Hi everyone, I'm having yet another frustration concerning POD (print-on-demand.) Or maybe I'm not used to being told "no." As you know, I am new to Colorado Springs. When I lived in Kansas City region, I did not have a problem when approaching Barnes & Noble for a signing, especially during April. I would supply the books, BN would ring them through their cashier, then BN headquarters would take their 20% cut and mail me a check for the rest of the proceeds. Okay, yesterday I went to Borders and asked for an event in April since it is Child Abuse Prevention Month and Sexual Assault Awareness & Prevention Month, topics covered in my book. Borders GM took my card and said, "Let me look at something first." What he looked at in the system was whether or not my book was POD. Then he said they usually don't do POD because the books are not returnable on their system. I said I supply the books. He then said I should talk to the district manager. I followed with BN with a phone call today and reached the most smug "community events manager" that I ever encountered. No, he doesn't do POD. No, he doesn't have room in April. (There are 30 days in April!) No, he never heard of the arrangement I made with the BN headquarters. He was smug and abrupt, like POD is an unruly step-child of publishing. Or perhaps he thinks the topics are "Not in my backyard." Plus, this BN has a writer's group that meets weekly, and I was thinking of going. So, I stewed while doing Pilates. Huh, I'll show him. I'll write a letter to headquarters. I won't frequent his store. I won't join the writer's club! But, honestly, that would get me nowhere. I'm going to join the group, make myself and my writing known, get a TV station to cover me in April, and show that smug naysayer what he missed out on! Or if you have any suggestions, please let me know! Love and Light (just what Mr. Smug must be needing) Lynn

Wait till this small minded Slug see's you on the Oprah show, ha-ha-ha and it will happen to you mark my words....Women rule....!

Thanks Chatty. Then he'll come crawling back to me, begging me to bring buyers to his B & N. ! Women rule! LLL

Hi Brenda, you are a wealth of information. Yes, I considered reporting the smug events manager to the BN home office. How could he say he is not set up with the home office to do contracts when I already had 2 contracts with the Country Club Plaza store? No wonder the CCP store (in KC) is the highest sales store! Thanks for the tip on sales rank. Well, my score with WD was a 19. And yes, that year, a CSS book was entered in the Independent Book Publishers section. I could be wrong, but I was surprised and disappointed to. I noticed that the Amazon review was back intact, and they changed the number of days it takes to receive the book from 4 to 6 weeks to 9-13 days. I never thought of using the WD evaluation for my book, but that is a good idea, and I will add it to my web site. Thank you ever so much. Love and Light, Lynn

I put an ad in RTIR. Television producers do read it. I had two offers. Ricky Lake and Queen Lativah and I declined both of them because they wanted to have the abusers on stage with the victims. They could get a woman killed doing that.

Anyway, I've digressed. I got a lot of radio interviews from it but you might be up at 2 AM doing an hour long interview.

I don't think it increased my book sales tho.

I need to add to my above post. Scam artist also read RTIR. One especially out of Phoenix. Offer you your own radio show. I asked for references and they wouldn't give me any. So, I called the BBB and they had a ton of complaints. Always check with the BBB.

Dianne, how much is it for an ad in RTIR?

I did a lot of radio last fall from an ad the publisher placed, but I didn't notice any increase in book sales either.

I'm enjoying this thread. There's so much helpful information.

I thought I'd share that I've tried different types of PR for my web site (now I know this is different than books) and I've decided online publications with links to your site are the best way to go. People are on the computer and can just click through. They don't have to try to remember your site, book title, author, whatever.

I think it's worth doing for book sales too because people can click through to your site, or Amazon and check it out immediately.

I'll also share that the radio I've done hasn't proven to be that successful. It was fun to do a live show and see a few people come directly to the site, but that was unusual. Also, some of the radio I've done is taped and broadcasted at other times. They can't always tell you when it will be aired.

The good part about radio is doing it in your own home. That's the best.

Lynn, I was just rereading one of your older posts on this thread where you talked about how much money you're spending. I can relate! But at least I have free blogs.

Have you considered starting a blog for your web site? You can set it up in the traditional blog fashion, or you can make it into a conventional web site by simply reediting the same post every time that you go in. That's one way to cut back on expenses and blogs have become kind of cool and avant-garde :-)

It does seem really hard to make money as a writer. I'm excited about my books but I'm discouraged about the financial end of things.

TTYS, Sigrid

Lynn, I find that it's usually good news when Amazon has run out of my books and they put up that stupid sign that says that it will take four to six weeks for them to deliver new ones. It never takes that long. Shortly after I see that sign, I check back and they have a whole new stock of books and they've removed the little logo. So I wouldn't worry about that. In fact, I would take it as a positive sign that people are buying your book.

Secondly, I have never been able to contact Amazon directly. When I have a problem with them, I call AuthorHouse and have my Representative get in touch with Amazon. Amazon in Canada and in the UK are still spelling my last name wrong! I have written to them but they have never written back and frankly, I've been too busy to worry about the small "d" versus the capital "d" in Macdonald.

So true, what a joke it was to have paid for the press releases that we wrote. May as well get a good laugh out of it now ;-)

No, I have not agree to iUniverse. I'm quite certain that I'm going to go ahead and publish it myself on Lulu. So far, I'm very pleased with it and I've gotten good feedback from my readers. I have someone to edit it and a fabulous graphic design artist, who just happens to be my nephew, so I am cool with going ahead with it on Lulu.

And I retract what I said earlier about getting publicity outside of my region. Several people in British Columbia and in California have ordered copies of the book, but none of them has followed up by requesting an interview. In fact, I have made 50 phone calls to the list of people that AuthorHouse gave me for press releases; out of 50 calls, FOUR people requested the book. Not worth my time unless one of them had been the New York Times!

TTYS, Sigrid