$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.

My audience

From the beginning, agents, editors, and publishers have asked me who my "reader" would be. They told me to visualize and write for that person.

Well, I learned, almost every time I have a book signing, that there is a flaw to approaching it like this. Because there are always one or two people who are so far away from that reader profile that you'd never think this person would read a book like mine. Now, one or two people out of 3 to 14 is a lot.

So, I'd like to concentrate on just writing well. Write what I love. Write what I find interesting. And I pray and hope that my reader will find me. It's such a pleasant surprise and a learning experience to encounter these outliers.


I had a book signing today. And I sold out! But before I get too excited, I sold out three books. Between employee transitions and a book order glitch, no one noticed that my books weren't there until...this morning. However, they were able to gather three books from surrounding stores and I signed those. I handed out my business cards, but I don't know how many of those would convert to book orders.

A flip side to this is that they are holding two book fairs with local high schools, and the community relations manager is trying to tie me in with those book fairs (I'm in the process of scheduling book talks at a high school in Hayward and a couple of ESL classes in the same area). So, it was ying yang kind of day, but aren't all our days like that?

I think it's all a matter of perspective. Half full or half empty. I'd like to think mine is always half full. I overwhelmingly choose to be happy (on most days when I'm not confronted with the dismal realities of trying to make money writing).

I guess I am digging myself out of my funk, at least a little.

Hazards of Research

I knew I shouldn't have done it, but I wanted to be able to describe the Japanese militray uniforms more in detail. So, with great hesitation and trepidation, I opened a book which I promised never to read again - The Rape on Nanking by Iris Chang.

This is not a particularly a well-written book, but it is a very important book. Especially with the denials of these events ever taking place from the Japanese government (at least some parts of the government and no real owning up to it as a nation like Germany) I think everyone who has the constitution should read it. Once should be enough. It's not even really the words, but the pictures that leave a series of disturbing and searing images that keep you awake at nights.

Now, why did I do this? I'm working on another book and the feedback was - need more history to anchor the story. And since my book spans from early 20th century to Korean war, this research definitely was required. But having said that, I'm going to need weeks of light, happy readings to make up for this one.

A matter of perspective

I've recently decided to go back to work (yes, back to Engineering). I'm not giving up. I'll still be working on marketing Waiting for Appa and working on my next book. I'm just not making the progress I had hoped and I'm running out of things to look into....

I guess that's the most frustrating part of all this - being self-published. I don't know what I need to know and even worse, I don't know what I don't know. So..., once I figure this out, I'll post it here.

I'm in a funk and I can't seem to dig myself out. I'm not sure I'm trying that hard. Ok. I'll try harder tomorrow. I try to remember, it always gets better.

Editing

I love writing. I think I'll wither away and die if I couldn't write. I've written on pieces of paper, envelopes, napkins, gum wrappers, etc. But editing. Editing I hate. There is no end to editing. You can always find one more way to phrase something you've already changed many times over.

I've been editing my first book once again and I hate all the cutting I have to do. It's already at almost 400 pages and I have to cut it back to 300, add more material to make it almost 400, then cut it back to about 350. So, there's a lot of work to do. But after about two weeks of doing this, I think I'm getting pretty good at it, but more importantly, it doesn't pain me as much as it used to.

I remember when I was working with an editor to cut my manuscript down, my editor told me to shorten 50 page scene where a woman is dying. She's a minor character, but a very important one. My editor sends me an email saying - I bet you can do it in 5. I thought 5 what? 5 tries? Then my heart dropped. 5 pages? Finally, although we've pretty much communicated solely via email, I called her. She answered, then said, "I was wrong." I thought. Thank goodness. She's got to be reasonable about this. Then she continued, "I think you can do it in 3." Yikes! Well the thing is, as painful as that was, I did get it done in 4 pages. It was painful to cut out the 50 pages (my editor agreed that they were beautifully written 50 pages, but they were ultimately cut), but it saved me 46 pages. So, I try to remember this lesson and keep cutting.

Things are slowly progressing on the marketing and sales front, but what I need is a miracle. A miracle like the one that Christopher Paolini had when a random 15 year old boy picked up Eragon, read it and told his father what a wonderful book it was. The boy's father was either an agent or a publisher. Christopher Paolini was still going from a library to library and bookstore to a bookstore doing readings (dressed in costumes) when this miracle happened. So, I'm praying for a miracle. The thing is I believe in miracles and my life is full of them. Hopefully, chances are good.

I truly believe that no one ever goes into writing for money (there are hundreds of better ways) but for the love of it. Well, the love it, weighed against the reality of having children, saving for college & retirement, etc., could run out enough to get me back into the work force. If that does happen anytime soon, I'll just have to do it part, part, part, part-time. In the mean time, I'm praying desperately for a miracle.

Book talk at the Hayward Library

I had a good time at the Hayward Library book talk on Saturday. I was nervous and excited, but the first person who showed up for my talk really helped me feel comfortable.

I had nine people come for the book talk (1 came late and 2 left early) and had very positive and encouraging responses to the talk. What was so wonderful was that there was a high school teacher in the audience and after the talk, she asked if I would come and speak to the students at her school. To top it off, she asked me what my fee was. Fee? I'm praying for opportunities to get my book exposure! When I told her I'd come for free, she asked me if I could come for a whole day of classes. Of course, I said yes.

I'm not known for my patience and this publishing business is almost all about patience, up to this point. I hope my patience will pay off, in time.

I've been reluctant to do book talks at book stores because I'm a complete unknown. My thought was...who'd come to a book talk by someone they don't even have a name recognition, but maybe I should consider it....

Now, digressing and going back to the exercise in futility...I'm thinking about trying to crack the Borders stores book signing process once again. Or should I say enough is enough?