by Janis Susan
May/Janis Patterson
I’m not good at decisions. The way I dither over a menu when
we eat out drives The Husband absolutely wild. Neither do I like doing
publicity – for myself; I used to be in the advertising industry and am very
good at it – for other people. Like? I loathe doing publicity, either for
myself or for others. I was raised in a time and a place and a family that
believed blowing one’s own horn was both vulgar and classless.
However… with the world the way it is and – more importantly
– with my assistant (also known as The Husband) and my webmistress (the
talented and irreplaceable Jane Akshar) suggesting (i.e., demanding) I become
more involved with the rest of the world, I have caved in and decided to do a newsletter.
(There will be a button on my website in a few days where everyone can
subscribe, or just let me know and I’ll have one of them add you manually.)
Believing in research, I immediately subscribed to a big bunch
of authors’ newsletters at random – and was absolutely astonished. I always
thought newsletters were for important news, or at the most a monthly affair
where the author could keep in touch with their fans. Apparently I was very
wrong, for very many of these authors think nothing of sending out ‘newsletters’
or ‘friendly contacts’ or ‘updates’ as often as 3-4 times a week, often
flogging the same book over and over!
My Lord, how can anyone think of so much to say about
themselves and their work? (To tell the truth, most of it was kind of boring…)
And so much of it was about giving away their books. While I recognize the
occasional freebie campaign is an accepted marketing tool, isn’t that much
freebie giveaway contraindicative to the concept of being a professional
writer?
And most of all, how do they find the time to do all that and
still have time to write?
I don’t get it.
So – if you do decide to subscribe to my newsletter (and I
hope you do) please be assured that I won’t stuff your email box. I intend to
send one only when it contains something truly newsworthy – a new novel
release, for example, or a major event.
For example – if I had my newsletter already up and running,
I would very happily publicize this :
On December 14, the Boekhandel De Kleine Johannes (which in
my nearly non-existant Dutch/German means Dear John Bookseller – if different,
please let me know) in Louvain, the university town of Belgium, is having a
literary evening featuring my dear friend Dr. Dirk Huyge, Director of the
Belgian Archaeological Mission to El Kab and Curator of Prehistoric and Early
Dynastic Egypt at the Royal Museums of Art and History in
Brussels. Dirk will be talking mostly about his work as an archeologist in
Egypt but also about how he became a character in my traditional Janis Patterson mystery A
KILLING AT EL KAB. I am even invited to participate by Skype! (The Husband and
I even looked into going over so we could attend the event, but it was just
impossible, both financially and scheduling-wise.)
Yes, I will mention this again in my newsletter! When it
comes out.
