Now I Believe The Economic Recovery Is Real, But How High Can It Go?

Here comes the sun. photo, Jon Sullivan

For the last year, economists have been saying the U.S. is now digging itself out of the Great Recession. That’s obvious if you look at stocks (bailout discussions aside), and of course Silicon Valley is enjoying another heyday, but so far it has been a jobless recovery for most of the country. I have tracked right along with this trend, having been laid off from full-time work in 2008 just before the market tanked. Of course I can’t sit still, so I founded 29 Diapers, started writing a novel, and did freelance editorial work where I could find it. Oh yeah, and had a baby. It was a busy recession for me.

But today I saw signs of real recovery.

LinkedIn: hiring.

Oxford Press: hiring.

Time Magazine: hiring.

Wall Street Journal: hiring.

The gutted Conde Nast, of all companies: hiring.

The help wanted signs are back, all over the Interwebs!

And me? Hired. Well, sort of. Right now ideal gainful employment for me means freelance writing and editorial work while I stay home to raise my daughter. Last month I was brought on board Inhabitat as the new Transportation Editor. Huzzah!

But how high can it go? The U.S. has enormous debt problems, has outsourced nearly all manufacturing, and faces stiff global competition for jobs that just aren’t coming back. I think we’re seeing signs of real recovery now, but at some point it will plateau and we will start the conversation about a new reality in America. Do you think we will innovate our way out of this economic mire? Move upstream to a creative economy and leave the information economy to the developing world? I’d love to hear your thoughts in comments.

Changing Tacks, Or Learning How To Create a Bestseller

"Changing Tacks" comes from the sailing term for sailing upwind by charting a zigzagging course against the wind. Doesn't that sound just like what any good book marketing campaign needs to do to beat the odds?

I thought that libraries would be the slam dunk for selling Ecofrugal Baby and getting it out to all the budget-minded new parents who need to know how to save 70% off baby’s first year. But when I started emailing libraries and telling them about my book, I commonly was told that the library I had emailed only buys books recommended by Book List or the [fill in the blank] Library Association, which in turn only recommend books submitted to them 15 weeks before publication. This means I need to set up a third edition of the book to go out 15 weeks after I get some high-profile trade reviews, but the prospect of doing all that work just to get libraries to buy one or two copies each left me drained of energy. Maybe libraries will be a big part of this book’s success after all, but to keep my momentum going and meet my sales goals this month, I decided to change tacks.

I also just received a letter from Barnes & Noble saying that they never order copies of self-published books for their stores unless the books are already a sales success–unless I contract with their own print-on-demand publishing company. Blah. I may look into that option, too, but it just reinforced the idea that I need to invest in my own loyal blog fans and the people already supporting me to get this books out to new parents across the U.S. and Canada.

And so, I decided to start my own grass roots word of mouth marketing campaign, offering a free copy of the book to several dozen of my most loyal followers on 29Diapers.com and asking them to take part in this WOM campaign to help me get the word out. I know better than most that ordinary people, moms in particular, have tremendous power as brand ambassadors: otherwise, none of the companies who sponsor giveaways on my blog would want to give away free product for PR. And really, all I’m doing is trying to get information out to other parents like me who need it, so I think it is other parents who need to carry the message for me. Fingers crossed! This is new for me (like everything I’m doing lately!) so I just hope that if there is some tipping point of getting the book into the hands of a certain number of people in order to start a fire that won’t fizzle out, I have reached that invisible point. I’ll be back later with updates on how this works. Stay tuned!

Learning something new every day,

Laura

 

Bucket List: Book Signing–Check!

Signing a copy of Ecofrugal Baby for a fan.

I hosted my first talk and book signing last night at the Ann Arbor Barnes & Noble as part of their National Authors Day, and it was a resounding success! I had 2-3 dozen attendees to my talk while the five other authors on the floor had maybe one person to talk to at a time. This was no accident. I’m glad I read up on how to host a good book signing before the event, because several key tips made all the difference, and I wanted to share those, plus what I learned from doing the signing, with you:

1) Arrange to speak as well as sign books. I billed my event as a free talk as well as a book signing. Not only did this attract dozens of people who wanted to hear what I had to say before buying a book, but it meant that the bookstore prepared for the event by giving me a table 3 times the size of the other tables on the floor, brought balloons to identify the table as the location of the talk, and agreed to set up chairs for my event. Now, they didn’t actually set up the chairs, but this ended up being a great thing because so many people showed up (right after the event planner apologetically told me that traffic was nearly dead that day and she didn’t expect anyone to come) that they moved my table to the other side of the floor where there was enough space for everyone. How cool to be able to say in my post-book signing press release, “Local author Laura K. Cowan’s book signing such a draw for Barnes & Noble’s National Authors Day that event had to be moved to location with more space”!

2) Never sit down. This is one of the tips I picked up from Jump Start Your Book Sales, and I’m so glad I read it because I always imagined authors at book signings sitting behind the table signing books. The table is really a barrier between the host and the attendees, so I didn’t even put a chair behind the table to tempt myself. I stood in front of my table and greeted people, offered them a brochure, asked them if they had any questions, told them about the giveaway I was doing for a cloth diaper and invited them to put their name in the box, and so on. The other reason this was a great move is that I’m a little shy and it would be hard for me to approach people and stay in the groove of being sociable if I were sitting behind a table looking authorly (no, that’s not a real word, but it should be).

They did make a sign with my mug on it for my own table, at least. I saved it and will frame it over my desk as a memento.

