Gee, now I feel like a real publisher. Or is it a publicist? I sent my first press release all on my own yesterday. The nice folks at PRNewswire sent our magnificently written missile to everyone in the world. It went "on the wire" at 3:42 P.M. Wow!
I had it ready to go on Friday but decided not to send it the Frioday before a big holiday weekend. I know what I do on the day before a big weekend. I want my desk cleared and so I pitch things I might not otherwise pitch.
I know it would have been better to get it out sooner but it wasn't ready and then there was the holiday. But this morning my Google Alert had already picked up its presence on Yahoo! Finance News.
I wonder what a car dealership does with such a press release. I say that because I assume that it may have gone to car dealerships along with organic food stores. Massage parlors? Probably not. Can't hurt.
What was nice about it was that we actually could send a press release since we had won an award. Now we were not just another novel some fool took the time to write for whatever reason. We are award winners and have something to shout about.
I can't wait to see what Google Alerts brings us today.

More and more fellow authors are contacting us and asking for direction. Since we know what it is like to get rejection notices or just be turned away, we prefer to be helpful. Especially since we have learned a lot in the last couple of years. There are now a lot of resources out there if you can find them easily. Here is our answer to queries which we hope will save people a lot of time, money, and frustration.


Dear Fellow Author:
The publishing world has changed dramatically in recent years and we are getting increasing numbers of inquiries asking for help in finding agents and publishers. We would like to be helpful and offer the following information.

Finding an Agent:
Unfortunately, publishers, by and large, are not talking to authors. An agent is needed if there is to be access to traditional publishers. Conventional advice has been that the author needs to buy books such as Writers Market to get information about agents. At the 2005 Book Expo in New York we received important confirmation of what we had concluded
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The books are generally considerably out of date and filled with agents who are established and are not looking for new clients. They have to keep their names out there but rarely get new clients in this fashion.

We wasted years pursuing agents in this fashion and one speaker at Book Expo gave valuable advice. He said that authors should go to and subscribe to their service which tracks deals recently made. It costs only $20 per month and it should be screened for several months. You are looking for the new and hungry agents who probably have split off from longer established agents. You can compare the names you find with the lists in the books such as Writers Market and identify who is new and, therefore, promising.

Getting Published:
The book world is now crowded with authors. The agents lament that they are getting more and more submissions of lower and lower quality. Before you even pursue an agent you MUST have a finished manuscript which has been worked on by an experienced editor. You need to try editors by hiring them to edit at least a portion of your manuscript. Try them out until you find someone you are comfortable working with. Ask what books they have edited that have been published. You may want to get some of those books to see what you think. Ask for references and call people the editor has worked for.

Even then you may find that you may have to take alternative means to get your work published. There are several possibilities.

The first thing you have to do is to decide what kind of work you have and what your goals are. Nonfiction is much easier to sell than fiction because it often relates to a niche which greatly affects marketing. Then you have to look at your audience. If your audience is highly focused or maybe even family and friends, then you have a whole different set of objectives. Once you have a clear focus, you have a number of options.

1. Subsidy Presses - Be very careful here. They used to be called vanity presses and they may cost you a lot of money. Most books published by subsidy presses sell on average about 80 books, mostly to the author. We do not recommend this route.

2. E-books - They have not yet come into their own but we are convinced that they will become important. One of the big barriers is the means by which they can be read. But recently Sony came out with an instrument which shows the promise of what may be coming. E-books are now being distributed by companies such as Lightning Source and show promise. One of the big attractions here is that the cost of production is low. There is no printing although a well designed “cover” is important.

3. Print on Demand – It’s not a bad place to begin. The costs have come down and they are especially useful if you do not need a lot of copies for a specialty work. You can have as few as 25 copies printed and they can look quite good. A good place to test the waters.

4. Self Publishing - Many of us are going this route. It offers the author complete control over the process although it is labor intensive. You still have to purchase professional expertise and you have to plan to spend some money on a cover, a website, editing, formatting and proof reading.

And then we come to marketing. Even if you have a traditional publisher you have to be prepared to do the marketing. It is a time consuming process and requires guidance and help. It is not possible to overemphasize the importance of the marketing piece.

Fortunately, there is a lot of information on all of the above out there. Here are some resources which you need to explore and absolutely must read in detail.

