I confess I've been rather remiss in maintaining this blog. Truth to tell, I've been busy working on the final installment of my young adult trilogy and I feel rather guilty writing anything but that these days. It doesn't help that I'm behind the schedule I set for myself -- added to which is the fact that it has turned out to be longer than I'd anticipated. The drafts for the first two were in the 220,000 to 240,000 word mark, but this one will probably hit closer to 280,000.
The good thing is that the ideas have just been flowing faster than I can type them. Well, mostly. There are the occasional moments when I stumble, but mostly it's a matter of finding the right wording rather than a dearth of imagination. The good thing is that the ending is already roughed out, and now it's simply a question of getting the main characters to that point in the story. Of course, I pretty much had the ending worked out before I even committed myself to a single word -- which isn't to say I had every detail of the story laid out in my mind. I'm not the sort of writer who creates outlines and sticks to them religiously. For me that's just too clinical and doesn't allow for enough latitude with the characters and plot. I tend to let my stories write themselves; indeed, there are times when I almost feel like I'm an observer simply sitting by and recording the events.
While the trilogy is currently going well (I hope to have it finished within a month or so), I can't say I'm having much success in getting word out about my novel In Darkness Bound. I feel as though I'm beating my head against a brick wall, and the whole process has left me rather despondent, to say the least. I keep trying to convince myself things will get better, but reality keeps crashing in.
One of my biggest dreams as a kid was to walk into a bookstore and see my book proudly displayed there on a shelf. But I can't even seem to get the major book retailer in my own country to carry my novel through their online service, much less in the local bookstores where I might have been able to have assisted sales with appearances. Chapters/Indigo seems to have forsaken me, and I can't say it particularly endears me to them. I've even had people try to order the book through the local Indigo in Barrhaven, providing the staff with the appropriate ISBN number and all, but to no avail. There's not even an offer to look into it -- regardless of the fact that the author lives just down the street. So much for supporting homegrown authors. Unless your name is Atwood or Mowat or Munroe, etc. you can forget it.
On the plus side, I have found In Darkness Bound is available at more and more online retailers internationally. I have found it at sites that cater to China, Japan, Italy, France, Britain, etc. Of course, that makes the fact that Chapters.ca doesn't carry it all the more galling. And it's not as though it has something to do with the publisher, because they carry books by other PublishAmerica authors.
If you've perused my website, you've probably seen that I've made an animated trailer for my book, which I posted to YouTube.com. I'd like to be able to say that it's been a roaring success, but after more than a week on the site I've had a paltry eleven hits. I know a couple of those came from my nephew, and another from my best friend, which leaves a grand total of eight from strangers who may or may not have followed the link at the end of the trailer. I actually thought the trailer was half decent, considering the tools I had with which to make it. If I have enough time at a later date I might try to expand it and improve it, but for now I think it gives the viewer some sense of the novel.
I can't say my expectations were high when it came to the trailer, but I had thought I'd see a little more action than I have. It was a stab in the dark, I suppose, as is so much on the internet these days. I've come to realize there's so much out there, floating in the electronic ether, that it's difficult to get noticed unless you do something of exceeding notoriety (like spending a night in a hotle room with a certain celebrity and her camcorder). Generating traffic to a website that is one in a billion or so is virtually (no pun intended) an insurmountable task when your budget is zero dollars. I had hoped that once a few people visited the site word would spread and more would come, but that doesn't seem to have been the case. I've tried to make it interesting, but I guess I can't really compete against the purveyors of celebrity and other infamy.
If anyone has any ideas that might help promote In Darkness Bound, I'm all ears. Maybe there's someone far more savvy than I about the workings of the internet who can point me in the right direction. If I could generate more traffic to the website, then possibly more interest in the book would arise, and as a consequence more sales.
And now I think I'll head back and drown my sorrows by diving into my book again. When last I left them my heroes were in a pickle, so-to-speak, and I think I've left them hanging there long enough.The end of the journey is nigh, and I'm eager to reach it.
Till later!
Lindsay Brambles, Ottawa, 2007
Of course, it should have been a day of great celebration: My author's copies arrived in the mail and they look fantastic. It's remarkable how much different my own writing seems when I see it as a genuine book. But for all that, there is the sobering realization that it's uphill from here.
