Something special about being a local author

There is something special about being a local author. 

I recently realized that I am a local author.

I guess every author (or artist or scientist) is associated to some locality, so they are by definition also a local author.

I don’t know what it entails because I am not a famous person in my locality, but I feel something in the air and I am eager to wait for it. 

I can almost taste it.

There is something special waiting for me because I am a local author.

I have experienced myself the warmth and the closeness of local creators. For example, I really enjoyed learning about (now deceased) Armenian writer in San Francisco, William Saroyan, when I lived in the Bay Area. I was always touched by the fact that he was Armenian but lamented that he could not write in Armenian language because he grew up in the United States. He wrote in English and was famous for his art even during his lifetime in the local community (way beyond the Armenian community).

Then at the San José State University, I enjoyed reading one of the books of the year, Together Tea by Marjan Kamali. I enjoyed her descriptions of food. As Iranian cuisine is close to the cuisine from my heritage, we enjoyed with my husband a few times a luxurious dinner in a Persian restaurant in San Francisco. Tantalizing flavors, memories of food at home during my childhood, but also the experiences of an immigrant, the heaviness of geopolitical conflicts on communities, culture shocks, and more. A local author who had in part a similar life experience as I , that local author’s writings usually touch my heart in a special way.

One of my favorite French teachers, Mme van Hooff (also deceased now), was from Besançon, France, the birthplace of another amazing writer, Victor Hugo. Talking about France, well Paris is a locality of numerous world-famous artists and writers – Émile Zola, Honoré de Balzac, Marcel Proust, … the list continues, and it is amazing to experience their writings about the City of Lights.

I have now published two books, one of them a collection of poetry. They are both on Amazon. I thought that I would wait for them to be discovered on their own. It seemed like a huge task to write and then publish the book in the first place. I am writing few more books at the moment, hoping to publish them before I die, and some of the books  – the writing is hard, and even the packaging and preparing for publishing is also hard.

Nobody expressed interest in me yet as an author, except my husband 😀 . But in my vision, if someone is interested in the book, it is possible that some media outlets might feature my book, or even have an interview with me as an author. A publisher might approach me to offer publishing the next book, or to publish another edition. Again, only if it is found that my writings are worth something to other people at this moment in time in the world.

But in all fairness, I am starting to think that I also have to do some footwork to self-market my book, or to take initiative to do other marketing campaign activities. This blog post is one such attempt. I don’t have money though to even buy my own author copies! I wish I could give out to local libraries or to some other places, such as my alma mater a few free copies, but alas I don’t have the funds. If you wish to sponsor purchasing for example 20 books to distribute in local book-spaces in Helsinki, please let me know.

I don’t have money now to do much of self-marketing and I did not yet get to asking for free marketing from family, friends, and other people. I did post some posts on my Social Channels. And I hope to do more marketing in the future, despite being shy about it. I found some nice ideas in this video. In particular, in the video description, Ruzanna states that the whole writing a book and then publishing it, these two tasks together (which was a huge amount of work) is only half the battle! Marketing (and publicizing and promoting) is also a task for an author. Please check out her video, for the full description. She has some amazing and very creative ideas.

 I will be honest with you, I have conflicting feelings about it. But my decision is to go for it. The conflicting thoughts and feelings come from the fact that there are two ways – one way to wait and somehow someone will notice you or the second way to do at least some footwork for promoting your book. But does promoting mean that your book is not good enough to stand on its own? Is it the less noble way? I have had the same comments made to me a few times in my work as a researcher, as an astronomer. People said that they have higher road, that they don’t promote themselves and let their work speak for itself. However, it is a simplified picture, why? Because there are different situations. If you are in a famous research group with a famous PI, then your position is more visible to the world. If another researcher is from a less known place, their position is less visible. That’s just one such example. I have waited for people to notice me for my own work during my doctoral program, and it did not happen. I went above and beyond to do well at the work part, but did little for self-promotion, such as networking, and now I am without a job, struggling to cover my family’s finances. I should have done more self-promotion and more networking as a doctoral student.

I had many publications, but I did not get a job. I know a person who had zero publications even years into post-doc and they got their post-doc position before PhD defense.

I had my own successful observing proposals with my own ideas, on my own time, as a PI, and I did not get a job. I saw numerous people who only worked on projects assigned to them and never took the trouble to generate their own work and they got amazing postdoc jobs.

Such comparisons are many.

The work does not always speak for itself, if nobody sees your work. Somehow people have to see you in order to notice you.

If your PI has a lot of funding and you get to go to conferences, if your PI has numerous collaborators who visit and get to know you, if your university is a leading institute in the field and gets to have seminars by top notch scientists from around the world – you get automatically some visibility as a student, even just by sitting and having coffee or discussing a question during a seminar or afterwards.

It is not a fair comparison, because situations differ.

I mentioned just a few examples.

So I think, it is the same as being an author. Just because I advertise my book does not mean that I am a sell-out, that I am not worth anything on my own as an author. These are very negative viewpoints.

Instead, here is another viewpoint.

I think connecting with people and spaces about your book is another way to connect, a way to discuss your ideas, a way to get to know new places, new spaces, new people. It is an opportunity to connect and to learn, to contribute, to collaborate, to create something good. 

Iron sharpens iron…

We can be inspired by other people, learn the ropes of the trade, contribute our ideas…

We don’t need to be a hermit and just create work, publish it, and see what happens based on the Amazon AI algorithms and such…

We can also mingle and reach out into the world to be present, to voice, to explain, to engage with the book, with the book readers.

I am excited to learn about new opportunities to engage with readers, with book publishing world, with the world of writers in Helsinki and beyond. 

I don’t know what writers in Helsinki do, what writers in Finland do, so I am interested to learn more.

I found this one other resource, Goodreads, which I hope to use soon as an author. I am just creating an account there.

Finally, I would like to thank the Finnish National ISBN Agency and the National Library of Finland, because they provided the ISBNs for the two published books and to a few upcoming books as well. Thank you very much. It makes me feel a bit more as a local author 😀

– Your astronomer from Helsinki

My books here