A Journey Toward Self-Publishing Part 2
I continued to spend this past week working my way toward self-publishing. I started working on ideas for a “bread and butter” book. A bread and butter book is a non-fiction piece that is designed to sell consistently year after year. The book need not be a best seller (selling 10,000 copies a year or more), just a consistent seller of as few as 1,000 copies or so.
When I sat down to decide what I wanted to write about I explored all kinds of ideas and finally settled on the subject of self-hypnosis and the therapeutic applications of hypnosis. I chose this subject because it has always been an interest of mine and because I have been using its techniques for years to manage stress, among other issues.
My lifelong interest in hypnosis became more focused around 1980 when the combined effects of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and alcoholism hit me hard. I spoke with several psychiatrists who, to their credit diagnosed the disorder correctly. When they told me they wanted to put me on therapeutic medication (and that the medications were not addictive) I balked.
The medications may not be addictive, but I am. I have an addictive personality which, on its positive side, makes me a highly creative, driven personality. On the negative side – well, let’s not go there.
I balked because I had just made a commitment to give up one crutch – Vodka and lots of it – and I wanted to be sure I wasn’t trading one crutch for another. I started searching for alternatives.
During my search, I had the good fortune to meet the late Charles Tebbetts. He was in his eighties at the time and had an excellent reputation as a hypnotherapist in the Seattle area and also ran a school that taught professional hypnotherapy courses
As I told him about my concerns he agreed to give me a “freebie” session. After that session I felt as though a weight had been lifted off my shoulders and, while I knew more sessions would be needed, I knew that I had experienced real progress in managing the effects of PTSD.
It was also after that session that I decided that, if I was going to use hypnosis to manage my stresses, I needed to make an all out commitment to understanding it, so I signed up for Charlie’s courses in hypnotherapy. While attending his hypnotherapy school I was also fortunate enough to take instruction from Gil Boyne, who has an international reputation in the field of hypnotherapy as one of the best in the world.
At one point I was even registered to practice hypnotherapy in the state of Washington, but I let my credentials lapse because I was more concerned with my own issues.
The one thing that did not change, however, was my interest in the therapeutic applications of hypnosis, which leads me back to the subject of the books I intend to write and self-publish in the next few months.
How many books I might write, is not clear. I would hope I can write at least a dozen on the various ways hypnosis can be used to manage stress, improve sports performance and create powerful, positive and healing life changes.
© 2009 Moody Publishing Co
May du Jour (short story)
When May rounded the corner the first thing she noticed was that her U-Haul was missing. It had been parked right in front of her new home. A gasp escaped her like a deep, caustic hiccup from an active volcano. Someone had stolen her things. She ran to her driveway and checked her front door. It was still shut. Nobody was around. The drizzle was still coming down and the breeze had picked up. Her cell phone, thankfully, hadn’t lost its charge. She started to dial ‘9’ when she realized she was staring directly at her missing U-Haul – only now it was parked precariously inside the wall of somebody’s house at the bottom of the hill.
–
The brakes must have failed. Or she hadn’t set them. May couldn’t remember now. All she could do was stare at the catastrophe that awaited her FIMA response at the bottom of the cul-de-sac. There would be cops to talk to, neighbors to appease, gift baskets to buy. Maybe they’d hate her despite a gallant showing of guilt-ridden diplomacy. A gift basket didn’t always mend fences, or walls for that matter.
Someone could be seriously injured down there. Or dead.
May wasn’t exactly panicking when she descended the long stairway down to the beach but she did vomit at the bottom of the stairs behind an old charred log. A seagull flew over. How she envied that bird its simple life in its mere pursuit of its next meal – which very well could be her deposit of upchuck.
“Eat my puke, you goddamn bird! Eat my puke and make it all go away!” If the gull didn’t hear her, she made sure the gods would.
Before she knew it her shoes and socks were off. She stripped down and flung the rest of her clothes over the log. She wanted to lose herself in the surf, to escape. She wanted to go back to Sacramento and to pretend none of this happened, not her nervous breakdown or David’s infidelity. If there was only an ‘undo’ feature in the application that was her life, something familiar and reassuring to click on with her existential mouse, something like ‘submit order’.
