I intended Booklife as a helpful guide that combined advice on how to navigate your way through the myriad of potentially distracting and useless tools and opportunities provided by the internet with modern advice on a host of more personal issues related to writing and being a writer, based on 25 years of experience. Crispin saw it at least in part as potentially manipulative or cynical, and placed it in the context of the many new “get-rich-quick” books that detail how to do internet marketing and the like.

After a more careful examination of her essay, however, I came to the conclusion that a difference in defining terms like “contact” might be part of the problem–that, in fact, whether you were to call someone a “contact” or an “ally,” the same points applied: in all of your dealings with other people, whether about your work or generally, be a sincere human being.

Of course, there’s also the uncomfortable truth that no one is ever going to perceive your book exactly the way that you intended for it to be perceived. In coming into contact with the world the text changes, given an additional dimension by readers. Nor do I think Booklife is perfect–part of the point of the book is to continually test it, to not only use it but to also define yourself as a writer by what you disagree with in the text.

That said, I decided it would be interesting to interview Crispin about issues related to the modern writer’s life and Booklife. The results are great—rock-solid advice and insight.

At least one of her answers deserves special emphasis, since I think it’s becoming a major problem in the largely hierarchy-blind world of the internet: “I do worry a little that the modern age has taken the failure stage out of the creative process. Now if you can’t get your manuscript published, it’s because the publishers are cowards, can’t see your genius, and you can self-publish it (and then send out slightly crazed emails to critics). There is a lack of humility, a failure to recognize that getting knocked on your ass is actually good for you.”

There’s also nothing in her answers that I would disagree with; indeed, there’s nothing in Booklife that would intentionally contradict the idea of focusing on the craft and art of fiction over the need to promote your work. Does that mean I won’t be making some changes in the second edition? Not at all, and one of those changes will be to add an introduction to the Public Booklife section that references Crispin’s Smart Set essay, and makes doubly or triply clear the context in which I am providing that information.

So, without further preamble, an interview with Jessa Crispin—with sincere thanks to her for doing the interview.

How do you personally use new media? And do elements of new media help define you as a writer and editor? (I’m thinking in part of how Bookslut has shaped your image online.)

Jessa Crispin: Before Bookslut, there was no me as a writer. Other than high school newspaper stuff, I had not done any public writing. The Bookslut blog was, I think, literally the first writing of mine published since I was 17. And I didn’t have a drawer full of stuff, either, the impulse came as part of Bookslut. As a result, the idea of me as a writer is very tied into the blog, because that’s where I show up the most. My writing style was shaped online, which is maybe why almost all of my freelance writing is for websites: NPR.org and TheSmartSet.com, where I am their books columnist, the occasional other venue.

You indicated in your Smart Set essay that referenced Booklife that some of your students need reminding that the most important thing is the writing. Do you also have students who seem too unwilling to engage an audience, despite perhaps being ready to submit their work? If so, what do you tell those writers?

I should clarify that I don’t myself have students. I’m brought in occasionally to answer questions that writing students might have, to crush their hopes and dreams about making a living off of writing as soon as they leave their MFA program, but I have never really taught on my own other than a day workshop or what have you. But I have in my life met published writers who are very sketchy about engaging with an audience. They think the book should stand for itself, and that the publicity, the readings, the interviews, the blogs are all pointless.
Which is fine when you’re Cormac McCarthy, but last I checked there was only one of him. I don’t think that’s a horrible mindset, some people just aren’t interested, and are fine taking the hit in sales that causes. Maybe they have a day job that they don’t mind doing, that actually feeds their creativity. The writers, however, who don’t want to do the publicity drag but are also pissed off that the world does not instantly recognize their genius and throw money at them, they need to rethink things.

When do you think a writer crosses the line between helping a publisher sell their book and entering into a cycle destructive to their creativity?

When it starts eating into everything else that you do. When it’s always gnawing at the back of your brain, “Maybe if I talked to this person,” “Maybe if I rewrote this press release.” And when you start to turn into a dick. I have received nasty emails in my day from authors and publicists, demanding an answer as to whether their book would be reviewed or not. At the time, I was getting 30 to 40 books a day, and it would take me hours to email each one individually and let them know the book had been received, then whether or not it was selected for review, etc. At some point you have to realize that you can’t control what’s going to happen to the book, and start thinking about what project might distract you from this.

But speaking of entering a cycle destructive to their creativity:
we’ve seen writers become really unhinged last year, responding to their critics in these really embarrassing ways. Alain de Botton, Alice Hoffman, whoever else. A writer wrote one of my reviewers who had been critical of him and called her a “cunt.” That’s destructive to his creativity, because if I ever run into him, I am going to tear out his throat with my teeth.

In your Smart Set essay, you talk about a writer needing “allies” in contrast to “contacts.” I like the term ally because it gets across what I intended to convey about “contact”, but how would you personally identify manipulation as opposed to dealing with someone on a human level? (And does this mean that writers should always deal with people like reviews editors and bloggers through proxies?)

