Mayo Arts Service hosted a talk on publishing in Breaffy House Resort on Saturday last (November 26). There was a good turnout including would-be and already-are novelists, poets, short story writers, memoirists.
The four speakers were Mariel Deegan of New Island Books, Matthew Parkinson-Bennett of Little Island and Lisa Frank and John Walsh of Doire Press. All four were remarkably open and honest in their contributions. Orlagh Heverin and her colleagues in the Mayo Arts Service deserve great credit for organising the event – saved us all travelling to the larger urban centres.
What struck me most? The role of the writer in generating publicity for their work and themselves. Publishing is a commercial enterprise and, as a newly published author, you have got to be prepared to help the publishers by promoting your publication anywhere you can.
A few of us chatted about this afterwards and reached a ‘like it or lump it’ conclusion: when you get published, you’ve got to put yourself out there. As someone who has come through a fairly extensive publicity phase for my book Second Chance & Other Stories (big thanks to Mayo Books Press) I recognise in myself a “thus far, but no further” impulse: as Meat Loaf might have sung: “I’ll do anything for my book, but I won’t do that.” In short, I am saying that I have a fair bit of neck, but maybe not as much as is needed to really promote your book far, wide and wider again. Santa might bring me some more neck.
It’s a topic I will return to. My in-between man refers.
Read the full review and interview HERE
Read from ‘Second Chance & Other Stories’, by Liam Horan, published by Mayo Books Press, HERE
Buy ‘Second Chance & Other Stories’ HERE