$300 press release

Here's the press release I paid $300 for (along with a long list of email addresses to "editors" and "contacts" that were completely useless. I actually feel somewhat misled by iUniverse on the effectiveness of the email campaign).


**FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE**
EDITORS: For review copies or interview requests, contact:
Promotional Services Department
Tel: 1-800-AUTHORS
Fax: 812-355-4078
Email: promotions@iuniverse.com
(When requesting a review copy, please provide a street address.)

Waiting for Appa
Will young girl find the father she so desperately longs for?

MILPITAS, CA - When Eunhae is 9 years old, she says a tearful farewell to her father, an ex-Korean Navy captain, as he leaves for America. He promises to come back for her and her mother in three years, but fear grips her as time passes and it becomes difficult to remember his face.

Two years later, she and her mother receive visas to immigrate to America. Eunhae’s heart pounds with the great expectation of seeing her father as she lands at San Francisco, but Auntie Soona instead greets her and her mother, and they discover that he is in a coma after an accident on the job. At the hospital, Eunhae and her mother meet Sunwoo, who was her father’s roommate. There is puzzling hostility from Uncle Chul toward Sunwoo, but Eunhae finds him a kindred spirit as she spies him crying over her father.

In Waiting for Appa, (published by iUniverse) author Jennifer R. Kim traces the pain and confusion of Eunhae, who continues to clutch to her dead father's memory like the ashes she refuses to toss into the sea during his memorial. When she catches Sunwoo and her mother in an embrace she withdraws from everyone who seeks to love her, and as she grows to womanhood, her confusion over her feelings and the actions of her relatives deepens. On a return trip home to Korea, she discovers that she herself holds a secret, and finding the answer to it will eventually unlock her heart.

About the Author
Jennifer R. Kim was born in 1968 in Chinhae, Korea, and immigrated with her family to the United States in 1978, settling in Newark, Calif. In 1985, she participated in NASA Ames Summer High School Apprentice Research Program working on the Space Station program. In 1986, she was at Lockheed’s research and development office in Palo Alto working on the Gravity Probe B program. Kim graduated from UC Berkeley with a mechanical engineering degree and went to work for Bechtel in San Francisco, and later in Silicon Valley, working in the semiconductor industry. An acclaimed writer during high school and college, she had an essay published in the San Francisco Chronicle and a short story published in The Literary Realm. This is her first book.

Waiting for Appa

Available from: www.iUniverse.com, www.bn.com, and www.amazon.com

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So, save your $300 and use it for something else, like buying books you'd like to read.

Publishing packages

I've been very busy with some other things and I haven't been able to blog as often as I'd hoped. I'm sorry about the long gaps. I'll try to be more diligent in updating the blog.

All the self-publishing info below pertains to my experience with iUniverse only.

Self-Publishing Timeline:

I called iUniverse on 2/3/09. My book didn't get "published" until 6/29/09 and I didn't get a review copy until the end of July'09. But I really didn't get much sales activity going until November'09 because my books weren't returnable until late October'09.

In between 02/09 and 06/09, I had to edit and proof my manuscript one more time and I thought I couldn't handle this "one more time." It's very difficult to capture mistakes on a manuscript which you've read over a hundred times in the last several years.

Things to keep in mind from the beginning:

1. Returnability. Without this, you can't get the books into the stores. Do this early. It takes almost 8 weeks to get this set up if you miss the monthly window of opportunity. ($599 for a year. $300 for each additional years)

2. Copy Right. Just get it when you get the package. You can definitely get discounts at that time, but not very likely later. (was included in $999 package I purchased. I think it was additional $100 or something like that.)

3. Library of Congress #. I didn't get this one, but I regret it. I would get it next time. (I think this was additional $100 or something like that).

4. Cover Copy Polish. I bought this, but I'm not sure how useful it was to me. The cover copy came back very close to what I had already. I'm not sure I'd do that again. OK. I wouldn't do it again. ($199)

5. Press Release/Email Marketing campaign. I bought the cheapest package and it didn't work at all. I think cheap had nothing to do with it. DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY ON THIS OPTION. It was nice to get a copy of a press release a publishing house like iUniverse would write for their authors, but I would definitely not do this again. You can do it on your own. ($300)

6. "Customized" editing package. They wanted to charge $2400 for this. I turned it down. I had enough confidence in my writing/grammar/etc. to just go without it. You may go with one of the cheapest packages if you're confident about your material. I think that's what Lisa Genova did through iUniverse. If you don't know about her, you might want to google her name or Still Alice. That's her book. Her story will inspire you.

I know you can copy right your book and get the library of congress # on your own, but with a POD, I wasn't sure how I can time it so that my book would be published with those #s (I think you have to submit two copies of your book with each request).

I was utterly disappointed with the press release/email marketing campaign. It was completely useless in that it's basically a SPAM when it gets sent out like that. I've contacted some of the editors on my own and they've told me to contact them when I've sold ~1000 books, at least.

