You can go your own way with book marketing and not feel guilty

The title of this post is as much as message to me as anyone else reading this, and applies beyond marketing. I'm one of those people who's occasionally confident in myself, but is far more often convinced that everyone else knows what they're doing far more than I do. It follows that if I see someone publishing a newsletter or promoting a book or writing in a certain style that's different from mine, their way is automatically more effective/smarter/better and I should follow in their footsteps. It's funny because this is in no way advice I would give to anyone about writing (or life), but in my own twisted mind, that's far too often what makes sense.

But sometimes I am willing to take risks and potentially fail and know that it's okay. I had this idea that I wanted to give away my new book Sex & Cupcakes to newsletter readers as a thank you on Cyber Monday. I believe strongly in this book and hope to write more nonfiction in book form so it seemed like a good way to encourage people to check the book out. But rather than me just sending it to them, I said that if they bought it from Amazon, I'd refund them the $4.99 fee via PayPal.

My boyfriend didn't like the idea. He thought it was pointless (I'm paraphrasing). Me? I was trying to synthesize some of the information I've gleaned by marketing experts like Tim Grahl, author of Your First 1000 Copies. Also, I was trying to just see what happened. To correspond with new people. To give someone a taste of my work who may or may not ever read that book or anything else. Potentially, over 1,600 people could have taken advantage of the offer and I'd have been very screwed.

My point is, I did it. Even with two major mistakes in two newsletters. It felt great to just hit send, even though I forgot a few links I wanted to include and made the newsletter far longer than I'd intended. My biggest takeaway is that whether my idea "worked" or not, I'm happy I did it. I wanted to try it and it made sense to do it on Cyber Monday, which was also the start of a new month. I'd been feeling guilty for skipping sending one out in November, for not publicizing my book party more broadly.

I read a post by Seth Godin today which said in part: "As marketing decentralizes and more of us work with less supervision (and more upside when we find our own path) reliance on the external fails us." In many ways, I operate independently. I don't have a traditional boss, I earn a living from various sources, I work at home alone, I decide how much time and money and energy to devote to promoting my books, even though I never know in advance if it will yield any results. But in other ways, as I mentioned above, I'm not independent at all. I'm the opposite. I play down my own ideas to myself so often it's truly ridiculous.

The long-term results remain to be seen, but when I woke up in the middle of the night, I thought a) that it's freezing and b) that I'm happy with my little experiment, because this is what I saw on Amazon:





Who knows what it "means" in terms of numbers? I don't even know if I'll manage to earn out my advance in 2015, though that's my goal, sooner rather than later. All I know is it made me smile, made me feel like maybe my idea wasn't so dumb after all. I'm working on doubting myself less. It's one of those things I sometimes have to force by telling myself if I'm lucky like seemingly everyone else I know and get to have a kid or two, I don't want to model that kind of permanent doubt. It's not that I'd tell them to assume they're always right, but to consider their ideas as worthy as anyone else's. And now I have to work on taking my own fictional mom advice.

Fear and trembling and kinky age Mommy/boy play at Bedpost Confessions

Much catching up in the last two days of the year, so to summarize: I was so scared of doing Bedpost Confessions I put off finalizing what I would read til beyond the last minute. I half hoped the organizers would tell me not to do it, or that I'd be too sick to speak (I got a huge cold upon arriving in Austin but rallied for my writing workshop and Bedpost). I couldn't fathom what had prompted me to want to do it, save for the fact that the three-year-old event was uber-popular and I wanted to be part of the cool kids. I wound up going with my original long draft of my age play essay that was published in Salon and Best Sex Writing 2013, the version I wrote while on vacation in Honolulu only two months after the OkCupid turned age play date happened. If I'd known that reading erotica was permitted, I'd have gone with my strength.

But I got there in time for sound check and was amazed and awed at how welcoming and professional the setup was. These were women who know how to do a reading series right. For a second, I wondered what my fledgling In The Flesh Reading Series could have been if I'd been as committed as they are. The truth is, I almost forgot I used to run a reading series. I think I blocked it out because by the end it was so arduous and I worried I'd lose money each month, plus I was stuck in an easy but demoralizing job where I didn't get a raise the entire seven and a half years and felt like I was stagnating. But in Austin, people thanked me for running In The Flesh, said it inspired them and they remember it fondly, which made me remember it in a new way. It was a fancy stage, with two microphones and multimedia and a huge crowd who laughed where I wasn't expecting laughter, who waited patiently through my fear and shaking. I was humbled and honored and glad I did it, as petrifying as it was. Retelling that story also made me grateful that I'm what feels like a lifetime away from that girl, save for the wanting a baby thing. Clock is ticking so loud I often can't hear anything else. But that era of my life where I was seeking and searching and desperately dating and look for love in the wrongest places I could? It's all faded gently into the background of this new beautiful life where we are almost as different as two people could be, but have still merged our lives and homes together in a way that sometimes makes me pause and wonder how I got so lucky. You can listen to my attempt at storytelling here and subscribe to the Bedpost Confessions podcast on iTunes here.

