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hitch a ride on the publishing world’s version of The Heart of Gold (the ship stolen by Zaphod Beeblebrox and powered by the above mentioned engine) until I ordered a salad with an agent. Like Arthur Dent’s wild ride through space and time, I am zipping around an unknown universe, trying not to get zapped. Everyone else in this universe seems to have a handle on what is going on -- everyone but me.
Even though no one has ever read a book by me before, I am expected to lure thousands of strangers to Amazon to pre-order my book – all synchronized on the same day – so that my ratings there will be such that my sales will sell the book. Or – something like that. It made perfect sense at the time I heard this and I was stone cold sober at the time. Now? No. But still I have set August 15th as the random date when everyone must order from Amazon, which makes as much sense as this entire paragraph. -- which is to say, none.
Buy this, do that, advertise here, there, everywhere, who do you want to provide quotes, where should the ARC’s go for reviews, have you set up signing dates and locations, what kind of promotions are you going to do, order these to give out and try not to be too pushy when you give them out . . . holy Wowbagger. I have NO FREAKING CLUE. For something that resides mostly in the head, there appears to be a huge amount of physical, real world stuff to do to get it into someone else’s head. I quietly wish we could just use our brains like the infrared beaming function on our PDA’s and “beam” it out to recipients who want to “receive” it. Work done. Revenge-Gifts.com could travel from my head to yours in sixty seconds (or less depending on baud rates). The only downside could potentially be that you don’t want to see what’s in my head until you’ve seen it and then you would have to wipe that sector in your head as a result.
In Douglas Adams’ world my problems and headaches could all be put right if I ordered a nice cup of tea. Right now, I would not have time to drink it. I used to think I had time management wired. I had perfect control of my world and each slice of my time was accounted for with work, play, creative writing, family activities, etc. When one thing goes though, it takes everything else with it and suddenly nothing is working and very little gets done. I am reorganizing my time, but for the life of me I can’t calculate it out because I have this great unknown involved in promoting this book, writing the next two books clamoring to get out of my head, and succeeding brilliantly at the job that actually pays me money. Forget about my house and family, they are on their own for a few years. Just kidding, but – not – because something has to go and I think I’m just going to have to flip a coin to decide what.
Another writer who is not yet published just announced that she is going to eek out time from work and home to just be by herself and write. I have seen this phenomenon before and only the independently wealthy ever seem to manage to pull it off. I keep hoping someone will yip out and honestly say they managed it. Report back and tell us how it’s done! I am afraid that, even if they do it, the hole they crawled through to get to it will have closed up against the rest of us. |
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