I thought that I would outline some policies on comments.
First off, I would encourage commentary, either as feedback on the novel itself, or on any of the other posts I make here. As a general rule, so long as I am able, I will respond to any comment made in good faith. To date that hasn’t been a problem, given how few people have been by and the 1% or so who have made comments, but it is certainly possible if things pick up.
Next, I’m going to be an autocratic bastard. Trolls will not be tolerated. Oh, comments and criticism are welcome, if they seem to be in good faith. But any spam or hatred will be nuked. This is my blog – if you want to hate on me or someone else, get your own blog and do it there. It’s not like they cost anything.
Jim Downey
So, according to the stats for the Communion of Dreams site, I’ve been getting over a thousand hits a week there, and plenty of people are downloading the files. And I hear anecdotal comments about the book here and there from people. Yet this blog gets little traffic, and even less feedback on the book. It’s weird.
I know from my experience as a columnist and long-time writer in other forums just how few people will ever actually voice an opinion on the stuff you write – it’s only like one percent in most of the cases where I’ve had numbers to run. But still, it seems so odd to me that I have heard so little response to the book, either good or bad.
So this is an invitation, once again, to comment. Good, bad, whatever, feel free. Be anonymous if you want – I don’t have the computer sophistication to track back your ISP and figure out who you are, and I’d respect your desire to remain anonymous, anyway.
Jim Downey
That’s how many listings I pulled out of the Guide to Literary Agents as prospects. Now I’m going through the list to do more research on each one, checking websites, that sort of thing. Once that is done, I’ll rank the different agencies, and start contacting those where I think I have the best chance to get someone to actually look at the novel. High on my priority list will be agencies which handle submissions via email – in this day and age, there’s no reason not to do such things this way, and I must admit to a certain bias in thinking that any agency which doesn’t do this is either so behind the times (I’ve been using email for regular correspondence in my business for over a decade, and almost 15 years of private correspondence) or so stuck in old ways of doing business that I would have to wonder how well suited they are to finding a publisher for my book.
Besides, submitting work via email is a lot faster and more efficient. I can embed some text with the cover letter, add links directly to the Communion site, et cetera. Save a tree and postage, also. Not that I have any illusions about what matters to most agents; convenience and efficiency for me is low on their list of priorities. In fact, there may be something to the idea of submitting hardcopies via snail-mail, if only for the fact that fewer people are probably doing that these days. Hmm…
Jim Downey
Gah. Spent yesterday pretty much crippled with a migraine. I suspect it was due entirely to getting into the Guide to Literary Agents and reading one phrase again and again under the individual listings for agents:
“Does not want to receive screenplays, science fiction, or romance.”
Welcome to the publishing ghetto.
Jim Downey
Let’s talk art. I was a gallery owner for 8 years, after all. And an arts columnist for the local paper for a couple of years following that.
The image at the top of this page, and on the Communion website, is titled “Burr Oak at Twilight”, by Columbia, MO artist Peter Haigh. That’s pronounced “Haig”, by the way.
I sold photographs for Peter at my gallery for pretty much the entire time we were there, and that image of the champion Burr Oak for MO (and perhaps the nation) was always a big seller for us. The tree, known locally as the “Williamson Oak”, is about a dozen miles south of Columbia on the Katy Trail, is about 350 years old and has a circumference of about 300 inches, and stands some 85 feet tall.
Anyway, I always enjoyed looking at that photo. And over time, in the many hours I spent working at the gallery, it slowly became associated in my mind with images from my novel. Because I spent probably three or four years just thinking through the storyline, the tech, the history, before I started really writing the book (which took about two years). In a very real way, I grew to equate the image with my novel.
It’s funny what inspires an author, or an artist. Seldom is there a direct one-to-one correlation between a work and the source of inspiration, based on my own experience and from discussion with countless artists I represented over the years. Usually, you’re responding to a comment, an image, an experience, but it is filtered through dozens of other thoughts and leaps of creative faith. But in this one instance, I can honestly say that when I describe the tree in the book, I am talking about this image of this spectacular tree, with all the associated baggage.
Anyway, I am thankful that Peter has allowed me to use this image, and would encourage you to go look at all of his other stunning landscape photography. I know people who own a dozen of his prints, and when you see his stuff you’ll understand why.
Jim Downey
Well, promotion so far has been rather lack-luster. Or perhaps just no one is bothering to give me any feedback.
That’s one of the big fears that any author has – being ignored. I know from countless essays/diaries/posts/columns that I have written for newspapers and the web that my anxiety about this is useless, and usually unwarranted. Unwarranted, because my writing is usually fairly widely read, even if that isn’t obvious to me at first. Useless, because there’s nothing you can do about it anyway.
As I mentioned previously, I know that it takes a while for this sort of thing to pick up momentum. My Paint the Moon project (which came from Communion – you’ll find it in chapter 9) just sort of stumbled along for two months before hitting the big time. And I am constantly getting comments from people about a column I wrote for the newspaper weeks after the fact. My ego lives in the immediate now – everyone else seems to exist in the distant past. Ah well.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Promotion
Well, I’m just now starting to send out the novel to some contacts I have in the press, and posting it to appropriate discussion forums and whatnot. I wanted to begin with my circle of friends while I was putting everything in order, learning the blog software, getting things set. I’m reasonably satisfied that things are as I want them to be (largely thanks to my good lady wife!) in terms of presentation – so the time has come to start promotion.
Because promotion is what it is all about. I didn’t just write the novel for myself – I wrote it for others to read. The web allows for one venue to disseminate it, and also provides for opportunities to get it into the more traditional venue of print media.
You can help. Send the url to any forum where it might be appropriate, recommend the site to your friends. It’s not like I’m charging people to come take a look or download the novel. Based on my previous ‘projects‘ this sort of promotion will likely take a while to spread, and may not catch on at all. Or it could go crazy. It’ll be fun to see what happens.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 