Flogging it

I’ve been very fortunate with my first major publishing experience. My publisher has been behind The Road to the Dark Tower from the very beginning. The book design is wonderful and eyecatching, the cover art is outstanding. Its existence has filtered throughout the Internet and elsewhere over the months, so awareness of its existence is pretty high. When people go to Amazon.com and check out King’s The Dark Tower, my book appears in the list of “people who bought this also bought…”

So, no complaints at all. My publicist is working on getting some radio interviews and I’m wheedling my way into some print appearances. Publishers Weekly is going to review it shortly and Locus magazine is planning to do something next month, too, though I don’t know exactly what.

But it’s not enough. I want to shout it from the rooftops! Which is sorta what I did this past weekend. I wrote a “template” press release describing the book and then I customized it to about six different geographic regions: the community where I grew up, the city where I went to university, the province where I grew up, the country where I grew up (there may be distince advantages to being Canadian!) and the region where I live now, both local and the greater metropolitan area. I sent out a grand total of 18 press releases to print, radio and (yeah, right) TV media.

Will it generate any more publicity or attention for the book? It’s a crap shoot. Who knows when something like this might intrigue a reporter to dig a little deeper and get the story behind the story. They get a zillion press releases a day and the trick is to give ‘em a story that catches their attention. Did I succeed? Won’t know for a while, but I gave it my best shot.

We also have a brand spankin’ new Borders bookstore in our community. Doesn’t even have a parking lot to speak of it, but it’s open for business, so I went in and introduced myself to one of the managers, showed him the From the Borderlands anthology and gave him a card that provides info about The Road to the Dark Tower. I’ve already set up a signing at the Barnes & Noble, which is only a block or so away, but I just wanted to rattle a chain or two, make them aware of the presence of a bona fide, fer real, gen-yoo-wine writer in the community.

Will it generate any more publicity or attention for the book? It’s a crap shoot! Maybe they’ll decide to set up a big display of my books near the front of the store. Who knows!

This weekend I worked on the book proposal for my next non-fiction project and I sent it out to my agent this morning for his review. It’s something I’ve been meaning to do for a while, but I just got fired up to do it a couple of days ago. I’m looking forward to getting back to revisions for my novel, MISSING PERSONS, and by getting that off my to-do list, I can go about things with a clearer mind.

Okay, so I’m a geek, but I added a countdown timer to my message board. As of this moment: 14 days 10 hours 25 minutes and 47 seconds to go!