A Book is Born

I know that I'm deep and that sometimes I'm way too deep. I know that being a very deep human being allows me to enter into amazing places that many cannot but I also know that because I am a very deep human being I am taken into extremely dark and isolating places. One of the places that I go to around this time of year is a place in where I feel very sad. Every Christmas I cannot help myself from thinking about my father, the father who concieved me, the very one who has never acknowledged my existence. Unless you have been neglected, ignored or abandoned it may be difficult to completely understand that the price one pays for being made to feel non existent is eternal. The depth of that pain is so enormous and I especially feel it at holiday times. I do beat myself up over the fact that there are so many in the world who are in need, who are grieving and who are sick while here I am so blessed, so privledged and still at times so very sad. While I do acknowledge those in our universe who are struggling and suffering, I have given myself permission to feel the hurt from the wounds that resurface. There is a special gift that is given to those who suffer or have suffered and I truly believe that if we show the cracks to our soul, the light from within will glow. So... my everyday gift to those that I come in contact with is the very close attention I pay to them when they speak to me. I look people directly in their eyes and I do my best to acknowledge them, their words, their feelings and their lives. I have chosen to give to others what I have craved so desperately in my own life. I give the gift of my time, my ears, my eyes and my heart. I really listen to human beings when they talk and it doesn't matter if I'm speaking with my 93 year old aunt or holding the 3 month old twins that I watch a few times a week. Human beings long to be heard, to be seen, to be acknowledged and I make a very special effort to not ignore anyone. Everyone gets an extra hug, an extra squeeze, an extra phone call, an extra pat on the back and my doggie gets an extra few scratches and smooches every single day. I feel good giving to others what was not given to me. Acknowledgement doesn't cost anything but I can tell you first hand that it is worth it's weight in gold! Give someone the gift of YOU this holiday!!

Have a safe and peaceful holiday ladies... may you always feel loved!

Lots of Luv

Debbie

My 1st grade daughter got a school writing assignment this week. She had to write a book "about your religious traditions." The assignment included text and illustrations. Parents were warned not to draw or write or basically influence our kids in any ways. Our only contribution could be to help with spelling. She was quite excited as we talked about it going home. As we walked home she had decided on her title and layout. When we got home she began writing. The first part was about Hannukah because that was the first holiday coming up. The second part about Christmas. We celebrate both since my husband's family celebrates Christmas and I am Jewish. What intrigued me was watching her writing process, her thinking, and how she layed out the book. She wanted to think about it a couple of days before she continued. She had specific ideas about where to put the text, what to write, how to illustrate, and where the page numbers would go. Of course her cover page needed to include a special reference to the author. I watched her carefully craft her book. I silently wondered what the source/inspiration for her ideas was. All the budding authors in her class will be reading and displaying their books to parents and students this week. She was very mindful of this as she wrote. She wanted to feel comfortable with the material she wrote and her ability to read it and answer questions about it. It got me wondering about how early we begin to develop our personal concepts about writing and books? How are these ideas shaped, changed and influenced as we become adults? What impact do these early seeds planted by our teachers have on our thinking and writing? Mix this with later contacts with family/friends/mentors, more education, our reading habits. Blend it all with our life experiences. The end result will be unique for each and every one of us. The possibilities exciting and endless. Good luck with your writing. Anything is possible!

I am Iris Waichler, MSW,LCSW, author of Riding the Infertility Roller Coaster: A Guide to Educate and Inspire.

OK who heard me screaming?? I had one of the busiest days of my life. Both kids had religion class, one at 4:00 and the other at 7:00. My daughter had a horseback riding lesson at 5:00 and my son had a hockey game at 6:30. My husband is at a Christmas dinner tonight so I had to find a way to divide myself in 3 and figure out how to get everyone where they needed to be single handed. We finally pulled into the driveway at 8:30pm and to our surprise the front porch was stacked with beautiful brown boxes. My daughter flew into the house and grabbed the video camera and for a minute I was able to realize how the 3 of us were sharing a special moment in time. What I had once thought would never happened has and it's incredible!! Thank you Nancy!! I'm going to put my pj's on now and go stare at my books. They are perfect!!

