by Janis Patterson
I’ve said many times the bane of my life is doing publicity.
From the time I was nine years old I grew up working in my parents’ advertising
agency where creating ads and placing them internationally was an everyday
occurrence. I know how to do publicity. I can write a press release that can
sell a thousand widgets. I can do a visual that is pure poetry. I just hate it,
especially when one doesn’t have an adequate budget – or even much of a budget
at all! Even worse is the fact that I was raised in a very old-fashioned
manner, meaning that one does not put oneself forward, that is it vulgar to
stand up and say ‘Look at me, look at me!’ My family was not quite so primitive
as to believe that a lady’s name appeared in the newspaper only three times in
her life – birth, marriage, death – but to blow one’s own horn was both crass
and cheap.
Sometimes our earliest lessons are the hardest to unlearn.
Which brings me to blurbs. And their bigger cousin, the
excerpt. Lots of places take blurbs and excerpts on certain publicity days.
Everyone knows you need an excerpt on your website. What ‘everyone’ does not
tell you is how we are supposed to take our complex, multi-character,
multi-plot book and boil it down to 250-300 words that have any kind of clarity
or appeal. Some of us cannot even say ‘good morning’ in 250-300 words!
And as for excerpts - ! Same problem, just longer. You’re supposed to have a pithy,
intriguing scene that will so enchant someone that they will immediately want
to buy the book – all in about 1,000 words or less. Trouble is, in my books at
least, intriguing scenes are not perfect little capsules. The action is ongoing
and interlaced, not chopped up into precise soundbites. And by action, I mean
the story – not car explosions and shootings and fistfights. Though all of
those do happen occasionally in some of my books…
For that matter, how can you take a slice out of a book and
have someone know what’s going on without any backstory or knowledge of the
characters? In the excerpt John and Mary are talking – or fighting – or making
love. Who are John and Mary? Friends? Lovers? Foes? What is their relationship?
Do they have a backstory? What outside forces are acting on them? To get all
that information into an excerpt brings it perilously close to an info dump.
Do you get the idea I don’t like either blurbs or excerpts?
On the other hand, I don’t know of any other way to get any
attention for one particular book out of the bazillions that are flying around
out there. No one book will please everyone. Some books please more people than
others. How to get a reader to pick up and buy my – or your – book when there
is such an incredible choice out there is a daunting if not downright
impossible task.
And I don’t have any better answers. If I did, I’d be both
smart and rich.
Now, if you will please excuse me, I have a blurb to write
and some excerpts to choose. Darn it.
