Summing Up My Week

 

I always feel bad for stores that go out of business. It's generally a process to get to the final stage of locking the doors for good. They'll start with a 25%-off sale and advance from there, until you step inside one day and there's a table with a couple of sweaters, one of them with a ripped seam, and a size extra-small pair of leggings. The metal shelves that used to line the walls are already torn down, and there's one dim light above the lone-staffed checkout aisle.

While my publishing career is still semi-lit, the light is rapidly fading. I don't necessarily feel any regret or nostalgia for it, unlike my husband who practically burst into tears once he decided to do away with our landline telephone. In fact, I relish no longer being a slave to the latest marketing ploy that, like all the others, won't work; but if I cross my fingers, squeeze my eyes closed and wish really, really hard, maybe this time magic will happen.

Nor do I resent those marketing gurus who prey on writers' gullibility. They've gotta make a living, too. And it has to be hard to keep coming up with new schemes to fool people. But they've become pesky mosquitos that keep landing in my in-box, which I'm too queasy to swat away. Of my 96 unopened emails I noted yesterday, I managed to cull only about ten of them. I see that David Gaughran wants to guide me through Facebook ads, Dave at Kindlepreneur has some new doo-dad to hawk, Written Word Media wants me to buy a 3-day promo stack at $155.00, but only if I price my book at $0.00. (Winner!) Another person titled their email, "What if book marketing wasn't so overwhelming?" Except I've already figured out the answer to that: Don't market.

I don't have anything against any of the above people. Gaughran isn't asking for my money, which makes him a surprising outlier. The other people might actually be offering something worthwhile...to somebody; just not me. But I don't need them anymore and it's questionable whether I ever did need them, but at one time I wanted to educate myself on marketing; you know, that one time when I still had hope.

My only unfinished business is the literary magazine I'm supposed to be featured in this month. But the month is waning and I have yet to receive any notification. I had to fight to even convince the editor that she'd offered to include my article, so at this point my odds of getting published are 50/50. In her defense, she was confused between my pen name and my real name, as if I'm the only writer on earth to ever use a pen name; and really, it's not that big of a deal if my article isn't published. All I ever wanted from it were sales, which again, is a pipe dream.

More interesting (?) is my back and forth debate over whether to email my former teacher. And speaking of "waning", now's the time to contact her if I'm ever going to do it. She's 86, after all. To that end, I joined a Reddit teacher sub to ask teachers if they actually like hearing from former students. The four responses I've received so far were strong yesses.

In other news, my cover has made the third round in the Cover of the Month contest. (How many f'ing rounds are there?) A lot of rigamarole for a nothing prize. And no, I'm not going to post about it on social media again. I felt like a fool doing it even once.

When I was researching the number of users Goodreads has, Google's AI mentioned that a place called The Storygraph is a Goodreads alternative, so I tried it out. Authors, don't bother. There's no way to sign up for an author account, and while I could add my books to my reader account, it was a ponderous process with no point. I added three of them before quitting.  

My current obsession is finding old photographs and scanning them. The memory book I was given allows image inclusion, which makes for a more interesting coffee table book. My puny house offers little storage space, so it seems I have photos stuffed in every space imaginable, except I'm not finding the ones I need. (Internet searches are far easier, all in all.)

And that's it---my lackluster week. I'm "confident" next week will produce something to write about.