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Originally Posted by slappyjenkins
[...] But I've been in sales forever and we have this concept that drives the entire career of any salesman...building clientele...its the poor man's advertisement. What you do over time is promoted by word of mouth or by your excellent service you obtain repeat customers that will show loyalty to you and from that point will also go out and spread secondary yet positive publicity about you. [...]
Well with self-publishing it is almost the EXACT process. You can blog about your upcoming work as a form of free advertisement, but I've seen endless comments on the lack of blogs as an advertisement medium in self-published e-books. But the main concept is building your clientele over time.
Also since reading your post I have been trying in vain to find this one link that has an example of being proactive about self-publishing. I can't even remember the author's name now, but he told his story about having an agent that was carrying three of his books. He said he had given over thousands of dollars to this agent for his service, and the agent basically sat on those 3 books for 2 years and had not sold a single copy. The author gets rid of the agent and formats the books as e-books. He blogged and self-promoted, put the books up for sale at .99 cents a copy as e-books, but the books were slow going for the first few months and then all of a sudden they exploded. He claims to have made a million dollars so far off those 3 books alone. I think by now he has several works being published. I don't know why I can't remember his name but I'll look for the link and post it later.
Self-publishing is most attractive to me right now because I can post my own work at very low cost and don't have to go through an agent or publishing house which is a very expensive process. And in the case with the previous author I mentioned, he knew his agent was not enthusiastic about promoting the 3 books. The agent had other authors and was clearly putting priority on them. I don't want to deal with any of that. I don't have thousands of dollars to take on a gamble. If I keep this in my hands then I know what level of participation and urgency that I am going to put into it.
And if it doesn't work I can always get with an agent later. Certaintly not discrediting your advice at all, because your suggestion is spot on as always. But I do want to take the self-publishing route to begin with. I'll look over the link to Literary Agents, thanks so much for that! Can I ask if you are published? Or have lyrics floating around out there? If its in this thread somewhere, forgive me I'll have to keep reading through the thread.
Yeah it was sad about my friend. And her mother calls me from time to time and I feel that guilt all over again. I've even told her mother that I thought I did all I could and yet I still feel like I let her down and now she's gone. Her mother has says almost exactly what you did, 'There's nothing you could have done. She wasn't herself anymore and she could not control her addiction.'
And I know anyone reading this will think well why didn't the mother do something like force her into rehab or even have her committed to protect her from herself. Her mother DID try that...she went to the sheriff's office and to a doctor and asked for help...this was the response she got in all cases...'You cannot commit a person or force them into rehab or into any kind of program if they have not hurt themselves or hurt someone else.' So even if the person is clearly destroying themselves, if they haven't done anything to harm themselves or anyone else, then they can just sit there drunk all day and out of their minds, a ticking time bomb, until they fall down the stairs and die.
We should communicate in PM or make our own thread or communicate in my thread. I do NOT want to take away from your thread in any way. You have shared a lot of high quality material here and it deserves to be critiqued.
But thank you so much for sharing and giving.[...]
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No worries about communicating here in my thread as we're doing, as long as *you're* okay with it. Earlier this year I was posting pictures to show the similarity between Eddie Van Halen's smile and a terrier's happy grin
...so compared to
that, your and my discussion about publishing is right on topic!
Besides, I use this thread as a source of inspiration for my writing and not just to post lyrics or poems. Mostly I'm here to have fun. And you know what? You're fun, Slappy!
About self-publishing:
I hear your reasons for going that route, especially since your sales background gives you confidence about using word of computer to spread awareness of your self-published works.
However, when you mentioned the high costs of getting an agent, I wanted to let you know that (I think) a good, reputable agent will not charge you anything and instead will just take a percentage of the proceeds from the sale of a manuscript to a publishing company. So I'm thinking that getting a literary agent shouldn't be expensive to get an agent if or when you seek one.
I *also* just read that poets typically don't go to a literary agent to publish a book of poetry, which I didn't realize or remember. Instead, the typical route for publishing poetry books is to send the manuscript yourself to small presses (after successfully publishing individual poems in literary journals to show the poems have selling power):
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Literary Agents: A How-to Guide for Writers | Poets & Writers
Agents rarely represent poets, as the selling of poetry books doesn’t usually generate enough income. Most poets, after building up several publishing credits in respected literary journals, send out manuscript submissions to small presses on their own.
If you are submitting individual poems to literary magazines, an agent is unnecessary. For a collection of poetry, be sure to follow the submission guidelines of the individual publishers you want to send your collection to. Also, check deadlines for chapbook contests and first poetry book awards in the Grants & Awards section of Poets & Writers Magazine.
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You asked if I have had anything published. I have, but not much. While I was in college and soon after, during my biggest writing years, I did get some poetry published in small poetry journals. I also had a poem and short story selected for a writer organization's anthology book, which was a fun process.
After college I had to decide what to do for a career. I loved and had studied both science and arts (I remember loving a class about lyrical poetry). I decided to pursue science (biology) in graduate school and for work, because I love living things and life and wanted to *do* something to learn more about them and not just write about or paint them. Then I was so busy that I simply didn't have time or mental energy to write creatively.
My love of creative writing has been reasserting itself during the last six years, however. (I was inspired by a former teacher to write again.) I'm glad, because writing feels like the return of a beloved childhood friend.
About alcoholism treatment facilities:
I had deleted from my previous post (to make it shorter) the very same information you found out from your friend's mom--you can't force an adult to go to a treatment center unless she is at immediate risk of killing herself or someone else. Even if someone goes to rehab, she or he is probably likely to relapse and need to go back several times and after all that still may not be able to stop drinking. I wanted you to know that, unfortunately, there was probably very little that could be done for your friend.
I once asked a loved one who is alcoholic (but sober for the last 15 years) what could have stopped him from his years of active drinking. He said the answer was deceptively simple: he should have never taken that first drink (back when he was 18). If young people could see their future due to alcohol-consumption...lost jobs, broken families, destroyed friendships, and poor health...maybe fewer would take that first drink.
I *did* have a good day! I hope you did, too. Selling things, maybe. (I hope you aren't having real-life GlenGarry Glen Ross experiences!)
Hey, if your publishing plan works, then you can supplement your piggy-bank assets and we can make our publishing company a true 50:50 enterprise.
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Originally Posted by Newkie
I'm not a great analyst so my feedback will be pretty feeble, but you have some really great lines there that typify the experience of being involved with someone with personality or even just serious mood disorders. I know that's how I felt a lot of the time when I was in that situation.
Always a problem when you yourself suffer from common issues like self esteem and anxiety, discussing it with them seems so trivial so you avoid it. When you confide in them and everything's going well it's not so bad, you know they've dealt with worse and they can still help you, even if they can't exactly help themselves. But as soon it turns sour they can really seem like they want to destroy you. I wasn't in that bad a spot though, the girl I was with knew about her issues, acceptance or discovery weren't really her issues, she/we just couldn't deal with them.
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Newkie, thank you for your feedback! I'm very glad to learn that you felt those lines matched your experience. I was hoping people would relate.
When you write that the person with a personality or mood disorder can really seem to want to destroy you, that reminds me chillingly of my memories.
Thank you for sharing.