I don’t like it, but I’m doing it. Promotion, that is. Of Documenting America. I describes some of my efforts in my last post, and the difficulty I’m having accepting the unnatural role of promoter.

Today I took another small step. On the way to my writers group I stopped by the Bentonville Public LIbrary and gave them a copy of the book. Thus it is out before the public now—or will be as soon as they log it in, categorize it as to Dewey Decimal numbers, and get it on the shelf. I suppose I’ll go there in about a week and see if I can find it in the catalogue and on the shelf, or better yet, learn it’s been checked out.

One other piece of promotion shows some hope, if not yet sales. I sent a notice to the URI alumni magazine to go in the Class Notes section. One of the staffers e-mailed me, saying that they thought an engineer with literary aspirations was an interesting story, that they’d like to do a feature story on me for the spring issue, and that a certain freelancer will contact me.

Will this actually happen? Will someone ever contact me? Will they actually write the story and print it? And if they do, will it generate any sales? I don’t know those answers, but I do know this: If they print it, it can’t hurt.