It's Time to Talk About "Dad Truths"

Self-promotion season is upon us! Please forgive me.

As you may know, I have a book coming out next spring.

It’s called Dad Truths: The Good, The Bad, and The Exhausting from the Frontlines of Parenting. You can even pre-order it RIGHT HERE!

I say “may” know because there’s a chance you have no idea I wrote a book that will be coming out next spring (just in time for Father’s Day!). And that’s because I am not good at self-promotion.

You might be rolling your eyes. After all, you subscribe to this newsletter (just hit 1000 subscribers!) and you probably follow me on Instagram (about to hit 300,000 followers!), and the very nature of those things requires that I talk about them or, at the very least, talk about myself, all the time. And you’re right.

But there’s a difference between putting out content that I hope people like and constantly reminding people that I have content, please go like it! But the fact of the matter is, if I want my book to succeed, I need to talk about it. A lot.

And that means not restricting book news to these Friday newsletters.

The Friday edition you’re reading right now are usually only available to my paid subscribers (I waived it for this one, you’re welcome!). It’s the extra newsletter that a very small percentage of my 1,000 subscribers signed up for, and I’ve been using it to feature real-time progress reports on my book. And to be totally honest, I lost a great freelance gig earlier this year and I was hoping enough people would pay for the extra edition to help me cover some of that lost income, but that hasn’t really materialized. Now I need Dad Truths to make me rich!!!

But, shockingly, isolating my book news to posts that hardly anyone reads is not a great way to promote said book. I know; this blows my mind too! 🙃🙃🙃

The fact is, I launched this entire newsletter as a way to help promote my book! Sure, I had a blog that long predates Dad Truths, but that was dormant. I wanted an outlet for my writing, but it wasn’t until the book deal came together that I saw extra incentive in getting more eyes on what I was doing. And now that the book is almost out, I need to get as many eyes as possible on it.

Which means that from now on I’ll be talking about new book-related developments in the regular Wednesday edition, and I’ll need to find something else to entice paid subscribers with, besides appealing to the kindness of their hearts! (Let me know if you have any ideas. I used to do an advice column on my blog and in a local mag, that was fun. I’d be happy to provide awful advice and terrible parenting counsel to anyone who needs it!)

I don’t promote myself all that much. It gives me the ick, as the kids say. And now I have to get over that ick, because I’ve always wanted to write a book, I’m proud of the book I wrote, and I want my book to do well so I can write another book (I even have a good idea, and a great title, for it!) And ain’t nobody else going to promote it for me. (I’m actually hoping a lot of people will, and I’ll be reaching out to many of them soon.)

Selling books isn’t easy these days. And the chances of me getting rich off this thing are basically zero. But in the hopes that they’ll share my link and help drive interest and generate more sales and make my publisher want to stay in business with me, I have to scream from the rooftops. And pre-orders are huge because they determine how many copies the retailers stock when it’s actually published. So help a brother out!

So get ready for a whole new Dad and Buried, one who’s a little bit more aggressive about himself. But don’t worry, I’m not going to suddenly get nicer. If anything I’ll become even more annoying. Yay!

Book Cover

Oh, and by the way, here’s the cover. Let me know what you think!

It comes out next April, and you can pre-order it RIGHT HERE!

Contact Me

I’m always happy to hear feedback, take topic suggestions, and answer any questions you might have - and may soon start providing advice on Fridays. Ask away below!