More than a Fish in the Sea
Why being a romance author feels as daunting as speed dating.
If you’ve ever heard the expression “there are plenty of fish in the sea,” you probably know it applies to dating. For those of you who haven’t heard it, imagine guys sitting around a bar after one gets dumped for dragging his feet, while his well-meaning bros tell him, “Forget her. There are plenty of fish in the sea.”
Maybe I’m a little hard on the bros. A few women have gotten that advice, too. That’s a sidebar. At the moment, I’m the fish and you’re the one with choices.
As an author, my marketing attempts equate to me throwing myself at readers, simply trying to catch your eye. Enter our central metaphor for this discussion, the goldfish at the pet store, swimming toward the looming figure, vying for a morsel of attention, or perhaps the Holy Grail of authorship, a spot on your bookshelf at home. The question is, how do I stand out against all the other fish in the sea, or tank?
The truth is, I have no idea. I follow all the latest advice, fumbling my way through social media, engaging with posts and reels by other authors, my potential audience, and anyone who will give me fifteen milliseconds of their time. I apply my pith and charm to all the words going out on all the platforms, exhausting myself of time that I could spend writing the next book, proffering my heart, scattered against the page in black and white, hoping. Always hoping.
So, what? That’s what my professors always asked. You listed a bunch of interesting details: so what? Another way of asking this question is: Why does any of this matter?
For starters, it matters to writers because we love story. Deep in the catacombs of our mind is a labyrinth of tales yet to be told, and an earnest desire to not only tell them, but to share them. We writers crave an audience not for ourselves, but for our beloved characters. Sure, there are those few who jump to the stage, heralding themselves as a name to be known. But for many of us, it’s simply the chance to reveal the heart of a world that only exists inside us.
Like in Terry Brooks’ Magic Kingdom of Landover, a book I will read a hundred more times before I die, the worlds all border one another, interconnected by the mist where time and thought are ephemeral. Hundreds of lifetimes exist in the recesses of imagination, and for those lucky few of us to transcend the mists, we collect what we learn in each world, crafting it into a story. Then we present it to this world.
And then we have to sell the book…
Picture me sinking to the bottom of the tank and floating upside down as the marketing plan overwhelms me. One tiny fin flips helplessly against the bubbles oxygenating the water. My fish face (a pout that annoys my husband to no end) opens and closes until a golden flake of food drifts down through the tank to my pity party.
Okay. I’m done pouting. Mostly.
This is the reality. Authors would rather have a positive comment than a dollar. One review that mentions how a side character made them smile is worth more to us than any best-sellers list. That’s what we want. All your favorite authors want to know you liked the story. Sure, we still need to pay the editor, the cover artist, the advertisers who found you out in the sea. But truth be told, I’d give my book away to every reader if I could afford to, just to hear one say, “I loved this scene.”
But we do need to pay all those people who helped us get the words on the page in a format that others can enjoy. That’s where speed dating comes in. They say the average attention span for adults is dropping from minutes to seconds. The problem is social media zooming through engaging reels with lightning speed, faster than a sitcom, the original suck on attention spans. Now people spend less than sixty seconds examining something, such as a book cover, before their brain moves on consciously or not.
With that detail in mind, consider the book blurb as my one shot to catch your eye. In sixty seconds or less. Assuming you’re an average adult, reading casually, that gives me two hundred words or less to make an impression and convince you to buy, and perhaps later read, my story. There has to be characters, tension, setting, and a hook that makes you think, “Oh, I wonder how that goes?” in two hundred words or less. Set that against the backdrop of the largest book retailers in the world, selling millions of books on everything from the Reformation to Vinyasa yoga, and you see why I feel like my hand was stamped at the door before we all got into this cloud-based marketing arena, right?
Alas. However, if you’re reading this blog, you’ve already given me more of your time than most of us get from anyone on any given day. Thank you.
Rest assured that if you take a chance on one of my books, I promise you three things: closed-door romance, a quirky cast of loveable characters, and a happily ever after. More than you can say for sitcoms these days, or a lot of things in the twenty-first century.
On a side note, from one fish to another, just because there are many, many options out there, doesn’t mean you aren’t unique, worthy, interesting, lovable, and important. You are my favorite kind of human, a reader.
