Book Promotion

World Fantasy Convention 2007, Days 3-4

Alas, all the late night boozin’ and schmoozin’ has caught up with me. I’m sick. As a dog is sick, so I, too, am sick. So I will complete my report here of the goings-on at World Fantasy by summarizing the last two days of the con. Even through my illness I do this for you, the people that read my blog, because I care about you all so much.

The highlights:

  • Scott Edelman strangling David Louis EdelmanScott Edelman and I bumped into each other several times and shared a plane flight home. As you can see by the photo on the right, the meeting didn’t go so well. (You can see more of Scott’s photos from WFC 2007 on his Flickr photo set.)
  • I had a long, rambling conversation with the inimitable Hal Duncan, beginning as a summary of his next work, continuing on to a discussion about the subtext of the Epic of Gilgamesh, moving on to Joseph Campbell and primitive mythology, and concluding with the psychology of the animal kingdom. Fookin’ great guy, that Hal Duncan.
  • Matt Jarpe and I came up with the brilliant idea of Photoshopping authentic photos so they look like they’ve been badly Photoshopped. He’s going to try to track down a photo of him and George R.R. Martin taken the other night, and make it look like he’s Photoshopped himself into it. Personally, I think we may have started a whole new art form, and I can’t wait to get started myself. (Who knows — perhaps Robert Stanek got there ahead of us?)
  • I finally met Patrick Nielsen Hayden, one of the editors at Tor! Patrick said that he didn’t recognize me without my hat, and that he reads my LiveJournal, and that he’s amused about how I boldface the important phrases in my blog posts, just like a Spider-Man comic book. (Eat yer heart out, PNH. ‘Nuff said!)
  • My reading of chapter 2 from MultiReal went off swimmingly, despite my horribly sore throat and need to sip water every four seconds. Nick Sagan praised my “excellent word choices,” and Paul Cornell continued to call me his “favorite current SF writer” (which hopefully he also repeats when I’m not in the room).
  • At the very classy party put on by UK publishers Orbit, I got a chance to meet the fabulous Scott Lynch (he of The Lies of Locke Lamora). I also had plenty of opportunity to act like a big shot and pretend like I know how to promote books online in conversations with Jon Armstrong (whose Grey came out from Night Shade this year), soon-to-be-published author Daryl Gregory, and also soon-to-be-published author David J. Williams.
  • Guest of Honor Kim Newman, Paul Cornell, and I had a great time poring over the SFWriter.com newsletter and catching up on all the Robert Sawyer news fit for Robert Sawyer to print.

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World Fantasy Convention 2007, Day 2

The organizers of WFC 2007 are rat bastards who deserve to be strung up by their own intestines. Why? Because they handed out free boxes of concentrated Seduction to everyone attending the con, in the form of Freihofer’s chocolate chip cookies. You’ve heard it said that human beings are merely an efficient transportation system for water? Freihofer’s chocolate chip cookies are merely an efficient transportation system for butter. These things are so chewy, sweet, and … Read more

World Fantasy Convention 2007, Day 1

Dear Diary, Yesterday at the World Fantasy Convention in Saratoga Springs, I had drinks with, caught up with, or otherwise hung out with Chris Roberson, Lou Anders, George Mann, John Picacio, Paul Cornell, Deanna Hoak, John Joseph Adams, Douglas Cohen, Allison Baker, David J. Williams, Tom Doyle, and Raani Graff. I rubbed elbows and said hello briefly to Amy Tibbetts, Beth Delaney, Eugene Myers, Garth Nix, Chris Cevasco, Jay Lake, Elizabeth Bear, Jeremy Lassen, Cat … Read more

My World Fantasy Convention Schedule

Tomorrow morning, I get on a plane and head for upstate New York for the World Fantasy Convention 2007. It will be my first World Fantasy ever, if you don’t count the one where the World has me tied up to a four-poster bed and we’re having a menage a trois with the Moon. I will be doing a reading on Sunday, November 4 at 10:30 a.m. Which really didn’t seem like such a bad … Read more

The New Cover for “Infoquake”

As I mentioned the other day when I unveiled the final cover for “MultiReal,” the great Stephan Martiniere is also doing the cover for Solaris’ mass market paperback release of “Infoquake.” Well, wait no longer. Here’s the final version of the new cover.

