I have mixed feelings. My new poetry collection, Heresies to Live By, is back from the printer. Now the next phase must begin. Call it getting the word out. Call it distribution. Call it daunting.
Make no mistake. I’m very happy with the book—a wondrous collaboration with Lisa Carey and Wendy Schleicher from Lucid Creative who designed the book and the 12 gifted artists from Art Enables whose work brings the poems to life and adds depth of meaning. But the purpose of publishing this collection isn’t achieved unless someone receives it. And that someone has to know about it first.
Nowadays even major publishers leave most of the burden of publicity to their authors. The book tour (live or virtual), the glossy magazine ads and solicited blurbs and reviews are usually reserved for potential blockbusters, a category in which books of poetry rarely figure. But for me as author, publisher and distributor of my own work for the past 23 years, the challenge is even greater. My books are most often sold hand to hand or on consignment to Amazon where, over time, they dribble into the libraries of faithful colleagues and the occasional stranger.
I knew this is how it would be. I did it in spite of the odds. Now I pick up my marked up copy of Free Play by Stephen Nachmanovitch and go to the chapter about the artist’s inner critic, the judging spectre, where I reread this wise counsel: “The easiest way to do art is to dispense with success and failure altogether and just get on with it.” Yes.