Chapter 6: The meek may inherit the earth but they won’t get published.

Usually at this point, I rush headlong into my next book. This time however, I decided to finally address the elephant in the room: Self-promotion. I searched online for guidance. Everywhere I looked, the ‘Authors Platform’ came up and most publishers were asking things like: ‘Where can we find you in cyber-space?’ This was an aspect of the submission process I’d always avoided or derided. (Jane Austen hadn’t needed a Facebook account, had she?). I’d also contemplated becoming an enigmatic recluse. No one knows what she looks like, but she writes these amazing stories about dysfunctional families and I’m running out to buy ten copies right now, was a sentence that floated through my mind often. I’d wake up in the middle of the night thinking, No, no, no, I’m not doing it, you can’t make me go into cyberspace…and so on.

Someone said I needed to be on Facebook so I opened an account and had fun for a while but couldn’t really see how arguing about coriander was going to help me get published. I had no book to promote, no successes to brag about – what was the point?

One day, I listened to a podcast with the bestseller author Lee Child on the BBC World Book Show. He talked about how ‘luck’ played a big part in getting published. Sure, you have to write a good book, but there are so many manuscripts out there waiting to be read. Who knows how the person who picks up yours from the slush pile will be feeling that day? What if the editor in question stands up to get a cup of coffee and accidentally knocks the whole pile over and your manuscript slides under a cupboard, never to be read. (Lee Child didn’t use this analogy – this is just where my head went while he was talking.) The point is, I clung onto this theory for a while, perhaps a little too enthusiastically. And still, no one came knocking.

While avoiding working on self-promotion one day, I googled the question: Can’t I just write a book?

Lordy!

There are a lot of frustrated, unpublished writers out there. I scrolled through and came across a course being run by Australian Writers’ Centre called ‘Build Your Author Platform’. I love the AWC – they have valuable courses and their whole vibe is very positive, inclusive and supportive. I signed up for the course and am currently in the second module, trying not to swear at Wordpress too often. In the first module, the CEO, Valerie Khoo talks with Australian publishers about what they are looking for in authors. (Not what they are looking for in books, and herein lies the important detail.) Each and every publisher said, in his or her own way, that they were looking for authors who were prepared to do some of the heavy lifting in selling their book. Publishers make money from selling books, not from mentoring authors.

Right, I thought. Come on Kate, pull up your socks. And that’s what this website and blog is all about: Social media networking and blatant, vainglorious self-promotion.

Thanks for reading, and if you’d like to leave a comment, I’d love to hear from you.