I wrote about Delhi gang rape and sexual violence play Nirbhaya

I'm tempted to tell you I know nothing about theater, as a way to preface my bouncing-in-my-head fears that what I wrote about Edinburgh Festival Fringe play Nirbhaya sucks. But I won't, at least, not really. Also, I've ever used Kinja for a post before and had wanted to add it to Groupthink in the hope that it might get add to the main Jezebel page but I don't know how that works. If you do and want to let me know, email me at rachelkb at gmail.com - mainly I just wanted to share what I've been researching the past few weeks since I"m fascinated by it.

I'm not a theater expert, and am only an occasional theatergoer. But I was drawn to this play, its process and the passion behind it. I wish I could go see it for myself in two weeks. I can't, but maybe someone reading my post will. And maybe the more I push myself to write about things I'm interested in, whether or not I'm an "expert" or ever will be, the more I will position myself to move out of the box of "sex writer" and into the role of "writer." Which I already am, but have so many dreams and plans and hopes for. Now on to some of those hopes and dreams, happy that I wrote it anyway, and that the universe gave me a few little writing gifts this week. I am thankful, and grateful, and it will happen. And I'll keep pitching. Forever.

Dear Writing

Dear Writing,

I've missed you, though "missed" sounds woefully inadequate for that sense of longing, of not being myself at all without you. I've missed with you with a ferocious, desperate urgency, the kind that piles on heavier and heavier the longer I go without, the kind that invades every minute of my day I'm without you. That's the irony, though—that there you are, always, waiting for me, available, practically begging me to return to you. I know—too well.

I know you miss me as much as I miss you, and all I can say is, it's not you, it's me. Cliché as that phrase is, it's the truth. It's always me, when we're apart. And fear. Every single time I have ignored you, neglected you, pretended to myself I had nothing to offer, it's always been fear. Fear of not being good enough, fear of nobody reading, fear of everybody reading, fear of gigantic scary edits, fear of rejection. The fear is so big and loud and huge I often forget it's not the same thing as truth, and that the moment I start to release some of my words, to push out all the fear and noise and self-hatred, the surety that starting is futile when you don't know the end the moment you sit down, some of that fear disappears, just a little.

I've been reading this brilliant blog, Momastery, and I love the writing because it doesn't shy away from fear. There's all the fear, right out in the open. It's so easy to do the opposite, and to feel that to be successful you must do the opposite. Nobody wants to buy books or articles from a scaredy-cat, do they? No; instead you must sell yourself, all day, both your books and your ideas, in order to keep getting those checks and keep paying that rent.

It's not just that, though, that has kept me from you. I dream about you, during the day and at night when I'm asleep. I am reminded of you everywhere I look, those titles that sit on blank documents, patiently holding space against all that whiteness. In my head, some of that empty space has been filled in, fleshed out, animated. I know what will happen and "all I have to do is write it down." Ah, if only that were "all" anyone ever had to do. There are so many walls, so many times when that act of filling it on falls flat, doesn't even come close to measuring up to what I'd conjured. I think if I wait—and wait and wait and wait, which really means, procrastinate and live with constant guilt and fear—the answers will come, even though every wise person who's ever written or spoken about writing has concluded the precise opposite: that the only way to write is to sit and bring forth the words.

I know I will probably always be a little afraid of you, even though I also know that so often you are the only thing that can make me happy, or at least, content. Maybe that's what I'm afraid of, deep, deep down. I have had glimmers, hints, signs, of late, that even when I neglect you, you still keep coming through for me, like that Morrissey song, "The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get." The acceptance for that story I wrote based on a cabaret show, the excellent interview I submitted to a dream publication but know will likely have to find another home, the "scary" essay that has made anyone I've mentioned its topic to laugh and look at me a little askance, with just the right hint of "you're crazy" to let me know that yes, I'm crazy, and should be sharing the craziness. The rereading those old pieces I'd forgotten about and realizing they still work. The writing workshop and talk and camaraderie. The marveling over a gorgeous sentence in a book that's been tucked away, just for the sake of taking pleasure in the words. The gratitude for all the chances, and second changes. The chunks of minutes I've dared to sneak away with you, but only when I have to be somewhere, or my battery is dying, anything with a shortcut, an off switch, but still, chunks where I got something down because I absolutely could not do anything else any longer.