No, I don’t think that there should always be proxies. But how I would identify manipulation: There are always going to be people who come at you with an agenda. They want something, they are going to figure out a way to get it, and then they’ll either disappear or they’ll try to stomp around on you before they go. It’s the difference between treating someone like a human being—”Hey, I like what you do, maybe you’ll like what I do”—and as a tool—”Hi, my name is so-and-so and I am hoping you can assist me in advancing my career.”

I was having a conversation with a writer the other day, and he stated that the best things are always by-products. Happiness is a by-product, and I loved that he said that. You can plot your journey to success or happiness or wealth or whatever it is you’re looking for, but if you’re too focused on the end result, you’re going to miss anything good going on around you. (There’s also the fact that the end result will keep moving if you live like that. Okay, I got a four figure advance, now next time I want twice that, bigger press runs, and a New York Times review, then I will feel successful.) Not that we should all sing songs around the campfire and braid each other’s hair, but there has to be a combination of the two, forward motion and goal planning, but while taking a look at the people around you.

How much of an introvert or extrovert are you, and how does it affect your writing career?

I am an introvert with brief flashes of extreme extrovertism. There are generally one or two patches out of the year with intense travel, interviews, running around going to parties, and then after that I need the rest of the year to hole up and get work done.

Are there attributes a fiction writer either has or doesn’t have, that can’t be taught?

Yes, of course. Curiosity, wisdom, sensitivity…

In Booklife, identify curiosity, receptivity, passion, imagination, discipline, and endurance as the pillars of your personal booklife. Which of those attributes do you think are most valuable, and what would you add to them?

Everyone’s tool kit is different. But it’s mostly about proportion.
How much of this is being driven by my ego, how much am I influenced by wanting to fit in, how much work am I willing to dedicate to this.

What does the term “permission to fail” mean to you?

I had been reading this biography of W. Somerset Maugham, and for some reason in my head I had always believed that he met with instant success. It’s true he was successful quite young. He was breaking West End London theatre records, was writing bestsellers. But he also went through a period of serious rejection. He couldn’t get a play made to save his life, his autobiographical novel could not find a publisher.

And so he kept refining his craft. He finally found a mode of playwriting that suited him and was successful, and his autobiographical novel was refined into the pristine Of Human Bondage.

Without his early failure, we would not have that novel. I do worry a little that the modern age has taken the failure stage out of the creative process. Now if you can’t get your manuscript published, it’s because the publishers are cowards, can’t see your genius, and you can self-publish it (and then send out slightly crazed emails to critics). There is a lack of humility, a failure to recognize that getting knocked on your ass is actually good for you.

Are there modern tools for writers that you feel actually hinder or put blinkers on creativity?

Everyone gets their energy from different sources. What’s good for one person will be completely devastating for another. So no, I don’t think I can make a blanket statement about Facebook being evil, while Twitter is the light and good.

A lot of this has to do with the writer’s own self-awareness. And god, we all know people who don’t seem to have any whatsoever. I don’t know, do you really need a book to tell you that if you’re spending six hours a day fiddling around online to avoid doing your own work you should stop that?

In accepting the modern internet-driven paradigm of “writer,” have we lost anything?

Lost, no. Things just change, it’s not necessarily good or bad.

What is it about writing and books that you most love?

I grew up in a tiny town with no movie theater, no MTV, no distractions except for the library. I have always filtered the world through books, and I still do to a large extent. Writing is just an extension of that.

If you had to give a beginning writer five minutes of general advice, what would you focus on?

You have to do the work. Not just sitting down and writing, but educating yourself, finding venues that suit you, figuring out where you get your strength and then following that.

For example, one of the biggest faux bits of logic I’ve been seeing is that “If the mass market paperback is $7.99, why can’t I get the e-book version from the get-go at that price?” Well, the fact is $7.99 for mass market paperbacks only works if you’re printing tons of books. It’s also important to note that many authors never get their books published in mass market format because the publishers rightly have estimated that based on hardcover and trade paperback sales, that particular book won’t sell enough copies in mass market. So they don’t reach the $7.99-a-book threshold, which includes the print-a-crapload-of-copies threshold.

Other examples show a basic misunderstanding of distribution, or of the fact that the actual physical printing of a book is a fraction of the cost of producing a book.

But what I find most inexplicable is the level of venom directed by some readers at publishers, and by extension writers, like some kind of scam is being perpetrated upon them. It’s especially ironic given that the book industry is usually dealing in unit sales of an individual book of under 20,000 copies, whereas other forms of entertainment like movies and music are dealing in unit sales of over 100,000 copies. In other words, there’s not much room for price discounts.

What’s led to this sense of entitlement? Here are some possible factors, beyond the basic fact of there being lots of free content on the internet.

—The proliferation of free book downloads offered by publishers and writers.

—The constant attacks on copyright, and thus the overall idea of “ownership”, on highprofile blogging platforms and websites.

