Take One. I'm pounding like a madman at my keyboard, my cappuccino now cold as the December chill blowing in through the half- open door of my favorite Cafe ( Cafe Trieste, in Oakland if you must know) and the soft murmur of daily life providing all the background music I need. Solitude, I'm finding is a dish best served with an accompanying soundtrack of other people.
I'm good at blocking out other people: just ask my wife. There's a table full of older women, fresh from their morning workout, next to me. They're loudly debating the upcoming Trump Presidency and comparing iPhone photos of their grandchildren. In a few minutes, a couple of regular characters will make their daily entrance: the wild-eyed Asian guy of an indeterminable age who likes to sing along loudly to whatever's playing on his headphones, and the homeless dude who's debating fiercely with whatever noises he's hearing in his own head. It all passes by me like a burbling stream.
All life is here. Fodder for the debut novelist. My daily shot of humanity to re-charge the muse.
Take Two. I'm writing, but it's not writing anymore- just like Zoo Station isn't really U2 (in fact, are U2 even U2 anymore or just a pale parody? Discuss). Instead, I'm promoting, posting, tweeting, Facebooking- anything that's going to help sell my book. It's the modern curse of the author: they tell you writing a book is hard- marketing the damned thing is harder still.
Instead of brainstorming my next enticing plot twist or crafting the next line of sparkling dialogue, I'm emailing my forty-fifth book blogger today in the hope they'll review my book. Truth be told, I must have sent out nearly one-hundred requests in a few days. I received one reply- a tentative maybe- and a deafening silence from the other ninety-nine. Dark Mirror creator Charlie Brooker once summed up social media perfectly- "it's like screaming into an empty bread-bin." That's me. Welcome to the seventh circle of hell, otherwise known as marketing yourself as a self-published author.
They don't tell you this shit when you start out. There's no shortage of advice our there for self-publishing- believe me, it's a minefield of information, misdirection, and hyperbole that's going to drive you insane. Really, it will.
Take three. I began to drink from the firehose until my head spun and drove myself crazy creating excel sheet of bloggers, press contacts, local bookstores and any place I thought might be interested in a dark crime novel set in Wales with a dysfunctional lead character who's addicted to cheap cigars and carries a dark secret. Add to that workload the blurb writing, the query letter, the web research, the website creation, the Twitter account, the Facebook Page- all otherwise known as my "author platform." I came to call it my "author millstone"- as if I needed any more distractions from actually writing.
Truth is, self-publishing is hard. Really hard. It's a full-time job done by people who most probably already have day jobs. You can spend a fortune too. Listing your book on book promotion sites, converting your manuscript into the myriad of eBook formats, printing your paperback (margins on these when you sell to bookstores, by they way, are minimal enough to make you weep). Then there's a copy editor to pay for. Don't think you can do this yourself, or that your next-door neighbor who "just loves reading" will spot every typo, misplaced Oxford comma, and grammatical error in your book. They won't, but you know who will? Every other person who reads your book on Amazon and then they'll take great pleasure in pointing them out in their reviews. Really, some people live for that kind of shit.
Take four. And, I'm only going to four on this blog, as it's already running long and my second cappuccino's getting cold now too. Don't loose hope. Okay, it's a lame platitude, but how else are you going to justify the thousands of author-hours, missed soccer games and moody nights at the dinner table because your day's writing sucked? By believing in yourself and your work, that's how. If your work is good, it will find it's audience. If it's not quite ready for prime time yet then forget all the noise and stressing out about platforms, bloggers, and other bullshit and just re-write until it hurts.
Next time. Adventures with agents and how I secured a publishing deal, and what I'd wished I'd done differently when I self-published.
Dylan H. Jones is a crime fiction author and owner of Jones Digital Media, an Oakland-based video content agency. His debut novel, Anglesey Blue, was launched March 1st with Bloodhounds Books. http://a.co/8NAekZa
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