–
The water was surprisingly warm and without menace. She swam the shoreline fifty yards out, confident in her ability as a swimmer. The homes and hotels were perched on the cliff in a veil of gruff fog. She had wanted waterfront property but prices were way out of bounds even for a shithole like Lincoln City. She had to settle for a rental; an old couple was raising stakes in order to finance their new lives in Santa Fe. It was a good deal which allowed her ample time to settle in without having to worry about taking a job. Her David had managed to snag himself a younger woman during the separation. They were living together and talking about children. Good for him. She didn’t want to hold any grudges in her fresh life. They had no children so she would never have to see him again.
May was surprised by how warm she felt coming out of the water. She should have been freezing her ass off dripping wet and buck naked in the raw February air; there was only serene warmth and the stench of flooded oyster dens and salt; on her skin she could feel the tongues of one billion microorganisms having their way with her. As much as she loved to swim in the sea she hated the quid pro quo return to dry land. She often wondered why Life bothered leaving the ocean and evolving into such unfortunate things as people, the only life forms, as far as she could tell, incapable of managing their own stench without a bubble bath sponsored by Bed, Bath, & Beyond.
–
There was a little girl over by the log where she left her clothes. She couldn’t have been more than five or six years of age. She was all alone. She was just as naked as May and shivering in convulsive fits and huddled over something in the sand protectively like an animal.
“Little girl, what in the hell – what are you doing? Get out of there. That’s – that’s mine.”
The little girl was eating May’s vomit. With every bite and swallow the little girl seemed to shiver more violently. May grabbed her phone and draped her jacket around the girl’s shoulders. She took hold of the little girl’s hands.
“Stop it! You’ll make yourself sick. What are you doing out here all alone? Where are your parents?”
“They forgot me here.” Her voice sounded oddly low, dull like the middle keys of an old, out-of-tune piano.
Once more May felt nauseous. This was not at all what she had in mind for a fresh start.
“Honey, that’s very unlikely. Do you mind telling me your name?”
“April.”
“April, I couldn’t imagine your parents forgetting you here. Do you mind telling me what your last name is?”
The little girl answered slowly. “Lipinski.”
“Is this some kind of joke?” May looked the beach over north and south. There was nobody around. “Are you sure that’s your real name? You didn’t just hear one of your neighbors say that name, did you?”
The little girl shook her head.
“Okay then. Can you show me where you live?”
The little girl pointed to the staircase leading up off the beach, back to the unfortunate business of May’s muddled life. She offered her hand to the little girl. “I can walk you home, April. But I’ll need to speak to your mommy and daddy about…some things.”
April took her hand without a second thought.
–
The bath water fell and made that lovely white noise inherent in faucets, producing majestic echoes throughout the empty house. May wished she had candles and music but she settled instead for April’s tiny hands rinsing cold water through her hair.
“You’re going to tell me the truth when we’re through with our baths, April.”
“I already did.”
“Now why don’t I believe you? Do you know what I think?” May took the little girls hands in hers. Her birthday was April 17th. She couldn’t remember if the girl told her that on the beach or during the walk. Her mother had named her aptly for the month of her birth, the same as May’s mother had done. “I think that you took off on your own. And then you met this nice crazy lady on the beach and now you want to live with her because she let you eat a little bit of her barf. Am I right?”
Her eyes widened just a little. “Yeah. Kinda.”
“Yeah kinda I think so too, kiddo.”
“Tell me the story again about your tattoo.”
April dragged her fingers in circles around the faded image on May’s shoulder. This little girl certainly wasn’t shy with strangers.
“I don’t remember telling you anything about my tattoo.”
“You did.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Tons of times.”
“Now stop it, April. You don’t even know me. Just stop it!”
May pulled away from the little girl’s grasp and grabbed her shirt. It wasn’t much of a towel but it would have to do until she retrieved her things from the U-Haul.
April looked at her with a put-on wounded look. Then she whispered in a playful, conspiratorial tone, “Daddy would get mad at you for not getting rid of it because you and your old boyfriend got one together.”
May looked at the wet shirt in her hands. There was dried blood and bits of hair stuck to it. She inspected her scalp in the mirror and noticed the large bump and gash around the top of her head.
“Does it hurt, mommy?”
–
The walk down to the U-Haul was cold and miserable. Things were starting to come back into focus. She remembered screaming; she remembered April screaming beside her, and the impact that sent her sprawling forward into the steering wheel. She had unfastened her seatbelt at the last moment to reach across the wide cabin to make sure April was buckled up.
There was nobody home. They tried the door and found it unlocked so they went inside and called the police on the landline. It was a rental like their new place; only this property hadn’t been rented out for a while. There was a visible layer of dust over the television set, and now thanks to her and some failed brakes, a great big hole in the living room wall. Nobody had been hurt except for her. Ironically, she couldn’t remember the name of the condition that resulted in her memory loss. For a short while she had also forgotten she had a daughter.