—General attacks on software limiting a user’s ability to copy an e-book, especially attacks that don’t do so in the context of respect for the creator’s wishes or need to make money from their work.

—Deep discount pricing of e-books by entities like Amazon to encourage the sale of e-books.

—Google’s book scanning project, which, under the guise of “fair use”, has made significant portions of hundreds of thousands of books available online with no regard for the rights of the writers of those books.

Have these factors led to this sense of entitlement? I don’t know, but it’s worth thinking about. It’s also worth noting that we often cause problems for ourselves as authors by thoughtlessly adopting whatever hot new media idea pops up on the internet. In some cases, I think we begin to contribute to our own disenfranchisement in doing so.

If this sense of reader entitlement proves to be pervasive or becomes the norm, then writers will be in a tough position, and the only way to make money on e-books will be to retain the rights yourself and self-publish–meaning you will also have to become your own editor, your own typesetter, your own distributor, etc.

Although you can self-publish more easily today than in the past, it’s not going to help you that much unless you are a celebrity like Wil Wheaton, someone with an existing high-profile platform like John Scalzi or Cory Doctorow, someone who is already a bestselling author, or unless you are prepared to basically become your own publishing house (involving a series of skillsets that most people don’t have).

In such a scenario, if e-books do eventually dominate the marketplace and physical books have only a fraction of their current market share, it’s entirely possible that unless this situation resolves itself into a compromise whereby readers actually show respect for the creators of the stories they love that we will see one of the largest mass extinctions of published writers in the history of literature. They’ll still be writing–but they’ll be largely invisible, and also unable to even dream of writing full-time.

My feeling is that it won’t get that bad, but we as writers have to do our best to make sure it doesn’t–by educating readers and doing our part as writers to make sure that our actions don’t contribute to the problem.

(For the best series of posts on the subject, including the Amazon-Macmillan fracas, visit Jay Lake’s livejournal.)

One of Matt Staggs’ links last week was to a New York Times Book Review piece on Jaron Lanier’s book You Are Not a Gadget. I haven’t read the book, but the description of its main points really resonated with me, especially because I’m currently taking a break from Facebook and my personal blog.

This part of the review made perfect sense to me:

Mr. Lanier, a pioneer in the development of virtual reality and a Silicon Valley veteran, is hardly a Luddite, as some of his critics have suggested. Rather he is a digital-world insider who wants to make the case for “a new digital humanism” before software engineers’ design decisions, which he says fundamentally shape users’ behavior, become “frozen into place by a process known as lock-in.” Just as decisions about the dimensions of railroad tracks determined the size and velocity of trains for decades to come, he argues, so choices made about software design now may yield “defining, unchangeable rules” for generations to come.

This argument and others from his book mirror my own concerns about new media. Even as I’ve embraced much of what new/social media has to offer, I also strongly recommend, in Booklife and in my lecture for MIT, thinking about what you’re doing and remembering the importance of balance. In particular, these points:

(1) New media tools like Facebook and Twitter are exactly that—tools. They are not strategies. Just getting on Facebook, creating a blog is not a strategy or a plan. I can’t repeat that enough.

(2) It’s when you mistake the tools for a strategy that you begin to not only become tactical and reactive but also limited in your thinking because of the limitations of the tools.

(3) The most successful writers in the future will be the ones that stop responding in Pavlovian fashion to our current need for that little food pellet in the form of a response to a Blog entry, Twitter line or a Facebook status message.

(4) Further, the tools which you help realize both a creative project and create interest for it are constantly changing. Thus a focus on the tools is a focus on what will all too soon be the past.

(5) A focus on tools thus also means that you are in some ways limiting your options by letting the limitations of the tool and the preconceptions the tool engenders shape your project. Don’t let your imagination become a lackey to a new media tool. If a tool controls your actions, it to some extent controls your imagination.

Lanier’s book also seems to make strong arguments about not supporting mob behavior on the internet, something that we’ve seen too often—in which sheer force of numbers seems to win an argument, even when there hasn’t been true or logical discussion of the issues. Nuance suffers and the facts tend to become distorted.

Food for thought–and a book I’ll be picking up shortly. Amazon has an interesting interview with the author here.

Today, a great guest post by author David J. Williams , whose futuristic military thrillers I quite enjoy–tightly written, intelligent, and exciting. This is being posted on Tuesday rather than the regular Wednesday due to a WordPress issue. – JeffV

er, hey, is this thing live? Well, first of all, thanks a ton to Jeff for inviting me to say a word or two about how I’ve been marketing my Autumn Rain trilogy (consisting of the books THE MIRRORED HEAVENS, THE BURNING SKIES, and the forthcoming THE MACHINERY OF LIGHT). I’ll also say a bit about Lessons Learnt and all that…

First, let me reveal the Actual Strategy, and then I’ll break it down a little from there. “Viral marketing” has more definitions than you can shake a stick at; it seems to me that the essence of the best campaigns is that they’re not transparently related to the author, but instead help to generate a buzz by virtue of their being a little mysterious.

