Okay, well, let’s see what we got in the news today. “Cutting their own checks: authors seek help to plug their own books after cuts by publishers.” Oh, my. Having to promote and market your own books. It’s hard these days. It’s always been hard, but it’s even harder than ever.
Even people with big publishing are having to pay other people to do the marketing because what is being demanded of us is so ridiculous. Let’s see. “Around the time my third or fourth book released, in much the same way a business expands to more employees, my author business began expanding more quickly too.” Yes. Says Harvey, an author.
Yes. Investing in book promotion is the thing to do. You got to pay somebody to do this stuff because God, there’s so much heavy lifting involved in a 20-city book tour or whatever. But I’m not going on a 20-city book tour, unfortunately or fortunately. I don’t know. Anyway, I’m not really sure about all that, but I will say that there’s a lot of pressure on authors to do this sort of thing, whether you’re published with a traditional publishing company or self-published.
Oh, look, we have HarperCollins. It was reported … I heard something ... heard about a strike, I think … the US publishing industry, this is from The Guardian. They represent a certain point of view and I'm willing to live with that.
Okay, where was that thing? Now I can't find it. [Found it!] “Employees of Harper Collins publishers participate in a one day strike outside the publishing houses [sic] offices in Manhattan.” Yep. That happens and they're unusual in having the union. By the way, most people in publishing don't have a union. I mean, especially authors. I mean, we have the Authors Guild, but I don't know what they do for us exactly. Let's see, wait, here's something .… the Authors Guild Launchpad: Book Marketing and Publicity with lots and lots of things that you can look through and recorded stuff, and that's nice. What else? What else have we got here that's just lovely. It's Time We Added Full Credit Pages to Books. Whoa. Okay, so now books are like movies, so that's an interesting twist on things. I have nothing against that whatsoever. Yeah. Put all the editors in there, put all the copyeditors in there, put all the marketing in there, put all the publicity, cover artist, all of it. Yeah. Let's give everybody an acknowledgement, honestly, because it does take a village to create a book, but it creates a different kind of village to create a movie and one that the writer goes in and thinks, “Ooh, money!” and well …
It doesn't just get thrown at you just because you created a cool script. You got to go out there. It's marketing. It's always about marketing. It's always about who do you know? Who can you connect with? What do you bring to the project?
What do you bring to the project? That's something to think about. Something I like to think about because as a person who studied library science, I know a little something about research and writing and using the internet, but I don't know everything. Being a librarian isn't about knowing everything. Being a lawyer is not about knowing everything and being a journalist is not about knowing everything. It is about knowing where to look for the answer. That's where I find the hope of the internet, where we can look to find an answer from each other. I hope I'm making sense. It's Friday, it's a holiday weekend, and I just decided to say, fuck it. I am making this video and saying this. We all deserve a break. Take a break now and then and just be glad to be alive. And then there's this …
See this four pound weight? I could never have [lifted it with my bad hand] six months ago.
Or even two months ago. I can't believe that. Look at that.
Not. Bad. Not bad. Got to make sure, I’m … ooh, got to make sure I'm sitting up straight. That's a problem. The whole left side there’s all affected. It's amazing. The brain is a very strange organ that we still don't understand and in any case, thanks for watching and I'll be seeing you.
I gotta stop saying that …! 🙂 As if … LOL!
PS: I especially love this quote:
“Things have evolved through the years,” says Hayes, “and now there’s just all of these things that authors are expected to do. They’re expected to have a website, a newsletter, be active on social media, have a plan for how they’re going to talk about their book. And a lot of authors just want to write the book: that’s why they became an author, not to do all the other stuff.”
It certainly has nothing to do with any of this! 🙂
PPS: Do you even know what a best boy is? They assist the gaffers and the grips.
Guess that covers all the assistants and interns. 🙂
PPPS: Here’s the AI summary of what I said on the video.
Speaker 1 discusses their progress in lifting a four-pound weight, something they couldn’t do six months or even two months ago. They emphasize the importance of maintaining good posture while doing so. They also mention that their left side is affected, hinting at a possible health issue. They conclude by acknowledging the complexity of the brain and thanking the audience for watching.
Yeah, that’s not quite complete, is it? 🙂
Give Yourself a Break