8...9...10 Launch!

I launched my second self-published book during my town’s summer fair. A gala event: traffic is diverted around the downtown core, and booths are set up in the freed-up streets. It gets overrun by neighbours and by people who all look familiar even if I don’t know them by name (The advantage of living in a small rural community).

Now don’t laugh, this annual event goes by the name "Carrotfest." The town abuts onto a fertile marshland that cultivates in a cornucopia of vegetables, namely, carrots, onions, celery and cabbage. Given that list I guess, the carrot is a natural choice. The town mascot is, what else, a big, orange Carrot. Anyway, the best names are taken already. A nearby town claims garlic, and north-west of us we have Potatofest. Beeton boasts of Beefest.

Anyway, with couple other indigenous authors we set up a table, arrange an attractive display of our works, and paste on smiles to make ourselves presentable or at least approachable. After all we (that is, our Writers’ Circle) comprise about 25 percent of the cultural wealth and resources of the community.

However, as the day progressed, the crowds came and went... mostly away from us toward more plebeian pleasures like face painting, battle of the bands, general street theatre (jugglers, fire-eaters, magicians), and ubiquitous jumping castles for kids... We watched as people streamed by and we cast lures into the flow, just likes fishing, getting the odd bite. We landed a few, talked seductively about our various opuses, sold and signed a few books, then bragged about the big one that got away.

I was lucky enough to have had an article published about me in the local paper the week before, and had people come up to me to congratulate me on my accomplishments. And we talked, which involved mostly me listening to them describe the book they always wanted to write but never got around to. Of course I was encouraging, patiently followed the twists and turns of the plot of the book that never was (but yet may be... who knows?). So I sold a few, not because my book was so great, but because theirs was or would have been... Go figure.

On the whole, I didn’t do badly. I reduced my inventory and recouped some of my initial investment. In two weeks I’m going to a regional literary festival where I have rented a table to do it all over again-- to challenge some stray soul to take a detour through my books (a life-changing experience, I assured them. Well not really, but it is entertaining.)

Between these rare interludes, I dream of success, and work on a marketing strategy. You will see me on streetcorners perhaps, peddling my stuff, face to face. Reading to writers’ groups, braving (and hopefully surviving) their criticism. Or putting on a lecture in libraries, about how I got to where I’ve gotten to other aspiring souls who yearn to put their imagination onto paper (sorry, into computer files) and breathe life into them.

Anyway, you won’t see me on shelves in bookstores, not in Chapters, nor in Indigo, or among Barnes and Noble offerings. To find me, you’d have to dig deep into the underbelly of the Internet, overcome near insurmountable odds to find me or my books. My vision is, if I can’t be the best of the bestsellers than I’m going to be among the rarest books of my generation. That’s what I wanted to say.