Publicity

In this country where everyone is supposed to be briefly famous, and where any appearance on a screen, no matter how dubiously earned*, can be justified somehow, it's also true that some people can hardly pay to get noticed.

In my career as an author, I've spent plenty to promote my own books -- books that established presses published but had little publicity money to spend on. For example, I put an ad on Nerve.com last Xmas season for my two Cleis Press books, paying $3000 for the extra bump of Xmas sales. Was it worth it? In this instance, since $3000 was the total combined advances I got for both books, anything I spend is strictly an investment in the long term. It's to get my work known, not for me to make money to pay my bills this year. (If it was, I'd be starving. But I have a day job.)

Last month I got my first-ever unsolicited piece of fan mail (via email); today I got my second. (I was tickled when that reader deemed my work "ever-so-dreamy.") This week I'm going down to L.A. for a reading. Should be fun, though I'm paying my own air ticket and expenses and taking off work besides. Anything to get more of that fan mail!

There was a week, though, when I was a sought-after spokesperson for Queer Nation. In October 1990, we staged a big demonstration in San Francisco's Civic Center against a right-wing Christian evangelist who had decided to come to S.F. on Halloween in order to "exorcise the spirit of evil" form the city. I volunteered to be the media contact -- actually, in Queer Nation, where we had a funny name for everything, we called it "media whore" -- and got myself on TV right and left. The crowning moment came during the demonstration when I spotted a TV crew while chatting with Cris (who had come in a fetching devil costume I was way too busy to notice -- sorry, dear) and said to her, "Excuse me, but I'm going to go over there and get on CNN." And I did. That night millions of viewers watching the news while their kids counted up their Halloween booty saw my mug, explaining why we were chanting "Born-Again Bigots, Begone!" I also got into a Wall St. Journal advance story on Oct. 30 -- that front page story in the center column that is always about something whimsical -- getting a lot of milage out of thatt because it made my parents freak. Back then I was for anything that drove them crazy, and that included not only alternative culture but most of mainstream American culture as well. (When I'm 75, I'll probably feel the same way about American culture as they did. But I don't have any bratty kids who'll rub my face in it. Live and learn.)

*link harvested from from Romenesko's Media News
** I've got that story lying around, and I swear I'll type it in one of these days and share it with all six people reading this.