Promotion in a fiverr world...

Thanks to the magic elves that make the internet run, it is now possible for pretty much anyone with half a brain (Joe Café) to publish a novel, make a movie, start a blog about their parrot, etc.  This is both good and bad. It is good because a lot of talented people are getting a shot they wouldn’t normally get. It is bad because a lot of untalented people are getting that same shot. Or I guess I shouldn’t say bad. Everyone deserves their chance, but it does present an interesting dilemma. Promotion. How can you make your novel, song, dance number, etc. stand out from the quagmire? It’s a good question. I congratulate myself for it. 

          
I talk to a lot of people about self-promotion, and what I usually say is something along the lines of…well, you promote your work the same way you would promote yourself. Be decent and kind to people. Think about how you can help the community you want to be a part of. Find people who are creating things you believe in and push their work.  No one likes a hard sell. It is far more effective to let people get to know you and your work on their terms. Less off-putting. Blah, blah, blah.

          
And then there is fiverr.com. For those unfamiliar, fiverr is a website where you can get anyone to do just about anything for $5, of which they keep four. I decided to do an experiment. Actually several. I’m not rolling in dollar bills (I quit stripping), but at five bucks a pop, you can afford to experiment a little. So, I did. Some of it you see here. I did a search for most popular services…who would have thought you could send some random woman your web address and it would be written on her cleavage and emailed back to you in less than five minutes?  I am here to tell you it can be done.  Go to fiverr and search ‘tayl0rwhat’. You, too, can have your name emblazoned on breasts bigger than mine.

          
The coolest thing I did on fiverr was to have a drummer play with my website on his drum and then have some guy plug my book. I have no idea who the people are. But it turned out awesome (search: Naiyyer). I am not sure if it sold any books or got any people to my website, but I like to think it did.

Promotion is a tricky thing. I wrote a book that I believe is pretty good. It’s no East of Eden, but it is getting good reviews on Amazon (except for one guy who apparently liked it, but ONLY if it cost 99 cents)…which brings up another point about the quagmire. It used to be a book cost more than a sandwich.  Now, you charge more than ONE DOLLAR for your book and some nozzle is going to claim he didn’t get his money’s worth. Creative work is being devalued. On my website, www.jdmader.com, there are enough short stories for a few collections. Some of them have been published before. Two of them got ‘positive rejections’ from the New Yorker. And they are all there for free along with essays and music and a lot of work that I put a lot of time into.

         
I’m not complaining (much). The ability to get your work out there... Kindle. Print on demand. Blogs.  The ability to do all that for free (without an agent) is huge. I have heard it argued, and tend to agree, that as a few years pass, the wheat will begin to separate from the chaff, but until then, it’s a big world out there. There are great, amazing self-published novels that you can buy for the price of a cup of coffee. And there are pieces of trash that you will pay the same price for. There are lots of ways to get your work noticed. Word of mouth is pretty powerful. But boobs never hurt anyone either.  

'Apostle Rising' by Richard Godwin

A little change of pace, here's a review of a book you should definitely, definitely purchase immediately.

            Apostle Rising, by Richard Godwin is an extremely good read.  It is also extremely hard to categorize.  It defies categorization.  This is one of its  many strengths.  It is a detective novel.  It is a mystery.  It skirts the edges of gothic horror.  Some of it is written (brilliantly) in verse.  It is dark.  It has depth.  It gives a nod to Noir.  It is so well-wrought and complex that it is almost like two novels in one. 

Did I mention that it is dark?  So dark that parts of it are hard to stomach, but it is well worth the trip into hell.  The prose is beautifully written.  Godwin certainly knows what he is doing.  The story is tight, with enough twists and angst to satisfy the most critical ‘crime novel’ fan.   It is a book that will stick with you.  The beauty of the words resonate long after you have read the last page.  And the darkness will tug at you, reminding you that the world is full of lots of different kinds of people.  And some of them are intensely frightening.

            Our protagonist is Detective Chief Inspector Frank Castle.  He is of the old school…the kind of cliché we love so much he’s not a cliché, but an archetype.  He drinks too much (whiskey of course).  He is incapable of feeling joy.  He is, in fact, haunted by a string of murders that almost drove him insane (the ‘almost’ is questionable).  The Woodlands Killer nearly drove him mad, but he hung on, only to find himself up to his eyeballs, years later, in copycat killings that are so much like the old cases that it would make any hardboiled detective dive into the bottle. 

Castle is aided by his partner DI Jacki Stone, a tough woman who is faced with the toughest case of her career.  Meanwhile her marriage is falling apart due to the stresses of her work and her inability to leave it at the office. 

And then there is Karl Black, a sociopathic, religiously obsessed manipulator who played a large role in driving Castle insane with the original investigation and gets Stone in on the act with the new one.  He is a fantastic character.  He is evil, yet his charm (and his ability to get under the skin of Castle and Stone) make him a pleasure to visit.

            There are more characters of course, and they are well rendered and interesting, but I don’t want to give too much away.  So, we have our cast of characters.  And we have death.  Dead hookers and dead politicians, brutally murdered by…who?  Some of the murders match the MO of the Woodlands killings.  Some don’t.  Some are clearly biblical taunts.  Some are attacks at the establishment and political corruption.  All are vivid and terrifying.  London is literally covered in corpses.  (A personal note here: I am often accused of writing ‘Dark’ fiction…Godwin’s murder scenes are enough to make the darkest thing I have ever written piss itself and run in fear.  This is not a critique.  It is worth noting, though.  The murder scenes are so vivid and real that you might not want to read them if you are alone in the house.)

            The genius of this book is that Godwin plays with so many forms (and with such a light touch), that it defies cliché in what can easily become a clichéd form.  Crime novels can enter the realm of cliché very easily.  This one never does.  Godwin is undeniably well informed about religion, compulsion, corruption, and delusion, and the way he weaves them all together is truly impressive. 

            There are people who read books and want to figure out “who dun it”.  I am not that kind of reader.  I like to be surprised.  But, even if I was that type of reader, I would have been shocked at the eerily twisted conclusion to this novel. 

            If you like crime novels, you will like Apostle Rising.  If you like horror novels, you will like Apostle Rising.  If you are interested in religion and human psychology, you will like Apostle Rising.  Hell, if you like well written books, you will like this one.  Godwin is a gifted writer who knows his craft, knows when to play the right cards, and he will get inside your head…just like Karl Black.

Author Bio: Richard Godwin is a widely published crime and horror writer, whose work has appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including recently Pulp Ink. Apostle Rising, in which a serial killer is crucifying politicians and recreating the murder scenes of an unsolved case, is his first published novel. It has received excellent reviews and is under offer for two foreign rights acquisitions. You can find out more about the author at his website: http://www.richardgodwin.net/.  His Chin Wags At The Slaughterhouse are popular interviews he conducts with other writers: http://www.richardgodwin.net/blog.