Capclave 2007 Wrap-up

I’m of two minds about my experience at this year’s Capclave in Rockville, MD. From a promotional standpoint, it might seem like the weekend was a disaster. My reading was slotted Saturday at 11:30 pm, and therefore rather sparsely attended. My book wasn’t available in the dealer’s room, as far as I could tell. And my autographing session never happened, because they scheduled me for 10 am Sunday in the dealer’s room — forgetting that … Read more

My Capclave 2007 Schedule

This weekend, I’ll be attending Capclave, the largest Washington, DC-area science fiction convention. I’ve got three panels, plus a reading and a signing. The reading time they’ve assigned to me is the plum spot of 11:30 p.m. on Saturday night. The Capclave organizers originally had me scheduled in a joint reading at 5 pm alongside Guest of Honor Jeffrey Ford, with a special intro by David Hartwell and an appreciation by Sir Arthur C. Clarke … Read more

A Guide to Ethical Self-Promotion

Update 11/18/09: Thanks to Mainer 122’s comment below, I’ve just become aware of a blog post by Stanek containing what appears to be the original of the photo below. Looks like it might be authentic after all — or at least a Photoshopped version of an authentic photo of Stanek with Brian Jacques. In which case I owe Mr. Stanek an apology, at least about the photo. I’ll reserve judgment for now about the fake reviews and web postings. (And for the record, I’ve never questioned Mr. Stanek’s military service.)

I’ve recently become aware of a fantasy author named Robert Stanek. Many of you reading this have probably already heard of him, but I’m a little behind the curve.

Why might you have heard of Robert Stanek? Because he’s an unparalleled master of the fantasy genre? Well, I haven’t read any of Mr. Stanek’s work, so I’ll reserve judgment about his “Keeper Martin” series of novels. Go ahead, check ’em out for yourself. No, this sleazebucket author is known for his tireless deceptive acts of self-promotion. (Update 11/18/09: Okay, so I’ve had a change of heart about calling the guy a sleazebucket. Sue me.) He creates fan sites for his self-published work, writes hundreds of anonymous 5-star reviews for his books on Amazon, and invents online readers who compare his work favorably to that of J.R.R. Tolkien and J.K. Rowling.

Brian Jacques and Photoshopped Robert StanekAnd if all that wasn’t bad enough, Stanek actually Photoshopped himself into a picture with renowned YA fantasy author Brian Jacques. Here it is, on the right. Take a careful look — hell, you don’t even have to take a careful look. Either Mr. Stanek is a contortionist, he’s a vampire from the waist down, or he forgot to Photoshop in a pair of legs underneath the table. Don’t take my word for it; the original is still up on the “#1 Robert Stanek fan site on the web.” Read more about this photo on CrapAuthors.com, including comments (supposedly) from Brian Jacques’ webmaster confirming it’s a fake. (Update 11/18/09: Looks like these links no longer exist.)

(Oh yes, in case you’re wondering, I did in fact post this photo without permission, despite a right-click warning from the site. Why would I do that? Well, I figure that it’s a fairly good bet that Stanek doesn’t have permission to post it either. If Stanek tries to sic a lawyer on me — or a fake lawyer, which he has done before — I could get some pretty good mileage out of posting all the correspondence. Besides, do you think anyone would actually threaten legal action over a doctored photo?)

In Stanek’s defense, I have to say that I understand the desperation that leads to these kinds of self-promotional measures. You walk into Megacorporate Bookstore hoping to find your book on the shelves… and you do! One copy! Meanwhile, there are piles and piles of Crappy Author X’s books in a fancy display at the front of the store, not necessarily because they’re better books, but because Megacorporate Publisher Y paid to put them on a fancy display at the front of the store.

And I say all this as a new author who’s been extremely fortunate to have gotten lots of attention from the SF world online, to have a large independent publisher that’s been gung-ho about the book since the beginning, and to have gotten nominated for a major SF award. I can only imagine how frustrating it must be to try to make it in this business without those things.

So lots of us smaller-fish authors will contemplate innovative (read: shady) promotional techniques to get noticed. We remind our friends again and again over e-mail that Amazon is still accepting reader reviews, should the urge strike them. We try to oh-so-innocuously slip a mention of the title of our books in the comments of more established writers’ blogs. We post trackback links to bigger fish in hopes that they’ll notice us. We have friends who will routinely turn our books around on bookstore shelves so the cover faces out instead of the spine.

I think most of us want to play by the rules. But what are the rules? Where’s the line drawn between enthusiastic self-promotion and unethical self-promotion? Sometimes it’s hard to tell, and every author seems to draw that line in a different place.

Here are the guidelines I try to follow myself in my own self-promotional efforts. I’d be curious to know where both readers and writers stand, so feel free to add your two cents in the comments.

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“Infoquake”: It’s Back

I’m still reeling from this news, which I just heard about literally 20 minutes ago… but it appears that Solaris Books has just inked a deal with Pyr to release a mass-market paperback edition of “Infoquake.”