I think we tend to be single minded creatures.
Specifically, I'm thinking about the process of publishing my upcoming book of poetry. One thinks that what is needed is to write the material, arrange it, and submit it, but in reality it's way more work than that.
Publishers want to see your platforms and how they perform, such as how many facebook or instagram followers a writer has to their credit. I decided to dig into that to get to the root of this request and it turns out, it has more to do with how many people can you "reach" than how many people you can rack up. Use to be that your "reach" was how many email addresses you had in your email list. Then it was how many "unique impressions" you had on your website. Of course, social media came along to change all of that into instant gratification. One post could go viral and the sky's the limit.
Now, we've come full circle as the gurus out there say we need to use our social media to drive traffic to our websites to collect email addresses. Finally the system is integrating. Pretty sure we knew this all along. Social media reach is a rented commodity - you can lose all of that effort if/when the operator decides to block your account, or, as in the case of YouTube, they choose to "defund" your content with new algorithms. In these cases, you have no recourse and have basically lost all of the good will and society you worked to build.
That's why there is the return to email.
Okay, my point is there is a kind of steep learning curve to publishing a book because the writer is now responsible for the marketing, promotions, and all support for their work. The product is no longer the art form of words and worldview, but the degree of success one has as with the cult of personality-with salesmanship-with business development.
Still, I love my manuscript and because of that, I'm sort of enjoying coming up with supportive content. It's taking a lot of restructuring but so far, so good!
Here's a list so far:
New website
New blog
New Vimeo channel
New lyric video(s)
New Social Media Campaign
New eBooks in development
New audio recordings
I hope you will enjoy this new work, and please know that I want to put this all out there, yes for me, but also for you! I believe we are important as a people, and relating to each other is the key! Feel free to share these to your friends and families.
Love will heal the World!