Greg Ioannou has been my editor since the day I walked into his Colborne Communications office with my in-progress manuscript for Lifeliner. This was in 1999, just before my brain injury. I went to him seeking a structural editor and, perhaps, a copy editor. I’d worked as a copy editor and didn’t think I’d need much help in that area; however, structuring a book was new to me. We hit it off, and he set me a writing schedule. I dug into it enthusiastically. And then two cars hit my stopped car. But a most amazing thing happened: through all the years of recovery, Greg waited patiently. When I was able to return to writing Lifeliner in 2006, he happily met with me and worked with my new abilities (or limited at that time). He has provided sage advice and guidance for my novels ever since. You cannot pay for guidance and support like that.

This past Fall, when I made my annual trek to his office for novel advice, he stunned me by offering to publish my next novels, but not in the traditional way, in a new way, focussing mostly on ebooks. He offered fair and attractive terms. My work would be edited professionally by an editing house I knew and trusted. I would no longer have to work on the publishing aspect alone. My answer was a slam dunk: yes.

I submitted Aban’s Accension to him for editing, and until it’s released, he has listed me on his website as an affiliate author along with my already published books and a blog to boot. More blogs! This brings me up to three blogs — four if you count Google+ posts — and four websites I have to keep an eye on. There shall be some duplication, my energy being a tad limited.

In addition to my books and blog, you will also find on my Iguana Books page an exclusive excerpt of one of my short stories, free for you to read.

In the coming months, Iguana Books will be offering pre-sales for Aban’s Accension. And once I’ve completed Time and Space, I will be submitting it to them for editing. Keep an eye on this space or my Iguana blog for upcoming publication announcements.

In honour of my third NaNoWriMo, I’m putting the ebook and Kindle versions of my highly rated and very first NaNoWriMo novel She on sale on Amazon US, Amazon UK, and Smashwords (with coupon code PZ44G) for only 99¢. Read a sample and download it today before November is over!

She is the classic tale of betrayal and friendship – with an evil entity thrown into the mix. Akaesman is that evil entity. And a young Toronto songwriter is his latest prey. Akaesman violently invades her and tries to make her into his image forever. Her career dies. Her name is gone. And then as her friends and fiancé turn their backs on her as she fights to resist Akaesman, she realizes the worst kind of evil: betrayal. That’s when her real battle for life begins.

“Put simply this is the best urban fantasy story that I have ever read period….you feel exactly how the main character feels. “She” is written with a pace that makes you feel every single word combined with hauntingly beautiful descriptions to forge a story that is anything but forgettable. That is the mark of a truly talented writer, someone who tells a story that you feel as opposed to reading words on a cold piece of paper.

One of the greatest attributes of “She” (One of many I might add) is how mysterious everything is within its pages. Considering that this story is done in the real world that is quite an accomplishment.” From the five-star review by Shane Porteous on Goodreads.com.

I’m pleased to announce that I’ve officially launched She now that it’s been rolled out to all the online bookstores and ebook stores, with the exception of Chapters and kobo, those Canadian bookstores that boast how they support Canadian authors like, um, me. I’ve emailed all my real-life contacts and have given up on trying to find where Facebook has hidden its “update Page subscribers” link. Of course, my email program didn’t do what I expected it to with its list feature and blasted everyone’s emails out to the universe. Figures. You spend hours agonizing over wording, preparing the lists, and the software mucks things up. I need a secretary! Or a virtual assistant, the newest kind of human resource for people like me. The hard part is trying not to send duplicates to people because of all the venues I’m announcing through: email, Facebook, Twitter, blog, and websites. To those who get multiple announcements, I apologise. But it’ll probably be a year before I do something like this again, about when my next novel comes out.

If you haven’t checked out She yet, I invite you to read a sample (scroll down to see links), peruse my web page on the novel, or best yet purchase a copy. Please don’t forget to leave a review! Reviews are invaluable. They tell readers who don’t know me that others have not only read one of my books, but they think it’s worth buying too. Reviews encourage readers to buy and try one of my books.

As I roll out She, I’m outlining my third novel and am scrabbling to be ready for National Novel Writing Month 2011. I’m also trying to squeeze revising my second novel in there somewhere. I think I need to clone myself.

They write: “Just as film previews help you decide whether to pay to watch a movie, each month our e-catalog will give you glimpses into the first chapters of books so you can read a preview before you decide to purchase a book.”

They focus on independent authors and publishers and provide an easy way to check out new authors and interesting books. Check out their e-catalogue now in PDF format. She is on page 20.

