Category Archives: book marketing

Putting Your Work Away and Bringing It Back

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My daughter’s piano teacher used to tell her that when you put a piece away for a while and then bring it back, it comes back better.

I think this is also true for writing–at least it’s true for me.

Most recently, I “put away” my piano memoir, Imperfect Pitch, for several months. I had been shopping it around unsuccessfully for a couple of years, and then I was offered a consultation with an agent who told me she thought it would be more marketable if I turned it into a “self-help memoir.” So, last summer I added a bunch of short sections reflecting on the themes I’d raised and offering prompts and prescriptions people could use to tackle perfectionism and self-judgment while amplifying joy and forgiveness. I was excited to give that version to a few readers, but then disappointed when they uniformly said that the self-help voice was intrusive and detracted from the thread of the story.

I put the book away for a couple of months so I could read it fresh. But other than realizing that they were right, I couldn’t figure out what to do.

Then winter hit, along with the new administration and my father’s illness and death, and I was too depressed to do any substantive writing for a while. But the book was there at the back of my mind, niggling me. The project was too important to me to abandon. In fact, of all the things I’ve written, this is the book I most want people to read, because I believe its messages about creativity and mattering are essential to healing ourselves–both individually and as a culture. That was why I was going for an agent and the big publishing houses, rather than the small ones–and why I was willing to take this agent’s advice about so-called “marketability.”

But as the months passed and my writing fog started to clear, I realized it was ok for me to loosen my expectations on the marketability angle. I’ve always personally been an outlier when it comes to popular culture. So why should my book be any different? Yet, there was something in the added sections I liked–a wiser voice that could look back on the memoir incidents I wrote about and make sense of them. It was the poplike “you-too” voice that felt insincere and inauthentic to my newly attuned ears.

So, I took out that voice and shortened the reflections, making sure they all sounded like me–a wiser, calmer me than the me in the throes of wrestling all my musical baggage, but still me, without artifice. I hope they now feel like a cool wave momentarily breaking the heat. We’ll see. I’ve given the book to at least one more reader. And then, after what will likely be another round of revisions, it’s off to market one more time–perhaps no longer exclusively on the big press circuit. While I’ll continue to attempt to build my platform, I’m no longer interested in being anything less (or more) than who I am, whether or not my messaging ever gets popular enough to build a huge following.

Photo by Shel Horowitz

Incidentally, I also put away the Brahms Intermezzo I fell in love with and worked diligently on for two months. I got it down pretty well, but far from perfect. Which is ok, now that I’m no longer mentally beating myself up for piano imperfections. Still, I hope I’ll be able to make it way better when I pull it out again.

Have a listen here from pianist Jean Marc Luisada.

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Confidence

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Despite coming down with COVID a few days afterwards, my time at AWP, the big writing conference put on every year by Associated Writing Programs, greatly surpassed my expectations. This was huge, because my introvert interior had been raising a fair amount of ruckus trying to convince me not to go.

How did I get beyond my general dislike of intensive networking and chatting up strangers and vague acquaintances? I think Julie Andrews said it best–Confidence. (My 2 &1/2-year-old grandchild is obsessed with Do-Re-Mi, so I’ve been watching a lot of Julie Andrews, lately.)

I only went to AWP once before, ten years ago, when I was a student in an MFA program and at a low point in my writing life. As an older student who wasn’t into going out drinking every night after residency activities, I didn’t establish the strong connections that many of my classmates had. And I’d already achieved the goal held by so many–of publishing a novel (two, actually) with major publishers. The problem was I couldn’t seem to publish anything else because my books hadn’t met company sales expectations, even though both won awards and one went into six printings.

So I’d been floundering for a few years before I decided to take the plunge into an MFA program. Even then, the decision spurred more from the love of learning than with strong expectations of getting my writing life back on track. I certainly learned a bunch, but while the approach to learning writing through close analytical study and imitation of “successful” writers helped me polish many elements of craft, I felt like I was losing the connection to my own voice that I’d honed over the years with a more generative and positively focused approach.

And as my voice floundered and rejections continued to pour in, I lost my confidence.

