Last night I went to a book launch party
for William Turbyfill’s Field of Turby
at B Sharp Coffee House in Tacoma. Graciously, Turbyfill honored friends and
fellow writers Christian Carvajal, Jack Cameron and Melissa Thayer by inviting
them to read from their own works, and then he read a few selections from his
newly published book—his first, and hopefully the first of many. It was a
wonderful event. It is good to see locals coming out to support local writers.
There are many more outstanding local writers than I can begin to enumerate.
Most of them are published by independent, small-budget publishers, or are
self-published. There used to be a stigma to that, but not so much anymore. Despite
not being well known beyond friends and relatives, many of these local,
independently published authors are just as good as, and often better than,
more famous authors whose books sell in the millions.
The difference is Random House and
HarperCollins and Simon&Schuster can spend huge fortunes on advertising and
promotion; they can provide every bookstore in America with return-guaranteed
books; they can send their authors on worldwide book tours. (I’m not about to
spend a thousand dollars to fly across country for a book reading where I might
sell half a dozen books.) Marketing is impossible beyond readings in local bookstores
(and only independent bookstores like Kings Books and Orca will even put these
books on their shelves) and at events such as Creative Colloquy.
Steven King’s latest novel, The Bazaar of Bad Dreams has 767 customer
reviews on amazon.com. Field of Turby
has seven, which is phenomenal for an independently published book that’s been
out such a short time. My latest book has four. The most I’ve ever gotten for
any book so far has been 19.
Like your local food co-op and
neighborhood schools, local writers need your support. Please buy their books
and read them. But don’t just read them. Post customer reviews on amazon and
Goodreads, and recommend them on Facebook. These reviews help more than you can
imagine, and they’re not hard to write. They don’t have to be polished or even
skillfully written. Just write what you think, and be honest. If there are
things about the book you don’t like, say it. If you just gush about how great
it is, readers will sense you’re being dishonest; they might even suspect you
were paid to write a glowing review (that does happen, and amazon watches for
it and will refuse to publish reviews they suspect are dishonest).
Here are some local authors in the
Olympia-Tacoma area whose books I recommend, plus a couple from other parts of
the country whose books are outstanding and who could use your support:
William
Turbyfill
Melissa
Thayer
Jack Cameron
Ned Hayes
Christian Carvajal
Ricker Winsor
S.R. Martin Jr.
Jack Butler
Larry Johnson
Joshua Swainston
Ruth Tiger
Dianne Kozdrey Bunnell
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