I hate feeling so estranged from you, hate feeling like a fraud when I say to someone I'm a writer. I hate seeing the moment pass because I was so worried about perfection, that mythical way of being. I am bad at promises; the act of making them seems to kickstart something in me that causes me to immediately rebel and not live up to them, so I won't bother. Just know that I never truly left you; I've always been here, thinking about you, wanting you back. Maybe that's part of the work, the missing and reuniting, the push/pull, the lows with the highs. I'm as bad at mindfulness as I am at promises, but I want to try to do better by you. Starting with this.

Love,
Rachel

Hard

It's incredibly humbling to think you have the hang of one of the few things you do in your career (I'm talking broad strokes - I edit anthologies, write erotica and nonfiction, blog about cupcakes and occasionally teach erotic writing classes and organize readings), only to feel like it is impossible to get this one thing done. Hard. It's a word usually found in my books to describe body parts—penises, nipples. In this case, an anthology, which may be my last sex-related anthology, in part because this one has proven so arduous. I haven't made any final decisions yet, but I do know that if they are all this hard, I'm out. If one in many years is this hard...we'll see. It's humbling to think you have a good idea and believe you will be overwhelmed with submissions, to suddenly find you're scrambling to make your word count, hunting high and low for just the right mix to add to the equation. It feels like I've failed to reach out to the right people or maybe it was a bad idea in the first place. It makes me winder if it's a red flag, a sign that my idea that's been percolating for years is screwed from the start, though it could be that it's just a slow build and once I find those last few pieces, all the parts will make up something as grand and wonderful as what I'd originally envisioned. But in the middle, where I've been for months, it's just hard. I know from writing that the pieces that seem easy at the start aren't always the best ones, though usually, for me, they are, or maybe it's that I usually drop the pieces that are too tough and challenging and feel impossible so I never find out.

I'm at so many crossroads in my life and it's hard, too, to know what the right decisions are, which leaps of faith are worthwhile and which are foolish, where to focus my limited time and energy, when to stick to my guns and when to scrap Plan A or even B and C and start over. On this one, I have no idea, and I'm not pitching any new anthologies until I file it. I don't know if I have what it takes to keep doing them, and am holding out to see if the economics make sense, despite it being something I've loved doing. Because when it works, it's such a glorious feeling to open my inbox and find a piece of writing I myself never in a million years could or would have written, couldn't have even conceived of. It feels like a gift that someone wants to let me publish it, and always will. Right now, for the next four days, I am reminding myself that it doesn't have to be perfect (my vision of perfect, anyway), it just has to be done, or, like so many lost projects, it will never be a book, the kind people can pick up in a bookstore or download to their e-reader, it will just be a failed document on my laptop, a might have been, a symbol of a brainstorm gone awry.

I know that's a lesson I need to apply each and every day in my work, that all those queries that never get answered, all those rejections, are, in some small way, hopefully (faith, ha ha ha, I'm so bad at it) are the building blocks, the stepping stones, to the yeses, which are there, and have been this year, but sometimes I'm so stubborn and fixated on the nos I don't see them. So here's to yeses, and imperfections, and doing it anyway. And books, both the successes and the failures, made with passion and belief and dedication and hardness and humility. I want to end the year as guilt-free as possible, as unencumbered as I can be, so that I can be open to new ideas and possibilities and projects and visions. I know I am not capable of doing then when things like this hover over me like the dark clouds I saw for eight hours yesterday, the ones that made me fear for my life. But I survived the brutal rain and the visions of accidents that dance in my head when I'm in a car, and I will get through this and make room for all those delicious possibilities, that sound so fun now but surely will have their own challenges, if I'm so lucky as to be granted the opportunity to tackle them.

Modern Love Rejects has launched

My Modern Love rejection, from The New York Times Modern Love section, but of course, goes up tomorrow at Modern Love Rejects. I hesitated over giving permission, even though I'd submitted it, but then I realized, once again, that fear is the ultimate self-sabotage. That even if my essay is foolish and stupid, even if one could say the same about my actions (feel free), I wrote it. I finished it. I tried. The not trying is what makes me despise myself. So, yeah. It makes me feel a little squeamish, but maybe that's a good thing.

So check out the first three Modern Love Rejects, by Samara O'Shea, Kiri Blakeley and Alisa Bowman, and submit your own!