Sarah E. Moffett

“Can’t you organize mud wrestling in the Tidal Basin or something?”  It wasn’t a college co-ed who offered this question up.  No, no, it came from a slightly more respectable source.  My publisher.  Well, sort of.

Let me start at the beginning.  Recently, I’ve been receiving the same questions over and over.  In an effort to provide a blanket response, I’m going to try to field them in this forum.  The first question everyone keeps asking landed me with the above Socratic response.  

Book tour is over.  Now what?

In the immortal words of one haggard, but honest publisher, “Sweetie, book tour is never over.”  Granted, one may no longer be required to plead with the TSA to give back their  3.01 ounces of shampoo, enjoy sitting on a long flight next to someone sporting the latest SARS headgear, and be a basket of sunshine at back-to-back book events sans flask, but the promotional efforts never end.  Or so I’ve learned.

After the traveling portion of book tour ended, I discussed with my publisher my recent mental inklings to begin writing the next book.  (Read:  After 16 weeks of book tour, I hate marketing, I hate people, and I want to pull a female Thoreau for the next year.)  He sent my inklings packing when he recommended I focus on promoting for now.  (Read: After not nearly enough weeks of book tour, you LOVE marketing, kiss babies, and want to coordinate a mud wrestling romp in the Tidal Basin with everyone wearing t-shirts that read Growing Up Moffett.)  So now I post.  Do interviews.  Network.  Good times.

Other authors, present company not excluded, have argued with their publishers that self-promotion is counterintuitive.  Or in my case, you tell your publisher that book promotion feels like bamboo shoots up my personality’s toe nails.  After all, most authors write to know themselves.  See SEM write a memoir.  To know themselves, they tend to be rather introspective.  See SEM spend a lot of time by herself.  And typically, those who are introspective find it difficult to engage in such extroverted activities as not only meeting and engaging complete strangers, but promoting one’s self.  See SEM nearly in hives before her first book event.  Isn’t this a personal violation of an artist’s integrity to be forced to pimp one’s work out?

Unfortunately for me, my publisher discarded my version of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (alone time, food, running, reading, sleep, no people, not in that order), and stated the obvious.  For all of its technological and business savvy, the publishing industry is not an exact science.  Publishers do not know what makes a book sell and catch on, but they do know if an author isn’t promoting the book, it will fail.  Two time author Scott Berkun, who wrote a three part series on the intangible world of literary marketing, observed in comparing his two releases that “[t]he surprise has been that despite the increased effort, a better written book, and a higher profile/sexier topic, the new book has sold well, but trailed [his previous book] for [its] respective first 3 months of sales.”  

More than ever, publishers are looking for something more than good writing.  They are looking for authors who will promote their book, themselves, and turn their name into a brand.  Yes, a brand.  I have actually heard the words “we’re building up the Sarah Moffett brand.”  Once the spoon was removed from between my teeth and I got off the floor, I went into hiding for three days.  But I digress.

The point is with 170,000 new books are released every year, there is no bankable answer on how an unknown, first time author should make a name for him or herself.  There are a few absolutes though.  If you sit at home, so will your book.  So how do you promote?  Any way possible.  For an introvert such as myself recovering from book tour and the joy of rediscovering humanity, this means blogging. 

At least,  until the mud wrestling options improve.

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