Since I’ve been clogged, I’ve had my face smooshed against my computer monitor trying to carefully correct all the mistakes in my damn book, Shrapnel in the San Fernando Valley; I’m so incredibly embarrassed by the plethora of flaws that were there. My gawd! That’s what no sleep gets you.

The writing hasn’t been coming, so the Summer Newsletter won’t be going out. I apologize to the both of you. I started it, but I only got two paragraphs in. Now autumn is a’commin down the pike. It will probably be here before I finish this blog post. I swear, I am getting slower in my old age. First my vision, then my hearing. Now it’s just everything I do.

Now that I’ve created a second edition of my book (and inevitably more mistakes will rear their stupid heads), I have a mountain of tasks before me, again. They all involve marketing. I have to promote and do the whole nine. It overwhelms me just thinking about how much time it will take away from art-doing. Not to mention getting the amount of rest I need these days, which is a lot.

Believe it or not, I was about to hire a publicist. I saved up some scratch for doing just that, because I don’t have those jumbo connections that are needed to make the difference. Then I found out how much it was to hire a publicist. Do you want to know how much?

After much research, I found a real PR service will run you anywhere from $1,500 to $4,500 per month usually with a three month minimum. This depends on whether you’re working with a private publicist or a fancy firm with even better connections. Some may not even take you on if you are self-published or with an indie, money or none. My knees about buckled when I got my first quote. I thought I was dreaming, or they were.

Now, don’t get me wrong. There are a lot of little places that offer blog tour services for as little as $100-$400, but that’s not what I need right now. I already did that. Twice. I need more specific stuff. Targeted stuff. Half of it I can do on my own, and with the other half, I’ll just have to pray to L. Ron Hubbard and hope for the best. I don’t have access to Good Morning America, or the NY Times, or whatever else that could boost the book to a better place. And even if I did, a lot of it has to do with dumb luck.

I already tried sending my book to pretty much every publication that counts with a cover letter and a press kit. Zero response. I need reviewers, both critical reviews and from readers. Even getting them from my readers is not easy. If I know someone who has read the book, or downloaded it, I have to bug them for their opinion in written form, then ask them to post it on Amazon. That’s a lot to ask. It’s annoying. I don’t think people want to be bothered, or else they’d do it, right? Maybe if they’re an acquaintance and they have some not so great things to say, they are afraid to post their opinions.

Well, let me just say this: I don’t care. I want honest feedback (now that the mistakes are fixed–ha ha).

Okay, so I likely won’t be hiring a publicist. I’ll do the dance myself, the stuff I know how to do anyway. And the thing is, I know exactly what to do. So why don’t I?

Time.

It’s going to take a hell of a lot of time and a lot of change, like participating on my social media platforms. I have to start building one brick at a time. One must do this in order to promote oneself. It’s the hard truth. I am part way there in that all my platforms are set up. Some people haven’t even gotten that far (I hate the word “gotten”). And, I do like to write on my blog. In order to gain more traffic from those platforms and drive them to the blog, I will have to interact! That’s not so easy for me to do. Change is not always easy.

I’ll also have to learn Twitter. That’s right, I really don’t know how to work it. I hardly know how to deal with Facebook where I have the most friends.

I have to change the blog site–this very site where you’re reading these very words right here and now. It needs to be integrated to the book site somehow. Though it’s also my artist’s blog, I’ll need to come up with some strategy to make it work with both sites. The “look” of my online Carol Es world should look familiar to others in cyberspace–it’s otherwise known as “branding.” Therefore, the look of the book site will more than likely look a lot more like esart.com has for the last several hundred years. Sounds a little boring, but I like my site.

From this, I’m going to make portions of my book available to download for free. I think it’s important that readers can read a little bit of what they would be paying for if they should purchase the book. How that’s going to work (kind of the way Amazon does their “sneak peek”), may or may not be tricky. I’ll have to hit mjp up to assist me–he doesn’t know it yet. Boy, will he be pleased. Woo hoo! More work!

Other changes are coming, but isn’t this thing long enough? Yeah, I thought so.