Even Before I Have A Book…

Recently my agent started a blog. She has been talking about marketing and promoting and the things that writers should do even before they get that first book deal. Lori is damn good and this is a must read for any would-be writer.

But it’s started me to thinking about promoting and my writing career. The truth is, I’ve been thinking about it for a LONG time.

I edit for a publishing company and recently had dinner with a client whose manuscript I edited. While we were talking I asked him what he planned to do for promotion. He said, “Well, I haven’t thought about that yet. The book doesn’t come out until 2008.”

I think I may have scared him a bit as I looked at him as if he’d just jumped the 723 feet to his death from the Sundial, where we had dinner. I said simply, “You should promote yourself first. There will be other books, perhaps even other genres, but you will be the one thing that remains the same.”

I think that may be an important thing to remember for all us writers. We spend lots of time and many years thinking about one book. Working on it, honing it until it’s just right, and this is good, but the one thing we forget is that the book will not be on the shelves forever. There will be other books, hopefully better, more important books, but we will be the one constant thing throughout our career.

I may be strange, but I have several different documents in my computer reminding me about things that I’ll need to do for myself, much of it even before my book’s published.

One of them is called ‘Tour for Sylvia’s Sun.’ It’s thirty six pages long, and talks about all the cities I plan to tour promoting my NAME (100--all of which I will be staking out friends and families couches, and many which plan to have a book release party for me. More than one? you say. Hell, yes!), the names of all the books clubs who have asked ME to speak even before I have a book, the type of book trailer I want, complete with black and white pictures of a young girl giving birth to a dead baby and ending with something more sinister. I have a list of the colleges and schools who have shone interested in Sylvia’s Sun (before Lori even talked about it, so this made me feel good), and things that other writers say have worked for them. The list goes on and on.

You could say that I’m just anxious about my turn, but the truth is, I want to get it right. I never want to say that I didn’t do the best I could. I want to be able to do this for a long time. I’m not just promoting my book, Sylvia’s Sun, but myself as a writer for a long time to come.

Really, I want to be the best …but this, my friends, is a post for another day.