by GGK on Jul.02, 2010, under Guy Gavriel Kay
So, jet lag isn’t readily conducive to lucid blog posts. Am I the first to notice this? Still in post-China mode, emailing contacts back there with follow-ups. I wrapped up the Bright Weavings tour journal yesterday … I had said that China would end the touring and thus the journal. So I am only here right now.
Insofar as, in currently hazy state, I am anywhere.
I continue to have some ambivalence about the degree to which book marketing these days is expected to be the author’s task, and I wonder about the degree to which promotion is also turning on the personality of the writer and not the merits of the work. There isn’t a lot that is going to happen to change in this regard, not in the short run. Publishers have drastically reduced budgets and our society is very much a cult of personality one. Things come together and create trends and patterns (that’s one thing history teaches).
And I suppose it is worth teasing me (go ahead) that here I am, blogging on a Borders site, discussing the promotion of my new book (and thereby marketing it?), and worrying about authors and promotion. Welcome to my glass house? But the reality, it seems to me, is that we all need to work towards finding our own balance in these matters, a comfort zone, a mix of accessibility and the withdrawal required to create.
In fact, I’ve already told a couple of friends today that, with the Under heaven journal wrapped it starts to feel as if a page needs to be turned … which means starting to figure out the next book.
Ouch.
Related posts:
- It is nice when life sets up your blog themes. I’m starting my sojourn here at Babel Clash by posting from Shanghai, where I’ve been for the past week doing a variety of book-related activities, and some tourism. For the next week I’ll be logging in from Beijing, then...
- We interrupt your regulary scheduled posting… …to bring you another post by our esteemed guest author, Guy Gavriel Kay. As you all know, he’s been talking with us this week while on a trip to China where, unfortunately, it appears Babel Clash is incompatible with the local internet. To make sure we don’t miss out on...
