10 years later...

So it goes like this.  I was digging through some of my old stuff trying to unpack boxes in the new house.  I stumbled on a bag I used to collect all the surrounding material for WALLOW when I wrote it.  I discovered that I had submitted WALLOW to the Self-Published Book awards administered by Writer's Digest.

At the time when I received the notification that I had not won, I was disappointed, and didn't give the rest of the package much notice.  Looking back at it now, it is very good feedback.  In fact, the person who reviewed my book said I should look into a book called Guerrilla Marketing for Writers.  So I went to the Books A Million near my house, and while they had lots of stuff on Guerrilla Marketing, they did not have the specific book I was looking for.  So I bought the iBook on my iPad instead.

Great book!  I wish I had it back in 2000.  I wish I had paid attention to the very valuable feedback I got in 2000 from Writer's Digest.  My goodness.

No worries.  I can pick it up and run with it now, in 2013.

So one of the first things I need to do is pull together an author's resume.  I sketched one out this morning.  Here it is:

Awards

• 1991 Robert A. Boit
• 2000 Merit Award from Writer's Digest for a Self-published book

Publications

• Optimism Magazine
• THINK Magazine
• SHIFT magazine
• Wall Street Journal
• Eclectic online journal

Readings

• No more words, book launch for displaced
• G+G, reading
• Sedm vlku, book launch for WALLOW

I got my ISBNs

My publisher code is 0-9745056. Isn't that a great number? I love it. DISPLACED is now 0-9745056-0-9 and WALLOW is 0-9745056-1-7. The real test will be to wait until my Bowker's list submission has cleared, and then to walk into a Barnes and Noble and ask them about an author named Rick Pryll, if they have any of his books. I wonder how often Bowker's goes out to the book stores, or if they have a real-time system.

the world just opens up

I just found this resource called MidWest Book Review. From there I found the Book Clearing House that will perhaps (hopefully) agree to distribute my books. For a hefty fee (Out of the cover price of $10, I get $3.10...) of course, but it's better than having the books sit in boxes at the studio. Well, careful now, I can't just give them away.

I also found information about the Amazon Advantage program. They pay only 45% of the cover price. I guess the only advantage they are talking about is theirs.

places to publish stories

Okay, some of the marketing that goes into selling a book is really marketing the author. And that means getting people to read some stories. Once they read a story, hopefully they'll want more.

In the interest of getting some stories out there, here is one place: Espresso Fiction. I also sent an email to Blue Mountain Arts, I want to write cards for them. Wouldn't that be cool? now that isn't really marketing for books, because who ever finds out who wrote a card. but I can write cards - I'm good at it.

More places to submit articles: writing-world.com.

minor hiatus

I am starting a new job. You can expect posts here to be infrequent for the next couple of weeks while I get my schedule figured out.

new site to check out

there is a certain amount of this that has made me feel like I am chasing my tail. I mean, wrodthunder seems closely associated with writer's manual, and I can't tell the difference between writer's manual, wrtier's gazette and ebooks.com - they seem like they are all just offshoots of the same site.

Today I found something new. It's called BooksandAuthors.net and it seems like it is a little more established. I guess that's the word I'm looking for. There is no place to send in your own interview or to promote or review your own book. Right away that seems a little more legit to me. In addition, they have a list of links to a bunch of other sites that I didn't know about. I will use this as my jumping off point for the next couple days if not weeks.

banner exchange

Earlier in this blog I question whether or not I would go so far as to add all these crazy banners to my site. The answer I have decided upon is that yes, but only to certain sections of the site. My press/reviews page is the perfect place for things like this. I have registered with the BestBookLinks Banner Exchange program. Hopefully my mysterious banner ad will draw some attention.