Journalists get that it’s a great way to talk to their readers, to talk to each other, to talk about the stories they’re covering, to opine, to show up the ridiculous, and to let people know when columns/articles/blogs are up.

Writers, book or freelance, seem to be divided into two groups – traditionally published who sort of get it and indies who think it’s solely a platform to sell books or help fellow writers learn how to write and market.

Either way, journalists are way more interesting to follow than book writers. There are exceptions in both camps, as you can see illustrated in the writers’ tweets above, and my experience is limited by the relatively small number of hundreds of people I follow (I have no idea how people can follow thousands – I’d be permanently glued to my Twitter feed if I did that just to keep up, but then perhaps they don’t want to keep up, they just collect us like others collect coins, oh look, more shiny people to collect and follow but hardly ever read). Still, as a book writer and non-journalist, I stand by my opinion.

So what does that mean for my own book tweets? I tweet on a lot of stuff – from politics to news to brain injury to the TTC to writing – but my book tweets are boring. They’re the usual run-of-the-mill kind: here’s my book, please check it out, here’s what someone said about it, please look at it, here’s where you can buy it, please review it, please, please, pretty please with a sugar plum on top buy it so I can get a measly royalty cheque cause I’m not Margaret Atwood and need to beg, and I really, really, really hope you will buy it. I was never very happy with that, but after the difference between journos and writers became apparent to me, I became quite dissatisfied and started thinking about how to copy journos with regards to my book tweets.

I could tweet about my stories as if they were news stories… The only problem with that when it comes to my novel is that tweeting about a fictional story as if it was real may be a tad confusing, and so I’d have to indicate this is fiction and do all that within 140 characters minus the number of characters the link to the book consume. Yikes! I could opine on my characters, but once I publish my work I do not like to comment on the plot or the characters because I like to see what readers come up with, and the variety to me is fascinating. If I opine, then I will skew that. Still, that would be alright with my non-fiction works. I tweet about my writing when I actually sit down and write; those I don’t think are too bad. I just need to be more disciplined about getting them out of my head and onto the internet.

As you can see, tweeting (and writing Facebook statuses) about fictional works is challenging. I think what I might try is to use a journalist’s tweet that captures my attention as a template for one of my tweets on She until I get the hang of it.

“I let America borrow my rake and pruning shears and they defaulted.” (Paul Wells, one of my favourite columnists, from second illustration above)

I let evil take over my imagination, borrow my concentration, and it got me to write SHE. Hmmm… Or I let evil take over my imagination, borrow my concentration, but good got me to write SHE. Well, it’s a start. May use that one anyway.

“In theory, I *guess* he could grant permission to use it in parody, but — no, I don’t see that happening. The Commons would go crackers.” (kady, a fantastic live tweeter of all things House of Commons)

In theory, Akaesman could enter our space-time from a distant galaxy, but that wld send conspiracy theorists crackers. Lordy. Too long! Or In theory, Akaesman could appear on earth, but that wld send conspiracy theorists crackers. S’OK. But this is fiction, so I suppose I should tweet: In theory, my fictional Akaesman cld appear on earth but that wld send conspiracy theorists crackers.

The other challenge in coming up with more creative “buy my books, please, please, oh god, please buy my books” tweets is being able to do that every, single, friggin’ day. Unlike Amazon, Smashwords allows me to see when and how many people view my book page, as well as download samples and the ebooks. The days I don’t tweet on my books, no one comes on over. Not one single, solitary person. But tweeting every day about the same thing gets tedious for both me and my followers. I must change it up, and I suppose I can look at it as another way to practice the art of expressing imagination, but not so wordily.

I published this on my other blog too and received some insightful comments. Please feel free to join the conversation. I’d love to know what you think!

For those who don’t know, this practice of following a person and then within a day or perhaps a generous five days unfollowing the person if they don’t follow back arose because of Twitter’s policy. Once you follow 2,000 people, you must have a certain ratio of follow:being followed in order to increase that number above 2,000. So the idea is you follow a person, they immediately follow you. You unfollow the person and repeat with another. (Writers who do this may not unfollow as it’s also, in their view, some sort of support thing.) If they don’t follow you, you definitely unfollow them. That way the number of people who follow you will remain higher than the number you follow, and Twitter will let you increase the number of people you follow beyond 2,000. You follow? However, with apps like TwitDiff, people like me can now spot these kind of Twitterers and no longer have to waste our time checking out their Twitter feed.