The core of my campaign was the following site:

http://www.greateramericanews.com/breakingnews

“TERRORIST STRIKE DESTROYS SPACE ELEVATOR”

“AUTUMN RAIN CLAIMS RESPONSIBILITY”

That dastardly terrorist group Autumn Rain! Who the #$# are they? I.e., we’re dropped straight into the world, with a faux news site with CNN-like look-and-feel, reporting on the aftermath of the catastrophic event that opens the first book. There’s plenty of “apparent” content and even (if you click on the graphic at the top) an actual video, in which a doomed reporter broadcasts his final hapless transmission. Of course, if you try clicking on the other links, you rapidly realize that there’s really not much to this website: it’s just a shell, intended to convey the emotional impact of Something Really Huge Going On, creating the illusion of verisimilitude…an illusion that’s carried still further by the page that virtually every link takes one to:

http://www.greateramericanews.com/restricted.html

The world of 2110 is one where the government has the Internet in “lock-down”, so it ties in thematically…but the point is that this website is like a cat that arches its back and makes all its hair stand on end to appear larger than it actually is. (I apologize for that somewhat-forced analogy, but as I write this, my feline friend Captain Zoom is sitting on my lap and intruding upon my cognitive processes, in addition to making it that much harder to type).

Now, in addition to that first website, I created three more:

http://www.presidentandrewharrison.com

http://www.spacecommandcenter.com

http://www.spaceelevatorclimb.com

….which all point to back to

http://www.greateramericanews.com/breakingnews

I won’t discuss these “feeder” sites in great detail, except to make the following points:

—Each one relates to some aspect of the world of Autumn Rain/the early 22nd century.

—Each one is even more of a shell than the core site, with far less detail.

—Each site has a “breaking news” update that appears over it, giving us the impression that the site has been around for a while, and holy crap, something’s just happened that’s overriding business as usual.

You may be wondering why the core site URL is http://www.greateramericanews.com/breakingnews instead of just http://www.greateramericanews.com. Well, if you go to the latter URL, you’ll find out why: that’s an entirely different web page …

EUROPA PLATFORM UNDER ATTACK

…promoting the second book, in which the O’Neill cylinders of the Euro Magnates get attacked by Autumn Rain, who’re trying to bag the U.S. president during a secret summit conference. (If you’re sensing a theme here as to the content of those books, you’re probably on the right track.). Originally, I built the first four sites to promote the mass-market release of MIRRORED HEAVENS (book one), and then when it came time to promote BURNING SKIES (book two), I made the “main” site the one that related to the sequel, since that was the priority. Then I linked that new site back to “breaking news” since it occurs subsequently.

So what we’ve got is a fully-functioning web ecosystem of viral sites, linked to one another, with multiple entry-points that draw the viewer further into the mystery. At no point is there a link to the actual book, and that gets to the central tension that I take to be at the heart of this kind of viral marketing, to wit:

How do you get exposure without being exposed?

The risk of not putting in links/mentioning the books is that the casual viewer stumbles upon the site (more later on how they get there in the first place), says, hmm, interesting, wonder what that is, no idea, let’s go find out what Megan Fox is up to these days, and then just keeps on surfing. But what I was betting on is that the viewer who DID get intrigued would then go to additional effort to find out what’s going on, and would then be that much more likely to TELL OTHER PEOPLE. It’s clear that the sites can’t possibly be real, but what are they promoting? A quick google search of Phoenix Elevator/Europa Platform/Autumn Rain will rapidly reveal my website and books, which would then trigger this kind of discussion:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389×5237545

…i.e., an exchange on a bulletin board as to what’s going on and what the books are and who I am.

Note the balance I was trying to strike here, which is while it’s not blindingly obvious as to who’s behind the sites, it’s also not *too* hard to figure out what’s up. This is in sharp contrast to the gold standard of viral marketing, which are campaigns that function as full-on activities in themselves (and have the budgets to match). For example, consider the oft-cited www.ilovebees.com , a gateway to an immense alternative-reality labyrinth/full-fledged ARG intended to promote the Halo franchise. But the problem for authors like me is that this is one of those Bell the Cat issues, i.e., it’s a great way to solve a problem that is already largely solved: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_the_cat

…because if I had a million eyeballs watching my every move, I wouldn’t need to take steps to try to get a million eyeballs watching my every move (Halo promoted Ilovebees.com via trailers relating to the game itself). Since Halo’s architects were confident of driving huge numbers of people to ilovebees.com, they could rest assured that SOME of those people would get to the end of the mystery, no matter how involved it was. I had no such assurance, which meant I couldn’t make the mystery too complex.

