It has been a while since my last blog post. It would seem that WHILE you are writing a
book, there isn’t a whole lot of news to post.
“Hey, just finished a page!” or “Wow, that edit was a rough one!” doesn’t
seem like the gripping reading into which you would want to invest your time.
The marketing/promotion front is slow right now. This is the downside of self publishing. I have managed to get the book in Wegmans, our
local supermarket chain store, but trying to get a book signing there has not
gone as quickly as I would like. But, I
need to trust in the process and hope that things will work out.
I do have a reading scheduled on the horizon, so that is a
good thing! I will be crossing the state
line into Pennsylvania to read to 5th through 9th graders
at the Blue Ridge School District in mid-April.
There are a couple of local gigs I am working on as well, but it is a
little too early to reveal anything right now.
The big disappointment, however, was not making it to the
next level of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel of 2014 contest. I know it was my first attempt at anything
like that, but it is still heart breaking, and it is hard not to take it as a
personal blow. I have also started
dipping my literary big toe in the cold waters of finding a literary
agent. But, as with the contest, have
only experienced rejection on that part as well. And here is where I am seeing the conundrum
of the traditional vs. self-publishing route.
The traditional arena seems like a very closed system; seemingly
designed to inflict rejection after rejection, demoralization after
demoralization until only those most stout of heart or numb of an sort to
feelings survive. I guess this is the
way to weed out the stragglers and boil it down to the best of the best. Still, it seems crushing and probably many a
good author have fallen by the wayside as a result of the system.
Of course, that leaves the self-publishing route, which is
much easier than it ever was, but as I am learning that without the backing of
an agent or a publisher, the marketing of your book suffers greatly. What good is a self-published book, good or
bad, if you can’t get people to read it?
Sure, there is an initial thrill of seeing this finished work in your
hands and selling a hundred copies or so, but once that tapers off you are at a
loss of where to go next.
Yet, amidst my various marketing issues, I have made
progress on Council of Ancients. I’m about five chapters in, and am starting
to set up the overall conflict of the book.
Two new and important characters have been introduced, both of which you
met if you got the link to the first chapter on the Facebook page, and I think
right around Chapter 6 I will be addressing the riddle of the “artifact” Karura
was trying to obtain back in book 1.
So…thanks for reading my random musings and stay tuned; I
will post more whenever news becomes available!
