Jackson Arthur’s Book Biz

By Grease Coakes

One of the major events at book Island is "Jackson Arthur’s Book Biz" previously known as his office hours. He told me the main focus of his book biz is how to better promote and market your literary works and expand your readership. Jackson is fairly lenient as there are not really any rules so long as you show respect to others. In general humans and furries share ideas about books.

As I or anyone walks or flies to his office on book Island Jackson always greets avatars cheerfully through voice. There’s lots of talk outside the topic of promoting your books and writing in general as regulars like DangerDave Writer and Merit Coba come and hang out. Jackson says the only requirement is wanting to chat or read to come to Book Biz.

Silver Moon Unicorn (silvermoonunicorn) had this to say in the zany conversation in text, "Merit and Grease, are you two getting married sometime?" There was an ongoing joke that Merit asked me to marry her and I said sure.

I mentioned that me selling my children’s book in the medium of Second Life is creating some buzz as people come back with positive reviews that I post on Facebook, as a friend, Eyll Tripsa, gave me a good review on my children’s book.  I mentioned that a stranger bought my book by tipping me when I djed. He declined my book, so he said to give it to Ophelia Magic instead, who is a popular playmate at Anthroxtacy. In her own words, she said it was adorable. That was certainlty a positive thing as I didn’t know Ophelia that well as she gave me a positive review.

Another subject that Jackson Arthur brought up was book covers and art in general. One of the challenges of an author is finding an artist for his or her book.  I mentioned a couple artists that did excellent jobs for me. A separate artist did the cover for my children’s book and her friendly drawing style seemed to fit my book. However her style wouldn’t work for all other genres. I suggested an artist named Dishes to Jackson Arthur who drew for me. Like the saying goes not to judge books by its cover but people do it anyway.

Tricia Joy aka redpatski came to the Book Biz and suggested her friend Ricker as an artist. She showed a wonderful black and white artwork of a family of deer.

I asked Jackson a question of what’s harder to write or to promote and sell your story? He said writers have an easy time writing their books and stories, but it’s much harder to promote your story when it’s written. But the other side of the coin is you have to write something to share too you can’t just spend all your time promoting what you don’t have.

Out of the blue Danger Dave gave me 2,000L to promote myself to give out ten copies of my book on the house to people. That was a big surprise. All he asked in return was go to @HaikuHare on twitter and share their thoughts. He said facebook was ok under his real life name  Rick Carlson too I was sure to thank DangerDave for the 2k Linden. I’ll think of a way to promote my book later on.

All in all Bookbiz by Jackson Arthur is a great event to share ideas about marketing and or writing in general. His Book biz at his office starts at 10am SLT every Saturday at http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Book%20Island/87/120/44. Everyone is welcome to chat about writing and have a good time

Grease Coakes