Speaking Event Test #4: Whole Foods Class

Can you read this sign?.... Me either.

I was hoping to get an idea of which speaking event format would work best for promoting Ecofrugal Baby, and today’s experimental class format gave me some unambiguous results, to say the least. Not a single person showed up to my class at Whole Foods!

I attribute this to several things:

1) I didn’t have any local press for this event, which is one of the main reasons my first book signing was a success.

2) I did less promotional work myself, too, just repeating the promotional techniques that worked the first time for the book signing and blogging about the event and sending out a press release. I suspect this is more than most event hosts do to promote their events, but it felt inadequate.

3) The store did a terrible job of advertising the event. Their promotion consisted of posting the class on their hard-to-read board that is placed by the exit (eliminating any chance of walk-ins as people would only see the sign when leaving–and they refused to angle the board toward the entrance when I asked if that would be possible), listing the class in their newsletter (how many pregnant girls do you know of who are signed up for the Whole Foods email newsletter?), and there were no signs leading to the classroom. In fact, I had a hard time finding it myself, and I was teaching the class! I posted a flyer on the classroom door and in the elevator, to encourage people who made it that far that they were headed in the right direction. Thirty minutes after posting the flyer I got back into the elevator and found it had been taken down. For Pete’s sake. They only announced the event over the store loudspeaker because I asked them to, fifteen minutes before the class was supposed to start.

Visions of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, you know what I mean?

“I finally had to go down to the basement. The plans were in a locked filing cabinet in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door reading ‘Beware of the Leopard.’…”

“The lights had probably gone.”

“So had the stairs!”

4) The primary reason I suspect no one came is that I was charging $30 for this class, which included a copy of the book, or $20 for the class alone. I have noticed a sense of skepticism in the attendees of my talks which fades by the middle of each event, so I think charging up front for this information just doesn’t work because people don’t know ahead of time that the book delivers on its title and is well worth the cost of a class.

In April I will be trying out the final format for this talk: a mom and baby tea at my local Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tearoom, but so far it’s looking like these talks are only worth the time if they come with a speaking fee, which is something most easily arranged at libraries or other venues that host regular talks. I was going to try hosting a paid class out of another location, but given the results of tonight’s class I’m now thinking of skipping that, because I would have even less help promoting the class.

Hey, at least the results were clear, right?

Publishing Contract!

I briefly mentioned this in my last post, but now it’s official: my nonfiction book Ecofrugal Baby: How To Save 70% Off Baby’s First Year was just picked up by a traditional publishing company, Kenrose Media!

I have learned so much by publishing and promoting the book myself so far, but I’m super excited about where this new opportunity can take the book. It will remove some roadblocks for selling the book and give it the credibility and backing of a traditional publisher. I will still be doing a lot of promotional work myself, but now the path is clear and open. According to the publisher I was doing everything right to promote it myself (flattering and encouraging!), but I was discovering along the way that many doors were closed to me–even ones that in theory were open. My POD publisher was painfully slow to get my book into Baker & Taylor to make it available to libraries and bookstores, my options for cover design and layout were limited, and so on. Now we really get to see this book realize its potential!

Part of me feels like this is just a practice run, not the destination. That’s probably appropriate, because most authors have to write several books before really getting noticed. But who knows where this will lead? There certainly is a market out there for this book, and I’m having so much fun blogging and doing speaking engagements. So, now I ramp up to do the promotional work all over again, adding a few new to-dos to the marketing list and scaling up all promotional tools where possible. Wish me luck, and may you start checking big items off your bucket list early in the year, too.

 

Don’t Despise The Day of Small Things

Just a quick post today. A lot has been happening lately with the book, the blog, and my novel in progress (more on that later!) but through all the little steps forward and the big steps forward I have felt in my spirit a repeated reminder:

“Don’t despise the day of small things.”

Big things are coming, and they’re coming soon. I could write so many posts on how I know that, but you’d think me even crazier than you already do, so I’ll skip that part and just tell you that I’m looking forward to an AMAZING year in 2011. But all that success had to start with a seed. And that seed has to sprout before it can bloom. We’re at the sprout stage now. And when I start to get angsty about things not moving forward fast enough, I remind myself to enjoy what may possibly be the last days of the seed stage: I have time to relax. I have relative anonymity (yes, at some point that may go out the window, and I’m feeling good and bad about that).

If you are on your way to big successes, or you hope you are, take the time to enjoy the little steps forward as part of the journey. Someday you’ll look back and remember this time as the last time you had time to relax before the big time hit and your world changed. Your day is coming. Don’t despise the day of small things, which is when you are tested to see if you’re ready to handle more.

Peace!