“Is this our new home, mommy?”
“No, honey. We’re just visiting for a while. I have to talk to the police first.”
“Are we in trouble?”
“Well I’m in a bit of trouble, but it will be alright. They’ll probably give me a ticket of some kind.”
“What’s a ticket?”
“It’s like a time out for adults, but instead of spending time in a corner, I get to spend some money instead.”
They could hear the police sirens now, faint but steady.
Maybe it was the gash on her head but she felt compelled to consult the dictionary she spotted over on the shelf. It was one of those portly dictionaries that also contained the etymologies of the words. While reading the definitions for the word that never left her mind – even after the impact – she smiled for the first time since…whenever it had been before. She was truly embarrassed to discover that she never really knew what the word actually meant. What especially pleased May was the original meaning of the word, which was ‘moving’ or ‘on the move.’ Its chief use was in reference to moving water, unstagnant, fresh drinking water.
This error corrected, their fresh start could now begin.
A Journey Toward Self-Publishing
I took last week away from this Blog to decide how I wanted to manage my business from now on. I had thought about writing freelance and working with local and national businesses to create their marketing campaigns. I even published my rates.
Then I sat back and looked at what was involved in marketing, selling, producing and finishing one of those projects and suddenly realized that I didn’t want to go that direction. Not that it wouldn’t be fun and creatively challenging, of course, but simply because I would be spending most of my time working for my own company, rather than the other way around.
I kept racking my brain, trying to figure out how I might monetize this Blog while, at the same time, create a business that works for me.
Things started to come together when I was introduced to an ebook titled 279 Days to Overnight Success by Chris Guillibeau (an unconventional approach to full-time writing). Its only about11,000 words long, but it is filled with a lot of creative and very practical ideas about monetizing a Blog and making the business work for me, which is what I was looking for all along.
As I started reading the book, I began to think about one of the best pieces of marketing advice I was ever given: “It doesn’t matter who you know, but rather, who knows you.” The goal in marketing is to reach as many people as possible tell them who you are, what you do and how they can buy your services.
For the rest of this week I am going to combine what I learned in the 279 days book with some of my own creative background to develop a writing business that is not only fun, and profitable, but is also designed to work for me, giving me the time I want to be involved with the Chamber of Commerce, the local theater group and a local cable TV station.
The community involvement is important to me because it’s something I dearly missed when I was working in a corporate environment. Most of the time I worked swing shift – usually from about 3PM to 11PM, a time when most of the groups I wanted to belong to were meeting. Needless to say, I didn’t have the time to attend the meetings or be involved with rehearsals that are so important in these groups.
As I create my writing business, I intend to be more involved with my community, enjoying the richness of the experience.
This week I am going to be sitting at my computer and developing a business plan that will not only create a successful writing business, but also, the time to be involved with my community.
The View From Here is published every Saturday and Monday and explores a wide variety of subjects. If you have suggestions or comments feel free to email me.
© 2009 Moody Publishing Co
A Poetic Vein in the Public Domain
When I decided to publish a book of my collected poetry, I knew it wasn’t going to be a California gold rush for the pocket book. It’s acceptable to embrace the hardships of the publishing world when you’re a novelist. And when it comes to poetry, well…you can just forget about it. You will never make a living at it. The simple fact is this: it’s the way it was meant to be. I learned this when I browsed the list of careers being offered by one of those guidance counselors who were hip to show me what my aptitude test results were. Poets weren’t on the list. But one year I was shown that I would make a great accountant; then the following year revealed my path to becoming a lawyer. After that I never bothered with academic astrology again.
When poetry came about, sometime during the dawn of language, what few poets that existed must have been considered divine – or crazy. While drawing in the dirt with sticks and painting on cave walls must have been some of the first works of art to exist, imagine those poor cavemen bastards who had to suffer the practicing poet. Here was the guy who was always talking to himself during the hunt…maybe even responsible for losing a few wooly mammoths because he just figured out a cool new word that rhymed with ‘urfff’ and couldn’t stop shouting out his new couplet at the top of his Stone Age lungs. This was the same guy who would fake a fever to stay home so he could try out his new poem on your pre-historic pin-up girlfriend. But the poets were revered during the various stages of Greek civilization. They would hold annual contests not all that dissimilar to the poetry slams of the current day. Prizes were awarded just as they are now. Then the English got a hold of poetry, and most notably, their educated noblemen. It was a past time for some of society’s elite. But these guys had their own bankroll. By and large, poetry never really paid well. It was something one did for personal gratification, whatever the angle. But it was never done for nine-to-five money.