I have never immediately followed back because I am too slow. First off, it can take me weeks to check out feeds, it all depends on my energy levels and what else I’m doing. With some feeds, I can’t make up my mind if I want to follow them. With feeds filled with RTs and @ replies, I know I don’t because a feed filled with RTs is too difficult to read, and a feed filled with @ replies means I won’t see it with how Twitter handles those tweets. Only TweetDeck would show me them, and I’m not on TweetDeck that often. In a very, very few cases, feeds are a slam-dunk to follow. They have funny tweets, interesting tweets, intriguing links, banal tweets, good info, some @ replies, a few RTs, or a combo of all of those; they have conversations; they’re not filled with hashtags fore and aft, which make my eyes spin. In short, they’re worth the follow.

Those kinds of feeds ought to be a natural for writers to write, or at least aspire to.

Apparently not.

I joined Twitter for the same reason I started a blog: to practice my writing (those 10,000 hours Malcolm Gladwell writes about plus it’s fun or at least work I like) and to express myself. Twitter had the added discipline of imposing brevity. Short writing, putting a complex thought into few words, is not easy. Twitter provides the perfect opportunity to practise.

Twitter also provides the writer the chance to write pithy thoughts on a wide variety of subjects. You’re not confined to the subject of your books or the theme of your blog.

I have also discovered that Twitter allows an author to meet readers. Goodreads does that too, but not in the real-time, free-flowing conversational way that Twitter does, in which others can join in to your conversations.

And Twitter allows you to meet or follow interesting people in the publishing industry and learn from them. You can’t do that — heck, you can’t do any of the above — if all you’re doing is exchanging book shills, which becomes extremely tedious before the day is half over.

Yes, an author does need to tweet on their books, what others are saying about the books, where to buy, sales and promotions. And yes, there will be bursts of these tweets when a new book comes out. But over the course of a year, those tweets should be a small part; even in the bursts they should not be the only topic on the author’s feed.

Twitter is a merit thing when it comes to following. I don’t expect people to follow me just for following support. I don’t expect people to follow me back just because I followed them. My tweets may not be their cup of tea. So I don’t like it when people impose the expectation of you-have-to-follow-me-just-because-I-followed-you-even-if-my-feed-is-the-biggest-yawnfest-you-ever-encountered. TwittDiff lets me spot these kinds of Twitterers in the ease of my email inbox. I no longer have to spend precious energy or minutes checking out a feed, only to discover that they’ve already unfollowed me (you can tell by the lack of direct message ability). But even with TwitDiff, it really irritates me when writers unfollow because I didn’t follow back right away or at all.

Authors who think we should follow each other because it’s how we support each other and that by boosting Twitter follower numbers we will somehow sell books, are missing out. And they are also missing out in how we can truly support each other: by sharing info, by discussing how we do things, joining up under a shared hashtag like #amwriting or #nanowrimo even though we may not follow each other. These authors and writers have just stuck a finger in the eye of Twitter’s opportunity.

“Real” authors, the established ones, don’t do this follow-you-follow-me thing. They’re too busy writing interesting tweets.

Lifeliner and She will both be fifty percent off their regular price. And as always, all ebook formats will be available for download. So whether you have a Kindle, Sony Reader, kobo, Nook, iPad, iPod Touch, iPhone, smartphone, or a computer, you will be able to read all my ebooks. And for July only, at a special price too! Just click the images below to be taken directly to the respective book pages.

If you need instructions on how to download and read ebooks from Smashwords, please check out my 2010 post on Reading Any DRM-Free ePub on iPod Touch, iPad, or iPhone. To read an ePub ebook on your computer, download the free Adobe Digital Editions, then download the ebooks from Smashwords. And when you’ve finished reading, please don’t forget to leave a review on the Smashwords book pages! Enjoy!!

But that’s not the only place you can find She in. So far, Apple’s iBooks and iTunes now lists all four of my ebooks in ePub version in its store: She, Lifeliner, The Job Sessions, and A Nibble of Chocolate. The latter two are available for only 99¢. And in a bizarre twist, the Canadian ebook retailer kobo, hasn’t listed Lifeliner, a biography on a remarkable Canadian woman who made medical, world-changing Canadian history, yet they have listed A Nibble of Chocolate, a nice bite-sized look at the nutrition of chocolate with a recipe included because nutritious food should always taste yummy.

If you’re a Goodreads member, you can now purchase and/or read both Lifeliner and She right on the site, as well as fan my author profile.

And as always, all four of my ebooks are listed and available on Smashwords (and through the ebook app Stanza) for instant download in your preferred format to your favourite device.

