That’s Not It At All
The other day, as a kind person was helping me line up an author event, I was accused of being too modest — a charge that could be refuted by the testimony of many credible witnesses. Also by the fact I have an entire Web site devoted to myself. Besides, I’m not self-effacing. I’m self-interested.
As a New York Times essayist has noted, fewer than half of all Americans read even one book last year. And there were some 400,000 published!
The math breaks down quickly, especially in my mind (pass the abacus), but I’ll give this a whirl. When you’re a first-time author … and your name is not Grisham … and you can’t write like Lahiri … and your publisher is small … and your marketing budget is smaller … and your book, if it’s even on the shelf, is but one of tens of thousands … and the story you’ve written is about a man who made his name playing a game only a fraction of the population follows … and the fraction of the population that follows that game includes at least a chunk of the majority who seldom or never pick up a book … and, well, let’s just say the number of people who will ever even hear of your book is small, small — staggeringly — small.
That’s no complaint. It is just the reality. Which is why when someone mentions the book to a friend — or scribbles words about it on their blog, or forwards one of my self-promotional e-mails to a colleague, or purchases a copy for their grandpa, or one for a school, or they take time to write a positive customer review, or open their bookstore’s doors and allow me inside — I know what they are doing is nothing short of an essential part of any success the book will enjoy.
And I’d have to be a rare sort of fool not to admit that I know.
This post was added on Friday, May 02, 2008 by Tom Swift at 14:22 and is filed under Swift Boat.
"Any idiot can face a crisis. It's day to day living that wears you out." -Anton Chekhov
