Susan Toy is an author and indie publisher who continues to actively promote the work of her fellow authors long after their publishers have stopped marketing their books. She also promotes the work of self-published authors.
In Canada, the trade publishers who do spend money on promoting their authors generally terminate the publicity campaigns after six months to focus on the next group of authors with new books to promote. That’s the point at which Susan often takes over.
On her blog, Susan gave a welcome boost to my autobiography, Leaving Dublin, after it had been on the market for two years. She came back a year later to plug my newly-released eBook edition of Scoundrels and Scallywags. Then came a plug for the columns I wrote for the now-dormant online journalism magazine, Facts & Opinions, followed by a plug for the book, Brief Encounters, that emerged from those columns. Additionally, she blogged about my book Rogues and Rebels, and invited me to tell her readers about three of my books that were back in print and available for the first time as eBooks.
Most recently, Susan profiled me and promoted my novel, The Love of One’s Country, in a new blog she calls Authors-Readers International.
Susan has done all this out of the goodness of her literary heart. She asks only of her authors that we respond in kind by promoting her and her work.
Many of us have been slow to respond. At one point, she told an interviewer, only about 10 percent of her featured authors had reciprocated. I was one of that delinquent 90 percent. But today, six years after she gave me my first plug, I’m pleased to finally return the favour.
You can read about Susan’s career, and find links to her own published works, on her main blog called Books: Publishing, Reading, Writing. A second blog, Reading Recommendations, highlights her favourite authors and their books. The third of her four promotional blogs, Reading Recommendations Reviewed, offers third-party reviews of books featured on Reading Recommendations.
All told, this makes Susan the equivalent of a one-woman version of Goodreads. As we say in Ireland, more power to her elbow!