May 2022: Update #2

Hello everyone!

Welcome back to my blog, journaling what I am learning about the inner workings of the publishing industry as a first-time author.

We are getting close to the launch, barely a few weeks away now. The cover has almost been finalized, the manuscript has been frozen (along with any spelling errors I may have missed) and the ISBN number has been created. It is getting real now guys. But, as I have learned of late, writing the books, especially in India, is only a third of the battle. Now the comes the next beast, and one that scares me much more than the blank page, marketing!

I am a purist in a lot of ways, and so I believe in blurbs on the back of the novel singing its praises. You may disagree, on quite a few days so do I, but I guess I am stuck in the romanticism of someone you have never met recommending a story to you. So that is where I am beginning my efforts. It is a lot of cold calling and emailing authors & reporters alike. Most don’t reply, some do. Can’t blame either of them. In their place, I would have probably done the same. But that does not deter me from trying. After all, getting another writer to endorse your book opens you up to their audience as well and often such cross-pollination of readers is good for everyone, even the scene.

So my next order of affairs is finding the right authors, and maybe some news publications to endorse Web of Ties and use their kind words to persuade others to give this story a shot. I can see why a lot of artists grow disillusioned with their work after a point (not saying I am there yet), but there are a lot of considerations you have to think about in addition to the craft. How do I position the book? Who is the audience? How do I speak to them? These are all supremely important questions that you must answer as a writer if you want to turn this into a career. And many of us thumb our noses at doing self-promotion, considering it to be vain grunt work

I often find great solace in a single sentence of advice Stephen King left for me in his book “On Writing”. “Get a bigger nail.” The story goes that when he had started writing, he got rejections from publishers and editors all the time. What he would do is keep all the rejection slips he received on a nail beside his writing desk. And his solution to the nail becoming full of rejection slips was to “Get a bigger nail.”

It is heartening to know that even a master of the craft like King struggled to get his stories out there. The man, unapologetically, is a beast. I think some of his books are longer than my entire career put together. At more than fifty books, and with no signs of stopping, he is one of my heroes. And if my hero had a difficult first act in his story, who am I expect any different?

So till then, I will keep on trying things, coming back to tell you how it has been going, and most importantly, go shopping for a bigger nail.

Until next time,
Siddhant Shekhar.