I hope you will enjoy my ebooks and be inspired to make a donation towards the substantial cost of She’s editing, by clicking the button in the right sidebar. No good novel appears in public without first going under the critical eyes of an editor. And you can be assured that mine have and always will. I hugely appreciate all those who have already donated and helped me afford this necessary step. Will you not join their number? Regardless, as always, I wish you happy reading!

Right now, I am doing a soft launch of the eBook. I had read about this method of launching a book awhile ago and thought it a good idea. Basically, I upload the final DOC file to Smashwords, which converts it to all the eBook formats, creates a book page for my urban fantasy novel, and lists it on all their appropriate shelves. I tweet about She a little and tell a few close people and my Beta Readers, increase the small announcements once I’ve had a chance to check and fix it for errors, but I hold off on doing the big announcement and marketing push until everything else is in place, like ISBNs and retailers stocking it. A soft launch gives me a chance to see it in its final eBook form on my Sony Reader, on the computer, and on my iPad in the various apps — kobo, iBooks, Stanza, Bluefire Reader, Kindle. That’s the best way to find formatting errors, like a title not fully italicized, or minor punctuation errors, or typos that would’ve been missed in the DOC file. After several readings of the same file, your eyes tend to see what is supposed to be there instead of what is actually there. Looking at the ePub is like seeing it for the first time, and errors pop out at you. With Smashwords, it is easy to fix the file and re-upload it. Anyone who has bought the original version will also be able to download the newer one.

The soft launch also means I have time to create a Goodreads page for She and a page for it on my website (yet to do!). Yet I can still get the eBook out into the public while doing that and while waiting for the Canadian agency that issues ISBNs to process my registration and to issue me a block of ISBNs. Canada does not charge for this service, unlike other countries, but you have to wait. I also have to wait for Smashwords to distribute She to retailers. Some won’t take it until I have assigned it an ISBN; others will. And, as well, I want to assign the Kindle version an ISBN before I publish it in the Amazon Kindle store. In a couple of months, I hope to have the print book out.

But you don’t have to wait to read it: just head over to Smashwords, buy it for the low, low price of $2.99, and download your preferred format to your computer and eReader and smartphone and iPad. Once you’ve bought it, you can download it as many times as you like without paying again. You can also read samples of and buy my other eBooks. Enjoy! And if you can spare a moment, please leave a review on Smashwords!

LinkedIn is the “world’s largest professional network, helping people find and share opportunities every day.”

I don’t know exactly how it’ll work for me, but I hear many authors find it useful. In the coming days, I’ll explore more how it works, but for now I have most of my profile completed. If you’re on LinkedIn, please join my network — you may find my public profile here.

“A compelling story.”

“Shireen Jeejeebhoy has written an extraordinary account of Judy Taylor and her fight for life starting in the 1970′s when medical science was not as it is today.”

“When (Judy) was drugged up, she’s going, ‘I can’t die cause there’s no way that Cliff can raise those three girls by himself. He can’t do it. I have to live.’”

“Jeejeebhoy’s style of writing sets the right pace as we follow Judy’s medical difficulties….It is truly a fascinating and eye-opening story which was well written.”

“Reading it will make you laugh, smile, cringe, cry and most importantly, think. If you want inspiration, Lifeliner has no shortage packed into its pages.”

“Thank you so much for telling the story of your father’s care for her and the strength and courage she displayed in such a compelling and interesting way!”

Just some of the nice things reviewers and those who knew Judy said about my book Lifeliner: The Judy Taylor Story when it first came out in print and limited eBook distribution. Recently, Smashwords made it possible for authors to publish their books in multiple eBook formats and have them distributed to all the big virtual bookstores from Amazon to Sony to Kobo to Apple’s iBookstore. It was time to properly join the eBook digital revolution.

Judy Taylor relished her simple happy life. She had a loving husband, three young daughters, a beautiful suburban home. Good health. Suddenly, intestinal blood clots annihilated her guts. Judy faced the certainty of starving to death in a cold Toronto hospital. “Don’t let me die,” she cried out. The year was 1970. There was nothing they could do. And then they heard of a radical young doctor doing revolutionary work on artificial feeding. She went for it; she agreed to become a guinea pig. And Judy lived two more decades without eating again. And because of her courage, she gave people a better chance at living with AIDS or cystic fibrosis, recovering from traumas, and surviving the rigors of chemo. Lifeliner is Judy’s inspirational story from death to life, from ordinary woman to medical pioneer.

Today, I’m proud to announce that Lifeliner is available on Smashwords and has been approved to be distributed to Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo, Amazon, and Apple. To celebrate this awesome occasion, I am offering — until May 31st only — Lifeliner for a measly $1.99 at Smashwords. Simply enter coupon code TX53X at checkout to receive this special introductory price.

