Is Anyone Interested?

Publication day had me naively assuming that all my friends would be anxious to buy my novel. I’d sent out a huge mail shot and posted them so that the recipients would receive information on the day the book came out.
I had just three responses! Friends I’ve seen in person since then have not mentioned anything about the book until I, probably not employing much subtlety, brought the subject up.
“Oh yes, I got your letter.”
“Do you think you might order the book?”
“Yes, I’ll try to remember when I get home.”
Utter deflation then has been my principal emotion. The lesson I’m picking up is that for the novelist the publication of his/her book is an extremely important and exciting event but for others it’s just a momentary flicker of news that will quickly fade from the mind.
The other surprise has been to discover that not everyone reads books these days, consumed as they are with their iPhones and tablets.
To me, as a man born in the 1950s, this is quite shocking. I use my iPhone continuously and am very interested in modern technology but I always have a book ‘on the go’ and read every day. I always have.
The fact that my novel is about two gay men may put some potential readers off but I deliberately didn’t write any sex scenes into my novel as I wanted the focus to be on character and plot development rather than any unnecessary paragraphs of cursory titillation.
I’m getting over the disappointment of the low key reaction to my book launch now. It hasn’t deterred me from further marketing effort on my part. The manager of my local Waterstones has agreed to read the complimentary copy I gave him and, if he likes it, he’ll order 6 copies in and “see how it goes” or, and this was an intriguing and potentially really exciting prospect, “we could go big”. The mind boggles.

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