Online Marketing

A friend of mine asked me the other day if I knew anything about viral marketing. First I had to laugh out loud, then I answered, "If I had known anything about viral marketing, would my book be still languishing in a hair's breadth above obscurity?"

In the last week, I've gotten a couple of emails and a phone call from someone who wants to help me market my book. I've ignored the emails and he finally called me. The thing was...when I started asking him questions, he could barely answer my questions in English. He kept referring me to a website and wanting to schedule an appointment with a senior consultant. I declined because I thought if this website or whatever couldn't even find someone who spoke English fluently to talk to writers (who tend to use words well and probably love words in general), there's absolutely no hope of this thing succeeding.

So,after the phone conversation, I checked the website out and it seems like it charges money for what's readily available out there as far as marketing through a website or having your own website. It also charged money (more than iUniverse does) for mass press release emailings of your book (my previous readers will know what an utter failure this is. DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY THIS WAY. If you want to see what I got for my money, go check out my previous posts. I think the title is something like...What I got for my $300 or something like that).

I don't know about viral marketing and I am trying to figure that out, but I do know of a couple of websites that I think are awesome as far as getting your free "author" page.

1. Amazon.com's author central. I think this is great because this is where the book lovers come to buy their books. If a lot of them are like me, they'd check out the author pages, too. So, I think it's definitely worth checking it out.

2. Did I tell you I LOVE goodreads.com. Besides giving authors a good "author" page, you can list your books under their giveaway section. This always draws a lot of attention. I know. I don't know how many of these convert to actual sales, but I love this site and you should check it out.

3. You could buy your web domain for pittance. I bought mine for waitingforappa.com and jenniferrkim.com. Haven't done much with it, yet, but they are mine.

4. Your name. Your book. Your image. You are a brand. You are valuable. Brand it well. Safeguard it and protect it.

5. For me, I'm not sure how effective social networks are. I don't know. Maybe I'm not that social....

I know there are many other good book sites, but I haven't had the time to check them out. I need to. Once I do it, I'll let you know. It's the full time mom thing that gets in the way of working on these more, but I'm not complaining. I just try to pick my battles or pick my low hanging fruit.

Finished!

Hurray! The first draft of Kwangsook (the main character's name) is finished! I do have a title for this book, but it would give away too much to reveal it right now. So, I'm just going to use the main character's name which means Virtuous Light in Korean (based on Chinese characters).

This was the first book I wrote, before Waiting for Appa, but it's an epic. After getting a lot of negative feedback on the book length alone (~550 pages), I've decided to work on a shorter, more manageable book. I did have an agent for this book before and she dubbed it Gone with the Wind Korean style, but I'm not sure about that description.... Anyhow, it's also the first book of a trilogy, so I've got a lot of work ahead of me to finish off this trilogy well.

I do have a lot of problems though. I still don't like the ending very much. You see, I can forgive a mediocre book if it finishes well. No matter how slow, how boring, it is, if I got passed 100 pages, I'll most likely read on. And if the ending is good, I forget about all the other things and rejoice in the great ending. So, I want a great ending for my book. I want my reader to forgive me of a lot of flaws if I give them a great ending. I'm not sure if I'm being too tough on myself, but I want a better ending. I hope something will come to me soon.

I've decided not to work on this book for two weeks. My dear friend will read the third section (she's read the first two sections already) and give me feedback. I don't know how long that will take, but I'm giving myself two weeks away so that I can look at the book with some fresh eyes. I get too familiar with the material and I can't catch anything. So, in the two weeks I've decided to take a break, I'm going to work on the 3rd book of the Gorgoyian Chronicles for my son. Hopefully, I'd have enough written to have it done by Christmas for him. My son told me to work on this series before anything because it'd surely bring me success which had eluded me so far. I have an uncanny feeling that he's going to be right and he's going to spend the rest of his life reminding me of that. That would be really funny.

Things I need to do for Waiting for Appa:

1. I really need to schedule some books signings soon. It's just that I haven't been too motivated for several reasons....

2. Need to craft a letter/email to community colleges/adult schools for book talk/book signing opportunities.

3. Continue looking into contact person for the community colleges/adult schools book talk/book signing opportunities.

4. Work on branding ideas for Waiting for Appa as well as Jennifer R. Kim as whole. What immediate message do I want to send?

5. Work on website layout and web content ideas.

Did I mention that I'm a full-time mom with two young kids who is looking for a job currently? I'm not sure how I'm going to find the time to do everything, but I will eventually.... It's all a matter of setting priorities, I guess.

