Author: skzb

I play the drum.

Reflections on The Incrementalists, Publicity, Self-promotion, and Stuff

I just finished signing books at Uncle Hugo’s (and thanks to you who showed up, especially Deane from Kansas), which marks the official end of my first-ever book tour. That makes this a good time for some thoughts on publicity and self-promotion.

“…I have been astonished at the readiness with which everything asked for has been yielded, without even an explanation being asked. Should my success be less than I desire and expect, the least I can say is, the fault is not with you.”
–U.S. Grant to Abraham Lincoln, April, 1864

It has been a remarkable couple of months. I’ve spoken before of how The Incrementalists holds a special place in my heart. This has been reflected in a couple of things, the first is my only effort to date to actively promote a book I’ve written, and, related to that, it is the only time I have asked a publisher to do more to promote one of my books.

As to the latter, I can only say that they exceeded my expectations. And for those ready to accuse me of kissing ass, I’ll point out that I don’t have any reason to do so: they already like me, and, moreover, I don’t believe any of the people involved are likely to make business decisions based on whether I say mean or nice things about them.

The fact is, they gave me (us) a book tour, my first ever. And a book trailer. And they advertised it. And they had us working with a publicist. And did posts on Tor.com. In short, they did everything I could imagine, and more (I never imagined a book trailer, for example).  It is also worth taking a moment to comment on the cover blurb by John Scalzi.  I don’t know, in general, how much good blurbs do, but I have heard (or overheard) several people saying that they bought the book because of the blurb.  Impressive.

The book tour: God it was fun!  For one thing, it was book tour “light”–the high-stress aspects of touring were, for the most part, missing.  What we had was joint readings (Skyler and I just never get tired of doing those!) before appreciative audiences, questions and answers from Smart People, and then signing books and meeting folks.  What is there not to like?

As for self-promotion, well, I tweeted more reviews than I ever have, I blogged and tweeted about signings, and I actively sought out interviews with blogs, zines, and everything else.  I even had, for the first time, a web site devoted to promoting the book (thanks to Adam Stemple, who created and maintains it).

So, now that that’s all done, there are a couple of obvious questions: 1) How much good did some or all of that do in terms of sales, and 2) How do I feel about it all?

As to the first, I don’t know. I think those in what I suppose I should call my “fan base” (folks who will buy my books because they’ve come to trust me to tell a good story) were going to buy the book anyway. I’m pretty sure that the effort at getting interviews and reviews &c succeeded in reaching some number of people who otherwise wouldn’t have been aware of the book; my impression, however, is not that many. Not enough, in other words, to turn it from a failure to a success, or from a success to a hit, or whatever.

What I know for certain is that the trailer, the tour, and a lot of the other stuff was an amazing amount of fun. I got to travel on someone else’s dime, meet old friends, make new ones, and do those readings and Q&As with Skyler which never stop being delightful. It also involved a lot of hanging out in Austin with Skyler, Scott, Egan, and Jen. We had a blast. Seriously, this last two months has been an utter delight, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat if I had the chance.

But, as expected, the self-promotion made me very, very uncomfortable. This shouldn’t be construed as an attack on those who do promote themselves, I’m only talking about how I feel, and tweeting and blogging about myself and my work makes me feel kind of dirty.

So, all of that said, before I move on and put the book behind me, I want to say a little bit about how it’s been received.

Not that I would ever stoop to the level of looking at my Amazon rankings, but if I did, I would find that it hasn’t been received as well as I’d hoped. Also, from the little I can tell, the sales aren’t as good as I’d hoped. These are two things, by the way, that I’ve never paid much attention to before; but I already mentioned that bizaare thing in a previous post.

But given the nature of the book, the reaction it’s gotten is exactly what I ought to have predicted. To some, it is a good read, to others it just doesn’t work, but for some . . . .