–Laura

Check Out AnnArbor.com’s Column on My Book, Ecofrugal Baby

Hey everyone,

If you have a minute, check out Heidi Hess Saxton’s parenting column from AnnArbor.com, which yesterday featured my book Ecofrugal Baby! (Some of you may remember the news last year about the demise of The Ann Arbor News: AnnArbor.com is its online replacement–the closest thing I now have to a hometown newspaper.) Details are included in the article on how to attend my book signing either in Ann Arbor or online next Sunday, November 7 at 4 pm. I hope to see you there!

 

–Laura

Would You Attend a VIRTUAL Book Signing?

Click on this image to go to the webstore on 29Diapers.com, where you can order custom autographed copies of Ecofrugal Baby in advance of the November 7 book signing in Ann Arbor.

Now that I have started promoting my new book, Ecofrugal Baby: How To Save 70% Off Baby’s First Year, things are really starting to happen. Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tearoom in Ann Arbor just picked up the title and we’re planning a mom and baby tea for the spring, during which I’ll talk about the main points in the book. And in just 2 weeks, I’m going to be doing a book signing and free talk and VIRTUAL book signing at the Barnes & Noble in Ann Arbor (3235 Washtenaw Ave.) on Sunday November 7, at 4 pm, as part of BN’s National Authors Day.

99% of my online readership is not in the Ann Arbor area, so I set up an online shop on my website 29Diapers.com, through which you can order copies of Ecofrugal Baby with a specific recipient and custom autographed message. If you order the book through the website and don’t specify an autographed message of course I’ll just be creative. I will be signing these books during the actual book signing in Ann Arbor on November 7th, and then shipping them to the buyers directly. Cool, huh? I’m excited about it.

So if you have a pregnant friend or know some new parents who are a little overwhelmed at the cost of having a baby, pick up a copy of this book for them and give them an autographed copy! You could save them up to $7000 off baby’s first year, and you will surely save them a ton of stress. I really wish I’d had a book like this when I was 3 months pregnant.

Blessings! And I hope to see you in Ann Arbor on November 7!

–Laura

I Came So Close To Never Writing Again

I would like to save this post for when I am a famous author being interviewed on NPR, but I’m going to share it with you now, despite my embarrassment, in the hopes that it encourages someone who is afraid to write–or that it helps you encourage someone.

There has been a lot of commentary and response lately to the recent student suicides that were the result of vicious bullying. I also just found out that my 16-year-old brother-in-law, who has aspergers, has been bullied at school and hit his limit last week. Thank God he knows how to flip out or reach out for help without hurting other people. He is a smart, sweet kid, and I hope things get better for him now that everyone is taking the situation seriously.

What most people in my life don’t know is that I was on the receiving end of persistent bullying in junior high. And it almost stopped me from writing for good. What happened to me was so painful to me that even though I wanted to write so badly that it hurt, I just couldn’t trust paper with my inner thoughts again for many years. Fifteen years, to be exact. Bullying made a mess of me. If you’ve ever known me to be prickly or reserved or arrogant or snide or perfectionistic or defensive, this is the root of it all. I am still climbing out of this self-protective hole. But I’m not writing this to get your pity. I’m telling you my story to tell you two ways you can do something about bullying and keep other kids from going through everything I had to to get back to my center and start writing again.

It doesn’t really take much to convince a twelve-year-old girl that she’s ugly and worthless. Being ignored, purposely excluded from groups, or mercilessly teased on a daily basis will definitely do the trick. And unlike my brother-in-law, I didn’t know how to ask for help, because I was embarrassed that the bullying was going on at all. After a while it sank into me, became a part of my identity. I remember a time when I told myself to memorize the appearance of my hands, because they were the only thing about myself that I didn’t hate. But one day my mom’s friend paid me a compliment about my skin, which meant a lot to me because she could see that I had a lovely peachy skin tone even though my skin was broken out. And that was what I wanted most of all–for the people around me to see through my glasses and bad haircut and bad skin and value the person I was inside. Taking a giant leap of faith, I wrote down these thoughts in my binder one night. And a few days later, I took another leap of faith and threw this writing out in the trash can at school along with some old homework. I told myself it was paranoid to think that the mean girls in my class would go through the trash to see what I had thrown away. I mean, come on! I decided I just wasn’t going to be that paranoid person, and I went ahead and cleaned out my binder, threw the papers in the trash.

The mean girls pawed through the trash and found my inner thoughts. And then they shared them with the twelve-year-old boys (what could be worse?). And the boys read them in front of their math class (oh, that is worse). And then they passed the note around and read it in front of other classes, none of which I was in (still worse: I was oblivious to why boys were jokingly flirting with me in the halls for two days). And then when I found out what was going on, on March fifteenth (beware the Ides of March, right? Of course I remember the day. I remember what I was wearing. I remember everything.), they passed the paper on to other schools in town. I asked for it back. They said they didn’t know where it had gone. They were lying. It’s still out there somewhere.

