Tag Archives: new media

My Endurance Tour–and Book Tours in the Modern Era

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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.)

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Six Elements That Drive Your Personal Booklife

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Your Private Booklife constitutes your core activities: the engine that drives your creative life. It has six essential pillars, or qualities:

• 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.)

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The Pillars of Your Public Booklife: What Do You Find Most Important?

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(Roller derby or the Internet flashing by? Photo by the highly recommended Jeremy Tolbert)

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)

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What’s Inside? Getting into the Guts of Booklife

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So, what exactly does Booklife include, and why should you care? Below you’ll find a detailed summary of the topics covered in my book.

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.

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