Oh My God, Just Give It Up Already

Hello, Author. We need to talk. Seriously. You've sent me the two versions of your synopsis for the latest book you are trying to inflict on the world. And they are terrible. (Yes, I will come back and post separately about the horror of a long, boring synopsis later.) But that's not the real problem. Your biggest problem is that you want an agent, but you've never been published.

For countless years now you've toiled away on screenplays and novels, never giving a care to getting another poem or short story published. You couldn't blog to save your life (or sell your other novel). You haven't even written a letter to the editor in two decades. When was the last time you were published? (Not counting Lulu.) Agents and editors want to work with writers who've been published, just as writers want to work with agents and editors who've actually published books. You could have the greatest synopsis in the world, but these people want nothing to do with you because you have no record of playing nice with others.

So what do you now? It's really kind of late to start working on building up credentials, don't you think? There must be something else you could do with all this money you waste on postage. Surely there's another hobby that interests you?

Publicity (and Sales)

Dear Reader,

I was completely heart broken the other day. The author decided she needed to delete the blogs she had created. They were genius and I had not yet made copies of them. How was I ever going to be able to share them with you? Luckily, after some digging, I found a link to a copy someone else had made. Yeah, it's so good *multiple* strangers took notice. I haven't been here in a long time, but, oh boy, what a post we have today...

The author's plan in self-publishing was to sell so many copies on Lulu that Simon & Schuster would take notice and decide they must buy the rights. Like the author's home phone would ring one day and on the other end someone would say, "This is Mr. Schuster. My good friend Oprah just lent me her copy of your novel. We MUST publish it. How does a bagillion dollars sound?"

Lulu promised world-wide sales (that is how the Information Super Highway works—globally), but this wasn't moving enough copies of the book. In fact, there were no sales whatsoever over the summer. I tried to explain to the author that she needed to create her own fan base. She needed to promote herself. The cheapest way to do that would be to go online and find chat rooms and message boards and befriend people and make some sales. I mean, the topics of her book are divorce and caring for elderly parents. How many forums must there be for those two groups?

She didn't understand, though. First she "played the email game" and then she hijacked her son's Tumblr account. Then she went back to whining to relatives in person.

As it turns out, all this started days before she was supposed to become a grandmother. For those on the up and up, yeah, I was about to give birth for the first time any day and these are the emails she sent me ABOUT HER BOOK SALES...

-- 9/5/09

Hi

I wanted to tell you how I've been trying to sell my book.  What I've been doing is sending out e-mails to addresses I make up on my own.  At first I was just attaching words from the Thesaurus to one of five e-mail companies.  I created over 5,0000 of these messages.  I didn't sell any books.

(I know what you're thinking: It's obvious she spent many years working in legitimate marketing departments.)

I decided to change my plan.  Now I'm sending the e-mails to addresses that begin with a woman/girl's name.  I figure that might mean I'll reach a real female audience. 

I have no idea where my first e-mails went.  I began to wonder, since the addresses were all so strange.  I mean I was sending to places like "artisticgirl@yahoo.com."  Who can say where that e-mail went?

I actually got responses to four of my first e-mails.  Two women sent back an automatic response inviting me to join their sex club.  One woman wrote back and asked me to take her off my list.  The fourth one was the strangest.  Someone wrote back to me and sent me this message:

   没有您的信息,我的生活将乏味；没有您的支持,我的生命缺乏灿烂。谢谢您!

          联系电话

Of course, I don't know Chinese, so I have no idea what this message says.  I assume she also asked me to take her off my list.

So, I've been having fun.  I'm hoping the women's names will get me some buyers.  I don't know how else I can sell this book.

Talk to you soon,

[author]

You can imagine my response here. Something about WHY ARE YOU SPAMMING PEOPLE?

-- 9/6/09

Hi

I have a special web site set up for my e-mail game.  It's not my [real] account.

Why would the site stop working?

One thing I didn't tell you about my e-mail adventure is that when I sent those messages to 5,0000 people or so, I used a subject line that said, "Oprah Winfrey refused to help me."  Then in the letter, I explained that Oprah wouldn't read my book.  When I decided to start with the woman's names instead of thesaurus words, I changed the subject line.  I thought the people who like Oprah might be offended by my subject line. I also thought a lot of people might think that note was a scam.  My new subject line is "Message about love and marriage."  Do you think that's any better?  Do you have any suggestions for a subject line?