3) Promote your own event. I’ve been told before that neither bookstores nor publishers put much effort into promoting book signings sometimes, so it’s important for the author to be involved in promoting their own event. Well, in my case my print-on-demand publisher won’t be doing any promotional work for me, and I could tell from my interaction with the event planner that the bookstore wouldn’t be doing much of anything either. She encouraged us authors to email our contact lists and invite them to the event, so we would have a good start to some traffic for the event. Yikes. When I got to the event, there was one sign in the atrium that said “National Authors Day” with the covers of five books, none of them mine, below the text. Double yikes. If I hadn’t promoted my own event, no one would have come at all. So what did I do? I posted or distributed 150 flyers; I got a local natural childbirth education center to email their customer list about the event; I sent out press releases to the local media (I ended up with one article in my local “paper,” AnnArbor.com, which was reprinted on the front page of their Sunday print edition) and obstetricians at the local hospitals and called the TV and radio stations; I blogged about the event on my cloth diapering blog 29Diapers.com and posted about the event on Facebook and Twitter using both my personal accounts and my 29 Diapers fan accounts; I told EVERYONE who seemed remotely interested about the event; and I cross-promoted the event with my Christmas giveaway event on 29Diapers.com via press release and blog posts, billing the book signing as a virtual book signing as well as a talk, so my more remote readers could “attend” as well if they were interested. It takes a lot of work to gather 3 dozen people to a no-name new author’s book signing.

4) Rinse and repeat. I have learned from planning other events that most people who say they’ll come will not, for one reason or another, so I didn’t stop promoting my event until the day before, when I took a short break to rest before I had to be on-stage. Sure enough, dozens of people who promised to come had surprise funerals, worked late, didn’t feel well, forgot–my book signing was not on the top of everyone’s priority list.

5) Book signings are not for selling books. No, really. Book signings are famously bad for selling any real quantity of books. My sales goals are modest since I’m just starting out, so I was happy with my small returns, but I actually did the event to help me get my foot in the door for other speaking engagements and signings. Being able to say I had a successful book signing with Barnes & Noble when talking to someone who has the power to let me use their facility for a class or book signing is a gold key that opens doors to more opportunities. I also did it because I wanted a local debut for the book with some visibility that I could use to not only build a loyal local fan base (who doesn’t love to be part of a “local author makes good” story?) but also as material to send out more press releases after the event and keep myself in contact with the media, who will mostly ignore me until I have half a dozen worthwhile news stories I’ve sent them.

Do you have more tips for me to use for my next event? I’d love to hear your feedback on these tips in comments. Thanks for reading!

There Is A Pile of Book Proposals on the Table!

So, I don’t suppose this is on everyone’s bucket list, but submitting a book proposal (as well as having it accepted, lol) is definitely on mine–and I just checked it off! Yes. I wrote a book about saving money on baby gear, because when I was pregnant I got just a teeny bit obsessive about finding ways NOT to spend the $10,000 the average parent plunks down for baby gear, clothes, and food. I found so many ways to save (without sacrificing quality or safety) it became a game to me, motivated by my goal to put whatever money I saved into a college fund for baby girl.

So, after saving 70% off baby’s first year and finding myself the resident expert among my friends for all things FREE, I started a baby blog about cloth diapers (29Diapers.com) and started writing a Friday segment that went through my money-saving tips for buying baby gear, one at a time. It was actually my way of scheduling in writing time so I could compile these tips into a book to share with other parents. And. It’s. Done.

Today I finally found time to put together a book proposal and prepare the submissions to three publishers, and the envelopes are sitting on my dining room table ready to go out tomorrow. omg. Happy day. I’m considering self-publishing it, too, with Amazon, but their upload requirements were harder to figure out in my limited free time than a book proposal, so I started with the traditional route. I’m thinking by the time I get the self-published thing figured out, I may be starting to hear back from the first publishers. We’ll see. I don’t want to steal sales from a publisher, but I’m also not going to wait forever to get this book out there when I know lots of parents would be happy to pay $15 for a book that saves them $7000. Wish me luck! I’ll be posting pics of my first rejection slip–a milestone to treasure!–here as well.

Are There 25 Hours in a Day?

If you're in a creative rut, The Artist's Way will peel you off the pavement, then The Creative Habit will set your mind dancing again.

I can hear my little sister’s reaction now: “Riiiight. So how’s that workin’ for ya?” she will ask me with one eyebrow up (her eyebrow goes up so high I can hear it over the phone). She knows me. She knows I like to DO things. And boy am I ever doing things right now!

I am in a groove, as Twyla Tharp would call it. Every time I take a walk, an idea for a piece of my novel or an entirely new book project springs into my mind. “Structure the book as an escape to the outdoors in the same way Robbe-Grillet structured The Erasers city in a circle to hint at the story’s ending!” I gasp into my iPhone’s voice recorder, and suddenly the whole novel gels and the symbolism that’s already central to the plot is perfectly sewn together. Sweet! It’s not effortless, but it’s the fun kind of working up a sweat.

If you include my full-time “momming,” I am currently working 75 hours a week, but I’ve never felt more energized. That is the definition of a groove, or it should be. All grooves come to an end, but I am riding this one like a wild horse. No way am I going to let fear or distractions or anything else deter me from getting every drop of fun out of this groove.

How did I get here? I don’t really know, but the one thing I’m doing differently this time that might have something to do with it is this: I’m not over-thinking my plans. I have plans upon plans–that’s what I’m so excited about!–but I am focusing on the short-term plans right now to explore these rabbit trails, then later I’ll see if I want to pick one trail above the others. I also took Pete Michaud’s advice not to make everything perfect before launching my new blog, and that has paid dividends in creativity and forward momentum. Thanks, Pete!

Two years ago I had barely worked up the courage to say aloud that I wanted to write at all. So my self-confidence has changed as well. All I can say is, it’s about time!

If you’re in a groove or remember a good one, how did you get there? If your groove turned to a rut, what caused that to happen?