Lusiphersblog

Doing whatever it takes

July 7th, 2009

Yesterday morning, 7/6/09, I awakened with a feeling of deep dread. My second book signing for my new book, BDSM, is Saturday June 11–five days from yesterday and four days from today. For the past several months, I’ve been spending a lot of time on the ‘net and trying to acquaint myself with various social networking sites–Twitter in particular–in the hopes of getting the word out about myself and my books. For me, the learning curve has been steep. So, yesterday I got my suitcase, some brochures, and some flyers I’d printed up for my upcoming signings–July 11th and July 18th signings at NOTJUSTABOOKSTORE and Nubia Cafe respectively, left home and drove my 14-year-old car to a supermarket called Schnucks in a cosmopolitan neighborhood at Lindell and Sarah.

The weather was warm and sunny. The Schnucks supermarket anchors the west half of a strip mall on a vast, deep, fenced-in lot. Automobiles were concentrated near the front of the supermarket; I parked my car on the outskirts of the lot among empty parking slots. For some strange reason, I felt paranoid, like there was something about me that stood out. Then, I realized that this feeling was fear. I felt self-conscious. I felt ridiculous. I truly believe that you’re only as old as you feel, but yesterday I felt every bit the 41 years old that I am. I felt like an old man in a young man’s race. Still in my car, I fumbled with my cell phone for a minute. I unzipped my briefcase and brought out the tan bag that contained the brochures and flyers I had designed for my upcoming signings. A homeless man walked up to my car on the passenger’s side. The white man’s clothes were dingy and very loose on his tall skeletal frame. The lines on his face were long and packed with dirt. His eyes were dim; his voice was a whisper. He asked if I had any spare change and I waved him away. As I watched him walk away and other people waving him off, I felt bad. I felt like getting out of my car and running after him, but I didn’t.

I got out of my car and walked towards the store. People streamed in and out of the store’s electric doors. A security guard stood at the entrance. I went to the far end of the front entrance where I chatted with a black gentleman named Sydney; years ago, he and I were cab drivers with Yellow Cab. He was glad to see me and was surprised when I told him that I was still in the cab business; he’d long since left the cab business and had a job with the state. People walked by as we talked and I offered them my flyer. Some took my flyer; others politely declined, but most completely rebuffed me and my outstretched flyer. Rejection burns. A single rejection makes you feel like the whole world rejects you. Rejection transforms the world into a funhouse mirror. Rejection makes you feel naked and embarrassed. Acceptance is like steam– having someone to actually take a flyer, look it over, fold it, and store it away in their pants pocket or purse is fleeting gratification; rejection lasts much longer. Rejection leaves you feeling scandalized, like you want to run somewhere and hide. I began to think of people who made their living in sales–door to door salesmen, insurance salesmen, etc.–and my appreciation for these folks–their toughness– became palpable. I also became aware that my friend Sydney’s presence was both a comfort and a crutch. When Sydney left–he’d ordered some fish and had been waiting for it to be fried–I had nothing to buffer the alienation of rejection.

Despite the polite refusals or cool indifferences I met with, I learned to keep my eyes and head up, to mask my disappointment, and to keep presenting a bright–but increasingly difficult–smile and my neon-yellow flyers. I also learned by trial and error that my most receptive prospects were those who left the store. People arriving to the store were in a hurry and had little time to bother with someone trying to take more money out of their pockets. Sometimes you have to walk in another’s shoes to fully taste their experiences; now I completely understood and felt what that homeless man must have felt when I turned him down. Too many no’s can scab over, but no still hurts. But, after a while, one can develop a tolerance for no. This was how I meditated as I walked between parked cars, hop scotched around rotten banana peels, piles of saliva, spots of motor oil, and discarded food. The thickening heat, direct sunlight, and adrenaline moistened my clothes. Occasionally, someone surprised me and asked me about my book. I’d ramble off the synopsis as quickly and as clearly as I could. The yeses I got gave me optimism: I wouldn’t have gotten those yeses if I hadn’t have endured the nos.