To my creative openness, this was a near death blow. And some kid out there is going through the exact same thing right now, and maybe they are supposed to be a writer too, just like me. I want you to do what you can to help them, so they don’t wait fifteen years to start writing again.

Here is what you can do:

1) When you see the bullying, don’t turn away in embarrassment. Speak up. It will make all the difference. Where were the teachers in the classes where the boys read my note? Did they briefly step out of the classroom when this happened? Did they stand by? I don’t know. But if the first teacher had taken the note away from the first boy who read it, things would have been different for me. If the second teacher had taken away the note, and so on, it would have helped. If one other kid in the entire school had said, “Hey guys, this is really mean and immature. Let’s give Laura her paper back,” it might have made a difference. Even the kids who clearly cared were silent. Be anything but silent.

2) Encourage a bullied kid in their gifts. Most bullied kids are kind of nerdy, which means they’re usually pretty brilliant at something. I had created my own language for secret communication with my friends by sixth grade and written a thick folder full of poetry by seventh grade. I got straight A+s in English grammar and Spanish. Clearly I had a thing for languages. If someone had said something to me, encouraged me to write more, I would have held on to that scrap of hope like a life raft. If someone said anything to me like this, I don’t remember. Of course it was more obvious that I was talented at playing the piano, since I did that in public, so it’s possible people encouraged me in this instead. But you get my point, right? It never hurts to encourage kids that they are talented, and bullied kids really need to hear this.

Also, keep in mind that a negative statement carries ten times the power of a positive one. One well-meaning English professor in college told me NOT to write fiction but to teach grammar instead. Guess which part of that statement burned into my brain and kept me from taking the plunge for a few more years? I’m doing it anyway, now that I have my confidence back, but it took a while to pull myself up out of self-doubt and fear.

None of us is perfect about encouraging others, or even avoiding saying hurtful things–certainly not me. But we all can do more to help kids who are being picked on. I know it. Will you keep your eyes open for someone who needs encouragement this week? My twelve-year-old self would be forever grateful to you.

 

How To Get Your Manuscript Reviewed by Publishers

… just send them a proposal based on Writer’s Market’s sample queries and proposals, apparently, because I just got my first request from a publisher to send the full manuscript of Ecofrugal Baby for their review. Woot! I know this doesn’t mean they’ll necessarily pick up the title, but it’s an encouraging step. My proposal must not have been THAT bad, anyway. Want to know how I put a proposal together? I know I would have liked to have this info before I started, so I’ll give you a sample.

If you’re thinking of querying publishers directly, here are the pieces of info to include in your proposal, with a sample of my opening text from my Ecofrugal Baby proposal at the beginning to get you started (please note this is a proposal: if the publisher wants a query letter, you only need to include the sections on The Hook, The Book, and The Author in your letter. Only send sample chapters and outlines/synopses if the publisher’s submission guidelines specify it, and send a self-addressed stamped envelope if you would like a reply.):

attn: Submissions Editor                                                                                 September 12, 2010

Fancy Pants Plaza, Broadway, 11th floor (why are so many publishers on the 11th floor of NYC office buildings?)

New York, NY 10014

Proposal: Title, genre

Dear Submissions Editor,

(The Hook–but leave the label off this section, for obvious reasons. If your proposal is long, feel free to label the other sections to make it easier to read.)

In this economy, many new parents are more dismayed than ever to discover that baby’s first year can cost an average of $10,000. I know I was. But when I started searching for ways to save money on baby gear for my new baby girl in 2008, I discovered a whole host of money-saving techniques I had never heard about anywhere else—including in the few baby bargain books on the market. The money-saving techniques I discovered saved me 70% off my baby’s first year gear, feeding, and clothing—without sacrificing quality or safety. That’s $7000 I could put into savings and a college fund instead of spending on stuff. I thought other parents could use that kind of relief in their budgets, too.

I started a baby blog called 29Diapers.com, all about cloth diapers (which save me $1000 per year over disposables) and about how to do what I did to save big bucks on baby. The money-saving tips were so popular on the blog that I decided to compile my Ecofrugal Fridays blog posts into a book.

The Book

Note the structure of the book, how it is laid out or what the important highlights of the contents are.

The Competition

What other books compete with this title? Why is your book better?

The Platform

Who is your target audience, and do you have a platform already in place to reach them? This is the place to mention blogs, speaking engagements, or anything else you’re already doing to connect with the potential audience for your book.

The Author

List any previous publishing credits, especially, plus a brief bio and resume/CV that communicates who you are, what you bring to the table, and especially why readers would want to buy a book from you. If you’re a celebrity, best mention it here.

