We had a black and white television and Jiffy Pop was the first product that Madison Avenue seduced us to buy over the airwaves. Marketing was in its infancy.
Now, several way-out decades later, I’m a self-published author in a sex tape kind of world, and I’m having a hard time with self-promotion.
Self-promotion feels like bragging and bragging is bad and when you brag people will tell you that, “children are seen and not heard.”
Oh wait! That’s what my mother used to tell me when I was kid—twenty-four, seven.
So anyway . . . I’m a self-published author, publishing my fifth book, and I’m trying that marketing/self promotion thing for the first time, and it’s confusing. How do I toot my horn louder than the ten-hundred-million other people tooting their horns, many of them without their clothes on, especially when tooting my horn feels vaguely creepy?
Oh well . . . here’s the news. I’ve written my fifth book. BEYOND the STRANDLINE. It’s my first full-length novel. It’s an action, adventure, dystopian, grid-collapse, romance, survival, young adult story set in Central Florida, in the tradition of Pat Frank’s “Alas Babylon.” It’s been edited by a champ and re-edited and then re-checked.
And the advanced reader’s reviews are GLOWING:
“Okay, seriously, I devoured your book.”
“It was awesome.”
“This book has it all.”
“My heart beat faster and faster . . .”
“CAN’T PUT IT DOWN.”
And here’s the best part: I’m not the one saying it without my clothes on!!!
When I was little and I would ask my mother if I was pretty, she would say, “I’m not going to tell you that. I don’t want you to get a big head.”
I don’t want a big head or to make a sex tape or to have to set myself on fire to get attention. I want to write great stories that people enjoy and want to read—and maybe even break even. That would be pretty cool.
Linda (Toot My Own Horn) Zern
