Operation Paperback

My child with cancer, being exploited to help me publicize my book.

So, the paperback of my memoir, Double Time, comes out just shy of a month from now. I’m quite excited about this. But I admit that I haven’t been as gung-ho about it as I probably would be if, you know, one of the stars of the book didn’t have cancer.

Clio was diagnosed less than two months after the hardcover was released last May. I was still in full-on publicity mode at that point. In fact, I’d done a bookstore reading in Maine two days before we ended up in the hospital with her. At that point, her symptoms had gotten pretty acute, and we were planning to see her doctor (yet again) a few days later. But we never got that far.

And can I tell you how bizarre it felt to have our family’s life turned completely upside down while having a book out there about the era which I’d already begun thinking of as B.C. (Before Cancer)?  Yeah. Pretty freakin’ bizarre. And heartbreaking. Honestly, I couldn’t have cared less about Double Time at that point. And the prospect of there being a paperback someday just seemed ludicrous. Even offensive.

But here I am, nine months later, and I feel like: Hey! Yeah! I still want people to read this book! It’s a good book, dammit!

So I’m doing what I can to get the word out, albeit on a more limited basis than I might if things were different in our lives, or I didn’t have a fairly demanding day job. And yeah, getting the word out is pretty much on me. Sadly, publishers — especially the big ones, like the one that publishes Double Time — don’t do a whole lot in terms of publicity and marketing these days, except for a very few, select books in whose metaphorical baskets they choose to put the the majority of their eggs. My book-basket has pretty much no eggs.

Le paperback!

(And can you blame them? Look at my tortured metaphors!)

So, that sucks. I wish it weren’t so. I wish I were one of the lucky ones, who had a crack marketing and publicity team getting my book out there and singing its praises. Or that I could afford to pay for an all-out, major publicity campaign from a third party. Or even that there had been a way — in the packaging, or title, or something — to make it clear that the book isn’t just for mothers of twins. But so it goes. (Uh oh. I’m kvetching, as writers are wont to do. I should stop.)

Anyway, I came up with one sort of fun marketing tactic — I think it’s fun, anyway — which was to send early Mother’s Day cards to a whole bunch of independent bookstores, as nominated by friends and readers (thanks to those of you who gave me names of your favorite stores!) telling them about the book, and suggesting they put it on their Mother’s Day gift idea tables.

Will it work? I have no idea. But maybe one or two will get my card and think: What the what? A Mother’s Day card? How cool! I’ll check out that book, by golly!

My child without cancer, being exploited to help me publicize my book.

I adore independent bookstores, and the people who run them. So I enjoyed looking at dozens of indie store websites. It also was a great opportunity to exploit my children. They love “helping” and they love putting stickers on things, so I put them to work putting on stamps and return address labels. They were in heaven. Yes, some of the stamps are hanging halfway off the envelopes, but close enough.

Meanwhile, I will very soon be offering an opportunity to win free copies of Double Time, so like my page on Facebook, or sign up for email updates (over there in the right-hand column) to find out how. (See? My day job in advertising serves me well! Maybe.)

In other news: as I write this, Clio is attending her first full day of school in two weeks. Woo-hoo!!