I jumped out of bed last
night with nagging thoughts of how demanding this business of publishing a book
had become. There were forms that required personal information, emails to be
sent, press releases, websites for inquiry and blogs to post, etc.
Well, it has become bigger
than the writing and bigger than me. Writing is a meditative thing-a sedentary
practice. With a quiet exertion of the mind, thoughts flow into words without
strict guidelines and eventually produce a finished work. The din I now hear
pushes me into a promotional frenzy where personal data, publishing dates and
commercial deadlines are required.
If you want your book to stand a chance of reaching the vast audience of
readers, you need to expose it to as many venues as possible. Commercialism
grabs your leisurely writing brain and changes it into a frenzied robot that
clamors, “WARNING! WARNING! WARNING, WILL ROBINSON! PROMOTE! PROMOTE! PROMOTE!”
It was late in the evening
before I could get back to sleep. And this morning, even before coffee, I went
on line to see if there were any more urgent instructions before I got Lost in
Space again.
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