At that price, I would buy it even if I didn’t know what it was, said one reader.

Read a free sample. Then take advantage of this amazing offer and download it in your eBook format of choice. And if you have a moment, please leave a review too!

Technorati Tags: Medicine, Health, Inspiration, eBook, Publishing, Digital

If you read my brief blog posts during the self-publishing phase of Lifeliner, you’d surmise I had a mostly good experience with iUniverse. There were a couple of odd things, like I wasn’t allowed to know the names of the editors who edited my book, but overall I found my Publishing Services Associate friendly, helpful, and professional. I liked how the editors helped me craft a better book. I liked that I had a chance to have Lifeliner‘s cover professionally designed. And I liked having the opportunity to have my book stocked in an Indigo bookstore in Toronto. After that though, things went downhill.

It all began when Author Solutions bought out iUniverse. My PSA couldn’t move with iUniverse to their new headquarters due to the burst housing bubble. My newly assigned marketing associate also left the company shortly after I contracted with iUniverse to use one of their publicists, and I wasn’t allowed to have her as my publicist (due to conflict of interest, they said). And in the midst of releasing and marketing Lifeliner, my lawsuit against the drivers who mucked me up emerged from one of its many long lulls into the final throes of resolution, which of course took months and months and months. Because I had little energy left over to market Lifeliner and to stay on top of the publicist’s and iUniverse’s efforts on my behalf, I relied on them to fulfill their contractual obligations, to do everything they said that they would.

iUniverse stated in their paperwork that they would do the following in their three-month publicity campaign:

The publicist…will contact the author the first day of the campaign to determine specific media target audiences and develop a plan.

A plan will be developed based on the following schedule:

Month 1

• Pitch magazines.
• Set up book events in author’s hometown and surrounding markets.
• Pitch to Amazon reviewers.
• Pitch to Top 100 Newspapers.

Month 2

• Continue to follow-up on all interested media pitched to date.
• Pitch to radio and television in local and regional area (talk, drive time, interview).
• Pitch to newspapers in local and regional area

Month 3

• Continue to follow-up with all interested media to date
• Pitch national wire services
• Pitch wire services
• Pitch all freelance writers

That’s pretty much the gist of the agreement. My publicist and I talked specifics about what kinds of magazines and because she was from the NE USA, I had to fill her in a bit about the media market here in southern Ontario, despite the fact that I wasn’t fully cognizant of all that is published round here. (Months later, when I’d recovered from the end of lawsuit, a quick Google search netted me a long list of newspapers, radio stations, and television stations in Ontario, a few in upper New York state, just across the border from Toronto.) My publicist didn’t set up book events because of my energy limitations but we did discuss one event that I set up myself, and she sent out an announcement to a couple of publicity places. It didn’t help that there was a problem with the timing of when to start the campaign because Indigo, to put it politely, bounced around the start date of when to stock Lifeliner in the World’s Biggest Bookstore (WBBS). I was also informed that Indigo would not tolerate me approaching them about having a book signing for Lifeliner, yet I suppose my publicist could’ve spoken to them, I don’t know. It didn’t happen anyway.

Aside from that item, the Month 1 obligations were fulfilled, well, except that 100 newspapers were not pitched to.

My publicist followed up on all her pitches over the three months of the campaign, and I received several Amazon reviews. I had had no idea book reviewers don’t just work for newspapers and magazines solely, but also post their reviews on Amazon and several other websites. Over Months 2 and 3, she also pitched to a few of the national newspapers and magazines (in addition to specialty ones in Month 1, including The Women’s Post, which was just not interested, sheesh), and to radio stations and Citytv in Toronto. The manager at WBBS told me that getting mentioned on CBC would help me sell books because their biggest customers listen to the CBC. Unfortunately, I had no idea how to pitch — though I tried on my own several months later — and my publicist was not familiar with how CBC worked, though she followed the website instructions. So that pretty much went nowhere. She pitched to community papers in Toronto but not regional newspapers in southern Ontario or upper New York state. I tried to do it myself months later but with my energy limitations and lack of knowledge, it was an impossible task. She did send out all the review copies I’d bought for the campaign to various magazines and reviewers. Of those, about 13% resulted in reviews of Lifeliner. I don’t know if that’s a good response rate or not.

The wire services pitched were of the web-based kind, not what I would consider national (like AP or CP). And if freelance writers were pitched, they were few in number.

