I’m tidying up my other webisite and came across this piece I wrote several years ago, so I thought I’d share it here.

These days I’m a publisher as well as a writer, and when I look back at when I had my first work published I realise I was dreadfully naïve – I thought the books would sell themselves.

After all, I’d written it, and someone liked it enough to publish – my work was done!

Really, not.

Now, three books in, and running my own micro-publishing company for 13 years, and having edited dozens of books, I am wiser and a heck of a lot more cynical.

The statistics on the number of books published every year don’t bear thinking about – how on earth can you get noticed? Especially if you haven’t been snapped up in a bidding war between the big publishing companies who have an army of publicists on their payroll?

You have to be prepared to get into the limelight and tell the world how fantastic and fascinating your writing is, and what a wonderful charming person you are.

I know.  You’d sooner walk across hot coals and sell your child/cat into slavery.

Well, nonetheless, the books don’t sell themselves, and the received wisdom in the publishing world is that your average punter is more interested in the writer than in what they’ve written, so if there is something interesting about you beyond the book you’ve written, or deeply wrapped up with said book, you need to be prepared to talk about it. You need to get out there and meet the public in all their various guises, whether that is in person, touring your work round bookshops and libraries; or setting up a blog, or being interviewed on a radio/TV station or podcast. THIS is how books become word of mouth best-sellers.

I have cast iron evidence. My first book hardly sold at all, because I was too frightened to do the publicity my publisher wanted from me. The second book pretty much sold out because I did it anyway, fear not withstanding… and I ENJOYED it (not a lot, but it was bearable and I discovered I LIKE talking about my writing).

The popular image of the writer, secluded in her attic/ the library with her notebooks, gazing at the view from her window or the riveting ancient text that has inspired her work, is desperately out of date, but some of us (me included) would MUCH rather be doing that, than spending time on socials inviting people to make contact, talking about our work and READ it, and the idea of facing a microphone or camera and having to SPEAK…

How to cope? Why would you want to?

How I did it: I thought about who I needed to be, and in what circumstances I can pull that off, and I wrote myself a character who is the relatively thick-skinned, witty, charming, outgoing person that I can be when I’m really comfortable. Then I put her on, coat-like when I need her. She’s been really useful for my publishing face too.

That doesn’t help with the white noise that hits when I’m asked a (to me) stupid question live on air. What does help is preparation. Interviews are fairly predictable, you will almost always be asked – what do you write/ where do your ideas come from/ what’s this book about? Although you might want to respond – haven’t you read it? Your interviewer is actually trying to help – the viewer/listener/reader hasn’t read your wonderful scintillating work, and the interviewer is getting you to persuade them to do that. If you do get asked something that throws you – say what a good question (flatters the interviewer, gives you time to think) then answer as gracefully as you can, and don’t be afraid to say I hadn’t thought about that, or I don’t know! If your character can enjoy the process, perhaps you will too.