Which brings us back to the fundamental challenge with this kind of campaign—and the core issue with gaining exposure without being (immediately) exposed: how do you drive people to the sites in the first place? I can’t claim to have totally solved this, but part of the answer is that these campaigns take time. They can’t be launched overnight, and that’s why for the first several months of this year I ran a batch of google ads that pointed back to the site, resulting in this kind of thing:

http://thedanward.blogspot.com/2009/01/space-command-mystery-jobs.html

Note that this blogger raises the question why the heck I didn’t link to the books themselves. I’ve given my reasoning above, but he may very well be right—the rulebook on all this has yet to be written. Which is part of what makes it so much fun…

I’ll conclude with a thought or two on the economics. First, although this might *look* like it cost a lot, it didn’t, because—like I’ve already said—there really isn’t *that* much content here. These aren’t so much web-sites as stand-alone web pages/shells. Web design was done through these guys , and I obviously also spent some $ on Google ads. The videos came from my friend Paul Ruskay, of Studio X Labs in Vancouver. The major investment was simply writing everything out, which I delegated to Captain Zoom and his friend Ajax in return for some salmon. But that’s another story.

So did I get my money’s worth? Like so much of PR, that’s hard to say. I clearly reached a lot of folks I wouldn’t have, and had the chance to build out further aspects of the world I created. I even received a really cool note from graphics artist legend Steve Lieber, who stumbled upon the site through a gmail ad, and wrote to tell me that how much he liked the content, and that he’d bought the books as a result. That kind of buzz can go a long way. And ultimately, buzz is what this is all about.

Protecting your Private Booklife means confronting issues like envy. I don’t know of any writers who haven’t experienced this emotion. Here’s an excerpt from my essay on the topic in Booklife. Next week: Despair!

Envy is a subject of intense interest to writers (or, really, driven, creative people in any profession) because it has been known to curdle careers and twist older creators into a kind of rigor mortis of bitterness. Thoughts of might-have-beens cross pollinate with a sense of entitlement, and suddenly anyone getting more attention is a creep, a thug, a soul-sucking light-stealer leaving you in shadow. And, just as electronic media have made it possible to access a blinding stream of information in seconds, so too these tools have left writers more susceptible to envy. Today you can easily discover the unpardonable triumphs of your colleagues, across platforms, across tools, across time.

…Francis Bacon also explores the effects of time on envy: “It is to be noted that unworthy persons are most envied at their first coming in, and afterwards overcome it better; whereas, contrariwise, persons of worth and merit are most envied when their fortune continueth long. For by that time, though their virtue be the same, yet it hath not the same lustre, for fresh men grow up that darken it.”

Because of new media, this process of establishing and fortifying a career can occur in weeks or months, exacerbating the situation. Even though this is just a side effect of having easy access to information, that doesn’t mean that the psychological reaction of gatekeepers and other stakeholders has kept pace with this kind of acceleration. Besides, in any context, appreciation for an intruder who appears not to have paid his/her dues or who simply, in the
opinion of the observing eye, does not have talent equal to the praise given to it is unlikely (and yet, precisely because information travels so fast these days, we have more of both types)…

…To truly protect against envy, I must suggest a corrective that may seem to contradict advice elsewhere in Booklife: the busy and inquisitive would be well advised to create blinders for themselves while online: shut down instant messenger, delete your blog favorites list, do not Google yourself, and most definitely do not Google those whom you envy. Otherwise, the reflection upon your eye may be like a nascent tumor that will only grow, dilating outward until there is nothing that you see of the world not tinged by envy.

(1) Acknowledge the limits of your skill set.

The skills that led you to write a book or story or article are not the same skills required to leverage it in the public world. That is a separate skill. Not everyone has it, and only some people have it in genius-level quantities. This can work for you in areas where an element of inspired amateurism—the Do-It-Yourself impulse—is appreciated, even expected. However, even in areas previously the domain of amateurs, like YouTube book trailers or podcasts, more and more sophisticated, professional efforts have started to become the standard.

Therefore, to avoid stress and be more successful: Recognize your own limitations and find others with the required skills and experience. You may need a budget to hire someone, but you may also be able to barter for services. The barter system has become more and more common as creative individuals collaborate across the Internet. The best way to find the right people to work for you is to find existing examples of what you want to do, and approach whoever created them—whether it’s a banner ad or a website or a short film. In all things remember that a combination of mimicry and your unique vision provides the best chance for success.

Luckily, too, online platforms like blogs come with ready-made templates, and a blog platform like WordPress allows you to turn a blog into something very much like a website. Make sure to let standardization and templates do the work for you where appropriate. If you cannot find someone to do something you know is not your strength, you may need to decide whether it’s worth the effort. An ugly or clunky website or book trailer can be worse support for your efforts at leverage than no website or book trailer at all.

(2) Define the limits of your effort.

There are only so many hours in a day, and you have only so much stamina, across a day, a week, or a longer period. Before entering into a campaign for your creative project, decide how much time and energy you can afford to spend on it. Ask yourself these questions:

—How much time will I be spending on this effort and over how many days, weeks, or months? (For example, are you going to devote forty hours over three weeks, or sixty hours over three months?)