At the end of the book, we (to quote a reviewer) rap at the fourth wall. What we’re playing with is the idea that this book is intended to go find it’s people. In other words, there are some people who will get exactly what we’re doing. We play with that in the book, and that seems to be exactly what happens. How can I complain about that? And it is worth noting that, so far as I know, everyone has thought the original idea that Tappan King gave us is Really Cool, so he should feel proud.

Below, I’m listing my favorite stuff–the reviews and interviews and so on that I like best; not that I expect you guys to read them, but mostly so that I have them organized in one place so I can use them to cheer myself up on cold lonely nights in the wordmines. Then I’ll be done with this, put it out of my head (like I should have done a long time ago), and get on with Writing the Next Thing. But before I do, I have two last things to say:

1. A sincere thank you to you, who’ve listened to me, encouraged me, and, in general, put up with me during this strange interlude when I was someone else.

2. I need to quote my favorite comment on the book. It was a tweet from someone named @cabridges. He wrote: “Reading #TheIncrementalists by @StevenBrust & @skylerwhitesuth, hit the Firefly reference, smiled, frowned. They’re meddling with me…”

Yes we are. Thank you for noticing.

Links to stuff I loved:

First and foremost, the book trailer.

A kind review in SF Signal.

Cory Doctorow saying nice things about it? Yes please!

A review from Fantasy Book Critic.

A Starred Review from Booklist? Well, that doesn’t suck.

I think this may be my favorite review of anything of mine, ever; from Little Red Reviewer.

Bookworm Blues had nice things to say.

And this from Bibliosanctum

This seems to be from Christasbooks, and says nice things, and includes an interview.

A video review with a great name.

I’m not familiar with untitled.united, but I like what they say about the book.

This is from Summer Reading Project.

Robert M. Tilendis of Green Man Review seemed to like it.

Steven Halter, in a very brief review at Interesting Things seemed to really get it.

Carol at Bitten By Books had nice stuff to say.

Disclaimer: Marissa Lingen is a friend and helped with an early version. That said, I loved her review.

Finally, there is this one, which I include just because it appeared in the Wall Street Journal.  No, really.  It did.

Tom Whitmore said kind things about us in Locus, but, alas, I couldn’t find an online version.

Then there were the interviews and Q & As:

We’ll start with an actual, real, TV appearance on a show called Good Morning New Mexico.

Here is a Library Journal interview with Skyler and me by Eric Norton.

We did this really fun one for Tor.com, focusing mainly on the audio book.

Also at Tor.com, we did this fun “pop quiz.”

John Scalzi, not content with the wonderful blurb, was kind enough to give us a platform in the Big Idea section of his blog.

Paul Weimer at SF Signal, in addition to the review, did this interview with us.

This interview from Christasbooks was fun.

Little Red Reviewer interviewed me, and also Skyler.

We answered these questions from Matt Doyle.

The Tor/Forge blog had us ask each other questions, and it came out like this.

This one, with Mythic Scribes, isn’t about The Incrementalists in particular, but it went to some interesting places.

The AMA I did with Redit/Fantasy is here.

This one is on LJ with C.D. Lewis, who asked some fun questions.

Audible Authors did like a 40-minute podcast interview with us that went to some places.

And that’s all I can think of for now.

 

 

 

 

 

New Flash Fiction

 Shadow of the Therapist

 

It was my sixth session with the guy I’d been told to call Lieutenant, and I was about fed up. He’d started with waterboarding, then moved on to suspension. The third session had featured sexual humiliation, then there was sleep deprivation. Last time had involved beating the bottom of my feet with bamboo. I was brought in this time, and he said, “All right, 78773, today we’re going to do something a little different.”

“I can hardly wait,” I said.

He ignored the sarcasm. “This time, we’re going to expose you to very, very loud music for a period of–”

“Excuse me,” I said.

“Hmmm?”

“Look, I hate to do this.”

“What?”

I twitched a little. I wasn’t good at this stuff. “Well, the fact is, this isn’t working for me.”

“It isn’t . . . ?”

