The last few days has been a maelstrom of activity related to Cat & Cat. On Friday morning, the reformatted version was finally vetted and published at Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/427306 . I then spent Friday evening & Saturday working with my tireless tech guru, Mike Hamilton, on a bunch of boring particulars - PayPal accounts, creating ebook coupons, web-hosting & web design, republishing the "clean" version on Amazon ( http://www.amazon.com/Cat-Novel-Three-Movements-ebook/dp/B00JAQXIUE ), posting on Facebook, Twitter, Linked-In and here. So I wake up at 3:30AM today and immediately go to Amazon & Smashwords to check sales & downloads and investigate some new publicity/promotion options, and while downing my fourth cup of coffee I suddenly realize I haven't done a LICK of real writing in the last few weeks. And I'm just a novice at all this. I mean what the h--- will I do if I ever actually sell a lot of copies?
I have a friend, Erin. She's a talented young writer. Fresh out of the MFA Program at Kent State. Erin is where I was 25 years ago. Like me, she opted out of the Ivory Tower and is now grinding in the 9-5 world. I love talking to her because she's fresh out of grad school and overflowing with the kind of cynical idealism that once fueled me. She also loathes the very idea of self-promotion. When you're in college and in a writing program, you stand on the merits of what you produce. Not what you can sell. Every week or two, you read a selection of what you produced aloud to a group of your peers and your professor. If it sucks, they will let you know. If it's good, you'll get some support. No one SELLS what they write. If they even tried, they'd be tarred & feathered, drawn & quartered and run out of the program on a rail.
I know there must be good writers who don't mind and maybe even enjoy selling themselves. They're in the definite minority, however. Most who apply themselves to the craft abhor self-promotion, and cringe at the very notion that writing is a business. Unfortunately, it is. Even if you're just an unknown, fifty-year-old, 9-5 desk-job drone trying to jump-start a career as a novelist. That's why any writer enjoying a modicum of success quickly takes on a lawyer, an agent and a publicist. It's not that writers can't be salesmen or business women. It's just that .. well frankly .. all that grown-up stuff sucks.
I was thinking about this idea yesterday in terms of the film 'Dr. Strangelove.' When the movie was released, Stanley Kubrick, Peter Sellers, and George C. Scott all refused to go on the talk-show circuit and promote it. The only one they could get to do it was Slim Pickens, who was enthusiastic about it. Pickens was hilarious on every show he did, but it left audiences with skewed expectations of what the film was like.
ReplyDeleteSo what you're saying is I need to find my inner Slim Pickens?
ReplyDelete