Or, “Getting your Hustle On”
Never a comfortable subject for an author as we so revel in being introverts that we adamantly shun drawing attention to ourselves. Though a clever person could argue that by the mere virtue of sending our stories out into the world we do draw attention to ourselves and interact with the public on fairly intimate level. But, for argument’s sake, let’s pretend no such clever person is around to point that out.
My lovely publishers, Untreed Reads, have given me some pointers on helping them, and me, promote my work. They’re quite good at getting review copies out and the pitch emails and other marketing things I know little of, but there is an area where an author can help out, namely: Libraries!
I have a list of all the libraries in the country and I’m slowly contacting each and every one of them - those that carry e-books - and asking them to please carry “The Fountain Pen”.
It’s a slow process, but not without it’s own interest. I’m finding such a variety of public libraries out there; some are small but deeply involved with their community, almost like a focal point, others are very large in major metropolitan areas where I run into very different attitudes. One big, library system sent a nice note to my query, while another large library sent an almost snide one saying they only buy materials that have gotten favorable reviews by the major reviewers.
Does that mean their library is smaller on the inside than the outside? Or does it mean those small libraries, one of which very excitedly emailed to say they were adding my story to their collection, are in fact much bigger on the inside than on the outside?
Either way, I am enjoying being part of the process that gets my stories and my name out there. If you like “The Fountain Pen” perhaps you could suggest it to your favorite library.
Thanks!