The thick stack of flyers I arrived with became slimmer. What brought me upon the idea of passing out flyers is this: the more people who read my flyer and see my name, the better the chances that those people will remember my name. A flyer that sells a book is great, but my realistic goal for my flyers is to reinforce my name and other elements of my advertising strategy. My flyer’s bold WARNING banner and long admonition are applied to every flyer for every signing that I do. That banner and long admonition are applied to my brochure and to all of the press releases that I present the media. So far, I’ve been lucky enough to get the attention of Kristen Hinman who’s a reporter for the Riverfront Times. She interviewed me last month and was kind enough to post that interview in the June 18–24, 2009 Music Awards issue. I tested out–and received the desired reactions that I sought–my brochure, flyers, and press releases on family, friends, and strangers. My Riverfront Times interview validated my promotional literature. So my hope is that diffusing my flyers and brochures in high volume locations will burn my name into the collective consciousness–this is what I hope. Also, I believe that the internet, though, fast, effective and powerful, still can’t overcome the raw impression of face to face encounters. I delete spam from my computer everyday; however, it’s harder to say no to a live person. I’m still experimenting, but I believe that there has to be an intermingling of technology and good old fashioned salesmanship, i.e. passing out flyers, making phone calls, book signings, book readings, etc. I’m an introvert. In the old days, a writer could work behind the scenes, behind the marketing machinery of some big New York City publisher and concentrate on writing. Today, in order to have his/her words read, that writer has to be out front with her work and bring life to her work. So, I have to overcome not only the anonymity of being an unknown and independent writer/publisher, but I must also overcome the self-sabotaging limits of my introverted tendencies. These challenges–promoting and selling my book–are before me and I have to face them whether I want to or not. There are no guarantees that any of my efforts will succeed. I will write about them here. Leave a comment on my blog, email me, or call me (314 504 7264) and wish me luck.

Lusipher (Johnny Booker)

www.lusiphersbooks.com

lusiphersbooks@yahoo.com

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BlogCatalog

July 1st, 2009

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Letter to Fred

July 1st, 2009

Hi, Fred, this is Johnny. Thanks for replying to my email. As for the site–company– that published my book, I published my own book. I published–via a POD (Print On Demand publisher)–a book about eight years ago. I was dumb: I didn’t have a web site, a budget, a whiff of a plan, or a general clue as to how I’d sell the book. My biggest oversight was neglecting to calculate my profit margin relative to printing and distribution through Amazon, Borders, Barnes and Nobles, etc. To be honest, I was so tickled to see and feel the physical copy of something I’d worked on for so many months that I didn’t have time nor did I give a damn about the other stuff. I’d find out later–the hard way!The gods must have been on my side back then. As disorganized as I was–I’m still disorganized now, but less so–I phoned a few Borders stores and convinced them to purchase some of my books. I wrote “phone scripts” that me or my wife (when I was married; I’m divorced) used to persuade almost every Waldenbooks (before they merged with Borders) and Barnes and Nobles to agree to my book signings. I did signings at either Waldenbooks or Barnes and Nobles at St. Claire Square, Crestwood Plaza, Northwest Plaza, The Galleria, Alton Square, St. Louis Center, St. Louis Mills, etc. At one particular signing and on one particular day, my book outperformed Jack Buck’s then new book. To fill in cracks between the mall signings, I did numerous signings at many of the independent black bookstores. I was on a roll. Left Bank Books got wind of our– me and my wife’s–reputation for hustling hard at book signings; Left Bank’s manager asked us to share booth space with Omar Tyree at the ‘03 Black Expo. We loaded two boxes of my books in my old ‘90 Chevy Caprice and we drove that old ex-cab to the Edwards Jones Dome. I’d never seen so many people in one place in my life. We found our booth, which wasn’t hard to miss; behind a long table was a high wall of boxes full of Omar Tyree’s books. My wife and I were overwhelmed with all of this as you could imagine. I forgot her name, but Left Bank’s manager–a short, forty something white woman with short sandy-brown hair, spectacles, no makeup, and a firm no-nonsense personality–greeted us at the booth. She left to attend some other matter. The sound was as dense as the crowds. My wife said something to me but I could only see her lips move. She yelled and said that she was going out into the crowd to steer people over to our booth. Meanwhile, I was sweating bullets; this had nothing to do with the cooling system, which worked fine. I was nervous as hell. I had only an hour to sell two boxes of my books before my glass slipper turned into a rotten sneaker. Also, I had a wall of boxes breathing down my neck, and all of those boxes contained books by a well known author: Omar Tyree.