—Will I be traveling as part of this effort, or staying at home? (Time spent traveling may not be time spent promoting your work, but it’s still time lost.)

—Will I be spending money or only using opportunities provided by the publisher as well as free tools and platforms? (If you’re spending money, what’s your budget, and are you buying services, access, or hardware?)

—What form of follow-up is required for this project? (Whether it’s nudging gatekeepers, conducting interviews, or finding ways for people to view your book trailer, every creative project requires some type of followup. Follow-up, even if it’s just emailing people, takes time and must be accounted for in your efforts. Sometimes this is the most important part of what you will do for your project.)

—How much additional follow-up am I willing to do? (The “X” factor in all PR campaigns is the exponential way success feeds on itself. If you’re successful in your initial efforts, there will almost certainly be additional investments of effort to leverage that success.)

These questions and their answers exist in the context of a wider space: your creative life. Some writers can easily promote their work and continue to create by separating “creative” and “career” efforts into separate daily blocks of time. Others require the immersion of total concentration on the act of creation and must acknowledge (without guilt) that focusing on their careers will require not working on creative projects during that time. Whatever your personality and approach, make sure you know the personal consequences of your decisions in this area.

This week on my book tour, I’m lecturing in Seattle, heading over to Los Angeles for readings at Cal-State San Bernardino and BookSoup, and winding up in San Francisco for a workshop, reading, and discussion.

As you can see by visiting the events page, I’m embarking on 28-event 35-day Endurance Tour in support of Booklife and my new novel. I’ll be hitting a variety of venues on the West Coast and East Coast, and I hope to see Booklifenow readers at many of these events. The tour also includes guest blogging, interviews in local media, engaging with local writer groups, and much more.

Booklife covers book tours, including how to conduct a virtual book tour through guest blogging and the like. But as my friend Matt Staggs and I put together my Endurance Tour, I think we both realized that the modern book tour is a complex, organic entity, the dimensions of which are even more dynamic and three-dimensional than depicted in Booklife (I can already see I’ll need to revise that section for the second edition).

Here are some thoughts just from planning the Endurance Tour. When I get back in mid-December I’ll report on how much of this I still believe in and what new ideas were sparked by the experience.

(1) Real-world events are still important because a real-world event still triggers certain responses from local media and from the blogosphere, which is especially useful for events in large cities, where local coverage can translate into national attention. (Besides, doing a reading or other gig contributes to the cultural literacy of your country.)

(2) A book tour should be balanced between real-world and virtual events, in part because doing so engages different audiences and different gatekeepers and influencers. You can also be your own best advocate out in the world by Twittering and blogging from the road–people love hearing about writer tour experiences.

(3) Good intel from readers “on the ground” as to which indies and individual chain bookstores are best at promoting events will save you from booking an event at a venue that winds up just going through the motions.

(4) Adding variety to the real-world part of your book tour means turning to universities, venues that host workshops, and unconventional locations like bars. For example, one of my gigs is a lecture at MIT in Boston and another is at Manuel’s bar in Atlanta. Given local resources and the timing of each event, each venue is the best possible for the area. (The MIT lecture will be podcast to a wider audience, and there are no indie bookstores in Atlanta with enough pull to make an in-store event a success.)

(5) Adding variety also means being able to bring diversity of material into play. Just doing a reading and signing will not allow you to take advantage of all the opportunities out there. I have prepared a number of different talks, lectures, discussion topics, workshops, and anecdotes to take advantage of many different situations.

(6) The actual physical event is important, but only half the battle. Getting pre-event publicity to encourage attendance is also important, but as important is sparking reactions after the event, from bloggers and others. Having a chance to meet bookstore managers is also key, as they are, of course, among the strongest advocates for the written word.

(7) In creating a book tour, you should think about how the events dovetail with your career as a whole. Which is to say, while you want to sell books and generate interest in your current book, you should also analyze how certain events fit in with your long-term goals. Since I want to do more workshops and lectures about certain subjects, some of the events I’ll be doing for the tour should be gifts that keep giving: they will lead to other opportunities.

(8) If your tour is unique enough to write about the experience, you can create another context for getting publicity for it. I would be writing about my five weeks on the road regardless, but as it turns out I’ll be blogging about it for Amazon and for other venues, in addition to a longer piece at the end of the tour for a print media venue. What makes my tour unique? The variety of venues and the length mean that I’ll be getting a nice cross-section of American book culture, and that’s worth writing about.

(9) Teaming up with other writers is often a good idea. It’s not just that there’s safety in numbers, but that variety can create additional interest. In addition, if you’re teaming up with writers you find really interesting, you benefit because you get a chance to hang out with them and talk before or after the event. (In general, the talking to interesting people aspect of a book tour gets lost in all of the more “practical” reasons for doing one.)