Learn More

I used this section to refer publishers to my blogs, so they could get a sense for my writing style, which is important. They can also see that I am a disciplined blogger that interacts with readers, both bonus points that may help them decide to give me a chance. I also offer in this section to send them sample chapters and a synopsis, or the complete manuscript, for their review–upon their request. Don’t send full, unsolicited manuscripts unless a publisher specifically requests it in their submission guidelines (very rare these days since most publishers are up to their eyeballs in unsolicited mail). I also mention that I have included a SASE for their convenience, letting them know that I know how the process works and that I don’t expect them to pay for postage to send me a reply. If you don’t want to receive a reply unless they’re interested in seeing more of your work, you can skip this step and save postage, but it does show that you understand the proposal process.

Sincerely,

Name

Title

Phone Number

Email Address

Mailing Address

–

There. I hope that was helpful, or at least interesting, to you. I know I’m an odd kind of language nerd, but I would have eaten up an article like this before I started the proposal process, so I’m just writing it in the hopes that some of you can use the info. Good luck with your proposals!

First Book Sale! (and it’s not to my mother)

I just checked my Lulu account and discovered I sold my first e-book copy of Ecofrugal Baby last week, yay! I’m realizing just how much work it is going to take to promote this book and get some real sales numbers via self-publishing. Blah. That’s something I would prefer to leave to a traditional publishing house, but until I find a traditional publisher to pick up this title, it’s all on me to sell some copies and recoup some of the hours I’ve spent on this project.

It’s not really about the money, though this first sale is gratifying. I’m following Pete Michaud’s advice to just get out there and start trying, and boy is it paying dividends, even if that doesn’t translate to royalties. In the last year I have written a non-fiction book, written the first part of what is shaping up to be a paranormal/spiritual/YA series, learned all about the formatting requirements and ISBN what-nots for self-publishing, put together multiple book proposals and queries for both book publishers and agents, and am starting to work on the second part of my fiction series. All this while maintaining the appearances of being a part-time book editor and being a full-time mom–oh, and mommy blogger: an eco labor of love and my platform for Ecofrugal Baby. Holy cow! That totally would not have happened if I had sat around thinking about how I was going to be a novelist or published non-fiction author someday. None of my current work is perfect, but I think I really have something here in both books that has value: the non-fiction content sells itself since it can save new parents $7000 off baby’s first year, and the novel may not be expertly written (it’s not that bad, though) but it has a unique and (I think) fascinating hook and the story will carry my writing until I learn how to polish up my style (if J.K. Rowling could get away with it, so can I).

Darn it, I’m proud of myself. I have to celebrate these milestones–every single one!–as they go by, to keep my chin up while I start to fend off the barrage of inevitable rejection slips. It’s just the way it is. Next step, keeping on keeping on! So that’s one more check on the bucket list: I’ve published and sold a book.

How I Would NOT Recommend Celebrating Becoming a Self-Published Author

I did it! I had to switch to Lulu at the last minute (and reformat everything, redesign the cover) to publish my book because Amazon wouldn’t let me reference the word “Amazon” in the text of my book (um, okay… ) and I needed to send readers to Amazon to buy a few hard-t0-find products, but it’s really done: As of last night, I’m a self-published author. That’s one big item checked off the bucket list! Here is the link to the book and e-book, Ecofrugal Baby: How To Save 70% Off Baby’s First Year. I was so excited after I finally got the prep work wrapped up and the book off to press, but then, well….

My baby girl is teething, AGAIN, poor thing, so she was waking up every 20 minutes last night all through the evening. I decided I would give her some Tylenol to help comfort her through the rest of the night, but she wasn’t awake enough to swallow it. She gagged on it and threw up all over herself and my bed. Fabulous. So I spent those exciting post-publishing minutes cleaning throw-up out of my daughter’s hair. Aint that just life? I would recommend that when you reach a milestone like this one, you toast with champagne or take a day off instead.

Then there was the appraiser coming to the house this morning, which I had all polished and ready with the help of my mom, but this time I lucked out. I decided that freshly baked cookies might be a nice treat for him (and cover the faint smell of the diabetic cat’s last accident in the hall), so I started baking away just as he arrived. Thank GOODNESS I was a little late on that one, because as soon as he left the cookies came out of the oven, running melted butter (which I had accidentally doubled in the recipe) all over the oven floor. And then I had the brilliant idea to put the oven on self-clean, which started a grease fire I was unable to open the oven door to put out, because it was locked for self-cleaning. Wouldn’t that have impressed the appraiser? Yeeeah. I think I should toast this milestone with a nap now. G’night!

Close to Being a Self-published Author….

Well, I finally did it. I submitted my nonfiction book, Ecofrugal Baby: How To Save 70% Off Baby’s First Year, to Amazon for self-publishing. I’m still pursuing traditional publishers, but I’m happy to get the book out there in the meantime. I’ll post pics and a link as soon as the review and publishing process is complete. This is a pretty cool milestone for me. Of course I hope the book does well, but just getting it out there is an accomplishment. Hooray!