Last week, I realized I needed to acknowledge to myself that I was in the end stage before publication of writing my memoir. For one thing, I finally came up with a name—French Boy / Growing Up Franco-American—that I’m likely to keep. (So many titles in the trash!) This title reveals the content of the […]

Last week, I realized I needed to acknowledge to myself that I was in the end stage before publication of writing my memoir. For one thing, I finally came up with a name—French Boy / Growing Up Franco-American—that I’m likely to keep. (So many titles in the trash!) This title reveals the content of the memoir—a good title has to position a book for its audience. A good title says: “This book is for you.”

My natural audience

Since I am a self-publisher, I am super aware of audience. While I believe that anyone might enjoy reading French Boy—do I flatter myself that it is insightful in presenting its theme?—but I know its natural audience is the Franco-American (francophone Canadian-American) who grew up in the mid-century. That is the person who will go on a search for such a book. That person will say, “I’ve been waiting for French Boy.”

That audience has searched for my mother’s memoir, We Were Not Spoiled, and has downloaded it several thousand times. I find that incredible that so many people have downloaded the life of an ordinary (albeit lovely) woman whose memoir spans the years 1921 to 1952. (I stopped the story in 1952 and then picked up the thread in French Boy.)

The readers for my own memoir are largely the same and so I am confident about reaching them. While I hope many, many different people will want to read my memoir, I don’t want to take my natural audience for granted.

Blurb time

Now, one of my next tasks is to send the manuscript out to people who indicated they would contribute a blurb. I’ve selected a few active Franco-American writers whose blurbs may help sell the book to the Franco audience I believe to be my natural readership.

I have also been thinking of a broader list of reviewers that would include academics and business people who are either Franco or who have worked with Francos. While I do have contact in other circles, for the moment I am sticking to those that promise to pull in my natural audience.

Emotions of this stage

As I’ve written elsewhere, arriving at this final stage is exhilarating and unsettling. It’s exhilarating because this is what I have been striving for since I began writing French Boy. The writing is a stage I enjoy and am good at. It’s not the unsettling part.

I know I can do a good job of the composition. I am good at finding a theme that ties story segments together and I am skilled at handling point of view.

The next stage is unsettling however because it is less certain and less in my strength. I’m about to enter the marketing phase of this book’s life. Now, I am not bad at marketing but I am not as good as I am at writing—nor do I enjoy it as much. But, that is the phase that I am now about to enter. (Good luck to me!)

In conclusion

I am hoping to read about your end experiences in the comments that I hope will follow this post.

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