Jill Murray

There was a recommendation for Break On Through in the Summer Reading feature of Montreal’s Hour magazine last week, and I almost missed it! I did an interview with these guys in March, but they didn’t use it for a long time, so I almost forgot I was supposed to be looking for it! Thanks Hour, for the mention.

“It twists and turns, spins and hops. Break on Through is a hip-hop right of passage.”

I quite like that.

Something I’ve learned while talking to friends, family, and pre-published writers since the release of Break On Through is that there are some widespread misconceptions about the way publishing and media work, and especially about the way they work together. This above blurb can be used to highlight a few realities:

1. There’s no well-oiled rube goldberg machine responsible for reaching across the universe, connecting things together, and communicating to an author the exact moment when something happens with the promotion of her book. We rely on Google, bloglines, technorati, etc…, even word of mouth for that. Really big media firms will often have clippings services that scour the universe electronically and by hand and let you know every time your name is mentioned, but these are expensive enough that its generally agreed that the money that should go into promoting the book instead.
2. Sometimes a media piece will come out a long time after you do the original interview. News outlets prioritize news before all else: the weather, politics, violence, the economy, the appearance of Kanye West for one night only in a barn on the edge of your small town… things that impact the largest numbers of people, and which must be published or broadcast right now to capitalize on their relevancy. Your interview about your teen novel can run pretty much any slow week, because that thing is actually going to take a 6 months or more to get stale.
3. Releasing a book generally isn’t like releasing a CD or a vial of smallpox. The time sensitivity is much lower. A book stays “new” for much longer. And for that matter, if it takes you 10 books to get famous and beloved, this is actually regarded as normal. This is wonderful and fantastic. I’m glad I’m not a musician. Those guys are too often expected to prove themselves within a year of the release of their first album.
4. Many people, even journalists, do not fully understand what fiction is. They look for deep personal connections to material, because those make for great stories. (See: James Frey) Sometimes interviewers are disappointed to learn that unlike my protagonist, Nadine aka Lady 6Sky, I am not and have never been a gritty, teenage, inner-city street dancer. This can put a damper on interviews, but there you have it. I write fiction, and fiction is fictional.
5. If you do an interview, a review or smaller blurb might run instead. This is pretty normal. Maybe you had a bad day. Maybe the interviewer had a bad day. Maybe the tape recorder didn’t record, or the editor wanted something different, or there wasn’t enough space, or it didn’t turn out newsy enough, or it wasn’t quite perfect for the mandate of the paper, or you turned out not to be inner-city enough, or, or, or… it’s still all good because…
6. Maybe by the time the thing actually runs, what you could really use are more reviews and short, quotable blurbs and…
7. Media rarely translates directly into sales. Exposure is helpful. You definitely want to generate a buzz. But the usefulness of media clippings is really in building credibility. As a first time author, a decent folder of clippings and quotes gives you credibility you wouldn’t otherwise have. It says, “look: these credible people think my book is awesome and has the following useful properties.” You can use that backup when trying to arrange school bookings or apply for grants, residencies and other opportunities because…
8. Book sales are important, but on a day-to-day basis, they actually make up a very tiny part of an author’s concern, mainly because the author has absolutely no control over what a publisher does with a book. The things that authors can do to encourage a healthy shelf-life for a book are all indirect– try to give good interviews, try to get those school bookings, try to establish good relationships with book stores, try to do all the things that will build a good, long-term career, and most importantly, keep writing– because writing isn’t one book, its a whole life.

So, if you’re writing, don’t worry too much about the eventual publicity for your eventual masterpiece. And brace yourself for a lot of funny questions about those eventual things you won’t be able to control.

If this topic interests you, you might also want to check out this Managing Expectations post by Caroline Hickey that ran on The Longstockings blog last Friday, as well as Daphne Grab’s A Funny Question from Thursday.