Eldest graduates in two months. I’ve been making lots o’ lists recently–the biggest and most important being the guest list. This is followed by the food list, which will be followed by the grocery list, which is directly impacted by the guest list guest-imation.
What is the Guest-imation?
That estimation of which guests will and will not attend the celebration. For example, graduation occurs on Memorial Weekend. The First weekend of summer in our neck of the words. The First opportunity to hit the lake. The First holiday in many moons. I don’t expect all of our camping-loving guests to show up.
Likewise, my big sis (and her family) is counted with the Will Nots. We will send her an invite/announcement, yet we know full well she will not be trekking 21 hours NorthWest on the very day her own Eldest graduates.
Guest List 4.
Food List 0.
When creating lists for book signings, release day parties and general estimations in sales (particularly for self-pubbed authors) we must keep in mind the Guest-imates.
Aunt Edna may love us, but will she really buy our violently steamy Paranormal Romance Horror novel? Eh, unless your Aunt Edna is cooler than mine, her name is firmly etched at the top of the Will Not list.
Yet, we often fail to wrap our brains around this. We find ourselves carried away by sheer numbers. I have 2,170 Facebook friends and 185,000 twitter followers, 164 this, 4,001 that, 12 + 907 + plus plus….*
Guestimate what? These peeps will not all buy my novel. Period. They will not all attend my Release Day Party–cyber or otherwise. Neither will they all care. I know that sounds harsh, but it’s true. Just because we know someone doesn’t mean s/he will financially support our endeavors, provide a toast for first-born novel or eat from my dessert bar for Eldest’s graduation.
And that’s okay. Perfectly, happily okay. But, we need to accept this as fact. We need to prepare ourselves for the reality that a guest list or friend list or twitter list or blog list does not automatically translate to sales numbers.
We also need to keep our cool when Aunt Edna–holding the number one slot on the Will list–actually does not. Just because she passes on divine chocolate cheesecake or that fabulous historical novel written in the time period when she herself was a child, doesn’t give us a free pass to skip her 108th birthday celebration and snicker behind our hands when she’s not looking.
Bitterness and hurt feelings have no place at graduation parties or in the writing realm. Life is not tit for tat. It is not a tally of favors owed and favors received. It is not a book purchased simply as insurance for a future sale of our own.
So be smart. Create a Guest-imate list based on real life and not one on feelings. Hopefully that will get my grocery list to a manageable level and your sales expectations more in line with reality.
How do you create your guest lists? Have you ever grossly under or over estimated them? How has this impacted you in the writing world or in real life? What tips do you have for creating future lists or guest-imating the Wills and the Will Nots?
Curious minds want to know.
*I don’t really have this many friends–real or imagined.
Words from the Woods 