Thanks so much for the post. Yes, it is in fact available in paperback already and should be at the local Wellesley bookstore. Thanks for sharing it with your group –I’m happy to drop by if I’m in Boston at the time of your meeting and answer questions (or do so by conference call if I’m in NYC still–I’ve done this with numerous clubs and it works pretty well!)

Meantime, all best for the holidays

jenn

I intend to share your book with my Book Cluc. Will it be out in paperback soon?

Kassia and other bloggers are like imaginary friends, literary friends, whose company I enjoy – pathetic I know, but true. Like “real” acquaintances, if they say something funny or teach me something new, since they can’t see me throw back my head and guffaw or wrinkle my forehead in concentration, I leave a comment to let them know they made me laugh or taught me something useful.

And Jennifer, I enjoyed your post and you’ve piqued my curosity with respect to your novel. You also scared the bejesus out of me. Sounds daunting: wending your way through the blogosphere as a way to promote your writing. But I guess if you can do it, especially since you started from scratch, we all can. Doesn’t sound like we have any choice.

In the past, authors looking for sales figures had to wait for the publisher’s semiannual royalty statements, which reported sales for a six-month period beginning about 9-12 months earlier. So in December 2008, for example, an author will learn the sales totals from fall 2007 to spring 2008.

Now, however, the cruel Web provides, if not numbers, sneaky glimpses of sales trends. Every author knows to watch the rankings on Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com to see if a book catches fire—i.e., goes to the top few hundred, or, for slower selling books, jumps a few thousand places from a single sale. BooksaMillion (BAMM.com) and Target also offer sales rankings for books, slowly updated and best explored by category.

One can also track, via the Web, a book’s purchases by libraries—either by checking the online catalog of individual libraries to view how many copies were acquired (start at http://lists.webjunction.org/libweb), or by seeing how many and which libraries have reported an acquisition to WorldCat (use the full database available through most big libraries). WorldCat doesn’t reveal how many units were acquired nor does it represent all libraries.

In addition, Borders online (go to “My Stores,” then “Inventory”) and Barnes & Noble online provide data on which stores are stocking one’s book. One searches for these figures metro area by metro area. Powell’s Books (Powells.com) also gives updated stock figures.

Through the online database of “Books in Print,” available via large public libraries, authors can glimpse holdings and movement of stock at such wholesalers as Baker & Taylor. Not all wholesalers give numbers, however, preferring to say, “available for order (like, what isn’t?).

And, of course, one can Google (or MSN) a title and author to see if there’s any buzz developing. For the desperate—and aren’t we all?—general searches can be followed by searches under images, groups, and blogs.

If you think dogs look silly digging up yards in search of old bones, just watch us literary bipeds clawing for such scraps as I’ve mentioned. The real absurdity—or pathos—is that for most authors the numbers are going to be nickel-and-dime, ever faltering, and generally depressing (if slightly diverting).

Wow as well. I have to say that while I’m always happy to have a response to my writing I’m a little taken aback by the vehemence of yours. I think you took my blog far more literally than I’d intended. And actually, as Kassia (happily) sees I did have quite a lot of fun writing it. For one thing, it’s a welcome change from my normally not-so-fun literary focus on things like sexual slavery and war crimes. But part of what was really fun about it, for me (if not for you) was poking fun at myself for being such a blognoramus. Hence the mother/VCR comparison. Though of course I also recognize that this may be seen as another “la-di-da-da” cliche.

I also want to clarigy that I certainly meant no disrespect (nor patronization) to the bloggers to whom I’ve written about my novel. The fact is, I only write to blogs I find interesting or thought provoking, and I’ve been honestly gratified by the warm response “Painter” has gotten on great sites like Booksquare. I was initially simply a bit overwhelmed by how many of them there are, and how endless the daisy-chaining process (usually via everyone’s recommended links) can be. As someone who literally knew nothing about the blogging universe 18 months ago, it was eye-opening, to say the least. For the record, though, I don’t feel in the least bit woeful about it. On the contrary; I feel very lucky.

Anyways. Thanks to Kassia for the forum and to Tim for the thoughts (I think). Maybe sometime we’ll run into each other at a party and I’ll get a chance to demonstrate to you how relaxed and enjoyable I can be.

It’s not lost on me that she has to help promote her own book or that you want to help her help herself by letting her post here. And when she’s sold enough books she’s going to stop blogging and get back to what she wants to be doing, which is writing her novel (you say she’s having fun but she doesn’t seem to be from what she wrote here). What is lost on me is why she, or at this point I should say any author, would do this ‘woe is me, I started out as an idealistic child wanting to be a writer and now that I’ve made it I’m forced to suck up to these things called blogs because I’m on my own in this big bad publishing world’ and not just hire a good publicist. Is a novelist’s time worth so little that it’s more cost effective to do so-called “marketing” for a blip here and there on their Amazon rankings and not write? Or is it just too easy and reassuring? Is it a commercial response to an author who wants commercial success (was selling lots of novels part of that 12 year old’s dream)? But really what’s happening is that just as the blogging phenomenon has created millions of amateur writers it also appears to be creating even more millions of amateur spammers.

I get pitched by authors every day, all the time. I’d say 99.999% of them do it wrong. Very wrong. They don’t take the time to read my blog and they don’t take the time to write a pitch that meets my needs. Jenn did both (plus, if my old brain recalls correctly, she connected via a mutual acquaintance). This is how the real blogosphere works — I want people to guest on my site, but I also want to limit those guest to authors who intrigue me. Since I cannot possibly find them on my own, I depend on pitches and mutual friends to do some of this heavy lifting.

That being said, the real point of this post was that this terrifically reviewed author had to learn how to do all of this on her own. I cringe at the comment about no online strategy…it’s sad and true. People network. Sometimes they click with others, sometimes they don’t. This is Jenn’s second post here, and she’s having fun. And I hope she continues to play in this space because it’s always interesting to me to see how authors step into other voices and characters as they move from writing person to promo person to casual person to….