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Writing and publishing in 2011, Penwarriors, and the power of pull
EC’s “THE SIDE EFFECTS OF WRITING” got me thinking once again about the universe of publishing, writing, and the tangle of “empowerment + uncertainty” that the explosion of indie publishing has brought to modern writers. I replied to EC’s post earlier today with a bit of a ramble about my own discomfort with marketing, and a few thoughts about traditional print publishing as an unsustainable business model in 2011 – not to mention being environmentally unfriendly.
As J A Konrath and a host of others have demonstrated, when a writer takes control of her own destiny by using channels like Amazon.com and Smashwords to epublish her own work, the results can be tremendously exciting. Over the last year conversations about indie publishing (print on demand and epublishing) have grown more common among writers everywhere. But as EC reflects, many of us are uncertain of how to tackle the new realities of promotion intelligently, gracefully and – most importantly, without drowning in a flood of social media options that suck away our writing time.
This evening the dogs and I went for an oceanside walk with a good friend who is not a writer, and she told me she’s just read The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion
I got quite excited listening, because there’s too much “pushing” going on these days – in politics, in business, in the administration of education. And yet it seems to me the history of the Internet has shown that offering control to the “market” (i.e. Internet users) is what works and draws people to a Web site, to a product, to an idea. Certainly it has been a factor in the success of communications in our modern world of Twitter, Facebook, Google, and our multitude of many-to-many communications.
I’m off to do a little exploration of “The Power of Pull” – and as with most books I buy these days, I’ll avoid slaughtering a tree by purchasing it online. I’ve searched out the book online and have read one rather critical review that claims the book is “old stuff” and not news in the business management world, but I happen to know that a lot of wisdom is “old hat” that “everybody knows.” But knowing and putting into practice are two different things. I notice that very few businesses actually apply this modern wisdom. In short, I’m sceptical of the scepticism of the review LOL.
I’ll give the book the benefit of the doubt because it’s worth it to me to spend a few hours in the hopes I’ll gain some clarity as to how I might navigate the world of promotion a bit more intelligently, and find a way to avoid promotion taking up the mental energy that I need for creating.
I’ll let you know if I learn anything – or if I don’t!
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