Publicity: Soul Crushing or Life Affirming?
By Guest | November 22, 2011 |
Therese here. Today’s guest is the delightful Rebecca Rasmussen, who’s here to talk with us about her experience with publicity and how it’s impacted her–personally and professionally–since the release of her debut novel, The Bird Sisters. Rebecca’s novel releases in paperback today, and if you haven’t yet picked it up, now’s the time. Said the Library Journal Review in their starred review of her book:
Rasmussen’s debut novel is full of grace and humanity. Her heroines are fearless and romantic, endearing and engaging, and her poetic prose creates an almost magical, wholly satisfying world.
This is a beautiful book, and if you know Rebecca at all, this will not surprise you.
Enjoy her post!
Publicity: Soul Crushing or Life Affirming?
If you know me at all, you know the answer already. Or at least my answer. When I’m playing the part of novelist I’m an eternal optimist in ways I’m not when I’m, say, in the checkout line at Target and my daughter is crying because I won’t buy her a Barbie doll and I tell her instead that if Barbie was real she wouldn’t be able to stand on her own two feet. Barbie crushes my soul; publicity doesn’t. But it almost did after my novel The Bird Sisters was published in hardcover this past April.
Back then (in the eighteen months between signing my contract and publication) my instinct was to look after the book with the same intensity I looked after my daughter from the time I found out I was pregnant and stopped drinking coffee, to the time she took her first breath outside of my belly and the doctor announced her her-ness and her shock of thick black hair. One of the big differences is that a first novel, or any novel for that matter, doesn’t automatically breathe on its own, which is why I vowed to help The Bird Sisters along as much as I could.
I emailed. I am blogged. I tweeted. I called. I Friended. I Dugg. I Reddited. I Google Buzzed. I became a good typist!
I’m dreamt about the weird bump on my right hand, and the good health insurance I couldn’t afford that would allow me to see a doctor without bankrupting us. I’m dreamt about the word tenure-track and had nightmares about the word adjunct. Oh, book, please deliver me from that mean-spirited word! I thought.
What an awful load to put on a little book! To put on myself.
I knew better, and still I did it.
Then came the book’s release day and the still upcoming months of waiting to see if all my hard work and reaching out had had any impact on the sales of the book. These were long months. But I’m thankful for them because they gave me time to open my eyes to something more important. In the nearly two years of working on spreading the word about my book to the world (because initially mine was a small book for my publisher), I made a lot of lovely friends – people I never would have met if I hadn’t been blogging and tweeting and generally working my butt off every day. It may sound like a Girl Scout troop theme song (wait, I think it is!): a ring is round it has no end, that’s how long I want to keep my friends…but it’s true.
It’s how I feel.
My wonderful new friends shouted about my book to their wonderful friends and their wonderful friends shouted about it to their wonderful friends, so on and so forth, and I really believe that’s the main reason why I have good news to share with you today: The Bird Sisters, which is being published in its paperback version today (November 22nd) has been chosen as the December/January pick for the Ladies’ Home Journal and their new, very cool book club—look for the pink sticker on the cover! It’s also the reason I believe the book was chosen to be part of Target’s Emerging Authors Program starting in December and the reason my publisher is devoting a lot of attention to it the second time around. (I screamed when I heard the new print run, which I didn’t do when I heard the first one.)
Still, no checks are popping up in my mailbox just yet. No offers of great health insurance either. But everyday I get a message from one of my friends and everyday I have something to smile about. I’m lucky. Really lucky.
Maybe publicity can be a little soul crushing if you’re only out to market your book. At first, I thought that’s what I was doing. For the first few weeks, I felt a little like Barbie—fake!—until one day I noticed a blogger who was having a hard time with her daughter. The little girl was having tantrums at every turn, and her mother was in tears over it online. I remember tweeting with her, telling her I was going through the same thing with my daughter and we messaged each other back and forth until we were laughing about our temporarily devilish she-children. At one point, I think I may have even said that it was Barbie’s fault that our daughters were freaking out at dinner and in the bathtub. And I think she may have said, “Everything’s Barbie’s fault.” And I know I said, “I’m SO happy I met you.”
That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.
Thanks for sharing your experience, Rebecca, and best of luck with your paperback release! Readers, you can learn more about Rebecca and The Bird Sisters by visiting her website and blog, and by following her on Facebook and Twitter. Write on!
Photo courtesy Flickr’s striatic
Many thanks to today’s guest.
You can read more WU guest posts by visiting this link.
Ahh, thank you for this. I’m in the ‘oh my god I have to promote myself’ hell as I prepare for my debut launch in January. It’s terrifying. More terrifying than a blank page or a plot hole or hard drive failures.
I keep reminding myself that I’m just having conversations with interesting people, not broadcasting infomercials. :) The hard part is ignoring so much external advice that doesn’t necessarily feel authentic to me. It may mean that I’m not maximizing my networking potential, or something but I have to take a path that feels aligned with who I am. And along the way, I’ve found some amazing books and authors.
Best of luck with your paperback release!
This is the part I dread most about publishing, but I like your outlook on it. It’s much less scary to think of it as individual conversations than throwing yourself and your book out there for the masses.