Self Publishing Organizations -
Small Publishers Association of North America (SPAN) - Go to and get acquainted. They offer a lot of information no matter which direction you decide to take. Join their online Yahoo group. We went to their conference last year in Denver and there was lots of excellent marketing information. Worth attending if you think self publishing is the route you want to take.

You can do research through the site and the exchanges on the site offer invaluable information. The list moms on the site are knowledgeable professionals who volunteer their services and many of them are a resource. The kind of issues discussed vary from day to day but over time you will find threads which are very helpful.

Publishers Marketing Association (PMA) - A group which is similar to SPAN. They tend to be oriented to slightly larger publishers but they also offer a “college” at Book Expo each year which provides a lot of information.

Books-
Here is a short list of other resources which will give you detailed information on all aspects of getting published. There are many of them but here are a few which are particularly helpful. Read their books cover to cover.
Dan Poynter - Go to his website and take a look at his books. He is a great resource.
Marilyn Ross - Go to and take a look at what she has to offer. She is heavily involved in SPAN.
John Kremer - Go to and look at his offerings. He is one of the big names in the field.

We hope you are not feeling overwhelmed at this point but what we have outlined relates to today’s reality. Using the above resources will save you time, money and disappointment. We wish you success.

Of course we were pleased to receive a Book of the Year Award from ForeWord Magazine for A Dream Across Time at Book Expo but a close second in terms of pleasure was that the Editor's Choice Award for Fiction was a POD! Totally cool. Along comes Fay Freimuth with A Multitude of Mercies with a touching, beautifully written story and scoops up a great award. She had shopped the book forever and couldn't get any takers. So, she did it in POD. Good for her.

We wasted years on agents and the search for a publisher. Oh yes, we got an agent at one point who did nothing discernible except sop up our time when we could have been going toward our goal of getting our first book out there. At Book Expo last year we learned what we suspected which was that most agents in the books really aren't looking for anyone. That information reinforced the rightness of our going the self publishing route.

Now everytime we see someone surface with a good book and see them recognized it feels like a thumb in the eye of the publishing industry. A deserved one. Yes, I know I should be more generous since the industry is in flux. But when you get so frustrated, you stop feeling generous. When we had a major publisher for one of our nonfiction books I learned that they were willing to admit that they didn't know what sold and they were really in the dark throwing darts. Win some lose some. There is, of course, much more to that story but I think I made the point.

As so many of us struggle with our craft and getting our books out there, the frustration, at least for me, gets focused on issues of attitude. I have an intense dislike of arrogance which is what many of us confront when we try to deal with the big six and many of their long term resource allies. You know who they are. They won't even look at you if you are self published or anything other than being from the major publishers. And all too often they don't want to have anything to do with you if you aren't "literature". I have a whole rant about "literature".

So, along comes Fay Freimuth and wins big. Take that people. Watch your backsides. We are coming.

It's a holiday weekend and it is very quiet here at our house. A little further down the road in St. Michaels proper it is a beehive of tourist activity. The joggers are out and people are strolling the picturesque streets enjoying the sights of the town with its Victorian and 18th. century houses. The main street is humming with vehicles carrying late arrivals or people on their way to their boats. The waterways are busy.

But with A Circle of Dreams due out shortly the work of the self publisher never stops. We are humming along on proofing the book to get it out on Tuesday.

Not far away is Rt. 50 which is the main route to the Atlantic shore. That means really heavy traffic with people going and coming to the beaches. They are having a glorious weekend with highs in the mid 70s. That is, after they get there.

My twisted little brain is thinking we should bedevil them on Monday as they return. We could take lawn chairs and sit by the highway smiling, waving and showing a sign which says "We live here." But maybe that would not be a good idea. Maybe we don't want them to know about our oasis of peace and quiet community.

We used to live in a quiet valley in Northern Maryland. Nothing EVER happened there but also there was not anything to do. When I moved to Maryland many years ago Baltimore was that old town you passed if you were driving from New York to DC. My first wife wanted horses and we could live in the country but be downtown in 45 minutes. Gradually it all changed as Baltimore and DC grew together. The population of Baltimore proper shrank but the population of the area exploded. We came to have California traffic.

So, we decided to cross the Bay Bridge and live on the Eastern Shore. Crossing the bridge is an experience we call "the mystical passage" because we leave the intensity of the national capital area behind and enter a county of just 35,000 folks. I probably shouldn't even be writing about this because we should keep our rural yet sophisticated gentility a secret. It's only an hour and a quarter to DC which some people think is commuting distance.

