As a reminder and realization, my debut poetry book, Reality Check, has been out for a month now. It’s been such a crazy journey with releasing this baby into the world, and I wanted to share my current thoughts and feelings.
Summary: Emotion, time and self are the most necessary parts of humanity. Emotion draws out the best and worst parts of people. Time is something that is never noticed, until it is. The self is the deepest part of the soul that a person can recognize. Reality Check is a poetry collection written during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. These poems are how Danielle Pitter describes hope, love, family, healing and forgiveness.
First Thought: Writing a book is easy, promoting and marketing it is hard
I thought writing was going to be the hard part. That’s why it took me so long to even be okay with writing a full fledged book. But it turned out, writing the poetry was surprisingly easy! Since all of the poetry was posted on my Patreon page in 2020, I’d arranged them into 3 parts: Emotion, Time, and Self. I wrote these daily poems based on how I was feeling throughout the pandemic, which had caused feelings of anxiety, self-doubt, panic attacks, work fatigue, and family drama. The work fatigue and anxiety was what stood out to me the most. The most emotional part of the writing process of making this book was the easiest part. Everything else that was out of my control turned out to be the hardest.
Second thought: financing my book takes time
I explained back in early May about the financial reality behind this book, the hardships of losing my job, family drama, and my own mental health struggles. During the process of Reality Check, I often found it difficult to keep going because I was on a tight budget. Even though I had a small window of “income” coming in, I felt like a hamster on a spinning wheel because of the pressures I put on myself. I’d never published a book before, and it was a huge learning curve to hire an editor, cover/interior design, discuss trim sizes, tons of zoom calls and emails over what looked good and what needed revising. Luckily, both my editor Erin McCoy and cover/interior designer Margherita Buzzi were extremely helpful and patient with me.
Third thought: spreading the word involves more hands of support
Once the logistics of the book were taken care of, I had to figure out how to market and sell my book. Would I rely on only social media? Signings? Virtal blog tour? In-person book tour? So many ideas overwhelmed my brain!
My photographer niece Aniya @AnglesByAniya and I ended up doing a short social media promo, then she helped me with the promo video on launch day. I wish I had been more consistent about the quote photos. I was so used to keeping my writing to myself, that creating a whole new campaign was a lot for me to handle. I’d always felt out of my element when it came to marketing (despite my Bachelor’s degree communications!), like I didn’t know enough about what the people wanted. But in the end, it wasn’t about them. It was about me sharing my story.
Next thought: the thoughts of others doesn’t (and does) matter
It also helped that I went on a virtual book blog tour earlier this month, headlined by RABT Book Tours & PR! It was really nice seeing everyone’s posts about my book, whether it was a review, spotlight, excerpt, or interview. That was another easy process, since I had done it for authors and bloggers back in 2014. That full circle moment of having bloggers read and enjoy my work will always be special to me.
Now my Patreon page on the other hand…it has no patrons on it anymore. Not because it’s not interesting, or I’m not consistently posting on it. But I think it’s because people don’t know about it. I share it on my socials, but without that major push for consumers, it’ll stay stagnant. Now that my book is out, I don’t know if I should keep it, or delete it. It feels like I’m writing to no one, that my hard work isn’t being recognized on that platform. Maybe I’ll keep it up as a sort of archive for my poetry and other posts, but as far as patrons go, it’s pretty slow up there. It served its purpose during the lockdown, when I needed a place to write my daily poetry and extra content. But now that the pandemic is coming around now, do I still need the Patreon page???
But anyway, I just wanted to let you guys know how I was doing, and how my book is doing. How are you doing? Let’s chat in the comments below.
My debut poetry novel collection Reality Check is available now! Buy on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
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Thanks for reading,
