Unboxing And Delivering

The next phase begins. Muddling By has been launched! But that’s just the end of the first act. Now for the transition from introverted writer to extroverted author. This morning, both behind and ahead of schedule, my first box of books arrived. Books in a box are fine, but my day off became a day of unboxing and delivering copies. The unboxing was quick. The deliveries will take weeks.

Muddling By was published in September, less than a month ago. kdp/Amazon hinted at a delivery of my first box of author copies within about ten days. Oops, their email suggested. Maybe they’ll arrive on October 21. Such delays are why I take the conservative approach to scheduling author events. I want to have books in a box before I arrange launch events, press releases, and talks. I announce the book as soon as the online link is available; that happened within days of my upload. Start those sales! But, in-person events are best with product available, and until that product is available, I take a short break. My short break got shortened by a day because the books arrived on the 20th instead of the 21st.

Cool.

Shoot the unboxing video! In modern life and with no one to help, that meant arranging hardware to record the event. It balked. I persevered. I stammered, but there was only one take because I wasn’t going to re-tape the box. Share it around on social media. Upload it to YouTube so it is in a convenient space. Keep it handy for things like including it in this post.

Friends and libraries next.

As I write, a couple of friends who are writers help out by letting me send them backups. Backups are good. Remote backups are a nice – well – backup that I’m less likely to accidentally delete. They deserve free copies. The closest lives less than an hour away. A quick call to make sure they were home, and a bit of a celebratory drive to deliver the first copy. Got a nice cup of tea, too. (And squash and apple butter because it is the harvest season. Earlier in the year I’d probably get zucchini.)

(An aside: My friend declared that I am a true artist because I create for the sake of creation, not solely for profit. And we both agreed that profit would be good too.)

My other friend gets their copy on a day that involves a ferry ride, which is a consequence of living near the ocean.

While I was at my first friend’s house, I realized I could start my library tour. I’m sure there are books about professionally presenting copies to libraries. Dress right. Make sure you fit their schedule. Review their submission guidelines and criteria, have a press release and description and bio ready. That was proper when I lived near A Big City. I live in officially designated rural country. I somewhat humbly walked in the door, casually and quietly introduced myself as a local author, showed them the book, and asked them how to add it to their collection. So much for the proper professional appearance. I wasn’t scruffy, but my pants had a nice collection of farmyard dog hair and my shoes were muck boots. And the librarian asked me for contact information, accepted the book, congratulated me, and said they’d get back to me when their reviewer had reviewed it. Not The Big City that involved pages of forms, book copies to mail to remote distribution centers, and the fog of bureaucracy.

Fine by me.

Whenever I remember, I also point out that I’ve written other books and have given talks about the books, publishing, and generally library-related stuff that they can use to help fill their event calendar. Some introverted writers can’t or don’t want to do something as extroverted as public speaking. My first two or three minutes are me being nervous, but I find I tend to get comfortable for the rest of the talk – and then have to escape to wind down from being a public presence. Hey, I’ve been asked back several times, so I must do it well enough.

A local twist on speaking events happens because I live in a very literate region. The Salish Sea, which includes Seattle and Vancouver, BC, has so much talent that world-class speakers can be readily available. I don’t have a publicist. I am just me. The competition is tight, but there’s usually eventually a slot to fill – if the book or the topic is interesting.

Now is when the extra prep work is useful. New business cards. Updated web site. Gotta get that press packet together. I have to travel boxes always ready. They’re boxes of books, props, book stands, cables, change, and the paraphernalia that add at least some professionalism to a presentation. I hope to write about that, and I’ll wait until there’s an event to write about.

As I mentioned, this is the beginning of Act 2. Act 2 can go on for years: sales, talks, marketing, interviews, et al. Most of my books are in Act 3. (BTW I just made up the Act thing, but like it.) Act 3 is more of the same, but after several years I am less likely to maintain that book’s web site, though I rarely delete it; am less likely to update graphics and such; yet keep the original travel material ready, just in case. My first book, Just Keep Pedaling, is still one of my top sellers despite being – wow, I just realized I published it 24 years ago. Yet, it remains a handy entry point for conversations.

Act 2 is the marketing and messaging act. I am getting better at it, and continue to work at it. I’m better at selling others’ works. I tend to summarize their work better because I never know it as well as I know the history and details of my work. Gotta, wanna get better at being more concise and engaging. And listening.

Act 2 is also an exercise in listening. Whether implicitly or explicitly, every person I talk to will communicate whether they don’t care, hopefully what they do care about, and ideally will tell me what they want and work with me about what I can provide. It is a treat to talk to a bookstore owner who hasn’t been dulled by a multitude of pitches for books that never sold. It helps to realize that writing a book is like writing a lottery ticket. The lottery has biggest payouts but worse odds. Most books don’t sell enough to cover their costs, and those that do cover their costs may not be very profitable, but the odds of a book being profitable are better than the odds of winning the lottery. And delivering the book helps improve those odds, or at least helps improve the possibility that people who are about what I wrote about will read what I wrote.

The next phase, the next act, has begun.