What’s behind the curtain

No. I swear to you. This is not more self-promotion about the Oregon Book Award—although the life of the not-already-famous-with-massive-“platform”-writer (that would be me) has been overtaken by, swamped by, self-promotion. I wrote about this for Nieman Storyboard. And struggle with the tension between DOING the work and blabbing about the fact that I have done the work. And angsting about followers and likes and shares and reels and stories and how long I can ignore TikTok and what the New Big Thing will be that will suck up my time.

Instead, I want to pull back the curtain on what, to you all (not you writers reading this…you know the hard truth of this…) may look like “success.” I am talking about the (wonderful, gratifying) Oregon Book Award. Btw, that mention (now twice in two paragraphs) is good seo. For those of you blessed to not know what this is, it stands for Search Engine Optimization, the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website or a web page from search engines. So, the more times I mention Oregon Book Award (see how I did that!), the better the chance that this little essay will show up when someone Googles that phrase.

Little man behind the curtain time. My experienced, smart, well connected, caring, and hard-working agent did not have an easy time finding a home for Free. It is not an easy sell. It is not an easy topic. Sure, people OUGHT to care. Sure, there SHOULD be ongoing community and national conversations about how to help people returning home from prison make meaningful lives for themselves. And, yes, the “low-hanging fruit” (criminal justice reformers and activists and the like-minded) may want to read a book like Free. But that, tragically—and I use that word advisedly—is a small group. So, a big publisher with clout and power in the literary marketplace was not going to embrace this book. And did not. It did not help that the previous book was about an even tougher-to-sell subject, life as it is lived by those who’ve been incarcerated for most of their lives.

The paperback. For my entire writing life, the paperback edition of a book follows the hardback by about a year. Standard. Paperback gives the book new life. Often paperback covers are redesigned to give a refresh. Book clubs love paperbacks and often wait for that edition. This publisher has no plans to publish a paperback edition until they sell more hardbacks. But hardbacks have a very limited life. Whatever promotion was done when the book was launched back in May of last year is it. And of course, there is the used book market, which kinda takes over after six months. That’s why paperbacks jump in to reinvigorate. Will the Oregon Book Award (yes, I did it again) make a difference? Who knows. And I don’t have the bandwidth to care as I direct my energies to my next book. What I do know this:

The real writer is one who really writes.
Work is its own cure.
You have to like it better than being loved.
(excerpted from a Marge Piercy poem)

Well, it’s nice to be loved too.

*image (mine) Packed house at Portland Center Stage/ Armory for Oregon Book Awards event April 3, 2023.