Thank you for the giggle this morning. I’m so very thankful Barbie and her evil minions are a thing of the past in my household. I, like LJ, am gearing up for entrance into the publishing world. I know there’s work to be done in the virtual world – but I’m not certain where the best place is to start. How did you find these people to connect with beyond FB and twitter? And how much time did you spend daily making these connections?
Congrats and the second run! I know which book I can buy for Christmas for my reading friends! Happy Thanksgiving!
I’m not as far along as you are (yet, I hope), but I have been amazed by the people I’ve met and the relationships that have developed from this crazy journey. And they say writers live solitary lives.
Thanks for sharing. I’m glad it isn’t as soul-sucking as you feared, and congrats on all your success so far!
Great post, Rebecca. I discovered you here at WU when your book first came out. I read it soon after, and loved it! It’s beautifully written, and the dialogue is exceptional.
Congratulations on the paperback release!
What a lovely post, Rebecca. You point out one great truth: it’s the little things in the big ventures that make it all worthwhile. Congrats on the paperback release, and on all its recognition. You (and The Bird Sisters) deserve it!
“Everything’s Barbie’s fault”, I love that! Thanks for this incredible post, and congratulations on the success you’ve found. Publicity is a land I haven’t had the pleasure of nosying around yet, but it’s enlightening to read about your experience, and it reaffirms that one needs to put work into the publicity of a project in order to get significant buzz surrounding it.
So happy to read about how your effort paid off Rebecca, not just for your book but also in terms of making new friends. Congratulations!
This post made me smile, and feel better about what I’m doing with my writing career right now. Thank you so much!
Sarah Allen
(my creative writing blog)
This post made me smile. A lot of authors dislike doing publicity and sometimes claim about it (I’m making no judgments about that) so it was refreshing to read a post that didn’t go down that road.
Thanks, and continued luck to you!
Keetha
Claim about it?
Sorry – that was supposed to be complain. I was thinking faster than I was typing.
Beautiful, beautiful reminder of why we do this work. Thank you! It’s not for the money. If we were just after the money we’d all be stockbrokers.
It’s for sheer love.
I so agree with you! And even the same week! I have noticed that, if you look at social media with an eye for developing connections and enjoying relationships, it’s a heck of a lot more fun and fulfilling. I think the people who are in it with an eye only for selling their wares really are missing out, and missing the point of the socialness of social media.
:)
Your last anecdote is exactly what I love most about being part of the blogsophere. It may not pay the bills or fix that bump on your wrist, but it’s what counts.
Great post. And, I’m wondering, who do I blame if there is no Barbie in our house… Congratulations on the paperback and the book club!
Thank you all so much for your lovely comments!!!
Love, love, love this. In the end, it’s the relationships that count…and organically spread the word about books.
I loved this entry. As someone who is just starting the editing process of her first novel, it was definitely inspiring to hear how you approach publicity. I’ve entered the world of Twitter and it’s this constant source of encouragement that keeps me going as a writer, even when I doubt my own prowess. More power to you!
I believe word-of-mouth advertising is the best kind there is. And in this case, it’s friend-to-friend advertising. SO happy to hear you SCREAMED when you learned of the second print run. Woo hoo. So proud of you and your success.
So happy for you with all this great news! I am not surprised and I can’t wait to see THE BIRD SISTERS in my local Target! Good things happen to good people.
XO
Wow, I needed this. My first novel comes out on February. I find myself wading through so much advice that sometimes I just have to step away from the blogs and social media to sift through it all mentally. I can (and have) worked myself into quite a lather over it. This post brings a sanity–a much needed sanity to the conversation.
Congratulations on your success. I’m about a year behind you, as I just jumped into the social media with blogging in January. I started tweeting after that, and still feel like I’m crawling.
In the past year I finished a memoir, self-published it, and am now trying to promote it. Laying the groundwork in advance, as you have done, would have been a good idea. Who knew?
I agree with many of the comments from your readers above, sometimes all the helpful advice isn’t all that helpful. You have to find your own way. Apparently you have.
Well done.
Regarding Barbie, I spent a little one-on-one time with my daughter and her Barbies when she was young. We played career Barbies where Ken was interested in the smart Barbie (with the badly mangled hair) and not the shiny new Barbie. If you can’t beat them, join them.
Ah, the “publicity” angst – oh boy do I have it, and three novels and a novella later I am not better at it emotionally or whateverlly than I was in the beginning! If I “advertise” my books I feel like a car-salesperson, and if I don’t talk up my books I feel as if I’m going to sink into oblivion. So instead I kind of stare around like a deer in the headlights *laughing* dang.
A lovely blog post full of energy and I can see a big smile behind it, as if you were smiling the entire time you wrote it.
Congratulations on the great news — well-deserved! I love the Barbie stories. My youngest daughter is 5 and I confess that I caved after a year. But we’ve had several serious talks about never trying to look like Barbie. And writing that sentence makes me laugh. Ah, motherhood — of books and babies.
This is just plain inspiring.
Hi Rebecca! Your promoting worked! I heard about The Bird Sisters on Twitter, then “met” you on Twitter. Because you were so lovely online I was even more excited to promote your book too and to meet you in person in Minneapolis.
The Bird Sisters was one of top reads of 2011! How wonderful that more people will discover it (at Target, etc.) in 2012. :)
Thank you all again — your comments are inspiring to me!
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