Ramble Ramble

I was recently doing some cleaning up of the drafts folder of my blog–you know, deleting the drafts that just had a title but I couldn’t remember what they meant, or the drafts with just a string of words that were obviously meant to be reminders when I finally got around to writing the post but now might as well be an ancient language for all I understand what I meant.

Anyway, I came across this draft that I wrote when I was starting this blog. I never posted it because I didn’t think kicking the blog off on such a random downer note was a good idea. But honestly, this post is part of the origin of this blog, and as such, I thought it’d be fun to read it now, a year and 1/2 later. So enjoy me, circa August 08.

************************************************

About a month ago, I set out to re-read the Anne of Green Gables series in honor of the 100 year anniversary of Miss Anne’s arrival in the world. I loved the books as a kid, a teenager, in college, and since I love re-reading comforting old books, it seemed like the perfect summertime activity.

And oh, how it was. Anne was there, just as I remembered her, with all her scrapes and shenanigans and imaginings and whatnot. And her loyalty, and spunk, and friendship, and honesty, and love, and personality. And I loved reading them again.

But something was brewing. Reading the first one sparked a minor twinge in me, a wistfulness I didn’t know how to place. And as I read each subsequent book, it grew stronger and stronger and stronger until I finally realized what it was.

Anne Shirley was making me feel bad about myself.

I know, how lame huh? This kid’s book character making me feel bad about myself? What’s that about? I sure as hell didn’t know, exactly, but I couldn’t shake the feeling. Finally, a few days later, I figured it out.

Anne, though she’s just a character, had such spunk, and personality, and you just KNEW who she was reading those books. And the more I knew who she was, the more I knew that I DIDN’T know who I was.

WTF?

Here is this character who is supremely unique. And people want to know her. And people can’t forget her. And people all remember her laugh, and her spark, and her joy. And, in contrast, sometimes I forget myself—so how memorable must I be to other people?

Yeah, yeah, wah-wah. Poor baby. But it just put this thought in my head that I’m not…visible. I’m not memorable. I don’t have a spark, and haven’t for a while. And while I’ve never craved celebrity, or fame, I don’t want to pass this life as an invisible player.  But then, WHAM, the idea for this blog started brewing, and brewing and brewing. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, contemplating it, wishing for it a little bit-a place for me to discover that person I want to be. A place to be visible.

And so, a month later, here we are, at the corner of insecure and narcissistic. We’ll see where I go with it, but at least I feel energized, for the first time in a long time, about something I’m doing 100% for me.

I’m working on something new. Something possibly exciting. Something to give me some professional joy in my off hours. I’m working on a way to take all the things I love about marketing books and authors and artists and brands and the internet and social media and make my own happiness.

I want to take the things that I’m good at, the things I enjoy and bring that to my everyday life–even if it’s not my 9-5 job. So what am I good at? I’m good at big picture strategy. I’m good at analyzing how to adapt social media for individual books, authors, artists, and brands. I’m good at researching where a market is and where it’s not. I’m good at big picture that has lots of small details.

I’m good with books. I’m good with authors. I’m good with artists. I’m good with small brands that have personality and strong identities. I’m good with all those things. So that’s what I want to work on. I want to exploit my strengths ALL the time. Not just occasionally. I find all this stuff fun and energizing and I want to have that. So I’m going to make it happen.

And I know I should keep my mouth shut until I’ve got everything figured out and planned (since that’s how I normally roll), but I’m so excited about this that I can’t help but say something. Albeit on a Friday when no one reads my blog anyway!

The plan is coming, the details are coming, the ACTUAL is coming. But in the meantime, if you know of  any authors or artists who might be looking for some marketing help, go ahead and send them my way (ginger@rambleramble.com). Because I’m going to make my own happiness–and I need some people to work with that want to use my passion and knowledge to their advantage.

This post is going to be a trip into my professional world, and what has been on my mind regarding the economy. Just to forewarn anyone who isn’t interested in that stuff.

So, in case you don’t know, I work in book publishing. I have worked in publishing for several years now–I moved to New York to get a job in publishing, worked for two major publishing companies, and even managed to find a job in publishing when I moved out to the west coast. I’ve worked on teeny tiny books that sell less than 1000 copies, and I’ve worked on some of the biggest books of the past few years that sell millions and millions of copies (I can promise you that you’ve heard of at least a few of them, since Oprah is a fan of them).

I say all that to not to brag, but so that you understand that I have a little knowledge when I say this: this Christmas is going to hurt for publishers. Which is really problematic, since this is usually a kind of key quarter for profits, like most industries that sell goods into a retail space. People will buy books, they always do, but numbers are already way down and they show no real signs of perking back up too much.

