Welcome

I am self-publishing my book What Peace Means to Us this Spring. Self-publishing is not hard; upload a manuscript and viola you are published. Self-publishing the right way, however, is going to be a huge undertaking.

“We might as well be playing pick-up sticks with our buttcheeks.”

That was my favorite line in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles and I use it whenever I face a huge challenge:

Self-publish a book and have it do well? I may as well be playing pick-up sticks with my buttchecks.

Perhaps, but I am competitive by nature and possess a determination to succeed.

I put up my novella The Seldom Dogs last January. It was uploaded with no marketing plan or anything like that. Today it is ranked somewhere in the two-millions on the Amazon sales charts--

In other words, it’s deep in the Amazonian sea of electronic books, somewhere in the literary Marianas Trench.

And I have no one to blame but myself.

For What Peace Means to Us I am doing the work. I believe in it; I want lots of people to read it and will do what it takes to reach that goal.

Obstacle One: I know very little about marketing a book...or myself.

How do we teach ourselves things in 2020? That’s right: Go to YouTube.

This past week I have been watching videos by Jenna Moreci and Kristen Martin and other authors who have had success self-publishing.

With every question answered three more pop up that I never thought of.

This blog is--in part--about me working my way through my questions about self-publishing.

This spring I will successfully release my book--

And it won’t sink to the bottom of the Marianas Trench.

Scribbled and then underlined in one of my many notebooks:

Brand before Product.

This is not natural for me: Marketing. Referring to myself as The Brand and my books as The Product.

It is not natural but I understand that I need to change the way I think in order to reach my goals.

The YouTube says this and the YouTube never lies.

Since this is the first blog I feel obliged to introduce myself to you.

My bio is fanciful but generally accurate: I grew up in the middle of nowhere. My step-father’s house really did look like a castle. Our closest neighbors were a mile away. They were also family friends who would engage us in drunken fireworks “wars”--

Not the safe stuff we can buy in the U.S., illegal rockets from China.

Tip: Want to sober up intoxicated parents in a hurry? Start a grass fire.

My siblings spent half the time up in Canada so a lot of the time it was just me and my imagination.

And books, I always had a book under my nose.

Younger me was alone but rarely lonely. Bored? Sometimes. Scared of my step-father? Yeah, especially when he was on a coke binge.

But...lonely? Nah. I had books and magazines--stories and words.

Eventually my love of words and stories led me to write my own.

I typed out an awful historical novel when I was sixteen.

And then I wrote more novels eventually working from awful to okay to pretty good to the upcoming book which I am proud of and can’t wait to share.

Despite never selling a book to a publisher quitting has never been an option. I have no idea why but something keeps pushing me: Write more. Keep trying. This is a great story you have to share it with loads of people.

Don’t give up.

Maybe I am telling your story: Perhaps you’re a fellow artist deep into the years where you should have acquired a grown-up career and a mortgage and all that adult stuff.

I see the millions of books on Amazon, I know you’re out there.

Before What Peace Means to Us comes out this spring I have loads of work to do: Build the platform. Solidify the brand. Reach out to people. Many things, enough that on occasion it overwhelms me. This blog will cover my coming to grips with everything it takes to successfully self-publish. It will also touch on something--in zanier moments (which are rare for me)--I call Izaak’s Crazy Art Life. As much as I want loads of people to dig this blog, I don’t want it to be Beige.

Beige: The color of characterless apartment complexes.

No, I want to take you into a rambling house that has been lived in and hosted parties and people sobbing on couches as they listen to the Depeche Mode--

And ghosts. Every cool house has at least one ghost lurking around.

Mine does, maybe yours does, as well.

Don’t just stand there on the porch, come on it.

Izaak

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