Write & Release

On flinging my work into the digital ether

Hey y’all, it’s KimBoo! I’m an author who is also librarian, text technology historian, and former I.T. project manager. I write about a lot of interesting things, I hope you agree! Please consider supporting me (and my dog!) so I can keep throwing errata & etcetera into the Scriptorium!

I don’t do book launches, and I am nonplussed by the idea of self promotion.

Which makes it awkward when a new book is coming out, in this case, Become an Unstoppable Storyteller: Using Beats to Craft Compelling Serials on July 31st. Yes, THIS Sunday. Yikes.

Honestly, when I publish a book (or any of my writing in any form), I have the attitude of a catch-and-release fisherman: when I’m done catching the story, I just fling it out into the world without a care about what happens to it.

I’ve always been this way, even when I had a publisher who really pushed me to do launch marketing like cover reveals and blog tours and such like. (They were, unsurprisingly, not very happy with me; my books sold really well anyway, which was my excuse?)

The assumption by fellow authors is I’m shy about my writing or myself (or both!) and while I do have a few hang-ups about my looks, I’m absolutely not shy about my writing. I will smear it all over the walls without even being asked, and I think this very Substack is proof of that. Releasing my writing into the world is simply part of the experience.

But marketing? Launching? Promoting? All of that is just so boring for me. Boooorrrrrring!!!!!!!!

I have tried to work up excitement for it all and I have tried pretending they are a continuation of the story experience, yet I lose interest quickly.

Unfortunately, that’s not a great attitude to have for a writer trying to make a living, a fact I have understood for years but not overcome.

I keep looking for ways to market my work that is intrinsically interesting to me, and believe me, that is a challenge without even considering what might be interesting to my readers.

I live in jealousy of authors who seem to extract real joy out of the launching of a book or project, who yammer on about them constantly because they are excited about it, who attract interest to what they have produced simply because they are keen on sharing it. I watch their tiktoks and read their announcements on social media with intense jealousy.

Because I love my work, fiction and non-fiction and essays like this, and I want other people to love them too (or at least find them helpful, sometimes) but I don’t feel responsible for them once they are done. I fling them into the great wide river (ocean?) and let them find their way.

Which is all to say, I have that book coming out on the 31st which I’ve been busting ass on for two months to write and edit, and I hope people find it, and buy it, and consider it useful in some way.

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