Spreading the Word

It’s funny I’d bring up a gardening metaphor right now (my front walkway is no longer navigable thanks to the Jungle Fever of the adjacent mulch bed) but writing books is like gardening.

There is no fast. There is the slow and steady and the things you do to tend the growth.

I’m thinking about this as I start writing Book 3. Right now, it looks like an hour a morning, five days a week. If I keep to this, I might just have a book to share with you all in the next few years.

Making books known is slow, too, though it might not look that way at first. Launch is a splashy week with a lot of noise, excitement, and sales, but if you’ve seen Toy Stories 1, 2, & 3 (4 was unnecessary) you know the drill. You hear the Sarah McLachlan song playing in the background. You see the dust bunnies cuddling the once-loved-now-forgotten book under the bed.

Actually, it’s not that sad – I’m just running away with my metaphors today!

In the past 3 years, I saw Lu move in a slow and steady way. I tried things that worked and things that didn’t work. I saw how peoples’ sharing took effect. Before we move on from the Louisa launch, I’d like to share TWO ways you can tend to this growth:

Write a review on Amazon and/or Goodreads. The quantity of reviews can be the difference between selling 3 and 3000 copies of a book, and the more detail you include, the more it helps people decide whether it’s a right fit for their Saturday afternoon.Share your copy and share it often! My nightstand is teetered with recommendations and book shares from friends – it’s how I find the majority of my next reads.

Thank you for all of your support and encouragement, particularly in this past week. There’s other things for me to tend in big ways right now – college semester starting, Troy homeschool starting – so it’s going to be quiet on the blog for a bit, but I’ll be back sometime this fall with stories about it all.

Until then, happy reading!