At the moment this blog feels like a house plant that's not being watered while I'm off on my travels. Well, here I am popping back home from the geographies of my novel to give it a quick splash - inspired by a relevant article in the Guardian today.
Ray Conolly writes about the fact that he is publishing his latest novel, The Sandman, in serial form online and for free, although it will be possible in the meantime to buy a download of the entire manuscript, and later a printed form will be available from Amazon. His enthusiasm is catching, and his argument that publishing is changing in such a way that, contrary to predictions, the web is returning power to authors, seems persuasive.
I wonder, though. Power always comes with responsibility, and in this case the responsibility for marketing. Connolly talks about the fact that there will be Facebook and Twitter links (not to mention the ipod audio version he'll be preparing). And we all know how much time Facebook and Twitter can take up... One can't help asking the question: where will he get the time to write his next book? It's not only my blogs that have been suffering recently from the fact that my novel has been absorbing all my time, attention and creativity, but my Facebook and Twitter accounts via which I should be doing the marketing for my published books, necessarily required by my small publisher.
The old (new) conundrum, eh?
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5 comments:
I have to say, as someone with a lot of professional sales & marketing experience (although not in publishing), I really doubt whether individuals will have the knowledge and clout to deliver effective marketing for their books.
As you say, as an author you need time to write. Publishers have economies of scale, they have contacts, they have brands.
Personally, when the day comes, I would like to be part of a team effort, learn from the experience of those in the industry, and keep at least some time for novel number two.
My fear is that we will become half baked salespeople, half baked marketeers, and of course, half baked writers... without the time to do any of them properly. Mind you, maybe no one will care... half baked readers will buy the books.
Eek, V!
Claire, interesting to know your marketer's perspective.
Curiosity got the better of me!
I read this article, too - convincing argument.
Hopefully, less promotion savvy writers won't suffer too much. I struggle to fit in blogging alone on top of fitting in enough writing time around two children. Cannot begin to figure out how to add more networking tools into the equation...
Yup, it's a problem!
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