Thanks for listening to me go on. Although most of us have never met it's so nice to share this with women who have already had or will have the same experience.

Lots of Luv,

Debbie (officially the author of Fragments of Hope)

12/08/06, A.M. My daughter Zoe still sits in her Care Bears pajamas on the couch, the baby is taking a nap, and it is past ten o'clock. It is a reasonable time for a package to be on the front porch. I didn't hear the loud engine of the UPS truck or the sliding metal door of the FedEx van, but the books could be there, nonetheless. How obsessive-compulsive is it to peek through the door and see if my dream has been delivered?

Hell, I don't care. I've gotta look.

Two cardboard boxes on the front porch. One sits on top of the other. They could be presents I ordered online. They might be my Advanced Reading Copies.

"ZOE! Come to the front door, hurry!" She can pick up the excitement in my voice, her four year old frame comes tearing around the corner. Damn, I hope I didn't wake the baby up.

"What Mama?" she asks. "My books are here." I bend down and look her in her sable eyes. Zoe puts her hands over her mouth, jumps up and down and says "This is so exciting, oh my gosh!" And suddenly I am so happy I get to share this moment with an already exuberant spirit. My son may well have said "That's cool, Mom" with a shrug.

Zoe runs and gets the scissors. "No, the big ones!" I say after she hands me her toddler scissors from the craft store. Zoe is excited because she gets to use the big guns on a big box.

Together, we cut through the clear tape with black scuffs, and behold the manifestation of a promise I made myself years ago, as I quit my last official job.

*** *****

I just received thirty advanced reading copies of my book, Little Grapes on the Vine...Mommy' Musings on Food & Family, due out next April. It's unreal! I drove a copy of my book to my aunts, my mom, (at every red light I open it up and read until someone honks at me to go), and showed my girlfriends at my son's school. The rest of the copies are reserved for the media - it sounds so official, press releases, book signings, newspapers, magazines...here we go now. On a mission, only stopping to re-lace my boots, hopefully, not too often.

Until now, I have been intimidated by such things. Holding my book in my hands, I am infused with energy and purpose - my work is not over, but I have a shiny ARC to hold as I find the right words to say.

The laundry remains unfolded. The dishes remain unwashed. I am back on the couch with my daughter reading my book - and I am focused. I am ecstatic! I did what I said I was going to do many years ago. So, there's that.

And a whole lot more...it's me in that book. It's me and my kitchen and my thought process and all my neuroses.

I am reminded of the movie Jerry Maguire - as Tom Cruise's character stands in the copy store in the wee hours after writing his life-changing mission statement, the copy clerk gratifies the most pure and fearless act of Jerry's privileged life, saying something to the effect of "that's how you get great, man - hanging it all out there."

Jerry, convinced and enthralled, shakes his head at the unexpected wisdom of the clerk. "Yeah", he says.

Yeah.

Last night (Thursday, December 7) I was on a live local radio show called TEEN TALK. The hostesses were two lovely young ladies... seniors in high school who were voracious for information about the college experience. We talked before the show, during commercial breaks, and after the show! It was great! We talked about EVERYTHING...sororities, parties, safety, health, homesickness... you name it! And it was (of course) great publicity for the book but I what really excited me was that I really felt that I made a difference to these girls (and to their audience of 20,000+). They were wide-eyed and attentive to everything I had to say... I actually felt like an "expert" for the first time in this whole process! It was a relaxed conversation as if they were my little sisters asking me to tell them the stories of my youth which is EXACTLY what I am going for! If I EVER had any doubts about my book and my message and my ability to do some good in this world... they all disappeared in that one happy little hour on Radio Sandy Springs.

Christie Glascoe Crowder - Your Big Sister

www.bigsisterguides.com

It's the first of the month. I hold my breath as I view the preliminary sales report from the distributor.

