by
Janis Patterson
Whether you self-publish or go with
a traditional publisher, the burden of publicity falls on you. Yes, even with a
traditional publisher you are responsible for getting your name out there –
unless, that is, you are already a household name, in which case you needn’t
read any further.
Publicity is one of the banes of a
writer’s existence. At least it is for me. I’m gregarious in public. I have a
lot of friends and I enjoy talking. Seems I would be a natural for doing
publicity, doesn’t it?
Wrong. I was raised in an
old-fashioned manner, where it was considered crude and vulgar to push oneself
forward, which is just about what publicity amounts to. Plus, I love the ‘aloneness’
of writing. I love sitting in a room, playing with my computer as I invent
populations and worlds and events. (Some call it a god-complex; I call it fun.)
Whatever one calls it, to me that
is what writing is about. The publicity circus is something else. I don’t see
where adding my voice to the cacophony of “Buy My Book!” out there is good for
me, people in general or my book. A couple of announcements upon release or
winning a prize I can tolerate, or a couple of discretely placed ads, but not this
constant “Here’s an excerpt – you’re going to love it so much you’ll want to
buy my book!”, even though there are loops devoted to nothing else. I cannot
help but wonder how anyone has time to buy any of these books if they read all
the excerpts posted.
On one of these excerpt loops there
are two women (whose names I am not going to reveal) who post two or three
excerpts every day. Every single day. They must be faster writers than I,
because with doing so much publicity how do they have time to write or have any
kind of a life?
We won’t even talk about the
tsunami of free books out there, which have to be promoted just as much as a
full-price one, let alone the problems and frustrations of getting a book out
there for free. I’m not allowed to use that kind of language.
I had an interesting call from one
of the minions in one of my publishers – yes, I’m a hybrid, and no, I’m not
going to name names here, either – chiding me for not doing enough publicity
for my books with them. If I would only push my books more, she said, like holding
giveaways and engaging with my readers through social media and buying ads I
would be selling so much more. Needless to say, this is a big publishing house
– one with which I do not intend to publish again, for this and several other
reasons.
I was polite to her (my mother
raised me to always be polite) but basically told her I was waiting out my
contract to get my rights back – if I can get them back. Big publishers are
becoming notorious about not giving rights back at all through one dodge or another.
She was horrified. Didn’t I want to sell books and make money?
Well, duh! Of course I want to sell
books, but making money with them is problematic. On my self-published ebooks I
make between $2-$4 dollars each sale. On the books through that big publishing company
I make less than a dollar – and sometimes as little as six or seven cents,
depending on how much of a ‘sale’ they’re having. If I’m going to go to the
time and trouble of doing all that publicity stuff it’s going to be for the
books where I make money instead of small change.
Somehow some of these publishing
companies can’t get it through their collective heads that most writers write
for money, not for the perceived glory of being published by them!
As for social media and interacting
with my readers, it’s a time sink. I really don’t care about interacting with
my readers. I’m sure there are some very nice people out there, and I might
like them, but between my writing and my life I am very limited on time. Surely
sensible readers who like my work would rather me be writing another book
instead of being on-line comparing gardening techniques or swapping recipes or
telling them how I write a book or whatever else we’re supposed to do to
‘engage’ our readers.
So what are we to do? Some writers
can juggle all this and jobs and families and whatever else – my hat is off to
them. I can’t, but that doesn’t make my books any less interesting. Some people
hire assistants and publicity agents – I can’t afford to, at least not until my
books start to sell better. It’s a vicious circle – you can’t afford not to get
your name out there, but getting your name out there takes money and time, two things
which far too many of us don’t have a lot of.
I ask again, what are we to do? I
don’t know. I believe that writers should write and readers should read. I
should not have to mortgage my time or my house to sell books. If anyone comes
up with a workable solution, I wish they would share it.
