Book Publicity, My Latest Book Review, an Author Interview, and More

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Book Publicity

Hello, hello! I’ve been busy getting ready for the publication of my new novel, THE CODGER AND THE SPARROW! If you’re in the Austin area on March 28^th, there’ll be a book launch event at BookPeople, a fantastic bookstore in downtown Austin, Texas. RSVP and preorder the book at this link. The event starts at 7pm and I’ll be in conversation with James Wade. There will also be an event at Nowhere Bookshop in San Antonio, Texas on March 30^th at 6pm. I don’t have a link yet. I’ll be in conversation with Andrew Porter at this one. Both events should be fun! Hope to see you at either one. These are the only two events I’ll be doing in March; more events to come later in the year (I’m looking at you Texas Book Festival).

Now that there’s only 49 days (!!!) until my new novel is published, I’ve been in book publicity mode, not my favorite mode to be in, but I do it nonetheless because I want readers to find my books and read them and enjoy them and hopefully feel inspired by them. But in this day and age, all of us creative types of people (I refuse to call us “creatives” because that’s stupid; I’m a writer, not a creative) are pretty much forced to put on our marketing and publicity hats and tasked with selling our wares…I mean products----I mean, our books. Most authors, including myself, are not extroverts or salespeople or marketers, not our strong points, anyway. We like to be by ourselves and write stories, preferably with lots of coffee and a fuzzy pet nearby. Asking us to publicize our books is a BIG ask. But why do publishers expect us to promote our books when our specialty is to write down our words in a secluded room? You got me. Doesn’t seem to me to be the best strategy for selling books. But what do I know?

New Year New Things, My Latest Book Review, an Excellent Author Interview, and More

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New Year New Things

Happy New Year! I hope you’re 2024 is an exceptional year and, if not, well give it your best. What more can we do, right? Anyway, you may have noticed my newsletter looks a little different. I made a switch from Substack to Mailchimp last month, mainly because the owners of Substack wouldn’t denounce the proliferation of Nazi and white-supremacist content on their platform or the fact they were making money off this disgusting content. You can read all about it here, if you’d like:

https://www.techpolicy.press/substack-founder-defends-commercial-relationships-with-nazis/

Now, I’m all for free speech, but there comes a time when a stance needs to be scrutinized and I morally can’t get behind a company who thinks it’s okay to take money from Nazis or white supremacist groups. As a person with fifty-percent Jewish heritage, I just can’t. I understand corporations are not perfect and the owners of Mailchimp, Intuit, may not be perfect as well, but I haven’t found any public comments from Intuit stating their cool with Nazis using their services. And so, for me, if someone asks me, “Are you cool being associated with a company that is okay with making money from Nazi content?” then my answer is a “hard NO.” It wasn’t a difficult decision for me to make.

But, it was a pain in the ass. Switching to a different newsletter service with great email features was not easy to do. It was quite time consuming and tedious. I had to update a ton of things on my website including CNAME references on my web host and all the links in my website menus and content. I’m having to use a different interface and, I have to admit, Substack’s was pretty nice. But Mailchimp’s is nice, too. Substack was more about “platform building” and connecting me with new readers. Mailchimp is more an email service rather than a platform builder. If all of this makes your head hurt, then—yeah, I get that. Nerd stuff and blah blah blah. Sorry.

Making a Living as a Writer, My Latest Book Review, One of My Favorite Author Interviews, and More

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Making a Living as a Writer

“I feel disappointed having to tell people that because [having books published with a prestigious publisher] sort of seems like a mark of success,” author Andrew Lipstein said. “If I’m not just supporting myself by writing, to those who don't know the reality of it, it seems like it's a failure in some way.” And this is how an article in Esquire begins about the financial reality of being an author. You can read the entire article here:

https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/a45751827/make-a-living-as-a-writer/

Making a living as a writer has never been harder and this article is the most comprehensive I've read recently about this topic. As an author myself, it really sucks to admit that the dream job I've always wanted just doesn't pay well enough to support my family. But with the way authors get paid by publishers, it just isn't feasible. Authors get paid like contractors not employees, so they pay more in taxes. Authors with publishing deals are not offered benefits like health insurance or retirement accounts like regular employees at corporations. Plus, authors pay commissions to literary agents and have to hire a publicist on their own dime. If you've ever dreamed of having a career as a author, then you better be ready for the reality of just how little you could make in terms of money.

Full disclosure: I have a day job. I've worked as a webmaster for over twenty years. When I first started this tech career, I tried to do anything and everything to get out of it. It just became mind-crushingly boring at times and my passion was really in writing fiction. I tried my best to get a book deal by finding a literary agent. I tried selling short stories to journals and magazines. I even had a couple of stints as a cartoonist and sold my comic strips to alternative weekly newspapers. But the big, gigantic book deal never came and I was stuck with being a webmaster during the day. I eventually figured out how to keep writing while I had a career as a web guy. With a little bit of planning, I've been able to write three novels and one book of short stories over the last five years during the lunch breaks of my day job. I've even grown to love this routine and look forward to my lunch breaks as my favorite part of my workday. Now that I'm at the end of my career as a webmaster and getting ready to retire, I will soon be a full-time writer supported by my pension.