With iUniverse in upheaval during this time, it was difficult to find out who my new marketing associate was and when I did find out, impossible to get a proper answer from her after our first e-mail exchange that I initiated in the brief moments of respite in the insurance company showdown. Of course, iUniverse had no problems billing me for postage for the publicity campaign. Even when I earned iUniverse’s Reader’s Choice award, no one e-mailed or called me to tell me this good news. I stumbled upon this fact when I was checking out my book page on iUniverse’s website. They again ignored my e-mails, even though all I wanted was the image of the RC logo to put on my website. You’d think they could at least respond to that.

Recently, I received a promotional e-mail from iUniverse. I was back in their good graces, I guess. And so that got me thinking again about the botched publicity campaign. I contacted the person who e-mailed me; she gave me the name of the guy who covers marketing for me; he, also a nice person, said he wasn’t familiar with my publicity contract, would look into it, and get back to me. Yup. You all know what that meant. Before we hung up, never to speak again, we also discussed getting Lifeliner into the Sony Reader Store (for eBooks) and onto Amazon Kindle. However, he said that would cost me. Apparently, iUniverse has a new deal where they’ll do the work for you, and you pay. Since I was already feeling like I’d overpaid for my less-than-promised publicity campaign, I wasn’t too interested in paying more. He never considered that he had a pissed-off customer who, being a writer, may one day grump about it online, and the best way to head that off was to make me happy by offering that deal for free as a make-up for my lousy experience. That kind of offer may also have upped the odds of me being a repeat customer. But clearly he was not too interested in resolving my issue and more interested in sending me regular promotional e-mails. Yup, great way to placate an unhappy customer.

Because of my previous posts on iUniverse, I heard from some unhappy iUniverse customers. One, distressingly, confirmed my 2008 experience of not being paid for books sold — basically, iUniverse under-reported sales. Because I happened to know just how many books sold through all
sources, I knew the numbers were off. iUniverse blamed a software
glitch. The same furious customer also informed me that iUniverse inaccurately reported how much they were discounting his book, meaning less royalty in his pocket, more in the retailers’. This was pretty much my beef about how they capitulated to Amazon without so much as polling their authors.

And so what began as a good experience, ended up with me feeling cheated, both on publicity and royalties. I have no intention of hiring iUniverse again, or, for that matter, any AuthorSolutions company. Jane Friedman in her recent blog post on AuthorSolutions says they are very focused on what their authors want. I beg to differ. Although when they do deliver, it’s worth it, I would advise any writer thinking of going this route to do it only if you’re a persistent little bugger who will not have any trouble sitting on them when they don’t deliver on what they promise. Meanwhile, I am going the trad route. For now.

—————–

I still have several brand-new copies of my debut book Lifeliner: The Judy Taylor Story in my own possession. I just discovered that I can sell them through Facebook Marketplace (OK, I’m a little slow in discovering these things) and have listed Lifeliner there for sale. You can see and share the listing by clicking here. Please pass the word and link on to family, friends, acquaintances, strangers!

Of course, Lifeliner is still available at the World’s Biggest Bookstore and Book City in Toronto and everywhere online through Amazon and Chapters Indigo.

Click here to check it out: Area 224 Interview with Writer, Artist, Blogger Shireen Jeejeebhoy

I could click Historical Sales, but it’s stuck at July. Yup, very useful to be up to 3 months behind in my sales numbers when trying to decide if my current marketing methods are working or not. The only feedback I have is the Amazon sales rank. If the number grows smaller, then I made some sales, but whether 1 or 10 copies I have no idea. If the number grows larger, then I know the book is not selling. Meanwhile the copy at Book  City continues to sit in the Biography section as people go in, can’t find it, and walk out again without asking the very nice sales people for help in finding it. The sales folks at book chains don’t bite you know, unlike small bookstore owners. But my book isn’t in small bookstores.

I could click Royalty statements but they’re only updated way back at Q2 (April, May, June). So how are my sales going? Don’t know, but I do know that if people pass on their copies instead of recommending to others to buy Lifeliner, then there are no sales. And I do know that without aggressive marketing on my part, which requires lots of energy and good health, then there are no sales. So I’m going to try and very slowly send out press releases to attract radio interviews. And I also have on my to-do list to do some sort of Christmas marketing effort. In the meantime, I’ll try not to get frustrated with the book business expecting me to be paid months and months later and to work in a vacuum of information.