What I remember about being at that AWP ten years ago was feeling that I didn’t belong. The journals and presses there were part of the MFA world, a world in which I didn’t feel included. So I didn’t talk to many of the people behind the tables. I walked the floor silently, feeling maybe a bit too sorry for myself. But when someone’s in the thick of writer depression, it’s hard to claw your way out.

So, what changed?

(1) Community: While I didn’t find a strong community in the MFA program, I did realize how important community was. It again took some arm-wrestling with the introvert, but shortly after I graduated, I started expanding my writing community. Forcing myself to go to a monthly reading put on by a local writers association led to an invitation to join a poetry critique group, which brought me a whole new circle of dear and trusted friends. And when the pandemic hit, joining on-line generative writing communities anchored near and far helped address the profound isolation of that time, even if it seemed strange to feel so connected to people I’d only seen in a box on my computer screen.

And one thrill from this past AWP was to meet two of these people for the first time: Sage and Carla in real life.

(2) Persistence: Somehow I got back in the submission saddle. Big time. With a goal of getting 100 rejections every year. And with these rejections came acceptances. And many of the journals who accepted my work were at this year’s AWP.  So I could go up to them and say, “Hi, you published a poem of mine in your journal. Thank you!” Hint: if you do this, it helps to have the name of the poem and the year it was published. And then, take a picture, as I did with Brian, who published my poem Horses in the Gully in his first edition of Tofu Ink, and bought my poetry book, Here in Sanctuary–Whirling.

In fact, it was my poetry book’s publisher Querencia’s participation at AWP that provided the final reason to draw me there, and I loved being part of an offsite reading they organized with Alternative Milk, fifth wheel press and many worl(d)s.place.  But having community and a publishing track record kept my sulky introvert at bay as I walked the tables of the trade show floor. This time, I browsed journals and small press titles, asking editors what kinds of work they were looking for. My conversations affirmed that these editors were real people, with their own tastes, judgments, prejudices that were no more or less valid than mine. And while I didn’t do a Julie Andrews hop-skip or wave a guitar around, I felt confidence–not that I would necessarily be published by these journals, but that my work was valid and belonged in their reading queue. And more importantly, that I belonged.

 

Humility and Spiders

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My grandson, Manu, has become obsessed with the Eeentsy Weentsy Spider. We’ve spent large chunks of the last three days singing the song and looking at a small  strand of spider web dangling from the hallway ceiling. “That’s the eeentsy weentsy spider’s house,” I tell him. He doesn’t seem to mind that the spider isn’t there, or that I’ve chosen not to reach up and grab the web for him. I think it’s the idea of a spider and a spider web that intrigues him more than the actuality. In fact, today, I couldn’t find the spider’s web at all, but it still didn’t stop him from looking longingly at the ceiling and talking about the spider as if it were there.

I’m impressed with his ability to switch gears to imagination when reality is less satisfying–a common attribute of children that we often lose as adults. Sometimes, I still miss the imaginary friends I had when I was three (maybe because they loved me unconditionally and there were never any relationship issues to work out, LOL!)  But when I can access it, imagination has served me well in getting out of my stuck writing places, especially when I’m trying to fictionalize something that had its origin in a lived experience. The further I can get away from what really happened, whether that’s changing everything I can about a “character’s” appearance and demographics, altering the setting, re-thinking alternative ways the chain of events could have played out, etc., the freer I am to get past my own vulnerability to the emotional truth of the story I want to tell.

Tim Green from Bradford, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

And then, of course, it’s hard not to think about spiders without conjuring Charlotte’s Web, which we must have read to our daughter (Manu’s mom) at least ten times–before she was old enough to read it to herself at least ten more times. And I can’t even count how many times I’ve seen the movie. The book is about a pig on a farm who befriends a spider, who saves him from becoming ham and bacon by writing words in her web: “Some Pig,” “Terrific,” “Radiant,” and “Humble.”

Of these words, the one that sticks with me (with web-like sticky threads) is “humble.”