After all of these years trying to get out of this career, I'm glad I stuck with it. Through my day job I have health insurance, vision and dental benefits, life insurance, and a retirement that is about to start soon. After I retire, I can write whatever I want without worrying about the financial side of being an author. I won't have to write for a market; I'll only be writing for myself. If I get a book contract, then great. If I don't get a book contract, then I'll put a book out myself and start writing the next book. Being a hybrid author (one that both traditionally publishes as well as self-publishes) is what the future holds for me. I have a novel coming out on a university press in March 2024, but I have a book of short stories that I may be self-publishing in late 2024. I'll have choices.

Book Cover Reveal, Audiobook News, My Latest Book Review, My Latest Author Interview, and More

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Book Cover Reveal and Audiobook Deal Announcement

I usually steer away from too much self-promotion in this newsletter because I want it to be enjoyable and informative to writers and readers and book lovers, not a constant sales pitch for me. BUT, this issue will be an exception because I have some good news about my new novel THE CODGER AND THE SPARROW, which will be published by TCU Press on March 22, 2024.

COVER REVEAL! That’s the beautiful cover up there for my new book. I’m so excited to finally be sharing this cover. TCU Press will be releasing the paperback and eBook. For more information about this book, please go to my website.

AUDIOBOOK DEAL! The audiobook for THE CODGER AND THE SPARROW will be released by Vibrance Press! Hopefully, it’ll be released on the same day. Vibrance Press is currently auditioning narrators and will hopefully be in production soon. For more information about the audiobook, please go to my website. Here’s the audiobook deal announcement:

Book Blurbs, My Latest Book Review, My Latest Author Interview, and More

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Book Blurbs

Seems the latest things that folks in the writing and publishing communities are complaining about is book blurbs. You know, the glowing recommendations from Stephen King or Margaret Atwood or whoever that declares, “This book is immaculate! Luminous! A page turner!” Two excellent articles in Esquire and The Atlantic talk in-depth about this: the blurb fiasco, the broken system, the publishing industry plague. And in some cases, the authors of these articles are right. In other cases, they are off base. Look, I feel blurbs are important; many people feel they don’t matter at all. But if they weren’t important, then they wouldn’t be highly sought after. They wouldn’t be put on books at all if they didn’t matter. In the weird calculus of what makes a book attractive to a potential reader / buyer, an excellent blurb along with a beautiful cover and a compelling book description can move books to the cash register or shopping cart. So why are people crapping on book blurbs? Because the system can be rigged.

Where the argument in these two articles seems to make sense is at the big publisher level where big corporations with lots of money to gamble on big sales do seem to have the system rigged. When books like American Dirt come out with glowing reviews from all the top authors and review outlets, then it seems like this book is the greatest thing since who-knows-what, until it isn't. Many felt this novel appropriated Mexican culture by a white author, and that’s when all the authors who blurbed this novel backpedaled, many even claiming that they didn’t even read the novel in the first place. The curtain was quickly pulled back. Many screamed that the system was rigged and that blurbs were suspect. In this case, they were absolutely right.

But in my experience, this isn’t the case at all. I have almost no connections in the traditional publishing world. I don’t have an MFA. Until this year, I had only self-published my books. I did have a few publishing credits with literary journals under my belt. I had been a published cartoonist. But I didn’t get my first book contract with a traditional publisher until the spring of 2022. I didn’t sign with a literary agent until the fall of 2022. I’m 52 years old now and have been writing fiction for over thirty years. So, when I reached out to my favorite authors for book blurbs for my new novel, it wasn’t some “Hell Mary” pass. I had read their books and felt a deep connection to them and their work as it was reflected in my own new novel. I had interviewed some of them for my show Austin Liti Limits or met them through writers groups I belonged to. I didn’t have an agent at the time when I requested these blurbs or a publicist or an editor with deep industry connections. I made these “author friendships” on my own and asked nicely. I explained the connection I saw with them and my novel. I gladly agreed to wait for up to six months for them to read my novel and write a blurb as most of them were very busy with their own writing careers or day jobs like teaching or editing. And once the blurbs came back to me, these authors explained in detail what they liked about my book and really wanted to stand behind it and me, show their support, so I knew that they read it and enjoyed it. And I’m so very appreciative of that. Their blurbs gave me a real boost because I admire them and their work. My hope is that their blurbs will be part of the overall package of publishing my book, giving it validation to readers who may not know me, but know the authors who’ve blurb my book. If that is the ultimate reason they plunk down money for my book, then I will be forever grateful.