Paula Coomer's Blog, page 5
February 3, 2011
Techno-resistant
In this world of so-many-people-writing, it is a wonder any of us unknowns gets published at all. So I was quite thrilled when I learned that Libertary Publishing in Seattle wanted to publish my novel Dove Creek and that they also wanted to re-release my collection of short stories, Summer of Government Cheese.
What I'm discovering, of course, is the work involved in getting a book promoted. Libertary has something called a "book manager" to help with the "viral marketing" and other areas of new-age book promotion, but it is still up to me to tromp around the countryside with a box of books in my car, trying to get the word around to book clubs and book stores and any place with a shelf big enough to surreptitously leave books behind. I have done this quite often over the years, starting with my poetry books--"accidentally" leaving copies in doctor's office waiting rooms, in restrooms, in coffee shops, airports, bars--any place someone might pick it up and say, "Hmmm," and recommend it to someone else. That's how "viral marketing" works as well (it's also known as "the dandelion theory" of marketing), basically a fancy name for "word-of-mouth."
I'm not sure what I think of all this. It requires me to spend more time online than I'd prefer. It's why I'm on Good Reads, why the press put up a Facebook page for the book, why I'm trying to figure out Library Thing, why I had to spent a month trying to figure out how to create a website before I finally gave up and asked my son how to do it. (www.paulamariecoomer.com)The idea is to get my name and Dove Creek to pop up as many times as possible any time someone Googles either of those things. Right now anyone Googling Dove Creek first brings up 5 pages of information about the town for which it is named.
Anyone who has read Dove Creek or glimpsed this author page knows that I come from pretty spare beginnings. Patricia Faye Morrison, the protagonist in Dove Creek, had much more meager beginnings than I, but by most U.S. standards, my family was certainly far from well-to-do. We'd lived for two hundred years in the same remote spot of earth. Mom and Dad were the first of their line to move up out of those hollers, both of them just after their 18th birthday. Which has always put me at a disadvantage. I've always felt as though I were about 200 years behind the rest of the world.
Which likely explains how out of place I feel with this world of online folks, folks who hold their book clubs in a virtual environment instead of coffee shops or folding chairs in the back room of libraries. Online readings? Online live author interviews? Who ever heard of such a thing?
BUT, as you may notice, I am trying. Which is why I'm writing this blog post. I'm trying to get myself used to the idea of shopping myself around virtually. It seems to be what all the world's authors are doing. If I am to spread the story that is Dove Creek--a story I sincerely believe needs to be spread--it is what I have to do.
So, here is to learning new media, learning self-promotion, and moving into the 21st century. Probably no one is surprised that I don't have an I-pod or an I-pad or a Kindle or a phone that vibrates in the middle of dinner. We don't have internet hookup at home. And we wouldn't have an answering machine if it were up to either of us.
But we do, suddenly, find ourselves looking at big TVs. Maybe, as the character Moose indicates to Patricia Faye in Dove Creek, it's the Indian in me.
OXOX
What I'm discovering, of course, is the work involved in getting a book promoted. Libertary has something called a "book manager" to help with the "viral marketing" and other areas of new-age book promotion, but it is still up to me to tromp around the countryside with a box of books in my car, trying to get the word around to book clubs and book stores and any place with a shelf big enough to surreptitously leave books behind. I have done this quite often over the years, starting with my poetry books--"accidentally" leaving copies in doctor's office waiting rooms, in restrooms, in coffee shops, airports, bars--any place someone might pick it up and say, "Hmmm," and recommend it to someone else. That's how "viral marketing" works as well (it's also known as "the dandelion theory" of marketing), basically a fancy name for "word-of-mouth."
I'm not sure what I think of all this. It requires me to spend more time online than I'd prefer. It's why I'm on Good Reads, why the press put up a Facebook page for the book, why I'm trying to figure out Library Thing, why I had to spent a month trying to figure out how to create a website before I finally gave up and asked my son how to do it. (www.paulamariecoomer.com)The idea is to get my name and Dove Creek to pop up as many times as possible any time someone Googles either of those things. Right now anyone Googling Dove Creek first brings up 5 pages of information about the town for which it is named.
Anyone who has read Dove Creek or glimpsed this author page knows that I come from pretty spare beginnings. Patricia Faye Morrison, the protagonist in Dove Creek, had much more meager beginnings than I, but by most U.S. standards, my family was certainly far from well-to-do. We'd lived for two hundred years in the same remote spot of earth. Mom and Dad were the first of their line to move up out of those hollers, both of them just after their 18th birthday. Which has always put me at a disadvantage. I've always felt as though I were about 200 years behind the rest of the world.
Which likely explains how out of place I feel with this world of online folks, folks who hold their book clubs in a virtual environment instead of coffee shops or folding chairs in the back room of libraries. Online readings? Online live author interviews? Who ever heard of such a thing?
BUT, as you may notice, I am trying. Which is why I'm writing this blog post. I'm trying to get myself used to the idea of shopping myself around virtually. It seems to be what all the world's authors are doing. If I am to spread the story that is Dove Creek--a story I sincerely believe needs to be spread--it is what I have to do.
So, here is to learning new media, learning self-promotion, and moving into the 21st century. Probably no one is surprised that I don't have an I-pod or an I-pad or a Kindle or a phone that vibrates in the middle of dinner. We don't have internet hookup at home. And we wouldn't have an answering machine if it were up to either of us.
But we do, suddenly, find ourselves looking at big TVs. Maybe, as the character Moose indicates to Patricia Faye in Dove Creek, it's the Indian in me.
OXOX
January 23, 2011
Book People Reading
Friendship: when people you haven't seen in 15 years drive 7 hours just to hear you read from your new novel then turn around and go back home to make it to work at 4 a.m. Fourteen out of 24 hours spent driving.
Friendship: when people who would die to be there but just couldn't get there send the biggest, most gorgeous bouquet of cream/pink roses, lavender snapdragons, and great wine-colored gerbera anybody has ever seen, instead.
Friendship: when people who would die to be there but just couldn't get there send the biggest, most gorgeous bouquet of cream/pink roses, lavender snapdragons, and great wine-colored gerbera anybody has ever seen, instead.
January 18, 2011
AT DECEPTION PASS
A bridge.
Water's aluminum
moving
with the moon.
Smelt slicking
small into the blue.
The stray color
of boulders.
The sun a sliced
tangerine.
I cross
to merge now
and new.
Water's aluminum
moving
with the moon.
Smelt slicking
small into the blue.
The stray color
of boulders.
The sun a sliced
tangerine.
I cross
to merge now
and new.
January 13, 2011
Daily Inspiration
Walk into my house at any given moment, and you will find a stack of notes waiting to be filed. These are snippets--descriptions, impressions, overheard quotes--anything that I might want to use at a later date in a piece of writing. Writing doesn't always have to be a big project. Serious writers are always "writing," even when they are not putting pen to paper. It can be as simple as taking a few moments to record something you don't want to lose--that turn of phrase that occurred to you in the shower, that metaphor, that odd name in the obituaries. Obituaries make great character sketches.
I keep a 6x9 file box divided alphabetically as a way to store these pieces, but they stack up around the house anyway. I love leafing through them, remembering what was going through my mind on a particular day.
I keep a 6x9 file box divided alphabetically as a way to store these pieces, but they stack up around the house anyway. I love leafing through them, remembering what was going through my mind on a particular day.