(10) If you can multi-task so a tour supports your career and creativity goals, all the better. I’m working on a definitive book about steampunk called The Steampunk Bible. This book tour will allow me to meet and interview some of the main creators in this subculture.

Also, the physical part of a book tour in our new media age helps balance all the hours spent at a computer, and that travel, for me at least, always sparks a thousand new story ideas. I also feel less fragmented on the road, because it’s almost impossible to be online 24-7. No matter what the irritations of travel and the stress of planning the gigs and prepping material, that all tends to make up for it.

But, as ever, your results may vary. A physical book tour isn’t strictly necessary in this day and age. Even a virtual book tour may not be necessary, if you get the right reviews and the right word-of mouth. The most important thing is to be happy and creative. Me, I like to push myself sometimes. This is me, pushing myself. Endurance Tour. If I survive, I’ll tell you all about it.

>>>Share your experience: Tell me the funniest or strange event you’ve ever done in support of your Booklife?

• Curiosity
• Receptivity
• Passion
• Imagination
• Discipline
• Endurance

Try to encourage these qualities in yourself and others. Draw them out into the open if necessary, and at times allow yourself to indulge in them. In all ways be generous to yourself so that you can be generous in your work.

Although several of these qualities are useful to your Public Booklife, nowhere are they more necessary than in your Private Booklife. Let’s explore them further…

(What does this photo spark in your imagination? How does it make you curious? Image by the highly recommended Jeremy Tolbert.)

***

Curiosity. Nothing is more essential to a writer than an inquisitive nature—being curious about the world and the people in it. Curiosity reflects a willingness to be disappointed and an urge to understand the world. It sends out a series of queries that exist for their own sake, and gathers back into itself anything it finds, transforming it in the process. The truly curious reject received ideas and try to see everything as freshly as a child with an adult’s mind. This “gathering” of information and texture through your senses, through your questioning nature, should be non-judgmental, finding pleasure in seemingly disparate, often contradictory elements. From the fusion of these elements comes an essential aspect of creativity. Curiosity is in a sense allied with qualities such as cleverness, and thus can be impersonal–like a pack rat that accumulates buttons and bottle caps and scraps of paper without caring about the provenance of such items.

Receptivity. Openness and empathy spring from being receptive to the world and the people in it, not just being curious about them. Receptivity means allowing more than just information to come in over the transom. Eliminating barriers to other people’s emotions, predicaments, tragedies, and other aspects of the human condition is crucial to a writer, even when it hurts. You must allow yourself to be a raw nerve end that internalizes whatever it experiences in life. When you do this, you not only create a well-spring for stories, novels, and nonfiction, you also retain a sense of empathy for your fellow human beings. Putting up walls to avoid being hurt may temporarily solve problems in your life, but it may also shut you off from the source of your creativity. (The only caveat, in this age of acute connectivity? An excess of “open channels” can result in you becoming too wrapped up in the issues of other people, the weight of this overload damaging to your creativity and your sense of self.)

Passion. Cynics find it hard to be passionate about anything, and therefore passion is linked to retaining your idealism, which is in turn linked to retaining your receptivity. First you lose your curiosity, which turns off your receptivity, and then you lose your passion. If you are not passionate about what you write, no amount of effort can revive your work. It will remain inert, waiting for an infusion of new life. Passion is the blood that fills the veins of your creative self; it provides the circulatory system that allows your imagination to breathe.

Imagination. The imagination moves beyond passion: it is a lifelong relationship with the world that transforms both the world and the writer. All of the best fiction hums and purrs and sighs with the imagination, and in this way fiction mirrors the best of life. But no imagination can long survive without recourse to curiosity and receptivity as well. It needs all of this as fuel for both its serious and deeply unserious aspects. On the one hand, it is the most visible manifestation of a “soul” and on the other a quality that allows us to express the most absurd and silly aspects of play. During Medieval times, the imagination was often associated with the senses and thus thought to be one of the links between human beings and the animals. Only with the Renaissance was the imagination firmly linked to creativity and thus the intellect. The imagination defies easy measurement, even though we “know it when we see it.” It brings yet another level of uncertainty to an endeavor already supersaturated with the subjective–and yet that uncertainty is a kind of blessing. (Is it true that imagination cannot be taught? Yes. It is a brutal truth, too. But one with an escape clause. A latent imagination can be drawn out of its shell. A change of topic, focus, or even setting can also reveal in a writer an imagination not previously in evidence.)

Discipline. Without discipline, the imagination would float off, untethered, into the sky. While imagination is the ultimate expression of idealism—curious, receptive, and passionate—discipline grounds the imagination in pragmatism and structure. At the center of the essential tension between these two qualities exists the perfect writer.

Endurance. Endurance is toughness projected over time, and the perfect writer in motion rather than inert: the potential for work expressed through work. Imagination and discipline create endurance by continually replenishing creativity and giving it form.

Taken together, these pillars allow you to reach toward the perfect Private Booklife. Think of them often. They ghost through and infiltrate almost every part of that life.

