{"id":2142,"date":"2012-08-16T00:05:28","date_gmt":"2012-08-16T07:05:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/?p=2142"},"modified":"2012-08-15T23:57:50","modified_gmt":"2012-08-16T06:57:50","slug":"the-worst-part-of-the-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/2012\/08\/16\/the-worst-part-of-the-job\/","title":{"rendered":"The Worst Part of the Job"},"content":{"rendered":"

\tSelf-promotion\u2014transforming oneself into a brand\u2014is an uncomfortable but necessary part of being a writer in today\u2019s world. It\u2019s the part of my job that I dislike the most\u2014even more than I dislike rewriting. One of the things that my agent asked me when I signed with him\u2014because publishers ask for it\u2014is what my \u201cplatform\u201d might be. For fiction, that\u2019s not so important, but for the non-fiction books that I\u2019ve written, \u201cplatform\u201d is a significant consideration for the marketing people that play such an important role now in determining whether a book actually gets picked up for publication. After all, publishing is a business and the publisher wants to make a profit off the book. How good the book might be is of secondary importance for the marketing department. Editors get excited over interesting ideas and good writing. Marketing people only get gleeful over whether a new book concept comes from an author with a platform. <\/p>\n

\tSo what is an author\u2019s platform? It\u2019s the people that you have contact with, the folks that know you who might buy your book. And the more the better. So, as my agent told me, if you have a blog that gets 15,000 hits a month, you have a platform that publishers will pay attention to. You\u2019ve already become a brand.<\/p>\n

\tMy agent was overjoyed to learn that the website of the small seminary I teach for receives over 30,000 hits a month. Not only does it link to my personal blog, it also links to my books on Amazon. So I have the sort of platform that the marketing people at publishing houses swoon over. My speaking engagements, my occasional preaching, and my teaching in the classroom are just icing on the cake.<\/p>\n

\tOne of the peculiar things about doing what my agent and editors want me to do\u2014self-promotion\u2014is that it inevitably leads to criticism. I once received an email from someone out of the blue who wrote \u201c you need to discontinue pressing to make a name for yourself like your forefather Nimrod\u201d and \u201cwith as much self-importance as you have placed in yourself coupled with your love for the praise and honor that comes from men, obviously more so than the honor that comes from God, I doubt seriously you are able to be corrected in your pride and arrogancy.\u201d Of course, the stranger went on in that vein for several paragraphs.<\/p>\n

\tUnfortunately, that stranger simply doesn\u2019t understand the business of publishing, or for that matter, the very nature of any<\/em> business. People buy books mostly based on their recognition of the author. When you want a new novel to read, you are most likely to purchase the book of an author that you know, such as Stephen King, Dean R. Koontz, or J.K. Rowling. How often do you pick up a book written by someone you\u2019ve never heard of? The author\u2019s name is a brand\u2014like Coca-Cola, Pepsi, or Kleenex. You spend your money on what is familiar. Thus, the publisher wants to turn all its authors into Hostess Twinkies, and the author, as part of his or her job, is expected to do what he or she can to \u201cmake a name for himself or herself\u201d like that.<\/p>\n

\tI am not comfortable talking about myself. But every job has its disagreeable aspects, and so I do what I have to do with each book. I send out a press release to the local newspaper, I send an email to the alumni affairs person at the college from which I graduated, and I visit all the local bookstores in my community\u2014all two of them (not counting used bookstores, which, I\u2019m hoping, won\u2019t have any of my books for a long while yet).<\/p>\n

\tAlthough the local bookstores are never helpful, and apparently are overwhelmed by local authors begging for notice (given that they won\u2019t give me the time of day), I still make the trek every time one of my books is published. I hate it, it\u2019s useless, but it\u2019s part of the job and maybe, someday, the local bookstores might actually be nice to me. I also maintain a blog, keep a presence on the social networks, and even watch my Klout score. Does any of it do any good? Hard to say. My books are selling, so I suppose something is working.<\/p>\n

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Self-promotion\u2014transforming oneself into a brand\u2014is an uncomfortable but necessary part of being a writer in today\u2019s world. It\u2019s the part of my job that I dislike the most\u2014even more than I dislike rewriting. One of the things that my agent … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes"},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2142"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2142"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2145,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2142\/revisions\/2145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}