Author Spotlight: Guillermo Stitch

See full issue for 2018 10-08

If you had a writing motto what would it be?
"Hold your nerve."

I can't claim the words as my own and nor can I attribute them correctly. I read of them being offered as advice to a writer who was nearing the finishing line with her work-in-progress. I believe the same would hold true with any work of art. In those latter stages it becomes bleakly apparent to the artist just how much is at stake. It's like a game of brinkmanship with yourself. You set out on the journey all swagger and open skies. Now you have to bring it home. If you manage it, your reward will be to need to go on another journey - a journey nobody has asked you to make.

So yeah - "Hold your nerve."

Where do you draw your inspiration?
I don't know. I worry about us, you know?

On the page is where I have found magic. Whether the spell is cast by Dickens, Barthelme, Beckett or Chandler, what keeps me coming back is the magic.

And so, I want to make magic. If that sounds egotistical, it probably is. But I like to think there's a humility to it as well - I don't claim to understand what I'm trying to do. I hold my hands up and admit it - I'm just flailing around trying to get results that are magical, and mysterious, to me. Like a monkey trying to light a fire.

What is one interesting fact about you?
Due to damage to my median nerve, I have almost no sensation in the thumb and three fingers of my right hand. I can regularly be observed throwing things around in public places (keys, pieces of paper, packets of food) because I've forgotten I was holding them.

Next time I would start earlier. When I reach the point where I have a proofed and formatted book with a cover, I would set a publication date six months out. Everything else in the publication industry moves at a glacial pace - why shouldn't the self-publisher?

This allows the time to do all the outreach you are going to need to do, remembering that some of the bigger guns (PW, for example) are also the slower guns. There are prominent and reputable review sites that want to see your ARC four months minimum in advance of publication. If you can live with that kind of time scale you stand a better chance of having your best ammunition (reputable reviews) coordinated around your book launch. Add a promotion or two on Day One or in Week One and you may actually have a launch on your hands, as opposed to the digital tumbleweed many will experience.

What has been your most successful marketing strategy?
Very little is as important as the content of that email you're sending out. You have to balance politeness, professionalism and humility with a certain amount of swagger. If you don't believe in your work, who else will?

As well as the obvious basics - addressing people as individuals and showing that you have engaged in some way with what they do, for example - you need the thing to read like the news, like something noteworthy it would be remiss of them to overlook. As soon as a testimonial comes in from a source that might swing it for people, that goes straight into the pitch. I've done quite well at getting testimonials and reviews for Literature®, my novella, and that is overwhelmingly because I wasn't afraid to ask. I got reviews from numerous publications that explicitly state in their policies that they do not review self-published books. They made exceptions. If you don't ask, you don't get.

That there really isn't a secret - it's a very methodical process and the more methodical the better. You are going to need to make a good thing and then you are going to need to contact a very large number of people (getting their names right every time) and say to them "Look at this thing I made. Isn't it good?"

There literally isn't anything else to it. The bad news is, it's gruelling - if you thought that rejection was an issue for the submitting writer, brace yourself for publishing and...hold your nerve.

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