There was a time when I thought the hard part was writing the book. I never imagined, when I first started to write, how difficult it would be to get into print. If I had had money, and had wanted to go the vanity press route, it would have been easy. But I never wanted that, for more reasons than one. There was, of course, the fact that there's no sense of validation in simply paying some outfit to print off copies of your manuscript. Anyone can do that. But I think the biggest sticking point for me was the whole matter of having to sell the thing myself. I thought, naively, that if I went with a traditional publisher they would take care of that. I have since been seriously disabused of that notion; publishers do little in the way of promoting authors unless you happen to be one of the big guns, the Dan Browns or J.K. Rowlings of the world. Ironically, these are the very people who need the great publicity machine the least.
The problem is, I'm not a salesman. I just don't have that sort of personality. I've always been rather shy and insecure, and the thought of walking into some bookstore and asking them if they'd carry my book or at least display it and maybe let me leave a few flyers is the sort of thing that leaves me as anxious as going to the doctor or seeing the dentist. Heck, there was a time when I couldn't even go up and ask sales people for assistance, I was that shy.
I actually took up gliding for a while years ago, thinking that would help me with my self-confidence. It did, in some respects, and I'm certainly better than I was. But I'm still no extrovert, and I don't believe I ever could be. I'm quite content to be alone writing my books--which isn't to say I'm some sort of squirrelly anti-social recluse.
I'm making an effort. I don't have a choice. I put too much blood into this book to simply let it languish. I've been plugging away at trying to get word out about In Darkness Bound these past few days, but it's far more difficult than one could ever imagine. The fact is, that although it's probably easier to get published now than it ever has been at any point in history, it is actually more difficult in many respects to be read. The competition is immense, and people are just reading far less than they did even a couple of decades ago. They've got other means of entertainment, and so much else happening in their lives. When they do read, it's mostly on the Internet, or e-mails and text messages. For many, a meaty, hefty tome like mine (704 pages) is just too intimidating. After all, look what they're doing to War and Peace: winnowing it to a more acceptable page count (though it'll still clock in at a handsome thousand pages or so).
What does all this mean for me? That I'm a faint voice in a vast ocean of noise, scarcely heard against the howling babble of the masses. There are something like 200,000 books published in North America each year. That's two hundred thousand! It's not a typo. Now, granted, a lot of these are self-published and a lot are books written for specific purposes: manuals, cookbooks, etc. A lot of them aren't competition for my novel. On the other hand, they all take up shelf space in a bookstore, which means less chance for books like mine to find a place in the stacks.
Bookstores can only hope to carry a small fraction of all the books being printed. Even the giants can't come close to displaying everything. And if you take a gander at what's on the shelves you'll discover that a lot of that material is old. Dead authors crowding out the new. Not that I would suggest for a moment that bookstores should abandon carrying the great works of yore; but it still means there's that much less space for the works of new authors. And for all the vastness of the Internet, for all its universality, for all it's breadth and scope and accessibility, the chances of being found on it by sheer chance are slim to known. People don't go around surfing the Internet typing in 'Lindsay Brambles' or 'In Darkness Bound'. Even if they did, would it mean all that much? Probably not. We've all cruised the 'Net on occasion, flitting from website to website, seldom if ever buying anything.
So I'm on Amazon.com and its affiliated sites in Canada, Britain, France, and Japan. Big deal! It means little to have your book in places like this or any of the other major online book retailers if nobody knows about it. People have to have an idea of what they're looking for when they go to an online retailer. An unknown author isn't likely to be highlighted at one of these sites; and it could take screens and screens of browsing before you might stumble upon my novel. Even if you did, unless others have bought it and left comments about it, you're not going to know what it's about and whether it's worth buying.
Let's face it: Unless something extraordinary happens (Hey, Oprah, how about giving my book a shot!), it's doubtful many people will ever buy and read my novel. It's disappointing to say the least, given the amount of time I spent writing it. But that's the reality of the publishing game these days. A harsh reality. It's enough to make you weep.
Lindsay Brambles, Ottawa