I hope you're feeling great.

love,

[author]

Did Oprah have any idea how many unsolicited, unpublished manuscripts she and Harpo would receive after she created a book club? The author knows Oprah isn't a publisher, but she decided to send Oprah and her producers separate copies of the manuscript. Only the producers responded with a form letter stating that they do not look at such material. Needless to say, the author took this personally.

-- 9/8/09

Hi

I've come up with a new idea. First though I think I should say I think you're right.  When people see a note from a stranger, they probably just delete it.  My subject line may do no good at all.

My new idea is to add an excerpt from my novel to my letter.  A guy who came to our writing group and tried to tell us how to land an agent suggested an excerpt is a great way to sell a book.  It lets people get an idea of what kind of story you're writing.

The email then launches into the excerpt. There is no closing. You, dear reader, will get to see the excerpt later in this post. For now, though, I will say I had to write the author to warn her that the use of "nipple" and other such words probably landed all of her brilliant marketing straight in spam and trash folders. I again suggested she create a blog and work on developing an internet personality for herself. Two days later I give birth.

-- 9/17/09

Hi

Thanks for sending the baby pictures.  I hope you'll keep them coming.  He looks adorable.  What a cutey!  I like the one where he's scrunching up his nose.

I'm writing to tell you my woes with the e-mail business.  I signed up on Tumblr like you suggested.  I don't think it will do me any good. Even though several people signed up to follow me after I signed up to follow a couple hundred, only one wrote to me to say he was interested in my book.  So I don't think I will make many sales through Tumblr.

Having no help from Tumblr made me decide to go back to my own e-mail address business.  I sent myself a note with the excerpt you saw to see if Yahoo dumped it into my spam folder.  When I checked my spam folder because it didn't show up in my ordinary mailbox, I was astounded.  I discovered that Yahoo has been sending a ton of "mail failure" letters to my spam box. I have received thousands of rejections in the spam box.  So this means thousands of my e-mails never went to the destinations I typed.

I figure I may be lucky if 20 of the 300 e-mails I send out with each round make it to a real person.  Nevertheless, I plan to keep trying the name game with the e-mails.  That's because when I went to my Lulu site, it said I had over a thousand hits on my book site.  Those people must have come from the e-mails I'm sending out.

I don't know if I've sold any books.  I don't want to look for another month or so.

I am having all kinds of problems with Yahoo.  It gets upset with me for sending out so many e-mails.  It sends me a message that forces me to type in a code before it will tell me if it sent my e-mails.  This slows things down in a big way. 

Sometimes Yahoo does other things, too.  It's very temperamental.  Today it refused to accept the code when I typed it in.  It kept giving me the same error message over and over again, while it demanded I type in a new code.  Obviously, I couldn't send out any e-mails this afternoon.

I've decided to stay away from Yahoo and the e-mail game for the next 36 hours.  I'm going to give Yahoo a chance to cool down and miss me.

Nothing else is new.

love,

[author]

This is getting good, right?

-- 10/2/09

Hi

I am totally bummed out. When I went to check my book on Lulu, it said I had over a thousand  hits.  I figured that meant over a thousand people looked at my book.  I was expecting a lot of them to buy it.

Today I went to check my revenue. I  haven't sold any books since a couple family members bought them last month.  I have only sold a total of 4 books. 

This is bad news.  It appears I am not selling any copies by sending out my e-mails each day. I was sure I was selling something more.  I'm so bummed.

Nothing else new.

love,

[author]

So by this point we give up trying to talk to each other about selling the book. She is determined to use the Girl Scouts' door-to-door method as a model rather than Dooce or other bloggers who sell books. I think she's completely forgotten about her blogs because if she has decided to no longer care about her novel, then obviously all of her blogs have also disappeared.

When I pointed out what I thought was a hilarious testimonial page for a screenwriting teacher, the author suddenly became very concerned about her abandoned blogs. The screenwriting teacher's site quotes the author's very sarcastic feedback about how brilliant he is, but she cannot remember ever taking this man's class. Therefore he must have stolen the comment. What to do, what to do. She began searching for all her blogs.


Now, here for your pleasure is the amazing copy from the author's blogs (all of them because they all used the same text). Behold and wonder how she is not a part of Oprah's Book Club selections...


(I swear to God I didn't change a word of this.)