THE MOST IMPORTANT QUESTION - would I go with iUniverse again?

I would if I was going the POD (print-on-demand) way. It's amazingly easy to have your books available on Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com. With Borders.com, it took a little work. This is incredibly valuable. So, this alone would make me go back to iUniverse.

I still can't schedule book signings at Borders. And as much as people talk about supporting independent booksellers, Barnes and Noble makes it so easy to schedule book signings at multiple locations. I tried to schedule events at independent booksellers, but I was discouraged by the sellers themselves. Maybe I need to try again with them at a different location. The bottom line - I am so grateful to Barnes and Noble for giving me a fair shake in this arena.

In the next blog, I'll post the $300 press release I've purchased along with the list of email contacts.

Back to self-publishing....

Self-publishing is a tough road. I'm not sure I'd do it again with the current book I'm working on, but I'm not sure if a minor author published through a major publishing house would fare THAT much better than what I'm struggling with. From what I know, only advantage they could possibly have would be that the distribution channels would be smoother (like getting the books into the Borders stores). So, if you want to give it a shot, here it is.

I called iUniverse on 2/3/09. My book didn't get "published" until 6/29/09 and I didn't get a review copy until the end of July'09. But I really didn't get much sales activity going until November'09 because my books weren't returnable until late October'09.

Things to keep in mind from the beginning-

1. Returnability. Without this, you can't get the books into the stores.
2. Copy Right. Just get it when you get the package. You can definitely get discounts at that time, but not very likely later.
3. Library of Congress #. I didn't get this one, but I regret it. I would get it next time.
4. Cover Copy Polish. I bought this, but I'm not sure how useful it was to me. The cover copy came back very close to what I had already. I'm not sure I'd do that again.
5. Press Release/Email Marketing campaign. I bought the cheapest package and it didn't work at all. DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY ON THIS OPTION. It was nice to get a copy of a press release a publishing house like iUniverse would write for their authors, but I would definitely not do this again. I can do it on my own. I'll post my press release which I paid $300 for on this blog some time later.

Of course, you’d have to write a good story, but more than anything, please keep your manuscript clean. Make sure there are absolutely minimal spelling and grammar issues (I know how hard this is because I think I have a few in my book and I thought I went through it with a fine tooth comb. At the end, I was asking my husband to put me out of my misery).

I’ll address issues in more detail in later blogs.

The MOST important thing - keep on writing, even when you yourself is thinking this is crap.

Why self-publish?

Waiting for Appa was pretty much in this manuscript form since 2004. I tried many, many times to find an agent, but there was something about this book that just didn't quite make it (a couple of agents read the manuscript twice, after rewrites). Even with all that heartache and frustration, I never considered the option of self-publishing because of the stigma of it being a "vanity." Well, at least not until 2009.

When my first book landed an agent in 2000, it made it to five publishing houses (Penguin, Random House, Harper-Collin, Morrow, and can't remember the 5th one). It got rejected, but one of the editors who read the 1st manuscript said that she'd be willing to read the 2nd one if I ever wrote one. So, without an agent, I sent her the manuscript in 2005. It took her a little over a year to read it and sent it back with a nice rejection letter. But the letter was so encouraging that I spent the next two years trying, once again, to find an agent while attending a writer's conference and reading as much as I can about writing, selling, and most importantly, landing an agent. Well, I still couldn't find an agent and December of 2008 was one of the most miserable time periods in my life because I felt that I need to make a decision soon. It's hard to own up to the fact that you just don't have what it takes to live your dream.

I was raised in a Presbyterian home. My grandmother proudly proclaiming to me when I was young that I came from three generation of Christian women (I don't know what she would think of my beliefs right now, though). Anyhow, in January 2009, I started praying earnestly - not for some agent to pick me up, but 1) for a sign, and 2) for my heart to accept no as answer (I was giving myself three months). Yes isn't the only way God answers prayers. No is an answer.

As I was going through this, I thought of different ways to market my book and picked two writers I didn't consider before and a third one just because I liked her book. I began digging into their first books, their publishing house, their agents and editors and guess what I've found? The two writers I picked self-published their first books (Richard Paul Evans and William P. Young). And Lalita Tademy had considered self-publishing initially. I thought wow, all three leading to self-publishing.... Hm.... But I still resisted. Then on January 31, I was surfing the web and found an article on Time.com. I can't remember the exact title, but it went something like this...Wild, Wild West of Self-publishing. The article was saying that self-publishing is becoming respectable and that it functions like a minor league to the major league baseball. The good ones percolate up and get picked up. It show cased Lisa Genova who self-published her book through iUniverse and now signed a big contract. Well, that did it for me. I've been praying for a sign and here were four big ones. On February 3, I made a call to iUniverse and here I am.

I don't know where I would be if the signs said no. I probably revised my resume and may have gone back to work in the high tech industry. I don't know.... Maybe the answer still could be no at the end of all this. No matter what the path, I would like to think that God, the universe, whatever you might call it wanted me to learn something in the process.