Battling Junot Diaz
My Summer of Southern Discomfort hits stores next Tuesday, May 6th, in paperback form. So I've begun rattling my saber, i.e. calling and emailing bookstores to discuss readings. So far, the results have been a wee bit disheartening. A "no" and several non-reponses. Granted, the rejection had a good reason: their library is being remodeled. I need to place more calls. The onus of selling myself and my book is on me. But where I live authors litter the sidewalks like cigarette butts (I mean we're not actually lying on the ground, reeking of nicotine and ash. Not usually, anyway. We save that kind of behavior for special occasions.)
What authors look like when they've been partying.
I've done readings with a former Poet Laureate and an Academy-Award nominated writer, because they happen to be local. Gather a bunch of Boston/Cambridge authors and one of them probably has a Nobel prize rattling in his/her closet. Even where I work at MIT, a school better known for producing advanced technology than for supplying superior prose, we have Junot Diaz. Who won this year's Pulitzer Prize (and Powell's Tournament of Books!)
I sometimes wonder if I lived some place where authors were scarce, would booking readings be easier? But then would I be some place where there are so many reading venues? Probably not.
So I'll make more calls and I'm sure I'll book more readings. And while I don't have a Pulitzer or a Nobel I do have a Presidential Academic Fitness pin. I think I've just hit upon a new marketing strategy.
"Hello, events coordinator? This is Stephanie Gayle, Presidential Academic Fitness pin wearer and author, and I have a proposition for you."
Hell to the yeah!