Sunday, July 12, 2009

Radio Spot

Well, that was fun. A while back an editor had offered a chance for us to talk on his weekly radio show. It took a month or so before we could both show up at the same time, but last weekend we made it. He was in the studio with two other authors and I was 180 miles away on the other end of the telephone. The engineer called me during the commercial break and when the last strains of the car jingle faded away I was "ON THE AIR." The idea was to talk about my book and so we did in a conversational way. Pretty laid back actually. But we hit some of the key points like the name of the book and where you can buy it. We had fifteen minutes and that was it. On to the next writer and goodbye to me. Good thing I hadn't driven three hours to get to the station. Who knows how far the station reaches or what the listening audience might be? But as I say it was fun nevertheless and one more experience to chock up with publicity for the book. There's another editor who has asked for an interview. She's planning on a book review, so that too will probably be fun. The one I did last year for the newspaper was enjoyable and resulted in a nice complimentary article. Book sales are dragging though. Without being proactive about the selling effort, there's little chance people will just happen onto the new book. Now I'm struggling with Amazon and formatting the book for Kindle. The more I have read and heard, the more difficult the whole process sounds and it seems as if Amazon might have misjudged the computer expertise of many amateur writers. HTML is not something I speak or what's more even care to speak, but evidently its somehow important to getting your book uploaded and looking correct for the Kindle crowd. I think I'll chicken out and call for some help. Years and years ago I remember taking a tour, probably with my Cub Scout Den, of the composition room for the local paper. I'll never forget the formidable type setting machines that clanked
and banged and spit out out lead. The type setter asked each of us our name and then he poked the keys and explained how the type faces were dropped into a tray and then how hot lead was drizzled over them and out came a shiney lead slug with our name neatly spelled upside down and backwards. I'm sure those old guys pounding on the linotype keys would have no problem formatting my book so it would look just great.

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