Late night/early morning inspirations

I wonder if most writers are insomniacs.... I certainly am and what's worse, I'm also a light sleeper. So, I have a lot of sleep related issues. Last night was one of those nights when I woke up for no apparent reason and couldn't go back to sleep. By the time I decided to come down to the living room, an hour had passed already.

I came down, sat with my laptop trying to solve my ending dilemma. I'm struggling with the last chapter (or possibly last two chapters) of my new book. It's just not strong enough. OR as strong as I want it to be and I was completely lost as to how to fix that problem. Well, last night, an idea finally came to me to fix the problem at ~5:20 am in the morning! I quickly jot it down in my notebook and tried to get some sleep. I'm a stay-at-home mom who needs to be functional in the morning. This is why the idea still needs to be written into the book.

The problem is this. My book is about lives of women, with historical events anchoring the book. At the end of the book, I'm dealing with the Korean War and the more I learn about it, the more fascinating it gets. Anyhow, the whole Korean War is in effect derailing my book. It's taking the story away from the women and I want a more elegant way of weaving the men's stories from the Korean War and the women's stories from home. I just need time to write the final couple of chapters (and it's the most precious commodity).

I wonder if it's like that for most of the writers...the best ideas come at the most inconvenient moments of the day. Well, at least I've got my fix.

Waiting for Appa update:

I had a great talk at the New Haven Unified School District's Adult School class on Monday. I was very excited to be there. I sent the instructor a review copy of my book and she had used it to teach her class spelling, vocabulary, and grammar. The instructor was gracious and the students were attentive. They had a lot of good questions for me and what overwhelmed me was the fact that every single people there put in a whole day's of work before coming to school that evening. What an honor to be there!

I was inspired by them. I have so much respect for them. They reminded me of my parents who had a great work ethic and a tremendous drive to make something of themselves. They laid the foundation for me to pursue my dreams. I need to do more of these talks....

Love of words and battle scenes

I guess it seems natural that an avid reader and writer would love words. I do. Not only that, but I want to understand where these words come from and how they all connect to one another.

Many scholars have studied the connections between Sanskrit and languages of the western world (Latin, English, Spanish, etc.), but what I find fascinating is the connections from all over the world.

Here are my examples:

Appa in Korean means daddy, but not in a childish sense. It's a more intimate way of saying dad. I still call my dad "appa."

Abba in Hebrew, from what I understand, is like the Korean use of appa.

Baba in Chinese is the same.

Appa has the same meaning in Hindi as in Korean (my neighbor told me).

Oppa in Dutch means...grandfather.

Oppa in Korean means older brother (from a younger sister to an older brother).

Umma/omma in Korean means mommy, but not in a childish sense. Again, it's a more intimate way to say mom. I still call my mom "umma."

Om is Egyptian language (Arabic) is mother.

Umma has the same meaning in Hindi as in Korean.

Aren't these connections just wonderful to think about? Korean to Chinese to Hindi, I can sort of explain away. But to go on to Hebrew, Dutch, and Arabic? I would love to have enough time to follow this thread, but I don't. If any of you know of anything regarding this, please let me know.

In some broader sense, this does make sense to me. Mommy and Daddy are the two people we all learn, very quickly, to rely on and call for help. So, it does make sense to me that they should be based on the easiest sounds we could make as infants.

Current book update:

Took me two days to write one chapter (7 pages long). I had expected more, but I just couldn't do it. Maybe it's because I don't write that kind of books, but it was incredibly difficult to write a sequence of battle scenes. I thought, heck, there are history books where I could get the facts from. How difficult could it be to write a chapter about Pusan Perimeter? Well, I applaud all those writers who write this stuff everyday.

To write this chapter, I had to read a lot about the Korean war, battle for Korea, Pusan Perimeter, etc. One thing I have to say is that I came away with a profound sense of gratitude for all those who gave their lives to save Republic of Korea. Maybe that's why it was so hard to write it.... Every picture I saw, I was thinking - you were someone's beloved son, husband, brother, uncle, etc. Thank you.

Ugh! I gotta start all over again.

I spent last two days writing a chapter. A difficult chapter that details the beginnings of the Korean War. After two days of working on it and having only 5 pages to show for it, I came to a horrible conclusion - I need to scrap this and start all over again. Even though I'm emotionally attached to this and like every word in the chapter (yes, because I wrote it), my book would be better WITHOUT it. The horror!