Having two books come out in the last six months has been a challenge to maintain what I consider an appropriate level of humility, especially as book marketing experts encourage me to scream, scream, scream from the social media rooftops and spend my days looking for places to plaster my “products” anywhere they might be seen.

And that is SO not my style.

I admit I may have a problem with too much humility, which the Mussar (a Jewish spiritual learning paradigm) equates with a tendency toward self-effacement. Yet, even posting about recent things I’m proud of (like getting short listed for the grand prize and winning first runner up in short stories for the Eric Hoffer Award, or doing a podcast about Here in Sanctuary–Whirling on the Bill Newman Show, or announcing/sharing upcoming readings or poems that were accepted in various journals feels like I’m on the edge of too little humility (equated in the Mussar as arrogance).

But, hey…I just got that all in, even if it was back-handed.

I don’t want this to be another “Dina Kvetches about Marketing” post. So, I’ll just say what I said to my friend, Alice, when we were studying the Mussar together: I want my writing to be recognized for what it’s saying and how it’s saying it. I don’t want it to be about me. In other words, it’s the message, not the product, and I’m not really interested in me or my books being thought of as commodities.

And if all this is just rationale for more self-effacement, I’ll counteract it right now by sharing a poem from Here in Sanctuary–Whirling, because it’s about a spider.

NOTE FROM THE AIR BNB IN TEXAS
“Please Don’t Kill the Spider”

He has a name: Septimus
because he lost a leg somewhere.

You might find him by the toilet.
Don’t shriek as you do your doo.

His poison is all in your head.
Didn’t you read Charlotte’s Web?

Humble is the word that matters.
Confront your failings. Take a selfie

if you’re lucky enough to spot him.
And put on your boots, hat.

This is cowboy country
land of brash bravado.

Where’s your gun?
A spider could be lurking under your pillow.

Unseen children taken at the border:
their parents’ lost limbs.

 

Birthday Parties

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This Friday, February 23rd, is the official birthday of my new book, Here in Sanctuary–Whirling, a collection of poetry inspired by my work in the immigration justice movement.

So this week, I’m feeling myself floundering as I try to get all the pieces in place for a perfect birthday party.

When my children were little, birthday parties were a huge stress. My older child, especially, wanted everything exactly how she wanted it… the color of the plates, the order of activities, the guest list/seating arrangements, and where she would stand to hand out the paper for an art activity featuring red and blue food coloring. My younger child was a little more chill, but I do remember making several calls before I found a baker who would be willing to do a birthday cake with a salamander on it (a picture, thank goodness–not a real salamander, though I’m sure a live one would have been preferred!)

Keeping a bunch of pre-schoolers entertained for two hours, containing their sugar-induced energy, and making small talk with parents I didn’t know while wondering how much they were judging me for the cleanliness of my house, my parenting style, my children’s uncensored responses to gifts they didn’t like all heightened the anxiety. I loved hanging out with my children, but I dreaded birthday party season!

Luckily, a book can’t tell you want it wants the way a child can. But this also means all the pressure is on me. As I sift through a nauseating number of articles and listserv comments on book marketing, I’m recognizing some important things about myself. I did succumb, as suggested, to posting myself on video on Instagram opening up my box of books, even though I thought it was silly. But ultimately I still believe parties should be low-budget affairs. I’m not interested in the $100/day plan, or anything that requires huge monetary investments, even when I’m promised that investing a daily $100 will net a daily $150.  I got into this to be a writer, not a business person and I refuse to think of my work as a commodity that I have to manipulate an audience into buying. As it is, I’m already spending too much time in my analytical marketing brain rather than my dreamy and comfortable writing brain.

But the goody-goody schoolgirl who also lives inside me reminds me that I can’t simply do nothing. My book will be so disappointed if I don’t give it a birthday party! Yet, I’m going to delay the big launch until May, where it can be in conjunction with a photography exhibit on detention that my immigration justice group is putting on at the Anchor House of Artists. I’m still coming off my last book (Immigrants‘) birthday party (also delayed) which I’m glad to finally be on the other side of, even though I was wowed by the love and support of nearly 50 guests who showed up. I hope they liked the color of the plates (brown, compostable) and the gluten-free brownies.