We can write in peace but have access to wonderful restaurants and even great music at the Avalon Theater in Easton. I guess I'll just stay away from Route 50 this weekend and enjoy a final read of the adventures of Jamie and her family as they make their way through A Circle of Dreams. And then it is on to the third book, Joup!

People ask how I am enjoying my retirement. Is that what this is? I think we need some new words for our continually changing careers.

When I left the hospital they told me to go home and pretend I was still hospitalized. That meant lying around in bed. If Iwas truly in the hospital they would have been coming in constantly and taking my "vitals" or drawing blood. Then too there would be shift changes which occur at inconvenient hours - for the patient. Just when you drop off to sleep at night they come in and wake you up at eleven at night. Ugh. So, it was hard to pretend because it's quiet around here.
And, anyway, I missed Hal my faithful computer. If I wasn't at Hal, how would anyone notice when he ate my data, randomly deleted things from my hard drive or refused commands. Probably the worst part of being in the hospital was that they do not have Wifi. There was nothing to do but look at TV, read a book and read and reread the notations on the wall about urine output and bowel movements. I was missing Hal. So, I came home and began to proof the galley for the second book in the Demontagne Saga, A Circle of Dreams, which comes out momentarily. It was not particularly stressful and it actually engaged me again.
We may never know what happened but I'm back at work and feeling fine. I think I won't waste a lot of time wondering why it happened or what it was. Not worth the trouble and I learned nothing new. Onward!

I came back from BEA with the resolve to blog daily. Great idea. And then life intervened.
The night before last I woke up with chest pains. I had never had anything like it before. I thought it was temporary but I could not get back to sleep and it was not getting any better. So, I woke my wife up and she did a really good job of not panicking. After all it is always possible to be comfortable at home with your spouse one minute and come home a widow the next.
We have a friend who spent four years nursing his wife dying of lung cancer. He said the hardest thing was the day he came home after she died. It was over. Everything that had structured his life was gone. He wondered now what he would do. He went on and he has now found a new wife.
It just takes me back to the fundamentals of the stories we write. You think you have a life course and then one day you find that the course is gone. That's what happened to Jamie in A Dream Across Time. And it happened again in A Circle of Dreams. These children she had always wanted were not ordinary children and one of them had serious problems. Life happens and your plans are out the window.
For me the other night it was just another reminder that I am getting older and that life happens. They gave me every test in the book and I do not have heart problems or incipient heart problems. We will never know but it was probably a combination of some kind of infection or an esophogeal spasm related to an old automobile accident. Who knows. I'm tired from the emotional trauma but otherwise okay. Just another life lesson.
I'll get on with the brogging I promise. Unless life happens.

Column 24 - Philippe Diamant Demontagne (Philippe)
Did Jamie and Andre tempt fate when they named Philippe after the child who was lost in the French Revolution? It seems they did or was it just that a crisis was inevitable because the mother of the first Philippe cannot rest.

Jamie is deeply distressed as she watches her son fall into a crisis which is unfathomable. His problems are beyond understanding. Where can she seek an answer? In modern medicine or in the understanding of people who are closer to the mysticism of the islands?

And what of Philippe? Any child must face the inevitable crises which are a part of childhood. How can he attend to the developmental work of a child when he is being drawn into things which are inexplicable? All he can know is that he may be living his own life one moment and then is drawn into what seems to be another world and another life.

As we move through A Circle of Dreams with this family we can only wonder what effects these experiences will have on him. Perhaps the effects will be more than just memories. After all, Philippe must almost surely have some of the unusual abilities to which these children are heir. Having experienced openings to the past, what will he retain?

In A Circle of Dreams we can only sight the beginning of things for Philippe. Our focus is stronger on Yvie and Lissa. His story will play out much later.
Come visit us at www.annierogers.com

Column 23 - Anne-Clarisse Demontagne (Lissa)
At the end of the first chapter of A Circle of Dreams four year old Lissa says, "I think I’m too small to do it all by myself." She is talking about something she perceives about the needs of her little brother. We don’t comment on this statement but under the circumstances the reader can feel the child’s burden and distress.

And further along in her young life it is clear that she continues to be a very burdened child. Lissa knows too much, feels too much, perceives too much. She feels she is the one who must help her distressed brother and feels it is her responsibility to set it to rights. While her sister, Yvie, is troublesome, Lissa takes too much responsibility onto her young shoulders.

