Grateful thanks to writer, Michelle McGrane, who is featuring The Opposite of Cabbage at her Peony Moon blog, including a poem from the book, ‘The Listeners’.
After all the glitz (well, ‘glitz’ in poetry terms) of the launch and the books flying off the Salt shelves for the first few weeks, I guess a new phase has developed. The collection isn’t exactly much in the public eye, like virtually all poetry books, but I am hoping to line up a few more readings and continue to spread word on it without appearing like a self-obsessed jackass. So I’m all the more grateful to Michelle and others who write about it and perhaps even help to sell a few copies.
One funny thing was that underneath Michelle’s article on the book, in an automatically generated list of ‘possibly related posts’, I found a link to ‘Miley Cyrus is Waiting for Marriage’, Miley Cyrus being, of course (for those of you without children), tweenie superstar, Hannah Montana. My daughter is a huge fan and perhaps the automatic generator uncannily knew that. Don’t anyone dare say it must have been the ‘cabbage’ reference. That would be outrageous…
4 comments:
'Miley Cyrus is waiting until marriage', no less ...
Thank you for allowing me to post 'The Listeners', Rob.
The poem posted at Peony Moon links to your post (in my head...). After the 'thrill' of the launch and all that surrounds it comes the 'dark path' of the next phase (how much to promote? how tedious it can be...how to feel about it all...). Was that on purpose?
And now for the come-down. I'm sure it will be a steady seller for you Rob. The readings will take care of that for you.
Michelle, I'm very pleased that you asked for something.
I hadn't thought of that, Rachel. But good to know the events in the poem have application beyond themselves.
Of course, I enjoy the readings, festivals, socialising with other poets and literary types that many poets profess to dislike. I feel fine about promoting the book, partly because I believe in it as a book (it's a good book! Really!) and partly because poetry publishers need authors to make an effort. But I don't want to annoy people. I don't send people weekly emails instructing them to buy it and I don't splash it all over Facebook every few days. There's promotion and there's spam...
I think sales will continue to happen - readings will be a part of that, but I have other ideas as well.
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