximum effect, when one deftly discusses one’s new novel on a message board or in a newsletter, then self-promotion can arguably become an art form — and a rewarding one, at that — in and of itself.

Example: I put together a book trailer for my last novel, Mr. Hands, convinced it was going to generate nary a ripple of interest once it was posted — and was stunned to discover that within 72 hours, it had been viewed nearly 300 times, and the book’s ranking at amazon.com had jumped from something like 182,000 to 34,000. They probably heard my jaw hit the floor all the way up in Toronto.

Lucy made sure I ate all of my humble pie for dinner that night.

And if I’d thought that the Mr. Hands trailer affair was just a fluke, Lucy put that notion to rest when her 2 collections, Sparks and Shadows and Installing Linux on a Dead badger and Other Oddities were released a few brief months apart. How she plotted her publicity campaigns for both books, and how she went about timing those campaigns, was a wonder to behold (she is more web-savvy half-awake than I am firing on all 8 cylinders) — but that’s for her to tell you about come the 26th. Make sure you check back in, because how she did it should be adopted as a template for those who, like myself, are only now beginning to understand and appreciate the value and challenge of self-promotion.

I’ll sign off now, but wanted to end by saying that it’s a genuine honor and great pleasure to once again be part of the Storytellers Unplugged team. It’s good to be back. (And you know what would make it even better? If all the other writers here were to go out and buy copies of my new novel, Coffin County — or better yet, buy 2, 3, or 10 copies. That would make me feel truly welcomed back into the fold.)

Subtle, wasn’t it?