What have you done for us lately?

Hi, my beautiful bookish brethren—Hollay here, your doting neighbourhood book publicist, National Book Critics Circle Member, former lit mag reviews editor, book podcast and radio show host, soon-to-be open mic poetry series host, Founder of River Street Writing, and basically, your go-to gal for CanLit community golden retriever energy. 

If you know me in person or have followed along with me online for more than a moment, you probably know tough love ain’t my style, BUT as we move into the winter/spring book launch season, I’d like to—with oodles of respect and love verily bursting from my paper-cut heart—remind authors of forthcoming titles that before you complain that no one is reviewing your book, or interviewing you or celebrating your book in the way you feel it should be celebrated (and it should!), take a tick to ask yourself what you do for other books. 

  When was the last time you reviewed a book anywhere?

 Featured another author on your website or newsletter? 

 Interviewed them for a platform? 

 Invited them to your book club? 

 Subscribed to a publication that reviews and features books and read the content within? 

 Attended a reading series or literary festival?

  Listened to a bookish feature on radio or a podcast and sent an email or left a rating to let producers know people are out there enjoying the content? Same with TV. 

These are just a few things you can do to fortify our literary landscape, which needs it desperately with traditional media coverage for books shrinking and opportunities for writers to be platformed vanishing. I get that we’re all short on time but if books matter to you, then making the time to celebrate them shouldn’t feel like much of a chore. 

 I sometimes wish I could lock myself away and just write—I get it—but that’s not the way it is. That’s not where we are. And the intensity of my love for literature outweighs the grumbling of my inner hermit.  

Our society isn’t in a headspace where we automatically celebrate the arts in general and literature specifically. So we—the people who write books—need to celebrate it. 

How can we expect anyone else to give a damn if we don’t? 

 K? 

 xo

Note: the art beside me is a collage by the wildly talented Governor General Award-winning author Diane Schoemperlen. She often sells these works on her Facebook page, if you like what you see.