Why I Don't Need a Publicist

I was lamenting to a friend over my frustrations with mucking around in the social networking swamp and trying to network with the right sites in order to get Suitcase Filled with Nails, reviewed.  “I really need a publicist to do all this for me,” I moaned.

“No,” she said adamantly, “You don’t need a publicist to help you with social networking.  You need a 15 year-old to help you.

Why I Need a Publicist

 At some point along the evolutionary line - at the B.C. point - (Before Computers), I worked as a publicist.  Back in the dark ages when press releases were typed on your manual Olivetti and handed or air mailed to an editor who had the piece typeset, printed and pasted onto dummies sent to the printers.  Maybe the piece made it to print or was picked up by radio and television. 

Along evolutionary line of technology, I chose as much as possible to stay in the dark, preferring to paint, draw, and read real books, rather than to engage in these endeavors on a computer.  As a result, I get pretty stuck in the technological web surrounding the promotion of Suitcase Filled with Nails.

I still find email amazing.  Although I’m on it, through the help of a 15 year-old boy who’s on Facebook 24/7, I still don’t understand Facebook. Yet all the cutting edge agents (who ignored my book) swear every author needs to be on Facebook and Twitter at least, along with owning a website and blogging,  Whew!   Talk about screen time. 

I already had a website, yvonnepepinwakefield.com.  I signed into the social media swamp where I spend lost hours trying to muck myself out of failed uploads, down loads, reloads,  information access crucial to marketing Suitcase Filled with Nails.  This is why I need a publicist, someone with techno savvy, someone who knows how to wade through and around the swamp.

The mother of the 15 year-old, did though help me set up my blog, suitcasefilledwithnailsauthorcloud which lead me to read other blogs, like the one I found on a Linkedin update and read because it was posted by Nina Amir, an editor of Suitcase.

Nina is a professional editor, proposal consultant and writing, blogging and book coach as well as the author of the forthcoming book, How to Blog a Book, How to Write, Publish and Promote Your Work One Post at a Time (Writer's Digest Books April 2012), (http://www.writenonfictionnow.com)  Through Nina’s blog I stumbled upon How to Get Your Book Reviewed,  a site promoting a  book by Dana Lynn Smith addressing ways to gain publicity in today’s techno market.  The book is available in PDF, Kindle, Nook and paperback. 

I went on-line (these days I’m rarely off-line).  I tried to order the paperback because I’ve developed a chronic case of screenitist, and one more dose of a screen would do me in.  Only the same credit card I’ve used on Amazon before wouldn’t take and after twenty minutes of trying to get it to take, I took the dog for walk instead. 

I spend more time getting lost in the muck and meeting dead ends on the computer than I do goals.  The dog is well walked.

Just Who Will Your Book PO?

You Know Your Book is Ready to Publish when You Know it’s going to P0 friends, family and anyone with differing opinions.  I’d heard this said by an author a few months ago, before I was ready to publish Suitcase Filled with Nails.   At that time I was afraid my book could offend friends (whom I disguised in the book), and of course anyone with a hyper reactive streak, when it comes to even mentioning religion, even a positive light (Suitcase does in a minor, light-hearted way).  But, I never considered my book might P O my family.  Really.  Because, beside my husband, my family consists of relatives in the Midwest, some of them very, very, very Catholic relatives.

One of these relatives responded to the Facebook or the Linkedin posting, I posted a few days ago, announcing the forthcoming publication of Suitcase Filled with Nails. My cousin said he would suggest it to his book group, I thought at first Swell.  Then I thought of his mother who is my aunt and if you even whisper God, even in a light-hearted flippant way, around her, she will wash your mouth out with soap.  And since I allude to my position in the Catholic Church in colorful ways, I’m starting to feel like Suitcase, could, along with other religious extremists enjoying the warmth of the Middle East, also PO this aunt in the cold Mid-west.  I do so much more prefer the minty taste of Crest than Bon Ami on a toothbrush.

Social Networking Pays Off in Strange Ways

Social Networking pays off in strange ways.  I’m a Luddite when it comes to computers but managed to finally upload a forthcoming publication announcement for Suitcase Filled with Nails,  on Facebook and Linkedin.  Within minutes I received responses from around the world from friends who WANT TO BUY A SIGNED COPY of Suitcase Filled with Nails.  I think it will be cheaper for my friends in the UK, Dubai, Egypt, Kuwait, and beyond to buy the ebook version at $4.95, than to ship a signed copy over seas.

Yet, one unexpected reference to Suitcase Filled with Nails, is in the email below which I am sharing as requested by Paul D Kennedy, author of The Lid is Lifted.