“I feel no more desire to talk than I did before we started.”

He frowned. “You know,” he said, “torturing is a relationship.”

“I know,” I said. “But this just isn’t doing it for me. I’m sorry.”

“What will you do,” he said, “if we switch you to another torturer, and you still won’t talk?”

I shook my head. “Then I’ll move on to yet another.”

“And another and another? If you’re ever going to make progress, you’re going to have to accept that breaking you can take a lot of time.”

“I know that,” I said. “And please don’t take this personally.”

“It isn’t my feelings I’m worried about,” he said. “It’s your future.”

“I think you’re not being honest with yourself,” I told him.

“That isn’t for you to say.”

“No, I suppose not,” I said.

He took in a slow breath. “Well, all right then,” he said. “I’ll speak with the Captain. He does hot irons.”

“That sounds more hopeful,” I said.

“All right. Well, I wish you luck,” he said, and walked out of the room.

I felt bad for him. But you know, I have to worry about my own needs and feelings. Don’t I?

 

Signing at Uncle Hugo’s

At 4PM on Saturday November 9, I’ll be signing books at Uncle Hugo’s Bookstore, 2864 Chicago Ave S, Minneapolis, MN 55407.  Alas, Skyler won’t be there.

This is the end of the signing tour that began in late September, and the end of Minnesota Boy Attempts Self-Promotion.  I’ll probably have some thoughts about all of that after Saturday, but, in the meantime, I hope to see some of you there.

 

In the Game of Science vs the Humanities, We Lose

My friend Casey Blair just made this post, which I liked because it made me think. I’m a sucker for that sort of thing.

There has been a fair amount of discussion in Some Circles about which is more important, education in science, or education in the humanities.  The general attitude is, you only have so many hours of education in college, you can only take so many classes, you have to choose how to divide them.  Casey points out that what is trendy today is to concentrate on math and science, because that will make you employable, and she elegantly picks apart the logic behind that position.  The crux of her argument is this: “Education is not primarily about teaching students employable skills.  That’s called training, and that also matters, but it’s not the same as education. Education is about teaching people how to think.”

In my opinion, the biggest problem in education today is that one needs massive student loans just to get enough of an education to get a job that will never allow one to pay off the student loans.  But, for the moment, let us ignore that and concentrate on the issue of education in science vs education in the humanities.

As far as Casey went, I have no disagreements; my argument comes in the next step.

I would argue that science is, in fact, about teaching people how to think.  However, when I say science, I do not just mean, “CSCI 4061 – Introduction to Operating Systems ,” or, “MATH 4707 – Introduction to Combinatorics and Graph Theory,” or, “BMEN 2501 Cellular and Molecular Biology for Biomedical Engineers .”  When I speak of science, I speak of using using our reasoning abilities and our means of gathering information to form conclusions that bring our thoughts as close as possible to objective processes in the real world.

In this regard, there can be no distinction between “science” and “the humanities.”

It is a false, pervasive, and dangerous dichotomy.

The point Casey makes above, that I quoted, is exactly on point: The idea of education is, yes, to teach us to think.  But just as much, it is to make us more complete, more empathetic, more well-rounded human beings.  That is also the role of art in life, as well as in education.  A good education ought to help us understand the world, both physically and emotionally–or, if you will, spiritually.

I think it is one of the great crimes of capitalism that today fewer and fewer people have access, not only to training in how to think, but in how to get the most out of works of art.  Of course, the closing of museums and the attacks on symphony orchestras are part of that same process.

I’m getting off-topic.  Sorry.   I’ve often heard things like, “science shows us how we change the world, the humanities show us why” and similar distinctions.  They’re clever, but I don’t agree. My point is, I think it is misleading and pernicious to make such a sharp divide between the sciences and the humanities. What matters is being able to understand, operate in, and change our world.   When it comes to education, to understanding how to think and to fully appreciate the world around us, we all need it all, and we all deserve it all, and, really, I don’t think that’s asking for so much.