Hello everyone,

I am a writer. As a writer, I just published my first book on the Lulu publishing site. The title of my book is [title of my book in all caps].

Now I’m a writer who is trying to figure out how to sell my book. I’m afraid Lulu won’t be much help with this. They say they market it worldwide, but I’m not sure how they do that. Readers can download a copy this writer made at Lulu for only $5. If you want to have me e-mail you the first chapter, you can reach me at [email address]@yahoo.com

I am a writer who can give you the synopsis of the book here:

In this first novel, [author] tells a tender, sensitive tale about a dysfunctional family facing a variety of problems. The biggest problem involves the main characters, sisters Angela and Bev. They are taking care of their elderly, bedridden mother. Angela wants Mama moved to a nursing center. Bev wants her to stay at home where she can care for Mama and pursue a passion for positive thinking. The sisters fight about this problem all the time. Set in the posh town of La Greer Park, Angela works as a wedding coordinator. She has problems with her own marriage, since she suspects her husband has cheated and this is what makes her move in with Mama and Bev. Add to this relationships with teenaged children that don’t always please Angela. It’s a novel that will be relished by anyone taking care of an elderly parent, as well as anyone facing divorce. It’s a timely novel with many twists and turns that force a person to think long and hard about the value of marriage and family. This story is told with a unique voice that will be remembered well after the final page is reached. It’s a story that will teach a valuable lesson about love and what we all need to know to be successful at it.

I can also give you an excerpt here:

When Brandy and Trevor appeared for their next regularly scheduled appointment with Angela, no one said a thing about the way their last visit to Angela’s office had ended. Instead, Angela greeted them with a more cheerful reminder that their big day happened to be less than two weeks away.

“We’re ready,” Brandy said.

“Speak for yourself,” said Trevor.

“Is the carriage all set?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Did they say who the driver will be?”

“I think the name they gave me was Marcia Somebody. Do you mind having a female driver?”

“She minds not having Jason show up at the church.”

“Stop it, Trevor.”

“Why? It’s true. Tell her about your bachelor party.”

“It wasn’t a bachelor party.”

“What would you call it?”

“I’m a girl. Remember? It’s called a bachelorette party.”

“Whatever. The point is I’ll have to get even now. Okay?”

“There’s nothing to get even for.”

“My ass.” He sat forward, braced his hands against the edge of Angela’s desk. “Did you happen to hear what Brandy and her little friends did at this party?”

Angela shook her head, almost too afraid to ask what might have happened. She’d actually seen two weddings bite the dust due to the shenanigans at such supposedly innocent gatherings.

It wasn’t easy explaining to two hundred wedding guests that you’d decided you couldn’t marry a man who enjoyed licking lime Jello off the flesh of a naked woman he’d known less than an hour. Not easy at all. Especially when those guests included your own great-grandparents and two aunts who were the oldest nuns in the city of Milwaukee.

“Brandy and the girls got royally soaked.”

“Like you’ve never been drunk,” Brandy said, as she examined the new paint job on her nails.

“Yeah. Brandy and all her little girlfriends went for a ride. Down Main Street.”

“I wasn’t driving though. We had a designated driver. And all she drank was one glass of wine.”

“They took off their shirts.”

Angela glanced at Brandy, saw her bite her lip to keep her evil little smile from spreading across her perfectly powdered puss.

According to Trevor’s miserable story, which he first heard from his cousin, who happened to be one of the bridesmaids who attended the gathering, taking their shirts off did not mean these girls were riding through town in their Victoria’s Secret’s finest. It meant they were fully exposed. Naked to the night air, arms spread wide, available for inspection.

“There she was, for everyone to see, with her nipples aimed like two happy astronauts—straight at the moon.”

Brandy roared with delight at that comment. “Two happy astronauts! That’s just so Trevor!”

Trevor continued. “And she’s sitting up in this big old convertible, yelling to one and all,‘I’m getting married. Take a look while you can!’”

“I was only kidding,” Brandy said. “Just having some fun. And it only lasted a couple moments, then we put our shirts back on.”

“Yeah. But you took yours off again real soon.”

“Not for very long.”

“Long enough to give Jason the wrong idea.”

Angela gasped. This seemed to get worse by the moment. She’d never heard of a bride inching the envelope quite so far.

“He looked, but he didn’t touch,” Brandy told Trevor.

Trevor sat back in his chair, fixed his eyes on Brandy. “I’ll get even. You wait.”