I had dressed up for this occasion. I wore a pair of dark blue silk slacks, black shiny shoes, a snow-white button-down shirt, a green and gold paisley necktie, and a suede olive fedora. I stood in this booth behind a long table draped in bright red cloth. I waved and smiled and fought to choke back the nervous lump rising up my throat. The collar of my shirt had become a noose; my shirt was tape on my body; beads of sweat rolled down my legs. I smiled and waved at passersby. Some paused to look over one of my books (I had two small stacks on the table and one held against my chest. “Where is Omar Tyree?” they’d ask and I’d tell them that he’d start his signing once my signing ended. As the minutes progressed, my shirt and pants legs dried out, the collar of my shirt relaxed from around my neck, and the books stacked in front of me got shorter and shorter. We were selling books. My wife was out in the crowd–I couldn’t see her but I could hear her laughing–doing her thing. I came from behind the table, left the booth, and dived into the swarming throng of movement and sound. The energy infected me. At first, confronted with someone who wanted to know more about me and my book, I couldn’t get my thoughts together. At times, I was incoherent. But now that I’d gotten over the initial butterflies and the scale of the event, I became lucid. Above the heads of most of the throng, I spotted the tall, lazy, pole-thin figure of Omar Tyree. He seemed distracted, his tall body leaning slightly and his ear inclining towards a white woman in a business suite, presumably his agent. He moved past me and the table without acknowledging either. Meanwhile, the stacks of books on the table diminished. We—my wife and I—sold the last book and high-fived each other. The manager and her cash register were at the opposite end of the long table. Later, she told us that we’d outsold Omar Tyree.

‘03 was a good year. The following years weren’t good. I’d done seconds and thirds at most of the bookstores before they began asking about a follow-up novel; my first book had worn out its welcome. I began working on my second–current–book in ‘04 (actually, I’d written a draft of my second book before I’d put out my first book; I did this due to the complexity of my second (present) book). The second book required more research and asked me to take a great deal of creative license, far more creative license that I felt comfortable taking, but no less than what the story’s subject matter and style demanded. These were some hellacious and lonely years, the years between then and now.

By the time I finished my present book and emerged out of my cave blinking, the whole world had changed. Wide swaths of downtown St. Louis had been gentrified beyond recognition. The Loop in U.City had crept beyond Skinker. Drug ridden boarding houses, which occupied the stretch of Delmar between Kingshighway and Vandeventer, had been either razed and replaced with a new home or gutted, re-skinned, and marketed in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Flowered medians were installed on Delmar between Union and Kingshighway. Smooth whispering tarmac and new ramped sidewalks ran down Martin Luther King. A strip mall at the intersection of MLK and Grand; the Windows on Washington; storefront business (no whores and drug dealers) along Olive and Taylor; a new nursing home on Page and Academy; grass (not motor oil, broken glass, rubble, etc.) along the curb along MLK and Marcus; a real GAS STATION at MLK and Clara– I didn’t realize how much the city had changed around me or how stiff and monotonous my life and daily routine had become in the years I’d spent writing my second book. I had lost contact with the world, the people–contacts–I’d made with my first book. When I called up those people to let them know that I had another book I found that almost all of those people had moved on with their lives. Most of the bookstores were either gone or had been digested into other larger bookstores. Waldenbooks was gone. I drove by Northwest Plaza and found a huge echoing labyrinth of empty gated storefronts. I walked its long wide corridors in disbelief. Back in ‘03, a Waldenbooks store stood on a corner across from a Foot Locker store. The Foot Locker was still there; the Waldenbooks storefront was gone. I followed a silent corridor of sealed storefronts to its only open storefront. Perfumed incense wafted out of its open door. Its owner, who I recognized from way back in ‘03 and who I had done several signings with, was seated at one of the many small empty tables that were scattered throughout the clean bright corridors trimmed in polished chrome. The store’s black owner was having a conversation with another black gentleman. When I walked up to the table, they looked at me with suspicion, and then recognition softened the owner’s face. He smiled, stood, and shook my hand. A book signing was way out of the question for both of us. I’d have to be Obama or Michael Jackson to draw dead flies to the mall, let along live ones. Though slightly heavier in the face, the owner hadn’t changed. And despite his empty store and empty corridors, he didn’t seem too bothered. He told me that he was moving from the mall to a strip mall at 170 and Page (Overland Plaza). He wouldn’t be settled there until mid July; by then I could call him about a signing.