In the meantime, I’ll invite people to wish Here in Sanctuary–Whirling a happy birthday on social media. And the gift this book would love more than anything else, for anyone who feels so inclined, is a review on Amazon or Goodreads. I guarantee, unlike my kids, the book will not talk back, no matter what you say. Or if you’re not someone who ever reads poetry, you can say happy birthday by adding the book to your Goodreads “want to read” shelf.

One birthday party I am co-planning and looking forward to is my mother’s. She’s turning 90 just a few days after my book is officially born. I’m thankful she’s never cared about the color of the plates. I got to order the cake. It will not have a salamander.

 

 

How and Why

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Back in my business communication teaching days I often shared a tidbit with my classes that I picked up from the career center: To prepare for a job interview, make sure you can answer “how” and “why” to everything you wrote on your resume.

This seems like a good process for writers, too. We can ask ourselves questions like:

  • Why am I choosing to break this line in this spot?
  • Why would my character say–*that*? Or do *that*?
  • How can I convey my character’s emotions from describing the way she’s opening her backpack?
  • How can I integrate setting more effectively here to raise the emotional temperature of this conflict?
  • Why am I using a metaphor here instead of sticking to the actual image?

The questions can be endless. And while I almost never answer them with a logical and well-worded rationale, I do use them as a guiding light through my intuitive fogginess. In other words, the mere act of framing the question can help me figure out if the choices I’m making feel true and right, and also inspire me to try a few different approaches and compare the effects.

Lately, I’ve also been putting some of these questions in play in my piano practicing. How soft should I make this part?  How much rubato is too much? Articulating a rationale is even harder since both my intuition and field of knowledge are on much shakier ground. But framing the questions in order to consider different ways of playing gives me a sense of the options. And since I’m no longer trying to prove anything to anyone about my piano-playing, I end up just choosing what I like.

As I’ve had to sacrifice some of my writing and piano time to tackle book-marketing, I’ve come up against how/why questions that feel more annoying–perhaps because interviewers, bloggers, and podcasters need to have clear and well-worded responses, rather than the multi-directional swirls in my mucky brain.

Q. Why did you become a writer?
True answer: I don’t know. I’ve just always wanted to be one.
Cheeky answer (because true answer is way too bland): Because I knew I didn’t have the chops to make it as a Broadway or Carnegie Hall star. And with writing, you can have as many do-overs as you want before you put your work out in the world.

Q. How do you like to write? With a pen? On the computer? In the morning? Afternoon? Middle of the night?
True answer: Sometimes pen, sometimes screen. Morning is best, but I can force myself to write at any hour if I’m disciplined enough.|
Cheeky answer (because true answer is way too bland, and how I like to write has nothing to do with how someone else might like to write): Actually, I like to carve my thoughts in sand with a stick and then erase them like a Tibetan mandala. And, I guarantee, the muse doesn’t care what time it is and what color pen you’re writing with, even if you might care.

Prof Ranga Sai, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

So what questions do I hope people will ask me at my book launch reading for IMMIGRANTS on Wednesday night. Here are a few I’d love to chew on:

  • What was the hardest story in the book to write and why?
  • Which of your characters did you fall in love with and why? Which characters were difficult to empathize with and how did you manage to overcome that challenge?
  • How will you deal with reactions to this book from people who aren’t sympathetic to immigrant issues?

True confession: At this moment, I don’t know the answers to any of these questions, but I promise to corral the various options and choose one well-worded answer–just as I would in a job interview!

 

Support Your Local Writer

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After a week and a half of cooking nearly every day, I still have 7 beets, 11 carrots, one huge sweet potato and one huge daikon radish. And more food to come on Saturday!

In western Massachusetts, where I live, supporting the local economy is a huge value that transcends red/blue leanings. At the top of the list is buying from local farmers. In the summer, you can find a farmers market in one of the surrounding towns almost every day of the week. They are always packed with people  willing to spend a premium for the privilege of fresh, local food and the knowledge that they’re contributing to their neighbors’ labors of love. I also purchase summer and winter farm shares from various CSA farms for both myself and my children and their families. This means that at this time of year I’m basing more of my diet than I’d like on parsnips, radishes, and beets, but it’s still worth it to know I’m eating in sync with the season and supporting my community.