With Wolf Gin Sonnets I grudgingly decided to go the way of self-publishing. It wasn’t something that sounded very attractive at first for the simple reason that anybody could do it if they wanted to shell out a few bucks. This is called vanity publishing. And I was coming from an old school point of view that looked down on putting something out that wasn’t peer-reviewed and approved. It took me a couple of years while I was writing the poems that eventually went into Wolf Gin Sonnets to accept that self-publishing is an OK thing, that we don’t have to rely on others when the technology is there to get the job done. Besides, I would be writing poetry whether or not somebody accepted my stuff. It’s just what I do. So when I looked around I eventually found an Amazon company called Createspace (I had tried another company first that didn’t have the distribution and so I opted out). Here was a company that did not charge for publishing and you get access to regular distribution channels. This means that they supply your book with its own ISBN and EAN numbers so you can peddle your book in any store in the world as well as corrupt the youth at your local library. And of course, you do have the options for additional services at a price. But I have one strict rule when it comes to publishing poetry: never pay for it. The best you can hope to do when all is said and done is to break even after considerations for your time and efforts.
The second consideration I had for my gaggle of poems was recording. I wanted to do a spoken word album. This meant that I’d have to find some music to put behind the poems. Here’s the thing. The few copies I’d sell are going to end up collecting dust sooner than any other CD or download. It’s just the way it goes. Poetry is something that requires a faithful listener, otherwise it’s distracting. With music you can sit back and relax or plan your next bank heist with friends over a few bottles of California red. But as soon as you put on somebody’s voice – it’s a jarring experience. It’s like listening to someone locked in the closet. That’s why they invented gags. So despite what someone may say to me, I’d expect a spoken word CD to not get a lot of play time unwinding after work. It’s something that they might play for someone else when my name is brought up. “Hey, that Boehman recorded a spoken word CD. Wanna hear it?”
“Not really.”
“Fine. I’ll put on some [insert your choice music selection here].”
Now just imagine how many plays my project would get if I didn’t put ANY music behind it? Probably once. If I were lucky. After all, it isn’t like a George Carlin stand-up routine. Spoken word is a niche at its best, a sideshow on a normal day, and a disaster on any other. It’s an acquired taste.
So I got the bright idea of checking out music that was listed in the Public Domain. This is music that has no copyright claims to it. And there’s plenty of it out there if you know where to look. I spent hours trolling through archives to find music for maybe 15 of the planned 48 tracks that I needed. The project would cover a little over half the material included in Wolf Gin Sonnets. Then I hit a snag. After a good day 48 hours into it I ran across a blurb on one of the websites explaining the basic copyright law I thought I already had a strong grasp of. Then I researched it further and confirmed that even though music in the Public Domain is free to use for commercial use, the actual recordings are not. Not until the year 2067, anyway. I was gutted. I had just put together some pretty decent recordings utilizing the talents of brilliant composers and phenomenal musicians. And now I couldn’t use any of it! I thought about ditching the idea altogether. Then I considered forging ahead without music. But selling a CD on Amazon with only voice seemed tacky. This wasn’t exactly a book on tape kind of project. If I’m going to sell just three copies then those three listeners best be getting their money’s worth.
Wait a minute.
I took a step back from it all and realized I got it all wrong. I’m not writing poetry, listening to performances, and reading all The Greats with expectations of lining my pockets with a little coin for every little thing I do. I’m in it because I’m drawn to poetry like a simile is drawn to a whorehouse, where it works its tricks with clientele until it becomes an old worn-out cliché. Why not put my recordings out there in the Public Domain as well? I could still sell my book with full rights reserved and offer up some recordings free of charge just for fun. Why not? And that’s what I’m doing now. Instead of offering a CD for sale I’m offering up tracks from Land of Smoke and Things free of charge to download. You can find them here at my Myspace page. And the image below is what the album cover would have looked like had I put it out some other way. Consider it all a virtual gift that doesn’t cost $19.95. It’s yours to keep, no money back guarantee. Operators are not standing by to take your order. Order now!
Sample here:
Time Away
Welcome to October, where the weather is getting colder and colder. I’m taking this week off to visit friends in McCall and to just put my feet up. Regular columns will begin again October 12.
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