There’s a slightly uncomfortable moment that comes after you have spent months making something you really believe in.
You realise making it was only half the job.
I’ve been learning this rather forcefully through LB Library.
Brandon and I can spend hours on the part we naturally love: the words, the illustrations, the characters, the stories. We can obsess over tiny creative decisions that probably nobody else will ever notice but which, for some reason, feel ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL at the time.
And then eventually the book exists. Which is wonderful.
Except now there are boxes of them sitting in a warehouse. And, rather inconsiderately, they do not sell themselves.
Actually, this shouldn’t have come as such a surprise to me, because I’ve learned versions of the same lesson making theatre.
You write the play — which feels, while you’re doing it, like the enormous task.
Then you have to put it on. Find the people to make it with. Produce it. Rehearse it. Get the thing onto a stage.
And when the show finally opens, we all look around at each other and think: We did it.
And then: Right. Now we have to sell the bloody tickets.
With LB Library, selling books has required me to learn an entirely new collection of skills.
Amazon listings. Social media. Marketing. Stock. Printing. Barcodes. Consignment. Reviews. Websites.
How people discover a children’s book. What makes them click on it. And — rather importantly — what makes them actually buy it.
None of these things require a Master’s of Creative Writing.
A marketing major might’ve been useful though.
They certainly weren’t part of the romantic picture I had in my head when I thought, I’d like to write children’s books.
But I’m starting to understand that if you want to make a living from creative work — or even just give that work a decent chance of being seen — you have to think beyond the making.
You have to think about how people find you. How they understand what you make. How the work is presented. How somebody moves from Oh, that looks interesting to actually buying the book or booking the ticket.
The phrase creative brand still makes a small part of me want to crawl under a table, but essentially, that’s what I’m learning about.
And ultimately, I want these books in bedrooms and classrooms and childcare centres. I want little fingers turning the pages. I want parents reading them at bedtime.
Ideally more than once.
Ideally enough times that they begin to quietly resent me.
And that is probably the part I understand better now: the selling isn’t some grubby little job that happens after the “real” creative work.
It’s how the work gets a life beyond me.
A play needs an audience.
A book needs a reader.
So yes, apparently I’m learning how to sell the thing too.
Because a book sitting in a warehouse is still a book.
But it isn’t yet the one a child asks you to read again at bedtime.