“I told you, there’s nothing to get even for.”

“My pals are bringing in a stripper straight from D.C. And you know about the women there. I hear she can do more with two little grapes and a pair of high heels to make a man happy than twenty women in string bikinis.”

“She’s allowed to strip, but nothing else,” said Brandy.

“We’ll see.”

“Those are my rules. No touching.”

“What you don’t know, I don’t need to tell. Those are my rules.”

Brandy leaned toward him, almost chin to chin. “No touching her, Trevor.”

“If I’m drunk, I can’t be held responsible.”

“No touching!” Brandy repeated, jabbing two fingers into his chest.

Trevor grabbed her hand, squeezed her fingers till they turned red. “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”

She yanked her hand free of his, got to her feet, smoothed down the wrinkled, white mini skirt that had become twisted about her thighs. “If you can’t promise no touching, we’re through.”

“Now, Brandy,” Angela tried to interject, but Brandy wasn’t listening.

“I can’t promise anything right now,” Trevor warned Brandy.

“Then consider us divorced.”

“We’re not even married!”

Brandy grabbed her purse from the floor, turned toward the office door.

I am a writer who hopes you like it and might want to buy a copy. I would appreciate any advice on how to sell it.

writer writer writer writer writer writer writer writer writer writer writer writer writer writer writer writer writer writer writer writer writer writer writer writer writer writer writer writer writer writer writer writer writer writer

Wedding Coordinators and Other Employment Opportunities

You can all breathe a sigh of relief. I found my copy of the novel. Meanwhile, though, I could have been writing about how I started watching shows like Whose Wedding is it Anyway? and Wedded to Perfection to try to learn just how much the author missed as it's pretty obvious she has no idea what Angela should be doing as a wedding coordinator. The author is not a wedding coordinator and did not befriend any wedding coordinators. However, as I type this, I'm realizing she missed the mark with the unemployed sister, too—and the author has been unemployed.

That's not very fair to Bev. She's not unemployed. She's supposed to be taking care of Mama. That's her full time job. Who pays her to do that is very unclear. There are mentions of asking the church for help and how little money they have, but the book doesn't say anything about how the utility bills get paid, the hospital bills, the mortgage... Money simply isn't a concern. But even if I could tell you how the groceries get paid for, I have no idea when those groceries are purchased. It's really unclear how the house isn't falling apart. Bev has plenty of time to make love potions and read tarot cards. She's never faced with a stack of dirty dishes or a floor that needs to be swept or a school project that needs her attention. The weight of the world is not on her shoulders. Bev can go hang out in the garden and take a break from massaging Mama's feet or brushing her hair. Feeding Mama seems to be the only real thing on her to-do list and it always gets done without a problem. It never strikes her just how immensely sad and frustrating it is that she's spooning mash into her mother's limp mouth. She feeds Mama, she brushes her hair, she changes a diaper, she moves on. Her mother's dirty diapers never send her over the edge. She never lashes out at someone who hasn't provoked her because really she's upset that her mother is in diapers and can't talk to her anymore.

Enough about Bev and her lack of problems, though. This was supposed to be an entry about wedding coordinators. I went to Tumblr to start a new blog where I would spend 20 minutes every day writing a novel about a wedding coordinator whose mother has a stroke. But even before I started to do "research," I felt this was just too impossible. The coordinator would be faced at some point with having to give up her clients in order to help her mother.

Angela is supposed to be highly in demand. However, she never seems to be attending to any brides. Her phone never rings. She never has anything she needs to be doing—no linens to look at, no florists to visit, no cakes to taste test. The story is set during the summer. Wedding season. And yet there is nothing to do. I don't think Angela has to love her job—it might be more interesting if she flat out hated brides—but give us something. She's supposed to be planning the most important day in somebody's life and she approaches it like she's ordering takeout because she just doesn't feel like cooking.

All those episodes only made me want to forget about this story (and its potential counterpart on Tumblr) even more. There is more drama in watching these yahoos on TV pick a color for the napkins than there is in the almost 500 pages I read in this novel. Reconciling the woes of a bride who wants to be just plain tacky on her wedding day with the magnitude of a mother who is now in a vegetative state is too much to be a carefree writing exercise. If I were Angela, I would tell the bride to go frack herself, but that's probably because I'd just be angry I couldn't tend to such trivial things as decor on top of trying to heal my mother. And there you have it. A novel. Man versus himself. What happens when Angela is pushed that far? The wedding TV shows and this novel will never tell us.