One of the main reasons this pains me so much is that it will mean that independent stores will be closing. I hate to be a downer, but if the largest book chains in the country are struggling through this time, then local indie stores are going to be even harder hit. And that’s not even taking into account the credit crunch & the real estate issue. The little bookstores, that give so much of their hearts and souls, just won’t all be able to survive if the holiday season is as bad as indications show.

Publishing is an industry that is touched by, and touches, many more folks besides just author and publisher. Freelancers, designers, bookstores, libraries, distribution companies, small gift shops, stationary stores, mail order catalog companies, printers, agents, sales people, and the employees for any retail space that sells books. When any of those have problems, it will affect publishing…and vice versa.

Look, publishing is a weird industry. In some ways it’s the stupidest possible business model (anyone who knows about the returns issue in the industry will understand what I mean). At the same time, it’s an extremely old-fashioned industry. Some publishers have gotten on board with things like online marketing, ebooks, digital content distribution, but it’s been a long slow fight for most. And some still aren’t coming along very quickly. This holiday season may serve as a wake-up call for some publishers: adapt and change for the times, or die living the old life. For many, though, it will be time when they hunker down, layoff staff, stop buying so many manuscripts, and cut marketing budgets, hoping that the end of this economic valley comes soon so they can get back to business as usual.

I don’t know that I had a point to this post, other than to try and walk through my thoughts about this. I don’t really feel like I’ve captured what I want to say, but this will have to do for now. It’s a complex bunch of thoughts in my head, just like it’s a complex set of issues in the real world.

I’ll just leave with this…if possible, support your local, non-national chain shops this holiday season. Whether you’re buying books or other gifts–they’re going to need it.

I’ve been a bookworm since I was about 4 or 5, when my grandmother taught me to read. My parents were divorcing/had just gotten divorced, and even at that early age, books became a retreat. A place where I could disappear into other worlds, other lives.

Over time, my love of books only grew. Growing up, I was more than happy to read rather than play, watch tv, ride my bike. Not that I didn’t do those things, of course I did, but books were like crack to me. I would read at the dinner table, the breakfast table, during class, during recess, in the car, at lunch, after dinner, while watching tv. Well, you get the point.

Friends and family have all teased me because I can get so caught up in a book that I don’t notice what’s going on around me, conversations people try to start with me, etc. My husband is still amazed sometimes that I can sit in one spot for hours, completely absorbed by one book.

Books have long been my friends, my escape, a place for me. Whether it’s chick lit, literary fiction, classics, memoirs, non-fiction, books have always sustained me. I’ve been known to read between 2 and 5 books a week, in large part because I crave that escape that they provide.

So it’s one of the saddest paradoxes of my life that when my work life is in turmoil, I turn away from books. My reading habits can speak volumes about what my state of mind is about my job. Because I work in publishing, when everything starts to get the better of me, my personal books become part of the problem. When I’m dealing with books all day long and I’m unhappy doing so, I can’t sit down and enjoy them anymore.

I haven’t read a book in 4 months.

Hey get your mind out of the gutter, I totally don’t mean that way! Nope, you see it’s Monday, so I’m once again copying inspired by Anna over at abdpbt, which lucky for you means yay a list!

May I present the top 5 reasons I’m totally a fake…

1. I was an English major in college, but the truth is I hate Shakespeare, detest Dickens, don’t care for Hemingway, and loathed the pretentious bullshit of most of the other undergrads in my program. Please don’t take away my diploma! I just liked to read, and thought 4 years of that would be cool. I actually ended up specializing in what my program called Minority and Outsider lit, and I loved every single solitary class about a thousand times more than the 4 semesters of Shakespeare I had to take, or the 2 of Milton.
2. I’m a marketing professional who never took a marketing class in my life (see English major, above). All on the job training baby. And often without supervision.
3. I’m a music geek who can’t read music. Never could–when I took piano, followed by flute, I’d memorize music. Part of why I never advanced very far…stupid sight reading tests.
4. I’m married to, and hang out with a lot of creative folk. I even manage to make myself sound like I know what I’m talking about a lot of the time that I’m with them. But I, I am not creative. I’m actually pretty cut and dry boring square by the book. I tend to look at the world with an analytical not creative eye. And I tend to filter my world through the realist, the by the rules, the plain-jane lens. I like to pretend otherwise though (see here.)
5. Despite my fears of joining in on already established blog relationships (see here), I’m pretty much still inserting myself wherever I think it will benefit me looks interesting. As evidenced by this post.

Thanks Anna, for once again providing me with a foolproof idea for my Monday!