I hate press releases

I hate dealing with press releases about my work or my books and CDs. My reasons are manifold. Including one related to that last sentence.

1) I hate being involved in my own promotion. The "champion" in me can only really engage all the gears if I am doing what I am doing for someone else (see "Muse"). Thus I have to struggle to not feel guilty.

2) Press releases invariably have to be ineloquent. Thus, words like "manifold", "ineloquent" and even "thus" are stripped from my considerable vocabulary.

3) I can't read editors' and publishers' minds. If I am writing a poem to woo a woman and I see a change in her expression on a key concept, expression or word, I can adapt. I get little feedback from editors. The last press release that was put out under my approval, the local newspaper ran sections of it verbatim under the "People You Know" column, along with news of someone getting a new title at a local fast food restaurant. Hey, at least they used it, and in a timely fashion. I have seen them print press releases, verbatim, for events at the local Barnes and Noble a week after the event they were to be advertising..

4) Once it is out there, it is beyond your control. That is actually a good argument for paid advertising, for marketing. At least there you control the message when you are paying for dinner. Think of it like hiring a hooker, you can be pretty sure if you pay the money you have a sure thing on your hands.

5) Given the choice between being the pimp and being the prostitute, I'd rather kill myself, as I am too much the romantic to survive, emotionally, being the latter, and being the former would invoke my self-destruction clause under the Nosferatu's Dream. I hate feeling like I am pimping myself every time I give a quote or an interview. Why can't reporters do their own legwork and actually read a poem or two? Recent studies have shown that many of the quotes in movie advertisements were actually written by the movie studios, then given to the magazines and newspapers, who in a lazy effort to save time and reporter salaries, just reprint the studio fluff.

6) Press releases rarely get you laid. Let's be honest and earnest. I like stuff that gets women riled up in a good way.

7) There are people much better than me at editing a press release. I'm secure in my poet. I know Larry Jaffe wasn't kidding when he called me "the greatest living poet" a few years ago. I have the quotes. As a poet, I'm a "master", a "living legend", the "catalyst poet of the digital renaissance" and "the god of sex" (oops, that last one wasn't about my poetry). As a press release editor I am some guy who doesn't want to be bothered by it all, but too cheap and controlling to farm it all out and sit back and let others run with it.

I am staring at the first draft of the press release about the book and CD release party on the 14th of this month, knowing it needs to go out to the Daily Athenaeum, The Dominion Post, the Times-West Virginian, Graffiti and the local radio stations (who won't read it anyway). And I am loathing seeing the final draft, loathing waiting to see if it appears in any of the local outlets, loathing the time I am spending writing about how much I loathe spending time thinking about how I loathe being involved with the publicity process.

I think I have issues with self-promotion. Which, if you are going to have issues with something, beats the living hell out of most aversions.