This is my second book but in a way it’s my first book. I’m starting over clean–older, new pen name, no bookstore connections, and no wife (we’ve recently divorced). I’m a baby taking my first awkward steps. Unlike my first book, I set up and published my present book on my own. Financial constraints have forced me to do everything solo: website design and publication to the web, book cover design, interior set up, book signings, promoting, etc. As to why I decided to publish my own book, I have to digress to my ‘03 experiences. Back then, I sold a modest–respectable–number of books. However, because I neglected to account for printing costs, distribution costs, and other expenses, my profit margin was slim to almost zero. Not printing–which is unavoidable–but other technical factors such as font size, margin widths, book size, page count, etc, ran up the book’s cost and drove down its profit margin. Also, take into account this: back in ‘03 retailers charged 40% of the book’s cover price. Then, lay on the slice of cheese you have to pay a POD publisher such as Authorhouse (then 1stBooks), IUniverse, Xlibris, etc, to broker the book from the printer (LightningSource) to those retailers. By the time you got the book from the printer, the POD publisher, the retailer, and then spread your razor-thin profit on this tall sandwich, the book would wind up costing a fortune–this is what hurt me back in ‘03, and this was the first problem I addressed with my second book. I went by a used book store and found a copy of the Chicago Manual of Style; this book taught me all that I needed to know about book set up, interior and exterior. I went online and read articles, I bought books–lots of books, and I studied. I didn’t realize how ridiculously easy it is to become a publisher and to do the same things that companies like Authorhouse, Xlibris, and IUniverse charge thousands for. It’s easy and it’s hard, very hard in terms of understanding all of the terms and minding all of the details regarding the physical set up of the book and calibrating these details with what the printer wants from you. I decided to go the self-publishing route because of the power and creative freedom it affords me as a writer; however, marketing and promoting this second book is 80 percent harder than writing the book. I guess there is a silver lining: I still have a real job, and I happen to live in the digital age where there’s tons of software and websites that I can implement to help me; the writer’s of old were at the complete mercy of the big New York publishing houses who are now suffering–technology is leveling the playing field.

So, Fred, I’ll end this brief letter this way: I’ll see you at the next meetup. BTW, this morning I cleaned up my site a bit. You can see it at

www.lusiphersbooks.com. It’s ugly, but I did it myself. See you.

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PUBLISH YOUR OWN BOOK (AND GET AMAZON, BORDERS, ETC. TO CARRY IT)

June 26th, 2009

cut out the middleman–POD publishers–and realize a higher profit publishing your own book.

Contact the printer i.e.LightningSource, and they’ll tell you everything you need to know
Next, go on Bowker’s web site and order your ISBN numbers
Register your book with the Library of Congress–protect yourself
Proofread and edit your book with as many people as possible
Get Corel Paint shop or another QUALITY graphic software and design a cover for your book. If you can write a book, you can probably design its cover. Otherwise find a quality graphic designer to design your cover. The cover is the first thing the buyer sees so make yours count
Get Sitespinner (what I use) or any other web page authoring tool and design a web page on your computer. Have confidence in yourself; if you can write a book, designing a web page should be a piece of cake. Otherwise, hire someone to do this for you
Start writing content for your web page. What is your book about? Expand on the different perspectives your book can be seen from? Write an informative page on each perspective your book can be viewed from. Read Author 101 by Rick Frishman and Robyn Freedman for more information on “slicing and dicing” your book. At this stage, don’t worry about the aesthetic appeal of your site. The visitor to your site will be more concerned with the content on your site
Do as much as you can yourself; this will save money and enhance your understanding and appreciation of the publishing process. This will also empower you. The worst thing in the world is having someone else control your destiny–control your own destiny.
Swallow your pride. Humility–reaching out for others’ help–is the most important attitude you can take. The bookstores are loaded with books on the subject of publishing and marketing. Join a writers group. This has been my goof–I thought that I had all the answers and I didn’t. Pride delayed my goals; don’t let pride delay your goals. No man is an island. Writing groups are the way to go
Go to the bookstore and thumb through books you’d like to model your book’s appearance on. Pay attention to margin widths, page counts, font sizes, size dimensions, etc. Most importantly, pay attention to the prices of each book you inspect. As you do this take the printer’s price per page costs and retailers’ 60% invoice fee into account and let these influence the design of your book

I’m going to bed now. I have to be at work at midnight (I’m a cabbie). I’ll post more on this subject over the weekend. Check back and let me know what you think. Thanks for reading this and follow your dreams wherever that dream leads you.

Lusipher www.lusiphersbooks.com

314 504-7264

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Is Michael Dead?

June 25th, 2009

I just heard that Michael Jackson’s dead; is this true? say it isn’t so!

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Lusiphersblog

Doing whatever it takes

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Letter to Fred

PUBLISH YOUR OWN BOOK (AND GET AMAZON, BORDERS, ETC. TO CARRY IT)

Is Michael Dead?

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