11
CHAPTERSelf-Promotion or Self-Delusion?
BORN-AGAIN
YOU HAVE PROBABLY MET THEM AT CONVENTIONS. INDEED,
they are hard to avoid. They are well-dressed, pushy, and hot on a
mission. Before you know it, they are pouring statistics in your ear:
over fifty thousand books a year are published ... a typical big
house does hundreds... only 5 percent of those get promoted....
You nod in agreement. Your own last book received little, if any,
advertising. As for promotion? Forget it. You know your place on the
food chain. Only the big-name novelists and sizzling nonfiction
books are sent on tour. What can you do?
Plenty, say your newfound friends, the bojn-again self-promoters:
you, too, can take charge of your career. Show a glimmer of interest
and they thrust upon you their handouts, press kits, bookmarks,
buttons—see? You have to believe! Promote yourself] No one else
will do it for you (though they can help).
Your eyes glaze over as the sermon grows more intense: they
confess their former naivete. They witness to the selling power of
self-promotion. They beg you not to wait. They offer to put you in
touch with their own press agents. They declare, "You can be saved!
Put your trust in TV! You can be on cable!" Your brain feels numb.
Their crazy rant is beginning to make sense.
Are they right? Should you break down and join the ranks of the
self-promoters? Should you, too, be making cold calls to the talent