Nowadays authors have to do much of the marketing themselves—even authors who are published by big presses in New York. And many authors, myself included, don’t have the money to hire a publicist. Unsolicited Press, an kick-ass, small, woman-owned press in Portland, Oregon, has published both of my books. They do so much—book fairs, posts for each book on social media, a Substack with author interviews and essays, a You-Tube reading series. They send books out for review. Publishing a book is a partnership between the press and the author.
But writing and all that goes along with it is only one part of my life, and not the biggest part. I spend most of my time working and keeping up with the ins and outs of life—tending to a home, myself, my partner, to friendships, connections—and preparing for the upcoming release of Tsunami. For a few months I’ve had a long list of things to do to promote the book. And because marketing doesn’t come naturally to me, that’s what I kept setting aside.
Every week I would enter that list in the calendar, and at the end of the week, I would transfer that same list to the next week. Then I realized, with some help from others, that I could start with one small task a day—an email, a visit to a book store, a connection—and just do that one thing. And when my tendency to pile on rears its head—today I’ll do three things, a post, visit a bookstore, send a book to someone who might be interested in writing a review; plus I need to edit a couple of articles and the cat needs to go to the vet and I’m meeting friends and there’s dinner—I stop myself. That’s when I get overwhelmed and move all three marketing tasks to the next day. And sometimes one task takes multiple days because there’s follow up and that follow up is important. Doing one task at a time, one task a day, seems so obvious, and yet it’s a lesson I’ve had to learn over and over again, with everything in my life. Slowly, very slowly, I’m checking off those items from the list.
But I’m also shifting my perspective because marketing a new book is a long game. Not everything has to happen all at once. I want the book to keep connecting with readers for months and years to come. With my poetry collection, Gathering the Pieces of Days, I did so many events in the first three or four months that I lost steam. So I’m trying to approach the release of Tsunami a bit differently, allowing myself space to breathe between events.
Now on to the poetry part of the program.
Today’s post is a bit different, in that you’ll have to click the links to get to the poems. I’ve included two links, one to an ekphrastic poem “Petits Matins,” which X. P. Callahan featured this past Monday on Diary Poems. Each Monday she features a new poet and I was so honored to be featured. The poem was inspired by Joan Mitchell’s painting of the same name.
And on July 9, Janie Braverman created an alchemical construction from my post and poem entitled “Fog.” To me this is one of greatest compliments—for someone to be inspired enough by my writing to create a poem of their own. The gift is I get to see my work in a whole new way.
These are just two examples of the incredible poetry community here on Substack.
And thank you for being here, for reading, for supporting my writing.
My book Tsunami is being published by the awesome Unsolicited Press on August 11, and you can preorder it now. Preorders are important. Each order says this book matters as it makes its way into the world. You can order the book directly from Unsolicited Press or Bookshop.org. Gathering the Pieces of Days is still here too looking for readers if you haven’t read it yet.
There are links on my website as well.
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