What’s Inside? Getting into the Guts of Booklife

So, what exactly does Booklife include, and why should you care? Below you’ll find a detailed summary of the topics covered in my book.

During launch week, content every day. Tomorrow, the lifecycle of a book. Wednesday, the pillars of your public booklife. Thursday and Friday? Check back and find out.

■ INTRODUCTION
The introduction provides tips on how to use the book, including an admonition to test everything set out in Booklife. It also points out that Booklife is a strategy manual–it is not a text that provides details on how to set up a Facebook account or a blog. Instead, Facebook, blogs, and other new media are discussed in the context of their uses for the modern writer.

■ I. PUBLIC BOOKLIFE
Your Public Booklife consists of those elements related to your career, including daily interactions that occur in some non-private context. As stated throughout Part I, your Public Booklife serves to support and energize your Private Booklife, or personal creativity. If your Public Booklife isn’t subservient to the actual writing, then your life has become imbalanced.

Chapter 1: Building Your Booklife
Before you can be effective, you must build a strong foundation. This chapter discusses the traits the modern world requires from writers in their Public Booklife. It also touches on creating goals, exploring your strengths and weaknesses, choosing internet platforms with an emphasis on proper use of blogs, and how to manage your involvement.

Chapter 2: Communicating Your Booklife
Along with building a strong foundation for your Booklife, you must consider issues that concern the give-and-take of communication with others about your book or other creative project. This chapter discusses how traditional notions of networking fall short of treating people as human beings, and how creating connectivity with others can feed your Private Booklife as well as prove nurturing for your Public Booklife. Proper ways to deal with editors and publicists, understanding new media PR, recognizing PR opportunities and tools, leveraging ideas, and creating plans are all part of the conversation.

Chapter 3: Maintaining Your Booklife
Once you have established a public presence, there are issues and traits that help you maintain that presence.Topics like branding, transparency, the importance of persistence, how to pay it forward, and pushing against trends are all covered in this chapter.

■ BOOKLIFE GUT-CHECK: TOWARD PEACE OF MIND
Some writers may feel overwhelmed by the Public Booklife section. This Gut-Check section provides the antidote by re-emphasizing that happiness in your creative life is paramount and that your Public Booklife must support your Private Booklife. Topics include the search for balance, your health, and recognizing how new media multi-tasking can lead to harmful fragmentation.

■ II. PRIVATE BOOKLIFE

Chapter 1: Living Your Booklife
Certain strategies and approaches will support a fulfilling Private Booklife. Topics covered by this chapter include reasons to write, attitude and creativity, relinquishing all fetishes, writing and revision, habit versus process, and permission to fail.

Chapter 2: Protecting Your Booklife
Certain dangers to your Private Booklife must be addressed to make sure you continue to be fulfilled in your creativity. Topics discussed in this chapter include rejection, envy, despair, recharging creativity, dealing with success, and taking the long view.

■ APPENDICES
The extensive appendices include everything from tips from booksellers and publicists to an exhaustive roundrobin with prominent agents and the process from the perspective of a book editor. Examples of PR plans, press releases, and other important elements of a Public Booklife are juxtaposed with essays on seeking experience, necessary sacrifice, and how to write a novel in a short time period.