To all three of the regular readers of this column, welcome! I'm going to digress a little from my usual focus of website-related shit I gotta do, although this still applies since it is still shit I gotta do. Today I will be grousing about the difficulties in promoting a novel you've somehow convinced someone to publish. Just getting someone to publish the damn thing ought to win you all sorts of awards. Sadly, no one cares. The publisher goes through all the trouble of editing, designing, typesetting, and printing your book, and then seems to wake up the next day with some sort of publisher-hangover. They stand over the sink and look at their tongue and mutter "What in hell did I do these past few months? I feel terrible." Then they slap their forehead. "Crap! I published that stupid book by Somers!" Then they spend the next few years avoiding you.
    In other words, promoting your small-press book is pretty much up to you. I kind of knew this going in, although I did expect some sort of support from the publisher. Other small-press published writers will snicker in delight at that statement, since now I know it is well known that if you happen to publish your book you've only gotten 5% over the hump. The rest is completely on your dime. But I did have an inkling, so I did a little light reading about how to promote the damn thing. There is a surprising amount of material on this subject, most housed within the confines of those desperate "How to be a writer!" sites. The one thing almost all the articles agreed on was that the number one super best thing to have in the war to promote your book is a web site. The authors of these articles (who one supposes are all secretly successful published writers) could not seem to stress this enough.
    Fantastic, I thought. I already have a web site. I'll build a nifty sub-site and watch the greenbacks roll in!
    Certainly having a web site for your book is an extremely important aspect of promoting it, mainly because when you're trying to convince people to purchase something they have no idea about you absolutely have to have a contact place where they can go and learn more about it if they wish to. If I tried to tell people about the book, I'd need twenty minutes to recite the synopsis, reviews, and ordering info. If I tried to put all that on a flyer, it would have to be in tiny tiny type. Having a quick URL to give people is great, because if they are interested enough to seek more info, it's there for them to find. You can't, however, think of your web site as a beacon that people will be drawn to, because 100% of the world has no idea who you are, or that you wrote a book, or what that book's title might be. That makes it difficult to enter the information into a search engine.
    So, I put together a slim, basic web site for Lifers, including a synopsis, scan of the cover, reviews, contact info, and a bio. It gets a bit of traffic and if nothing else is someplace to point people to. The question then became, how in hell do I let people know that my book exists? Aided by my suffering and incredibly energetic girlfriend, without whom I would still be sitting on the couch eating Cheez-Its and wondering about all this, I came up with your basic promotional campaign: flyers, mailings, readings, reviews. I can't imagine this plan of attack is much different than what other authors do.
    First, I made up goofy flyers with the cover of the book, a quick synopsis, and the URL. These I put up all over my home town of Hoboken, NJ. It was one of the longest, hottest days of my life, but it did work because people have told me they saw the flyers and thus knew the name of the book, which is all I could expect from the tactic. I knew the flyers weren't going to set the world aflame with interest, it wasn't like a Larry King intern was going to run into the production office at CNN and pant "I just got this off a telephone pole in Hoboken!" I was just hoping to get a few people to walk into the Hoboken Barnes and Noble and ask about the book, thinking that might encourage that one store to order a few copies.
    At the same time, I mailed little packages to about 50 local book stores. In the cover letter I stressed that I was a local author, and I included the flyer and ordering info, and the bio. I have no idea if any of these stores bothered to order a copy, since I didn't hear back from any of them. Still, it was a cheap thing to do, and if I got one store to order three copies, I think it was worth it.

    The other thing almost all the articles agreed on was that the only way to get your stupid book into local stores was to do ‘events' like readings. This terrified me. Actually, this still terrifies me. I don't go to readings and so it's hard for me to imagine why someone would come to one of mine, and the idea always makes me picture an empty store, and me weeping in the bathroom while the custodians tear down the MEET JEFF SOMERS banner. My girlfriend leaped into action and contacted the Hoboken Barnes and Noble and found them very receptive, and in about three minutes had arranged for me to do a reading there.
    The one great thing about agreeing to do a reading is that the store will order scads of your book to have on hand. They may not sell them, but at least they have them. The store put an advertisement in the local papers, sent out postcards, and put up big, embarrassing signs with my picture on them in the store. It made me realize that while readings and signings and all were terrifying and potentially humiliating, they did, if nothing else, get the huge corporate publicity machine to crank for me for a brief moment. After the reading had been scheduled, the local Hoboken paper called for an interview. Now, I don't imagine more than three people actually read that interview, but at least it was exposure, and doing the interview was fun. Hey, any time you're on the cover of the local paper it's fun. Unless you're on the cover because of some double murder you committed.
    Setting up these ‘events' is really easy, because most book stores are always looking for events to get people into the store. You call, they are generally glad to have you. The reading went well, partly because I dragged a lot of family and friends there and partly because I didn't take it too seriously. I figure if I can convince 50 friends and family to come every time I read, I'll be fine.
    I have a signing set up and another reading soon too. I have no idea if anyone will come, but at least it's more postcards, newspaper ads, press releases, and posters with the title of my book on them. Even if my appearances are disasters, my name was out there for a while, and that might drive a few people to my site and then, who knows, to Amazon!

    Finally, the last cog in the publicity machine The Inner Swine has unleashed on an unsuspecting world is soliciting reviews from anyone capable of holding a pen or tapping a keyboard. Once again, you don't expect that a single review will make hordes of people stampede to the bookstore to buy your book (unless the reviewer's name is Oprah something) but you hope that the cumulative effect of having your name and title show up in lots of places will burn the book into people's minds. Also, it usually gives you some quotes to use, and having review quotes makes your book seem like a legitimate enterprise.
    The publisher actually took some of this on themselves, bless their hearts, and prior to publication they even had a good review from Booklist, which is not all that well-known but is pretty well-respected. It gave us something to put on the back cover and to quote. I sent copies to a couple of ziney places, like The Whirligig and Skunk's Life and they were kind enough to review the book. Somehow, The New York Times Book Review got a copy and chose to review it - why I have no idea. I have also sent copies to a variety of on-line reviewers, like Danny Yee, and the publisher is sending copies to other major book reviews. 
    I think the main value of reviews is in legitimizing the book. People in general don't spend their money (especially not fifteen fucking dollars of it) unless they really think they're going to enjoy the product. While you can read a synopsis and sample on my site, a review by a writer you've come to trust can give you a clearer idea whether the book is worth your time or not. So while a single review somewhere won't result in a run on your book, it might convince three people to take a chance. If I can get reviews in lots of different places, well, who knows?

    That's it. That's what I've been up to these past few months, trying to shill a few books. It's depressing that you can't just be an artiste and calmly ignore things like sales and promotion and advertising, but if you do that you will sell no books, and then not only will you be humiliated, but no one will want to pay you for your next book. So swallowing a little pride and getting off your ass and doing the shit you gotta do is worth it. I think. Ask me again next year, when all the numbers are in. My response might be "I can't believe I humiliated myself at that signing in Morristown and didn't sell any copies in Morristown!"

New column in about two weeks. In the meantime, please feel free to drop me a note.