Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Promoting a Book


When I left the Cabot Library yesterday, I thought of the Steve Martin movie, The Jerk, where he's running down the street waving a book and yelling, "The new phonebooks are here! The newphone books are here!" because his name was now in print. I had just asked the head librarian, a pretty, friendly lady with wild, black flowing hair, how I might go about getting my new novel, Going over Jordan, on the list to be purchased by the library. She said just give her the title and author, and she would order it that same day. Wow! I'll be able to look my book up online in the card catalog. Who'd a thunk it?

I'm finding that the writing is the fun part. The promoting, not so much. Putting myself and my book out there is sort of excruciating for an introvert. But I'm getting great feedback from the people who have bought it. Maybe the ones who detest it are keeping mum. That's okay :) The book signing went awesomely, stupendously well, but of course I had images of me sitting there for 3 hours all by my lonesome. Some of us regularly expect the worst and then are often pleasantly surprised. My friend and former classmate, Linda Spurlock, took the above pic. Maybe she won't sue me for using it without permission. But then a lawsuit would be publicity......like they say in Hollywood, bad publicity is better than no publicity.

My publisher, Rick Baber, said for me to just keep plugging on the promotion stuff, but he also said that he thinks it's going to be an important book someday. Gee, Rick, I hope you're right! I'll be running down the street, waving my book, screaming, "They like my book! They like my book!"