People do this, right?
They blog about their book launch in a kind of self referential, quasi-narcissistic way drenched in actual fear that no one will actually show and it'll just be like me, the publicist, my wife and my one month old son sat there, holding a balloon, forcing smiles?
I find this whole thing kind of scary to be honest. For one thing, I hate being that guy who scalds all his social friends into involvement in his own personal project. I don't have a whole lot of friends who do that, they're all gracious enough to have a modicum of class about what they do. But I've just become him, I've lashed the invite all over facebook, tumblr, twitter and everywhere else with a login. Hell, I'm going to copy the link at the end here too.
I guess, as a writer, I'm not really a PR person's dream. I'll happily shy away from the limelight when it involves me actually engaging with humans, especially to ask something, and in particular something like the validation that comes with inviting them to a self-promotional event. Jeez. I can sit and post things and plague everyone with links till the cows come home. Stepping up seems like another thing. I'd imagine other writers are like this about their book launch too. We're reclusive, isolated souls by nature, right? I mean, right?
I've always party suspected the reason writing had such a tight hold on me was the illlusion of control in a situation where I never had to explain myself to anyone. Until I showed it to my wife, and she explained to me she didn't yet care about any of the characters, didn't understand where they were, what the dilemma was and why she should read on. In a multitude of ways I'm blessed to have her, but from a purely writerly way I could not have asked for a harsher critic. Far, far better writers than I have fallen at the hands of this demon reader, but perhaps that's for another post. I guess the upshot is if you want to make it, garner any sales at all and get to write more, you have to actually emerge from your little cave, rub those eyes and try and talk to other humans in the cold light of day.
So that's what I'm trying to do, in Dublin, on November 5th:
https://www.facebook.com/events/938070689596955/
They blog about their book launch in a kind of self referential, quasi-narcissistic way drenched in actual fear that no one will actually show and it'll just be like me, the publicist, my wife and my one month old son sat there, holding a balloon, forcing smiles?
I find this whole thing kind of scary to be honest. For one thing, I hate being that guy who scalds all his social friends into involvement in his own personal project. I don't have a whole lot of friends who do that, they're all gracious enough to have a modicum of class about what they do. But I've just become him, I've lashed the invite all over facebook, tumblr, twitter and everywhere else with a login. Hell, I'm going to copy the link at the end here too.
I guess, as a writer, I'm not really a PR person's dream. I'll happily shy away from the limelight when it involves me actually engaging with humans, especially to ask something, and in particular something like the validation that comes with inviting them to a self-promotional event. Jeez. I can sit and post things and plague everyone with links till the cows come home. Stepping up seems like another thing. I'd imagine other writers are like this about their book launch too. We're reclusive, isolated souls by nature, right? I mean, right?
I've always party suspected the reason writing had such a tight hold on me was the illlusion of control in a situation where I never had to explain myself to anyone. Until I showed it to my wife, and she explained to me she didn't yet care about any of the characters, didn't understand where they were, what the dilemma was and why she should read on. In a multitude of ways I'm blessed to have her, but from a purely writerly way I could not have asked for a harsher critic. Far, far better writers than I have fallen at the hands of this demon reader, but perhaps that's for another post. I guess the upshot is if you want to make it, garner any sales at all and get to write more, you have to actually emerge from your little cave, rub those eyes and try and talk to other humans in the cold light of day.
So that's what I'm trying to do, in Dublin, on November 5th:
https://www.facebook.com/events/938070689596955/