DEVASTATION.

Returns. They are absolutely the bane of any indie publisher's existence. I think they are literally going to kill me.

Some of my authors don't understand this bloody business practice the book industry has had in place since the Depression. With a great distributor, a solid buyer's rep channel, and a steller publicity plan – books will hit the shelves of bookstores. And, they will stay there for about 8 weeks. If the author has gained a celebrity status, the books may stay on that shelf, but chances are far greater they will be boxed back up (and damaged in the process) and returned. With stores struggling to maintain profits the decision is an easy one - they never keep the books and pay, instead they return and not pay.

I learned the "return lesson" hard with my 2003 title. The distributor ordered 12,000 copies - we were elated. The author did some big media tours, got lots of ink, and frankly worked her ass off. Then, as the months rolled on, over 8000 of those were returned. In 2004 we thought we'd try again, on a smaller scale with even bigger media. The book had pre-pub serial excerpts in 3 major parenting rags, the author is a spokeswoman for numerous corporate brands, and was becoming a household name. The distributor pushed a small order of 4000 books out to start and over the last 2 years the obligatory 60% has come back - then ordered again, then came back, then ordered again, then came back.

You see, Ingram and Baker & Taylor and weasly 3rd parties with names like "book wholesalers" can order as many as they want, return them before the bill is due, and then order again a few months later. Each return negates the sale, and has a return and shipping fee.

If you've been doing the math - we've been in the RED more often than black.

So here we are, December 1 and with the Co-Op books from 2005-2006 we have been even more conservative with our bookstore pushes, averaging anywhere from 300 to 3000 books - proportional to the author's publicity plan. And, the numbers are red. Blood red. An expected royalty check of $7500 will not be coming, instead we have a negative $3500 from last month and now a negative $2500 this month plus the returns fees and shipping. Last month I had to do extra consulting work to cover the royalty checks – I hate to hold a "reserve on returns" from my hard-working authors anticipating the negative. I am constantly assuring them a return does not, in no way, reflect the quality of their writing. It's just the book business. The bad book business.

How does an indie publisher do it? How do we survive?

The dream of every author to have their books on bookstore shelves is an evil MYTH because it's like a lottery - there are 870 Barnes & Nobles stores (not counting all the other chains Borders, Wal-Mart, et al, plus 2000 independents) if you try to get a few copies on every store shelf across the nation - the scenario is like our 2003 title, it takes well over 12,000 copies. Can you move enough bodies into those stores to buy books in the short 2 months they will be there? Or, do the customers end up going to the one store in town which didn't stock the book - when right down the road one is getting boxed up to be returned.

An article in The Wall Street Journal "Quest for best seller means lots of returned books" illustrated the sad truth - major pub houses putting 100,000 books out there only to be sitting on 60,000 returns, but hey, they sold 40,000 books! When you begin to size that down to 1000 books going out and 600 coming back - well, you can't help but be left with a negative balance after all the fees and shipping is paid.

I listened in on a very popular telecall a while back called "How to get your books in to Barnes & Noble", they said there were 600 people on the call! I wanted to unmute myself and scream DON'T DO IT! Even the speakers on the call were clueless - all of these authors with this big "dream" - what the hell are they thinking? Are the authors so full of themselves that they believe their books are "classics" in their genre and have this omnipotent staying power on the shelf? Do the math, how many books came out last year, over a quarter-of-a-million? And how many of those have major publishers putting hundreds of thousands into advertising and have major media tours for famous well-known authors and celebs - probably just enough to fit in the bookstores next to the true "classics". The rest, will be returned.

With "A Book is Born" we will have a small army of authors doing promotion across the nation. We plan to sign and sticker every copy we can get our hands on (which, in theory, should not be returned). I have to decide how many to print, how many to push, and how big of a risk I can take... without losing the farm, literally.

Wish us luck... and look for us in bookstores next September. I'll be the homeless one with the sign "will work for no returns".

~ Nancy