Yvie envys Lissa her position in the family because Lissa is so close to the mystical side of the family. But Yvie fails to perceive her sister’s burden and that her powers are not felt to be a blessing.

Lissa’s senses are acute and lead her to perceive things others cannot see. Virtually alone she must decide what to do with what she sees. It would never occur to her to use her powers in negative ways. Rather, she feels an almost instinctive selfless commitment. A carefree childhood is not something that describes her life.

If Yvie is chaos, then Lissa is order. It seems that these twins are virtually a living form of yin and yang. Each will have to find their way to different futures.

No doubt there are many people who envy children such as Lissa. She is talented academically. Adults have confidence in her intelligence, abilities and reliability. How nice for the adults. Lissa is never so sure about herself. It is difficult for Lissa to get support and understanding from other people because too often other people do not begin to understand her. Adults often wonder how such a bright, capable and seemingly self assured girl could possibly need support. Nobody except possibly Bertille can truly understand the world in which Lissa lives.

In the second article about the theories of Carl Jung we discussed the wheel of personality and how it begins with a core function which is developed and that the wheel in its entirety continues to rise and develop over time. Ideally over a lifetime a person will gain increasing command of the whole.

While Lissa exhibits a stable personality from the beginning, what is not readily apparent is the fact that she has command of the totality of personality from a young age. Her personality grows richer with time and more complex. While other girls may dimly perceive their animus, a rudimentary member of the opposite sex within themselves, Lissa has a highly developed animus. This male being is so highly developed that he can take on substance outside of Lissa and can become a confidente. At least, then, there is someone close at hand who can understand her and give her support.

It is hard not to like Lissa. She has so many positive virtues and she is not a troublesome child. Equally it is hard for us to understand how difficult her life must feel to her. And we can only guess at the pain she must feel as she attempts to make her way in the world among people who too often will fail utterly to understand her. And then as she becomes a woman, how can she share intimacy when to be intimate with her is to risk coming into contact with a frightening intensity and inner power?
Come visit us at www.annierogers.com

Column 22 - Janine-Yvette Demontange (Yvie)
In A Circle of Dreams we continue the Demontagne Saga and introduce Jamie’s children. The love story continues and like most stories about families the children enrich but complicate the life of the couple.

When your children are on the way you dream of what it will be like to be a parent and what the children will be like. But when they arrive are you really prepared for who comes to live at your house? You love your children, of course, but you may be surprised at who arrives and what they are like.

Jamie wanted children and she is overjoyed with them. But, as the crisis builds in A Circle of Dreams she has to confront the fact that her children are not normal.

Let’s talk about Jamie’s children. We will begin with Yvie.

If you’ve read "The Bridge" in our website columns in the Author to Author section ( www.annierogers.com) you can identify her as the imperious four year old who pushes her twin sister to the floor and declares that her mother should send her back. We all know or have met Yvie’s in this world and we might even have one living at our house.

Maybe Yvie isn’t quite the embodiment of chaos but her mother is convinced that she comes very close. Andre often finds the child infuriating. Fortunately, Jamie rules with an even hand as do Marcus and Bertille who take Yvie for who she is and respond with love and firmness. So, Yvie can rebel safely.

Unfortunately, Yvie feels that she does not belong in this family. Her mother is so talented, being a consummate artist in designing clothes and an astute businesswoman as well. So, for Yvie her mother is almost beyond an identification figure. The child can only wonder how she can ever measure up or if she has passable talents.

The presence of her fraternal twin sister, Lissa, doesn’t help at all. If Yvie is chaos, then Lissa is order. It’s easy for Lissa to get praise and Yvie is often left feeling mutinous. She acts out her frustration when she gets into frequent trouble. At least she has her partner in crime, Marc, who is her buddy and constant companion.

When her sister is off gathering ingredients for bush medicine, Yvie is left feeling the outsider again because her sister’s talents bring Lissa close to the mystical parts of the family. Yvie feels it is impossible for her to compete and achieve a comfortable place for herself in the family constellation.

And so Yvie has a secret life in which she draws the precious things she comes in contact with in the rain forest. While she can’t readily assess her talents, it appears to the outside observer that they are considerable. Since she keeps her artwork to herself, she cannot find out that she is quite talented artistically but that it is a different talent than her mother’s.

