While cleaning out the basement, I found an unpublished and untitled manuscript, read the first page, and instantaneously launched into revision. But then I stopped and flipped through the 300-plus pages. Did I really want to do this to myself? Again! Wasn’t it just a few months ago when I had exhausted myself revising my last ms, a 30-year effort, Roobala Take Me Home, which lays dormant (again) while I try to figure out what to do with it?
In between, I’ve written short stories and poems, also dormant. And there is an unfinished novel around here somewhere. Typically, I take many years to “finish” a novel, making sure each word counts. But why? Why not just give my old ms a title and post it as is, succumb to the current trend, the push to publish a staggering number of ill-conceived words. Then I could finish the other one and publish it. Then race through another, and another.
Many seem to be concerned almost exclusively with quantity, cranking out lots of books and publishing them fast. In “How I Sold a Million eBooks,” John Locke admits this readily, stating that his writing isn’t that good, but he writes to a specific audience, and they like him, so the quality does not matter that much.
For whatever reason, I can’t do that. I suspect others have the same problem — we love writing but are uncomfortable with marketing. While I am getting better at marketing, I often wonder if I am sacrificing my devotion to quality. I have read the books of many authors who are promoting online. Some are good, some okay, and many others not so much. Given the ease with which we can publish, it’s no wonder amateurish and clunky writing abounds. Like John Locke, if we learn marketing tricks, we can sell books regardless of quality. (He boasts that his humor is dry while offering bad puns and groan-jokes.)
As I page through my untitled ms, I am still tempted to dive in and enjoy rewriting, getting every word right. But I purposely stop myself. Not because of any acceptance of the new normal in publishing, but because I have more pressing issues. Real life has interfered a lot lately, the usual kind of gut-wrenching stuff – staring into the face of death, ruin, destruction. Mine is by no means worse than others. (While some writers I know rush to post everything from hangnails, hairdos and hysterectomies, I offer only forced alliteration, the type of humor John Locke might provide. I am a relatively private person, a writer who wishes to remain that way. No wonder marketing is difficult.)
My published work has done well enough. The “Wells Creek Route” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and is available free online here. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch praised Where the River Splits, my outdoor relationship suspense novel. No Teacher Left Standing, an elementary classroom suspense available only as an ebook, is starting to get good reviews. There’s more of course, available online. And I have a backlog.
From what I’ve learned about marketing, a direct request sometimes works, as long as you aren’t too obnoxious about it. So please consider a .99 to a 2.99 purchase for your ebook reader, or 7.99 for a paperback. Search Jeffrey Penn May, who is at this moment giving you and marketing a great big hearty hug!
Much, much, and much more is available from Jeffrey Penn May (his real name!), a superbly talented and extremely good looking writer fully aware of his own stupidity. Click here, and here, and here!
Okay, that might have been a little obnoxious, but at least I’ve done my marketing. Now what?