>>Test this section of Booklife: Do you think receptivity is an important part of being creative? What elements not mentioned in this post do you feel also play a factor?

Today, a focus on your Public Booklife, or career, and on Friday, your Private Booklife, or personal creativity, with a book covers post for kicks on Thursday…

More than two thousand years ago, the strategist Sun Tzu wrote that the warrior skilled in indirect warfare is as inexhaustible as Heaven and Earth, as unending as rivers and streams, and passes away only to return like the four seasons. Curiously enough, these classic lines could as easily describe the relationship between you and the Internet, given how quickly a writer must adjust to and take advantage of opportunities. It also reflects the ephemeral quality of the Internet. Because of the vast amount of information and opinion posted every single day, every hour, every minute—supplanting the information posted a minute, an hour, a day before—you need to be fluid and flexible while retaining inner calm and balance.

(Sun Tzu, thinkin’ about book publishing)

Traditional strengths like being fleet of foot, working hard, creating something seaworthy and imaginative, and finding interesting opportunities for collaboration still tend to be rewarded in the marketplace. However, the traditional career and promotional models that once helped you to brand and leverage your creativity often don’t work today.

The modern context requires from a writer some combination of the following qualities or abilities to achieve lasting, sustainable career success:

• Vision. Look five or six moves ahead, like a chess player, and recognize opportunities to diversify while remaining focused on the main goal.
• Centeredness. Understand that committing to objectives does not mean giving up balance in one’s life.
• Adaptability. Have the flexibility to turn on a dime and reverse course or pursue some new course, depending on new intelligence.
• Risk-taking. Be able to leap into the unknown, although not without a bungee cord or safety net.
• Honesty. Have the willingness to open yourself up to self-analysis and criticism from others.

Thinking about and nurturing these traits will be invaluable in your journey toward a sustainable Public Booklife.

>>Test this section of Booklife: What traits do you find most important in this ever-changing publishing environment?

During launch week, content every day. Tomorrow, the lifecycle of a book. Wednesday, the pillars of your public booklife. Thursday and Friday? Check back and find out.

■ INTRODUCTION
The introduction provides tips on how to use the book, including an admonition to test everything set out in Booklife. It also points out that Booklife is a strategy manual–it is not a text that provides details on how to set up a Facebook account or a blog. Instead, Facebook, blogs, and other new media are discussed in the context of their uses for the modern writer.

■ I. PUBLIC BOOKLIFE
Your Public Booklife consists of those elements related to your career, including daily interactions that occur in some non-private context. As stated throughout Part I, your Public Booklife serves to support and energize your Private Booklife, or personal creativity. If your Public Booklife isn’t subservient to the actual writing, then your life has become imbalanced.

Chapter 1: Building Your Booklife
Before you can be effective, you must build a strong foundation. This chapter discusses the traits the modern world requires from writers in their Public Booklife. It also touches on creating goals, exploring your strengths and weaknesses, choosing internet platforms with an emphasis on proper use of blogs, and how to manage your involvement.

Chapter 2: Communicating Your Booklife
Along with building a strong foundation for your Booklife, you must consider issues that concern the give-and-take of communication with others about your book or other creative project. This chapter discusses how traditional notions of networking fall short of treating people as human beings, and how creating connectivity with others can feed your Private Booklife as well as prove nurturing for your Public Booklife. Proper ways to deal with editors and publicists, understanding new media PR, recognizing PR opportunities and tools, leveraging ideas, and creating plans are all part of the conversation.

Chapter 3: Maintaining Your Booklife
Once you have established a public presence, there are issues and traits that help you maintain that presence.Topics like branding, transparency, the importance of persistence, how to pay it forward, and pushing against trends are all covered in this chapter.

■ BOOKLIFE GUT-CHECK: TOWARD PEACE OF MIND
Some writers may feel overwhelmed by the Public Booklife section. This Gut-Check section provides the antidote by re-emphasizing that happiness in your creative life is paramount and that your Public Booklife must support your Private Booklife. Topics include the search for balance, your health, and recognizing how new media multi-tasking can lead to harmful fragmentation.

■ II. PRIVATE BOOKLIFE

Chapter 1: Living Your Booklife
Certain strategies and approaches will support a fulfilling Private Booklife. Topics covered by this chapter include reasons to write, attitude and creativity, relinquishing all fetishes, writing and revision, habit versus process, and permission to fail.

Chapter 2: Protecting Your Booklife
Certain dangers to your Private Booklife must be addressed to make sure you continue to be fulfilled in your creativity. Topics discussed in this chapter include rejection, envy, despair, recharging creativity, dealing with success, and taking the long view.

■ APPENDICES
The extensive appendices include everything from tips from booksellers and publicists to an exhaustive roundrobin with prominent agents and the process from the perspective of a book editor. Examples of PR plans, press releases, and other important elements of a Public Booklife are juxtaposed with essays on seeking experience, necessary sacrifice, and how to write a novel in a short time period.