!Book release concerns
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rawtext.club:70/~xiu
2023-01-28
Boorloo/Perth, Western Australia
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In Q4 of this year, I'll be releasing my first
novel-length book. This is the time where a writer 
in my position should be thinking about how to
effectively promote their product and make sales.

But I read about the carbon costs[1-3] associated with
ebooks (device manufacturing, data storage), the carbon
costs associated with physical books (production,
shipping), the general climate impact of e-commerce and
digital marketing, and so on and so forth... And it now
feels like someone's taken an ice-cream scoop and dug out
the part of me that would normally get excited about an
upcoming launch.

[1] https://theconversation.com/weighing-the-environmental-costs-buy-an-ereader-or-a-shelf-of-books-8331
[2] https://bookriot.com/carbon-footprint-of-publishing/
[3] https://theecoguide.org/books-vs-ebooks-protect-environment-simple-decision

I'm sure the conventional worries around my book not
selling also make it easy to cling to that sortof
narrative as well, as a way to avoid having to think
about it. It's kind of like experiencing fear at both
ends of a spectrum. If my book doesn't sell, I will be
sad. If my book does sell, I will be sad.

One thing I don't want to do is shut out the
environmental stuff on the basis of living in a
capitalist society. While this is true, and so it
wouldn't be right to begrudge anyone poorer than a
billionaire making less environmental decisions on this
basis, one of my personal foundation stones is to explore
how someone might do things differently and what
conditions might make that work.

This matters to me. I'm buying into the idea that small
shifts in behaviour, en masse, can lead to bigger shifts
further down the track. Maybe that's a bit of magical
thinking, since I'm not sure how. But it's not too hard
to imagine, say, figuring out an approach that might do
less damage. Something one's peers can adopt, thus as a
group multiplying the damage reduction overall.

# A potential strategy?

Something I'd like to try for this book is putting more
effort into making it available in libraries. This would
potentially maximise the use of any physical copies, and
make digital copies more easily affordable.

There's a system here in Australia where writers and
publishers can register the lending rights for their
books and recoup a small royalty every time someone
borrows one of their titles from a public library. I
assume it's a lot less than the royalty on a sale, but
what if it's enough under the conditions I'm working
with?

I like the idea of finding out, and probably learning
something new.

# The "maybe nots"

Printing to inventory -- aside from this being way out
of my budget, print on demand seems like a more
economical and less wasteful option.

Social media advertising -- feels akin to giving
someone money to go and make someone else miserable.
That said, I'd still promote through indie networks that
include people who post on social media.