Nate Briggs's Blog - Posts Tagged "self-publishing"
Resistance Is Futile
Many of you may be acquainted with the "Star Trek: franchise: whose boldly going ships occasionally encounter cube-shaped vehicles that carry something called The Borg: a kind of hive-mind species who don't seem to get enough sun.
The Borg's intention is to subdue just about everybody: repeating a very confident catchphrase in toneless voices, "Resistance is futile ... you will be assimilated...."
I mention this since I'm having very threatened feelings as I read about promoting my books as a self-published author. Edmund Kean famously said "Dying is easy ... comedy is hard". I would change that to "Writing is easy ... selling is hard."
One of the solutions most commonly offered to me, of course, is coming A Brand.
My "day job" is in corporate life, so I am very brand aware. The Theory of Brands is the one thing you should talk about if you ever find yourself stuck in an elevator with an MBA. He (or she) will bite into that topic and not let go until the repair people arrive.
All the same, I'm uncomfortable with stepping aboard the Brand Borg.
I would have to become a Twit: sharing trivial events in short bursts of retwitable text: "I wouldn't have stepped on that dead mouse if I'd seen it! LOL". I have to become unavoidable - like Buick, or Maybelline, or Google - even though I've never liked being the center of attention.
I'd have to beat my drum. Run contests. And beg. I'd have to beg. (And who likes begging?)
Making a Brand out of Me seems so contrary to how I usually operate in the world. And yet resistance seems futile, so I might be assimilated. Because - at about the time that I'm getting ready to reject the Brand Borg - I get a subspace question: "Hey! You want to sell books, don't you?"
I do want to sell books. I do want to be more like Buick.
So resistance is futile. And I should probably twit (tweet?) that information so it can ripple out through the galaxy.
The Borg's intention is to subdue just about everybody: repeating a very confident catchphrase in toneless voices, "Resistance is futile ... you will be assimilated...."
I mention this since I'm having very threatened feelings as I read about promoting my books as a self-published author. Edmund Kean famously said "Dying is easy ... comedy is hard". I would change that to "Writing is easy ... selling is hard."
One of the solutions most commonly offered to me, of course, is coming A Brand.
My "day job" is in corporate life, so I am very brand aware. The Theory of Brands is the one thing you should talk about if you ever find yourself stuck in an elevator with an MBA. He (or she) will bite into that topic and not let go until the repair people arrive.
All the same, I'm uncomfortable with stepping aboard the Brand Borg.
I would have to become a Twit: sharing trivial events in short bursts of retwitable text: "I wouldn't have stepped on that dead mouse if I'd seen it! LOL". I have to become unavoidable - like Buick, or Maybelline, or Google - even though I've never liked being the center of attention.
I'd have to beat my drum. Run contests. And beg. I'd have to beg. (And who likes begging?)
Making a Brand out of Me seems so contrary to how I usually operate in the world. And yet resistance seems futile, so I might be assimilated. Because - at about the time that I'm getting ready to reject the Brand Borg - I get a subspace question: "Hey! You want to sell books, don't you?"
I do want to sell books. I do want to be more like Buick.
So resistance is futile. And I should probably twit (tweet?) that information so it can ripple out through the galaxy.
Published on December 11, 2014 18:25
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Tags:
assimilated, borg, branding, futile, self-publishing, twitter
Sunday Literary Life - Feb 19
Sunday Literary Life:
In 2005, after hovering over the manuscript for three years like a cat waiting for a goldfish to surface - and thinking that it was the greatest Great American Novel I could write - or that perhaps anyone had written - I queried various literary agents about my fresh new novel "Dry, and Severe".
The universal response, without reading the manuscript, that it was "terrible". (Later on, I was to discover the weary consistency of this reaction. Agents never need to read something to know that it's "terrible". LOL)
After all that effort, it seemed a shame to just drop the thing in a drawer - print-on-demand was something people were trying - I had book design skills - and so "Dry, and Severe" became a reality between covers before I cheerfully handed out copies to friends: thinking something good almost had to happen.
What's happening now is that I think the books I gave as gifts are the ones I am slowly buying back. What I thought was the best book possible in 2005 turned out to be an embarrassment when I looked at it again in 2014.
New title in 2014 - two chapters completely thrown out ("terrible") - new narrative line - and the thing rewritten almost completely.
Time changes everything. And so a minor project lately has been locating all the mildly embarrassing copies of "Dry, and Severe" that still hanging around for recycling. I have acquired most of them for recycling at around $8 apiece. But you'll notice that some ambitious re-sellers are marking them up to almost two hundred.
Are those copies "collectors' items"? Do these booksellers know something I don't know?
Maybe cockeyed optimism is what you need, these days, in the book business.
In 2005, after hovering over the manuscript for three years like a cat waiting for a goldfish to surface - and thinking that it was the greatest Great American Novel I could write - or that perhaps anyone had written - I queried various literary agents about my fresh new novel "Dry, and Severe".
The universal response, without reading the manuscript, that it was "terrible". (Later on, I was to discover the weary consistency of this reaction. Agents never need to read something to know that it's "terrible". LOL)
After all that effort, it seemed a shame to just drop the thing in a drawer - print-on-demand was something people were trying - I had book design skills - and so "Dry, and Severe" became a reality between covers before I cheerfully handed out copies to friends: thinking something good almost had to happen.
What's happening now is that I think the books I gave as gifts are the ones I am slowly buying back. What I thought was the best book possible in 2005 turned out to be an embarrassment when I looked at it again in 2014.
New title in 2014 - two chapters completely thrown out ("terrible") - new narrative line - and the thing rewritten almost completely.
Time changes everything. And so a minor project lately has been locating all the mildly embarrassing copies of "Dry, and Severe" that still hanging around for recycling. I have acquired most of them for recycling at around $8 apiece. But you'll notice that some ambitious re-sellers are marking them up to almost two hundred.
Are those copies "collectors' items"? Do these booksellers know something I don't know?
Maybe cockeyed optimism is what you need, these days, in the book business.
Published on February 19, 2017 10:05
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Tags:
agents, buyback, failure, revision, self-publishing