No, really, we have no idea what was slipped into our wine glass. All we know is that we’re suddenly feeling funky. Hmm, maybe it’s possible we like sunshine more than we’d ever admit in public (or maybe it’s that we could drive today without fear of someone rearending us…Los Angeles drivers never take yellow lights seriously). Whatever it is, it has us veering so far from our original topic, we’ve forgotten what it was.
We’ll be right back.
Ah, right. Genre fiction writers. Mad Max interviews the author currently known as Lynn Viehl (yes, one beauty of genre fiction is the dramatic reinvention of the author). Viehl straight talks about her work, her output (hey, who you calling prolific), compensation, promotion, and nutcases. Not necessarily in that order. Lots of cool insight, but we’re just gonna go ahead and pick out a quote that excited us.
I should have said “traditional self-promotion” because the whole booksigning/postcards/ bookmarks/convention thing is outdated and virtually worthless in a marketing sense. Writers need to pursue new, inventive avenues to market their books. That’s what I’ve tried to do with my website.
We do treasure each and every postcard and bookmark we receive, but that’s only because we only accept postcards and bookmarks from trusted friends. We don’t like junk, unless it somehow has the ability to distract us from such endeavors as work. And we suspect that this type of promotion has less impact than most authors think (though it is cost effective). Viehl discusses her approach to promotion, and we think it’s the right direction (but we live in fear of self-promotion).