Today, I’m pleased to announce the opening of my new CafePress.com shop at CafePress.com/ShireenJ. I call my shop Points North Studio, after my Flickr name. I’ve created a few products to begin with: T-shirts featuring my popular morning rose, a journal with the CN Tower soaring up its cover, and a birthday card featuring a jaunty yellow crocus. Other products and shop features will follow regularly as I familiarize myself with creating them. Also CafePress provides the ability to open up more than one shop; if, for example, people want to see more greeting cards, I’ll open up new shops to showcase new card designs.

I invite you to check it out, e-mail me your comments, and shop!

Jack E Jett of RationalRadio.org, 1360 AM, “Progressive Talk, All Day, Every Day…” radio in Texas, asked me to come on his show on Sunday for an eight-minute interview. It took me less than eight seconds to say yes, heck, less than eight nanoseconds. When opportunity knocks, yells, or whispers hello, I leap. If the last few years have taught me anything, it’s that!

According to the radio station, the Jack E Jett Show “asks its listeners to open their minds without fear of their brains falling out,” and boy will this story challenge and surprise them. Inevitably, in response to my giving the Cole’s Notes version of Lifeliner, I get the question, “Is this true?” And then, sometimes, “Is this science fiction?” Sometimes, I wonder if people truly believe me when I tell them it’s not science fiction, it’s reality. And then even when they do and read the book, some think I made up the last chapter. I didn’t! It’s true. It’s all true!

I have no fear of public speaking, but I do worry about being able to keep up with the questions, for apparently he has a “show that is dynamic and spirited, while maintaining chatter that is intelligent and inimitably fun.” I can be those things, but the question is can I be them fast enough? He worked with Sandra Bernhard on television, so I can imagine the questions aren’t going to be run of the mill! Still, that worry isn’t going to stop me!

The beauty of the internet means you don’t have to live in the Dallas/Fort Worth listening area to hear the interview; you can listen online, through RationalRadio.org’s website, from anywhere in the world. So on Sunday, 28 September 2008 at 1:45 pm CST (that’s 2:45 pm EST), I encourage you to tune in, for it should be interesting.

Irene Watson, a Canadian living in the US, has helped me a lot with my marketing and publicity materials, and so when she asked me to sponsor her virtual book launch/fundraiser on Tuesday, August 19, 2008, it was easy to say “yes.”

At last, it’s the big day. Today, August 19th, Irene has gathered together leading authors and experts, to show you new ways to lift your life to breathtaking heights — including transformation, personal growth, and creating an inspiring life.

As a sponsor, I’m working with her to make you this offer: If you purchase her award-winning book The Sitting Swing: Finding Wisdom to Know the Difference today, you will be on your way to receive the many gifts entitled to you and to help a good cause at the same time.

All you have to do is go to http://www.readerviews.com/RV-amazon/index.html and follow the link to purchase your copy of The Sitting Swing: Finding Wisdom to Know the Difference at Amazon.com. And then enter your Amazon transaction number in the space provided. You will be directed to where you can claim your many bonus gifts, including excerpts, subscriptions, and book discounts from the sponsors.

All proceeds from the sale of The Sitting Swing will be donated to Higher Power Foundation, Inc., a foundation created to give financial assistance for people to attend recovery-based spiritual and life training events.

So don’t delay, go to http://www.readerviews.com/RV-amazon/index.html and claim your copy of The Sitting Swing today!

Amazon has its own affiliate link system that is easy to understand and to set up. Chapters Indigo, on the other hand, uses Commission Junction to manage its affiliate links. CJ, a US company, actually provides and manages affiliate links for a whole host of companies, not just Indigo. Unlike Amazon’s system, I found the CJ system confusing and, at one point, it incomprehensibly cancelled my affiliate link shortly after I first set it up. And so it came as no surprise, even though unexpected, to learn that there was a class action lawsuit against it.

Today, I learnt that a class action lawsuit against CJ, covering 2003 to 2008, is about to be settled. I highly doubt I’ll receive a penny as my affiliate link didn’t seem to work. For the most part, I found that readers would prefer to take the long route round to my book page by Googling and then clicking until they found the order page rather than using the quick cut from my website, through one of the affiliate links, to the order page on the bookstore website. To complicate matters, neither Chapters nor CJ, indicate in any way whether people have ordered your book through them. Amazon, at least you can tell, by the ranking numbers — if they go down, someone has ordered a book; if they go up, no one is ordering. It’s not surprising then to me that the lawsuit was about commissions being stolen or diverted from Publishers and Advertisers. It makes you realise how much you trust these companies to report purchases accurately, even the bookstores themselves. The latter is particularly trust-based. The affiliates pay you monthly, but bookstore sales take a long time to reach you. Royalties are added up over 3 months and then take another 2 months to reach your bank account, by which point so much time has passed, how would you know — unless a reader told you directly — that they have omitted a sale or two (that actually happened to me in my first quarter of sales, and I caught it because a reader had told me how many books they’d bought, which didn’t appear in my sales statement)?