Dear Yvonne

The Lid is Lifted

I was one of the Westerners trapped in the centre of Kuwait city when the Iraqi army invaded on the 2nd August 1990. I witnessed first-hand the appalling human rights abuses that took place (indeed I was a victim in one brutal case), as well as looting on an industrial scale and the contradictory reactions of scared and desperate men.
Written as narrative non-fiction, The Lid is Lifted uses terse language to describe the feelings of extreme fear and almost uncontrollable anger we all experienced at that time.
You can find out more about this exciting story (with short samples from the book) at: www.kuwait1990.com or you can have a free read of the first few chapters at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005O302T2.
The Lid is Lifted also details how a few expatriates betrayed friendships in order to ensure their own safety and several embarrassing facts about the behaviour of the foreign embassies in Kuwait during the few times we interacted with them.
Have you ever wondered what REALLY caused Saddam to invade? I had excellent connections at the highest levels in Kuwait who kept me well informed of what was happening and why, so you can find out in this book
The Lid is Lifted is the true story of what happened in Kuwait during August 1990. Though every word is true, I have written it in the style of a novel so you too can experience what it was like during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.
You can find out more about The Lid is Lifted at: www.kuwait1990.com.
Or you can buy this exciting 250-page book directly from Amazon for less than US$5 at: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005O302T2.
Please pass this email on: Even if you are not interested in what happened in Kuwait in August 1990, over 20 years ago, perhaps you have friends who would like to read The Lid is Lifted. I would appreciate it very much if you would pass this email on … and your friends may be grateful to you.
Thank you for reading this email and I hope you enjoy my book.
Yours sincerely

PAUL D KENNEDY

The Jacket Blurbs: Suitcase Filled with Nails

“An eye-opening look under the veil of young Muslim
women that allows readers to see how similar they are
to young women everywhere… a realistic, and
sometimes frightening, view of what one can expect if
you live and work in the Middle East.” Nina Amir,
author of How to Blog a Book: Write, Publish and
Promote Your Work One Post at a Time

“This ‘innocent abroad,’ tells her story with vivid language, living
metaphor, and above all, great story-telling skill.” Judith Roche,
author of First Fish, First People and Wisdom of the Body

This is my blog on publishing my book Suitcase Filled with Nails :Lessons Learned from Teaching Art in Kuwait.

It took six years to write the book.  Actually, it took six years of living the book before I sat down and actually started piecing my notes into a book. When I left Kuwait,  for good in June 2010 I had over 800 pages of copy and five dog-eared files of newspaper and magazine clippings.  I also had the goal of trying to condense all this material into a story of my six years in Kuwait teaching studio art to Muslim women and treading a misogynistic minefield.  The first draft was 600 pages long, mostly whinny rambling.

It took seven months of writing-writing on average six to eight hours a day-pecking out maybe 30 versions before I sent 300 pages to a copy editor.

In December 2010 I received a bill for $2000 and my manuscript sans most misspellings, inactive verbs and dangling participles. Suitcase was so ready, so timely, so unique, agents and publishers would snap it up-I was so sure.

 I spent the next two months, sending out queries to 135 agents and publishers.  My office was papered in 24”x24” sheets of printing paper, inked with the date of submission, to whom the query was sent to, when it was replied to (if I ever received a reply) and marked as to whether they wanted the first five, fifty or all the pages of my manuscript.   In orange ink I would mark their response.  Next to one agent’s name and because of her response I wrote in red ink - Paranoid, crack-head, narcissistic vole.

By February paper covered two walls of my office.  The requests for my book just about balanced the thanks we’re not interested rejections.  Still, none of the please send outline, proposal, sample chapter, pages, a urine test, your first born, ever produced a Yes, I’ll represent your manuscript.  Everyone had their reason.  Anyone reading this has probably heard them all.

That same February I went to the San Francisco Writer’s Conference to meet with some of the agents who had my manuscript.  I figured getting up close and personal might enhance my chances of representation.  After having met some of the agents who had my manuscript I walked away with one impression of an agent resembling a burrowing animal.

I also came away with the business cards of six new agents who wanted to see my manuscript.  After submitting Suitcase  and after waiting weeks and months, alas their responses agreed with the other 135 agents and publishers…good story, just not for us.

Back to the computer, and a new editor who reviewed Suitcase, advised on where the story arced and didn’t arc.   Back to the computer, re-write, re-write…  Another bill for editorial services $2500, back to the computer to write arcs…I am losing hope and my chiseled abs as they melt into blobs of inactivity over the waist band of my pants.  I am developing Dunlaps Disease… my stomach done laps over my pants.

I am also losing hope.  But, I have already said that.

I have a story.  It is good (I think).  It is timely.  It needs to be told.  And, it will be, because I quit fooling around and found an editor whose niche is Pacific Northwest authors, AuthorCloud, and it's my hope this will begin a productive and honest working relationship.  So far it has been.

The Cover of my New Book.  Look for it soon!!!!