Soon after I knew my book, Under the Tree Ferns, was going to be published, I started thinking about how to market it. Hiring a publicist was not an option: the cost of publishing the book through a hybrid company was prohibitive, and a publicist would add another $6,000 or more to the bill. So I began to research.
The suggestions were overwhelming and incredibly time-consuming—SOMEHOW, the experts say, identify your exact target audience; compile a promotional email list of all the people you’ve ever known; create a professional-looking website; optimize retailer listings such as Amazon through author pages, keywords, and categories; host a dynamite launch party; boost the constantly changing sales algorithms; get well known bloggers, podcasters, and other influencers to review your book; join book platforms; spend money on ads in trade magazines; and work with other authors to promote the book. Some of the suggestions I could do; others remained as incomprehensible as an Einstein math equation. There came a moment (to be honest, many moments) when my stomach squirmed in despair.
That is when I thought of a poem I’ve always admired—Walt Whitman’s “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer.” Whitman also knew of daunting data, though in his case it had to do with astronomy, not marketing. Here is what happened to him:
When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Yes, that was how I felt—tired and sick. So what did Whitman do?
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
Inspired, this is what I did: I opened an advance reader copy of my book and began to read. The words, scenes, and characters came alive to me on the pages. The book—that was what was most important. Marketing worries faded. My stomach relaxed, and my breathing returned to a cadence as natural as the iambic pentameter of the final line in Whitman’s poem.
[Photo by Klemen Vrankar on Unsplash]