My first draft is almost done, except for the last 1/5 of the book which deals with the Korean War. I've done enough research (I think...) and I'm ready to write, but I want to make this section dynamic. I mean, how can a war, any war be boring and static? But the engineer (the analytical geek) in me wants to cover it from the beginning and that's what I've done. But I know, in my heart, that's the boring part that my editor will tell me to cut it. I can see the conversation in my head (this is the editor who challenged me to cut 50 pages to 3 pages. I did it. I wasn't happy about having to do it. But she was right. It made the book better).

"Jennifer, you can do this. You can cut this to...0 pages!"

"Uh...uh, but it tells a beautiful story of the beginnings of the Korean War."

"But it doesn't add anything to the story. In fact, it SLOWS down the story. Cut it. It won't make any difference to your book."

That's the sad truth. It won't make any difference to my book. So, I'm saving her the time to tell me to cut it when I eventually hire her to do a final read through. I guess I'm learning something, or remembering something my editor's been trying to teach me for a long time.

1. Make every sentence earn the right the occupy the valuable space in my book.

2. Make a dynamic start by starting in the middle of the action (this is a real challenge for me because I love 1200+ page books where you get gnats ass detail about everything. But I know most readers out there don't want that. So, I'm saving my special edition of gnats ass detail of this book for myself and a very select friends who appreciate that sort of thing).

Moments of Laughter

I'm trying, once again (nth time, I stopped counting after my 5th attempt a while back), to schedule a book signing at a Borders store in my own town. Because my book doesn't have a BINC#, it's hard to find, even on their own computer data base (although it shows up on their online store). I haven't figured out how to get a BINC# because I haven't had the opportunity to speak to a real live person about it. So, here I am. Doing my own search to 1)make sure it's on there, and 2) more importantly, they can find it. Don't get me wrong. People I spoke to were very nice and trying to be helpful, but it's the process that's cumbersome and confusing. So, I'm waiting, once again, but I am determined to win this battle.

As I was waiting, I thought I'd check Barnes and Noble and Amazon. On Amazon, now only could you buy my book for $13.50, but you can also buy a signed copy of my book from between $19.98 and $25.00. That gets me laughing out loud because I can't believe there's someone (two people) out there charging extra for my signature. It's flattering, but very funny and uplifting (in some weird sense). So, I guess my signature, at this point, is worth at least $6.48. But since these have been there for months now, it could be the same two books languishing in someone's garage. So, it's higly likely that my signature, at this point, is worth nothing. I'm still laughing about this.

Updates from my current book:

I've never been really interested in Korean history. I've read all I could on Irish, English, Egyptian, Mayan, Incan, Sumerian, etc. histories. With this current book, I'm looking more into Korean history and I'm proud to say that I'm Korean. We've been through so much. I didn't know this, but after the Korean War, Korea and Kenya had the same GDP in the early 1950's. It's amazing where Korea is now today, but I credit much of that with the Cold War and the incredible amount of aid America had given Korea (thanks to Russia, China, and North Korea). I wonder if Korea and Kenya had switched places, would it languish in third world status today?

A New Beginning

I haven't blogged since May to early June because I was in "depth of despair" as Anne Shirley would put it. I'm not prone to melodramatics, but when I want to, I can really get into it. I crashed into this wall called reality and learned that what I hoped for will take much longer to happen, if at all.

I spent a carefree summer with my kids and family, on vacation or just busy at home. But one thing I didn't stop was writing. I'm actually quite happy with what I have so far and I can't wait to start querying (but this will probably happen next year).

Here are my Waiting for Appa update:

1. I had a nice article written in a Korean-American parenting magazine. It was really nicely done. I need to make a copy of that and post it on the web somewhere.

2. I'm talking with an ESL teacher to go and speak to her class about my book and myself sometime in September. I'm also hoping to schedule something with a high school in Hayward, CA for a book talk as well.

3. I'm talking with a former high school friend of mine to help me figure out what I need for a decent website. What I have right now is not even pathetic (that's how bad it is).

4. I'm going to start scheduling book talks at bookstores again. I need to get going on this or this year will be all booked.

I started looking for a job in earnest today. My average ~$30/quarter royalties just isn't going to cut it for retirement and college for my kids. I don't know what I wish for anymore. I need to be true to myself and be the best writer I can be for this next one.

A good friend just send me an email about why I haven't blogged. I had planned to start this week and what a coincidence! I'm going to try to blog at least a couple of times a week.

I'm an avid reader. A friend of mine described me as a voracious reader. Mind you, who'd eat books? So little nutritious value. I'm actually thinking about creating a blog about my book reviews. I'd only write about ones I love. I don't know. I want to keep up with this one more regularly first.

I love Goodreads.com. You can find me there.

Thanks for hanging in there with me.