University Market II

     I am aware that up until this point, this blog may be of marginal value.  My book, "Cutting Through the Knot (Second Edition)," does not have a commercial publisher and of all the manifold ways there are to market a book I am pursuing precious few.  Still, there may be some reason for keeping a record of this kind.  It shows, if nothing else, how one author is making the attempt to market his own novel.  I don't seem to me making much progress on the next one, so this also keeps me writing.
     I've been in touch with the managing editor of the Cornell Daily Sun and there is some reason for optimism here.  He received the book, and he is looking for someone to review it.  In fact he said,
     "I'll shoot you an e-mail when I get someone."
     He didn't have to say that.  I actually think there is a pretty good chance I'll get reviewed.  Will the review be positive?  Here again, I think it will. I believe the novel is well written and funny, and that it deals head on with mental illness with an honesty that may well be unique.  It is also a suitable book for the Cornell market. Like it or not, mental health is a big deal up there.  I don't want to say it in a flip way, but last Sunday the university was faced with the task of removing the body of a sophomore from the Fall Creek Gorge.  He jumped off a bridge.  The protagonist in my novel, never considers this, but he does have an emotional breakdown while on leave from that university and living in Ithaca.  It would seem to me that the community is ripe for some additional discussion along these lines.  But hey, that's just me.
     If I do get the review I think I may be able to use it to approach university papers on other campuses.  They may be more likely to join in once The Cornell Daily Sun has gotten the ball rolling.  With e-mail and the Internet getting in touch with the editors at other papers would not be at all difficult.  So that's it.  That is all I'm really doing on the marketing front.  I've been in touch with the Sun advertising department and if I do get a review I'm planning on running a small ad in the on-line edition.  They are not expensive.  I know, it's a big "if."  I just have to wait and see.
     Maybe this is a good time to say something more about the novel's value as a mental health document.  It's a good read, I've been told. I'd like to think it is Literature, with a capital "L," but it is also a painstaking honest look at the process of recovery from severe obsessive compulsive disorder, a condition closely related to other forms of mental illness including addiction.  The central character is brought along by a highly skilled and brilliant psychiatrist, until he gets upset, flushes his medication down the toilet and winds up in a mental hospital, until he runs away from the hospital flies to California has breakfast and comes back.  Right, I'm giving some of it away.  The point is, the doctor really knows his stuff, and says all kinds of interesting things about O.C.D. and how, at the root, it can be treated.  And it's funny.  Really at times it is.  Read it.  Tell your friends.