A second value that many of us share is supporting local businesses. While it’s often easier and sometimes cheaper to shop on-line (and I fully recognize that there are many people with various health or financial challenges for whom that’s essential), I try whenever possible to patronize local stores, often setting a challenge to myself to locally source all my holiday shopping. And since books are one of my favorite gifts to give, I end up spending a lot of my holiday shopping time at local bookstores. We have so many good ones. My favorites are (in alphabetical order): Amherst Books, Booklinks, Book Moon, Broadside, and the Odyssey Bookshop.

Independent bookstores often have an on-line component, which means you can order most books also available on Amazon through their systems. The price might be a few dollars higher than the Amazon price, but to me, that’s no different than paying a local farmer a little bit more to assure that they can meet their bottom line and stay in business.

However, not all books can be obtained at local bookstores. Many smaller independent publishers encounter obstacles or simply don’t choose to go through the extra hassle of getting their books on the Ingram distribution platform that these independent bookstores use. I had to lobby hard with my publisher before they were able and willing to get the book on Ingram–under a different ISBN, just to make things confusing–and that didn’t happen until six weeks after the book was published. In the meantime, I was grateful to the bookstores who were willing to take copies of Immigrants on consignment in order to address the concerns of many of my friends who told me they’d love to buy my book, but only if they could get it at a local bookstore. And I’m especially grateful to the Odyssey Bookshop for hosting my book launch event, now re-scheduled for February 7.

And I’m grateful to the friends who bought the book to support me, just as I try to support local writers by buying their books–another way of giving back to the community. This week I ordered three books from people I know through writing: Dean Cycon’s Finding Home: (Hungary 1945); John Sheirer’s For Now, and Eileen Cleary’s Wild Pack of the Living. I’m looking forward to reading these books. And if I like them, I’ll make to write a brief review on Goodreads and Amazon (I buy just enough from Amazon to make sure they’ll accept me as a reviewer). That’s another easy way to support a local writer. You don’t have to sound brilliant–and I generally don’t. One-to-two sentences can make a big difference.

And even if you’re not a big reader, buy a book for someone you think would enjoy it. Or buy an EP from a local musician, or a small piece of art or craft item from a visual artist. Just as we need fresh produce to nourish our bodies, we need art in all its forms to nourish our spirits. And we need to let the local artists in our community know we care.

 

The Second Child

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Ironically, the day after I wrote the last post about my love/hate relationship with the spotlight, this wonderful feature of me in the Substack Starry, Starry Kite appeared. (Please check out this newsletter and subscribe!) So, I guess that means I’m doing my marketing homework.

It feels overwhelming, but in the past few weeks I’ve doubled the time I’ve spent on social media, mostly searching for and posting to groups. I also culled lists for a final email blast inviting people to my book launch next week, updated my Amazon and Goodreads author pages, revised my website, talked up the book at local bookstores, wrote an article for my alumni association, and connected with a number of editors of journals I’ve been published in to ask them to spread the word about the book. Still on my list is to set up and publicize a Youtube channel, investigate more blogs and podcasts, and connect more with journals and other relevant groups I know on social media, etc. etc. It never ends.

And as I was going full-steam ahead, a surprise snuck up on me. My poetry book  Here in Sanctuary–Whirling was suddenly in its final stages of pre-publication. In fact, it’s scheduled to come out from Querencia Press in late February and can already be pre-ordered at this link.

So now I have two books to drum up the buzz about. It’s kind of like having a second child, and (like the way I felt before actually having a second child) I’m worried about giving each book the love and attention it deserves. I had a similar situation in 2006, when my two children’s books, Escaping Into the Night and Playing Dad’s Song came out within months of each other. Escaping Into the Night continued to do well, since its unusual Holocaust story generated a lot of interest from middle school students and teachers. But Playing Dad’s Song, a book very close to my heart about music as a healing force from grief and aimed at a slightly younger audience, never found its niche. And several people with knowledge of the industry suggested its lack of success might have been related to being published too soon after my first book.