Oops

Somehow we've misplaced our copy of the novel, which makes it hard for me to directly quote it. That also makes it hard for me to write any posts about it. Hence, there again has been a huge lapse in updates about this novel.

Meanwhile, the author claims she is going to bring the manuscript to her writer's group. This summer. Maybe the end of August. It's always helpful to start looking for feedback after you've published.

The Dog

The other day it occurred to me that there was possibly a worse minor character than Chita. There was a dog. There was. And then there wasn't.

Emmett, the possibly-cheating husband, runs out of the house, all excited by the presence of Angela, the terrible possibly-main character. He needs her to take the dog (a basset hound? named Claxton?) to the vet. Angela seems to care about the dog as much as she cares about her son. (Hint: Not very much.) She invites the son to dinner. Angela never takes the dog to the vet.

I had thought the dog up and disappeared from the story completely after Emmett makes his request, but, no, there's a mention of the dog being on the fishing trip with the guys when Angela sneaks home later in the book. I know. This is either an amazingly thick plot or a ridiculously awful story.

Chita is by far a more offensive character. In the Chita vs. Claxton smackdown, Chita wins.

The Break in Posts

Dear Reader, I'm sorry there was such a delay between posts. Shortly after I posted my thoughts on Chita, the Gungan in-home nurse, the author told me that she planned to no longer work on selling this novel. In one phone call she's telling me about how she's sending excerpts to publishers (because who needs an agent when there are publishers like Lulu?) and then in the next she's saying that she's done with this story all together.

I was so disappointed. Done? I just finished reading this stupid thing. I just started a blog about it. And now you're calling it quits. You're not even calling it quits because you became aware of how stupid your novel is. You're tapping out because you've only sold five copies in as many months. "It's been on Lulu for a while now" was your logic. Really?

So what are you new plans? To start hocking the second worst novel ever. (Until next week when you tell me that you're going back to creating the world's most mediocre screenplay.)

What are my plans? To start reviewing everything I read. And continue explaining why this—the first piece of trash, the one you actually spent money to publish, the one that is printed and bound by a third party and available for purchase—is the worst novel ever. Even if you never understand that point.

Old Notes

I took to transcribing our phone calls some time ago. You want me to call you no more than twice a month, and these calls last a maximum of ten minutes, so it's really not that much work to get a pad of Post-Its and jot down your half of the conversation. It's caused me to say less and less because I'm busy writing,  but you don't really seem to care. You only want soundbites of "what's new."

The other day you wrote me an email to tell me not to call this Sunday (today) because it is Oscar Sunday and you don't want me to interrupt. I went looking for last year's reaction to the ceremony. I mean, I would swear that for the past eight years you've done nothing but complain about how boring the show is. But I couldn't find notes about the Oscars. I found complaints about the Golden Globes and freelance clients and your "stupid" writers' group. But nothing about the Oscars. I would imagine that your renewed interest in the ceremony has something to do with a renewed interest in screenwriting.

As it turns out, I found a set of notes from a night about a year ago when there was no episode of Brothers and Sisters, when ABC "made" you "suffer" through an extra hour of Extreme Makeover Home Edition. ("What do they care? They don't care.") It had to be at least a year ago, before you'd discovered the wonders of Lulu.com. You told me you were "working" on the novel, but you were "not finding much to change."

You were "not finding much to change."

Perhaps this was a different novel? Oh no. This was The Worst Novel Ever that you were "working" on. Because there was not much to change, you were mostly looking for excerpts to send to agents. You had decided that the scene where "they make LOVE" was the way to go. You said this as though it were the most scandalous way of describing raunchy sex. Make LUHV.

In case I didn't know exactly which scene you were talking about—the scene you had been so impressed with when you wrote it in what? 1992? Long before you were aware of Candace Bushnell and the way a certain Samantha would influence how a generation of women viewed sex and sexuality—a scene you described briefly as "the bride and groom have a fight and then make love in the wedding coordinator's office. That's a good one." Oh my god. As I was typing this, I put "on the wedding coordinator's desk." But even that is too graphic for you. No, no. They make luuhv in a room. They don't fuck on someone's desk. Oh my god. Dear readers, you can only imagine how brilliant of a scene this must be. But [author] was still completely impressed with her handiwork more than ten years later.