Booklife

If you want a glorious look at a large version of the Booklife cover, check out GeekDad’s post about the book.

Brad Moon’s been tremendously supportive, and it was gratifying to get this blurb from him awhile back for Booklife. When working writers give it a stamp of approval, you know you’re doing okay.

As a part-time writer making the transition to a full-time career, BOOKLIFE has been an invaluable resource. Like many writers, I found myself juggling freelance gigs, while neglecting the bigger picture; essentially running on a writing treadmill with no viable long term plan. Writing is a challenging way to make a living, especially with shifting publication models, advances in technology (and accompanying distractions), a growing emphasis on self-promotion and the potential and pitfalls of burgeoning social media web sites. BOOKLIFE offers advice for dealing with these variables, as well as laying out a strategy for effectively organizing and planning your career. Important issues like health, fitness and maintaining a work/life balance are also addressed. Jeff VanderMeer’s personal anecdotes, real life examples and sense of humor go a long way toward preventing BOOKLIFE from becoming a dry “How-To” manual, while sections on Public Relations, Editors and Agents have helped me to anticipate and prepare for what lies ahead.

If I could only bring three things with me on my book tour, I’d choose pens (you can always find something to write on), a manually winding watch that doesn’t require a battery, and copies of the books I’m touring behind. Note how shiny and new those books are right now, at the beginning of the tour. They won’t stay that way. The Finch copy will get all tattered and torn and marked up from me using it to read from. The Booklife copy I plan on turning into a keepsake by having readers at events sign it. By the end of five weeks it will be full of signatures. It may also be tattered, but I kind of like that idea. It should have some signs of having gotten out into the world.

I’ll discuss some ways in which modern book tours are more like playing three-dimensional chess on November 2, when my tour really begins to kick into high gear, but for now, a few images from my preparations with accompanying explanation. Also check out my post on my personal blog about the organizational principles of a book tour.

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Even though we’ve gone for a soft roll-out for Booklife and Booklifenow for reasons having to do with my novel being published at roughly the same time (the strategy a subject for a later post), it’s been a great week for the book and the site. In addition to a ton of well-wishes and interest from various book sites, Boing Boing posted a rave review of Booklife, writing in part that ” “.

Sparked by that, Booklife entered the stratosphere on Amazon, peaking (for now) in the mid-300s and making Amazon’s “Movers and Shakers” list for the most dramatic rise in sales ranking, as noted on the Omnivoracious book blog.

So thanks all of you who helped make that happen, and I hope you share the link to this site with your writer friends. If you haven’t bought the book but were thinking about it, help us keep the momentum going.

Next up–the Pillars of Your Personal Booklife.