More self promotion!

What should have been clear from yesterday's post is that trying to get people to read the screenplay, as part of selling the screenplay, is significantly harder than writing the screenplay was.

Writing has always been the easy part for me. It's not that it's always easy, but I've been doing it for a long time and I find it intrinsically rewarding. I am still doing a lot of writing, so I am still doing things that are rewarding and where I feel like I know my way. There is also this expansion now, of trying to become a professional. And I don't know what I am doing.

I keep finding out new things. For example, I did upload the novel to Kindle, and I have even made about $10 in sales.(I know; it is very impressive.) Still, there are things I am learning. I chose the easiest option for a cover, and I didn't do any formatting for readability. I don't even have an e-reader, so I really have a very poor understanding of the aesthetics of it. That's something I should look into more.

In addition, I just figured out how to create my author profile on Amazon two days ago. This is important because I am not the only Gina Harris on there. The one who wrote I Kiss Girls comes up first, incidentally. However, now that I have that profile, I also have a direct link to me:

http://www.amazon.com/author/ginamharris

I can be added as a favorite. People can follow me. Perhaps that would be cooler if it had happened because I was already a successful writer, but it still feels kind of cool.

I have not been sure how to do the same thing on Goodreads, but I did think I should try and get some reviews, and there were two people among my connections who do a lot of book reviews. Asking them, one has let me know that Goodreads has librarians who can help with that. Checking on that, and sending official review requests to both contacts is something I am still trying to get to. I am afraid that everything takes longer than I think it will, but that's all the more reason to keep at it.

Other agenda items include updating my LinkedIn profile to reflect the writing. I have made some progress in getting every page linked together. For example, if you go to my blog there is a link to my screenplays and my Ficwad writing, and now I have added my Wattpad writing, but as I keep forming new links, that requires more updates.

I don't know how helpful the LinkedIn will be, but I haven't checked to see if there are relevant groups and contacts. I need to at least try.

There is more networking I can probably do. Different people in various aspects of film have followed me on Twitter, and they may have ideas too. I have a few links down to check out.

There are a few other possibilities for writing that I intend to check out. Maybe I could do something for HitRecord, or submit one of those one page romances to Woman's World (which I read), and this spot, which seems kind of improbable, but I will check it out:

http://www.bubblews.com/

And, it feels premature, but I should probably check out the Dark Horse submission guidelines.

Once upon a time, I was making agency inquiries, and I could always do that again. It wasn't particularly productive at the time, but the economy was down, there were strikes going on, and I think I only had four scripts written at the time. Maybe it would go better now.

This is still not my favorite thing to do by a long shot. I still have a lot of bands to tweet. I will say, if it hasn't felt as good as writing a novel or screenplay does, there have been some surprising things. As I go through this list of bands I've reviewed there are all these memories. There was that stretch when all of these bands I wanted to see so badly were showing up within a few months of each other, and that was pretty cool. There were the people I got to talk to.

Even forgetting the concerts, there were the bands that just followed me, and I listened to them. Some of them are so good, and I would never know about them if they hadn't followed me first.

Gene Simmons was complaining that Rock & Roll was dead. No, it lives and breathes. It is not always a huge financial success, but maybe the struggle is part of what gives it life. It is a privilege to get to know these bands and hear their sounds. I know they're not doing it to do me a favor. They are trying to promote themselves just like I am trying to promote myself now. However, when people are being creative and making their art, and then we find each other, there's a lot of good with that. It's not all sordid commercialism.

So I will still be at it.