But these two new books are thematically related, so my plan is to market them together and let the books build on each other, treating Here in Sanctuary–Whirling as more like a late-arriving twin than a second child. There’ll be some differences in audience, since not all fiction readers like to read poetry and vice/versa. But both books center on the very human stories related to immigrants and immigration justice–one through poetry, the other via short fiction. And I believe there’s an emotional core in both these books that matters, and that we need to tell these stories to soften hearts and reject the horrible rhetoric that depicts immigrants as less than people.

And this alone is reason enough to keep marketing–and braving the spotlight.

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Immigrants, Centos, and Celebrations

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Last night I read at the annual 30 Poems in November reading, an annual event where each writer who participated in the fundraiser is asked to read one poem. Meanwhile, I’ve been overwhelmed by my writing/book-marketing to-do list, at the top of which is wrestling these poems to have something to send to donors by the end of the month, and continuing to spread the word about Immigrants through my web of connected networks while taking the first dips into investigating blogs, podcasts, social media sites, etc. where I don’t have a personal connection. (NOTE: Any suggestions are welcome!!!)

Most moving at last night’s reading was hearing from three of the students at the Center for New Americans who shared heart-felt writing in both English and their native languages, as well as their deep gratitude for the hard-working teachers at CNA who are helping them build their new lives.

As the negative rhetoric around immigrants starts to build again, with Republicans in Congress demanding changes in immigration policy in exchange for aid to the Ukraine that would make it even harder for people threatened by violence to escape to the safety of our country, I’m remembering a writing workshop I co-led for women in the border camp. We introduced the beautiful picture book, Somos Como Los Nubes (We Are Like the Clouds) by Salvadoran poet, Jose Argueta, which talks about the hopes and dreams of Central American children walking thousands of miles in search of safety.

Then we asked the women to write or draw their response to the book. One woman sat and started to cry. “I can’t write,” she told me. Having heard this many times from leading writing workshops for most of my adult life, I mustered up my Spanish to give her a pep talk on writers’ block. But she wasn’t talking about writers’ block. She was talking about illiteracy. I felt so embarrassed as I asked a more fluent Spanish speaker to act as her scribe, but recognized that my embarrassment was nothing compared to hers. And when it was time for her to share, her story, like every story we heard that day about kidnapping, lost livelihoods, rape, threatened or dead children broke our hearts.

While only one of the stories in Immigrants is about the border, I wrote the book to showcase all the ways that immigrants interface in our lives. While some of the stories are more political than others, in all of them, the human story takes center stage. As I worry about all the ways the U.S. is becoming less safe, it feels like an impossible nightmare to think about leaving my home to go somewhere strange and potentially unwelcoming, especially today as the winter sun is slicing a comforting wedge of light through my large porch windows. Yet, that’s what the immigrants coming to this country did–an act of incredible bravery to leave everything you know. And that’s what people displaced in wars have to do, with no opportunity for choice.

But I didn’t read a poem about politics last night. My poem, a cento, was about loving the world despite its difficulties. A cento, which is a collage of lines from other poems, might be a bit of a cheat, but hey, when you have to write 30 poems in a month, sometimes you need to take some shortcuts. And the fun thing about this one was that I only used poems for source material from the prompts that were sent out every day to participating writers.

So next time you’re stuck, leaf through some poems and write down lines that strike you (best if you’re not sure why) and then try to meld them together. I guarantee, this will be fun, even if you’re just tasting other people’s words, whether or not you come up with a poem of your own. Here are the first few lines of my cento. Poetic sources are from Mary Oliver, Dean Young, Mahmoud Darwish, Winnie Lewis Gravitt and Richard Fox.

VOCATION

My work is loving the world.
Because of you, I’m talking to crickets, clouds.
I have a saturated meadow,
where, like plants sprouting where they don’t belong,
sorrow, grief and trouble sit like blackbirds on the fence
scanning the topography of prayer