Toiling away at the business
Originally published at Champagne and Socks. You can comment here or there.
I’ve been working on marketing and promotion for the Twelve Planets this week. A book doesn’t finish when it arrives in bountiful copies in numerous boxes on your (mother’s) doorstep. In some ways, it’s only just the beginning of the process. This realisation is a hideous one after the months spent working on finetuning the contents.
But it’s the way it is. So this week I have been working on some media releases (Nick, I can call it that because I *am* sending them out to actual real media outlets
). I sent my draft to a couple of people for comment and both of their individual responses were “dude, if this is what you do when sleep-deprived, OMG” (I paraphrased slightly, whatev).
And that had me thinking about a couple of things. I’m dog-tired. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in well over a month and before that too. I feel run down, I’m in post-con crash and emotionally I’m very fragile. All true. But I’m also a small business owner. And there are no days off or tired days or emotionally fragile days when it’s your own business. There’s no sick leave, no annual leave and no holidays. It’s my own hard-earned day job money that I’ve invested in this business. And the outcomes are mine to wear. I could have spent the money on a golf club membership or several trips to Paris or many other expensive pursuits. But I chose to invest it in this project of mine, this idea that I believe in and that I think, if I work hard enough at it, might just, one day, be something.
So media releases and promotion and marketing go on. And so does the beat.
And as I sit in full life reevaluation mode, questioning the direction I want to choose for my future, wondering if I’ve backed the right horse, I still plug away at the night job. I don’t even question it. The programme works if you work it. But you have to work at it every single day. Every day, I make sure that in some way I have promoted or publicised a title. No matter what else I do in the day, I make sure I’ve told someone new about the work I’ve published.