Good Karma Marketing and Success

Hello,

Just thought I'd post an update on what I've been doing to promote the sale of the book for the fundraising.

1. Emailed organizations to whom I'll be sending the donations.
2. Emailed friends and family and select colleagues.
3. Posted a free press release.
4. Developed a Facebook page.
5. Contacted Geraldo Rivera at Fox News.
6. Contacted three major NDN Country newspapers.
7. Posted a listing of the book to another self-publishing site
8. Posted on relevant FB links, to anyone I thought might be interested.
9. Posted on Multiply to sites that might be interested in the book.

Additionally, I have traded a copy with another grassroots author who was kind enough to agree to it, and I have bought 4 boxes of girlscout cookies in trade for someone agreeing to buy my book.

In terms of the fundraising aspect, my goal would be to raise enough for these two organizations for it to be worthwhile having gone and done this at all. I could have just cut a check to each for the amount it cost me to self-publish and been done with it, not having published The Summer of Pomba Gira at all. But then, it would have been easier. Who likes easy? No, it would have been personally safer to hide behind a checkbook and sometimes we need a little adventure in our lives!

In terms of the readership, my goal would be to give them something to think about, some paradigm shifting, a different perspective. I've been told that I often put things out there that sit like ticking time bombs, that go "kaboom!" a few days later when they emerge in people's consciousness and they have an "ah ha" experience. I'd like this novel to do that for folks, but I didn't set out to do that. However, I don't generally set out to do that when it happens with folks I know, either. It actually did happen to me in relation to this book, after I read the review copy.

One pre-publication reader didn't like the ending of the book, and it was the first time I'd heard that. I respect her opinion, and would love for her to review the book on the review page, as I respect criticism as well and want readers to know all opinions. So when I was re-reading it at the review copy stage, I was mindful of this feedback.

I didn't change the ending, but I found myself reading it and wondering what it was about the ending that was challenging. As I read it, I went back to previous scenes and I realized that I'd done some foreshadowing at several points related to the paradigm shifting, and that I'd done it without consciously being aware of having done it. Tracking it back this way, I realized the importance of some key elements I included, and had several "ah ha" moment myself.

And this leads to the idea of success and how it's evolving for me. I'd feel the novel was successful if it raises money for these organizations, and if the readers can relate to some aspect. But it's also a success for me personally. Not because I self-published and gain acolades of my friends and family. It's because it conveyed some critical concepts to a viewing audience in a way that I haven't seen done before. I read a lot, and I admire the authors I read. I admire them because they say the things I'm thinking that I couldn't. I think I set the bar in terms of my own writing as being to make it to the base of the mountain that they've already climbed.

However, in reading the review copy, in some respects, I went beyond those mountain peaks and hadn't realized it. Not because I'm a great writer, but because I'm a bold one.

I had a situation that occurred a few years ago, where I went into an important meeting and needed to assist in a paradigm shift for something that influences a lot of people. No one there knew me, and I afterward, I felt very outrageous and bold. I called an activist friend of mine and processed it. I said I felt like Saul Alinsky had channeled through me, and that I'd made myself so extreme and radical in that meeting, that any message I might calmly convey afterward might actually seem reasonable.

He said to me that I kicked the door open so that others might walk through. I was really grateful he said this, and helped me to put what I'd done into perspective, because I felt organically radical and out there, doing what I'd done. And it feels this way, now.

So I've put a book out there to use as a fundraiser, that may not make me the most popular Sea Monkey in the brine. It's a major risk on many levels. Yet, if in writing what I have, if the very existence of it allows other authors or community members to walk through that door, then that's a monumental success.

So at least it exists now and it's out there.