But Yvie does not spend all her time making negative comparisons of herself with others or sulking. This child does not have a laisssez faire bone in her body. She is both volatile and sensual. Passion rules her life. Her misadventures are partly a function of rebellion, but they are also a function of her passions at work. As she enters adolescence she can’t yet channel her talent and her passion. Her job will be to achieve balance and command of what can only be described as an awesome combination of beauty, intelligence and talent.

Some day Yvie will come to know that she is a beautiful, brilliant and talented woman. She will also come to know that she is very much a part of this family. If she were just a little closer to Bertille she might know that her intense relationship with the creatures of the rain forest along with her family heritage may have worked a magic on her.
Come visit us at www.annierogers.com

Granted I don't have a long history of attending BEA but it seemed to me that there were many fewer ARCs laid out at the show. If true, I find myself wondering what it means. Is it a matter of scaled back promotional spending? Are they questioning the utility of such promotions? At a purely abstract level I wondered what books are still being chosen for such promotions.
Maybe it is simply a matter of the show being more about networking than anything else. Such networking is a long and winding road and one has to wonder where it is leading as well. The noise is substantial and is very much related to the quandry about where we are going and where it will end. This observation again feeds into my perception of confusion.
On another topic, this morning I am going back to work on my new career as a publicist. Taking on new jobs seems to be very much a part of my life. When I was in graduate school I bought a very used Jaguar to work on when I couldn't stand being in the library anymore. When I found it needed a valve job and there was no one who knew how to do it in Durham, I did it myself. So, why not become my own publicist. Is grinding valves all that much different than grinding away at promotions?

We got the second book in the Demontagne Saga, A Circle of Dreams, off to Sheridan Books for printing and I thought I could kick back for awhile. Then ForeWord Magazine pitches up with the Book of the Year Award. So much for my minivacation.
One of the suggestions was to put the win "out on the wire". "Wire?" inquires I. "How do you do that?" So like an idiot I ask a knowledgable friend who tells me. And a new world and a new career opens in front of me. The implications of getting a national award begin to sink in. We are not just selling a book among many other books. We are selling an award winning book. Now there is something to tell. Really tell. So, I am now embarking on my career as a PR person.
I guess I better get off my blog and go work on my press releases. See you tomorrow.

Going into this post I have to admit that what I have to say may be terribly subjective because my perspective about publishing/self publishing is evolving quickly. I feel as though this last year has involved a quantum leap. Self publishing the first book was difficult and required tenacity as I found my way through resources and essential steps. By contrast the second book was a breeze.
That little preamble leads me to my reaction to this year's Book Expo in DC. So get out your salt shaker and take this with a grain of salt for what it's worth. But as a psychologist I'm also used to sifting the experiental sands. And my experience of BEA this year left me with the feeling that the climate of the publishing industry has changed yet again.
Last year I felt fear in the air as it became clearer that the changes in the industry are huge and unpredictable. For example, agents were striking out verbally at Google as they saw Google's new programs threatening their income stream. The circus atmosphere on the floor seemed undirected if not random.
This year my overwhelming impression was of confusion. If the fear has subsided somewhat then it has been replaced with quite simply not knowing what to do. In one session about blogging they franklty admitted that while the title of the session was about blogging 2.0 no one knew if there was a 2.0. Yet.
It is tempting to say that this perceived change at BEA might be predictable. Oh, sure. Easy for me to say. But maybe the fear can't be sustained when you have to go back to work even if you don't know where it is all going. But you can continue to be confused. Being confused is less draining than being fearful. So, is it a step in the right direction? Probably not. We are waiting for clarification, a light at the end of the tunnel or even Godot. In the meantime we scrap it out until the new world emerges.

It's Sunday and we are recovering from Book Expo. Once again this year it was really interesting. I didn't do any entries lately because I was getting the decks cleared here so we could go to the conference in DC. It was well worth the trip especially since we learned that we were a winner of a Book of the Year Award for romance from ForeWord Magazine!
It was even nicer because it was for our debut novel A Dream Across Time. We have been getting really lovely reviews and now we have a really lovely award to go with them.
I'm going to be posting more often now. Panelists at BEA impressed upon me that I need to be posting more often. I have a lot of thoughts about self publishing and how it is going as well as reactions to what I saw and learned in DC this year. I'll be posting a lot of that. Also, shortly I will be posting the columns about the three kids we introduce in the second book of the Demontagne Saga, A Circle of Dreams.
Just when I thought I had things under control ForeWord has to come along and give us an award. Now I'm swamped with promotional things I need to do as we announce our award winning status. Life is hard! Yeah, right!