Thursday, December 15, 2011

Marketing the self-published book...divided loyalties

I am awash with divided loyalties....every day I am made aware by the flood of information about how to market my book that I am not doing everything I could! of course, I could be doing it 24 hours a day! Blogging, tweeting, networking, giving away, posting, etc etc etc. As someone pointed out on Facebook the other day -- you guys are everywhere!!! Referring to the publicity phenomenon that is Three Women/Three Books. Ergo...here is a nice article from Ottawa This Week....http://www.emcottawasouth.ca/20111215/news/Authors+find+three+heads+better+than+one Together, as a threesome, Jasmine Aziz, Nerys Parry and I have managed to crack the CBC (Talking Taboos), get coverage throughout the city, and show up just about everywhere we could! We are a quirky threesome, and that gets attention. We are, however, having trouble getting a review in The Citizen, with the exception of Jasmine....who says sex doesn't sell? And while we were happy to be talking the unholy triumvirate of sex, politics and religion on All in a Day, we have all tried to get a feature profile on each of our books individually without success. Are we being taken seriously as authors? Female authors? Driving home last night I enjoyed the interview with Matthew Firth on his new book of short stories on....All In A Day. Alan Neal is a brilliant interviewer. But I have had two CBC producers try to sell an interview with me on my new book, without success, and I know Nerys' publisher and Jasmine have also tried. Why is this? The last book interview I heard on All in a Day was with Mark Frutkin. I love Mark's work, but can't help but notice....another guy. Prior to that it was Frances Itani, but she is in the big leagues -- you can't ignore her. But what about supporting writers who are starting out? Hmmm. The people at The Ottawa Citizen who look after reviews are....guys. This all disturbs me...looking at reviewers in the major papers here and in the US, top heavy with men, winners of the Canada Reads contest, and so on. There seems to be a double standard. Let's hope I am wrong.

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