At the moment, I’m leaving the links up because they do provide information for people who wish to order my book, even if those same people don’t click on the darn things, but then would rather surf over to Amazon or Chapters and do a search on those websites for my book instead. Sigh. The travails of trying to sell a book.

Although I expect a few claimants don’t write the review that’s part of the claiming process, I’m hopeful this one will, for she keeps an up-to-date book review blog. I will be sure to keep you posted!

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Continuing the good news, a journalist in Malaysia contacted me today. She’s writing an article on TPN (Total Parenteral Nutrition) and my father, Dr. Khursheed Jeejeebhoy. She has read Lifeliner and was interested in one of the photos featured in the book trailer. I’ll be linking to the article when it comes live.

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And lastly, in a bit of housekeeping news, I have added a few new widgets to the website for my blogs, Flickr photos, and YouTube videos. Well, things never work as planned. The YouTube widget has an on-again, off-again relationship with my site. Sometimes it pops up, showing very nicely my latest videos, and sometimes it balks, showing only the little “Get Widget” tag at the bottom and no videos. I have no idea why. But since YouTube is the only social media site I’ve come across that doesn’t have a badge that allows one to share photos/videos on one’s blog or website, I’d say it’s all YouTube’s fault. (On the other hand, that doesn’t account for why all three widgets don’t show up in Internet Explorer 6. But then I switched from IE 6 to Firefox because IE 6 is so darn slow that it looks like my website isn’t ever going to load, but it does.) I’ll figure out how to fix it later. In the meantime, hopefully, it’ll be more on-again for all of you than for me.

While I’ve been publicizing Lifeliner through traditional means, I’ve been looking into more (and free, definitely free) ways of publicizing it. That’s how I stumbled upon (no pun intended) some of the new ways people are sharing their work using the Internet. Apparently, there are a plethora of ways, some of which bring publicity for one’s blog and book, but not direct income, and some of which seem to bring in an income. One of the ways I’m trying out this week is Squidoo.com, well, to be more exact started trying, for from all accounts, it’ll probably be Christmas before I see my first payment, assuming I write regularly and often and let people know about my Squidoo work. But as I’ve learnt and learnt well, the tortoise on weed is the one that eventually gets there.

Squidoo is that odd-looking icon near the top of the left sidebar. It links to my first lens, which is about me (maybe I should change that Squidoo lens to my lensmaster page…). Lens? Huh, I can hear you asking. What the heck is that? That’s what I thought too! A lens is basically an article with photographs, comments sections, links to Amazon, and so on. It has a Table of Contents, is broken up into modules, and can be customized with lots of fun addons that I haven’t figured out yet. But I have made a start! I added a Polaroid module on my second lens.

So how does one earn an income? Basically, through affiliate links and ads. So, to put it simply, the higher the number of people reading one’s work, the more likely you’ll reach the threshold to earn an income and eventually a steady one. They recommend writing on one’s niche topics; mine are obviously Lifeliner and related topics like TPN (total parenteral nutrition), but I also have a nice-sized store of old articles, blog posts, and ideas that I can flesh out into articles on other topics. One that popped into my mind as I considered my second lens was how to autograph one’s book. I get a fair number of hits on that topic. So I rewrote it, added photos, a comments/debate section (and what self-respecting Zoroastrian doesn’t like a debate?), and a guestbook.

There’s lots more for me to figure out, but Squidoo looks like a good opportunity. Certainly, lots of others have found it fun and profitable!

When I searched for “jeejeebhoy” on Amazon.com, I did a double take when I saw next to the title of my book “4 reviews.” Four? Didn’t I have three? I clicked on the “Customer Reviews” link and first noticed that at least one person had found Gloria Oren’s review helpful. That was new. Gloria had reviewed Lifeliner back in February and had awarded it 5 stars. Then I scrolled down and discovered that there really was a new review of my book, posted just two days ago on May 24th.

Diana Rohini LaVigne, Online Editor of Indian Life & Style Magazine and India-West Magazine and the South Asian Journalists Association Bay Area Chapter Coordinator, had succinctly and kindly reviewed my book on Saturday, giving it 4 stars. Cool! She’d summarized Lifeliner and commented briefly on the kind of research I’d done, then wrote:

“Arranged in chronological order, readers are taken on the journey with Judy; experiencing her triumphs and her challenges. Reading it will make you laugh, smile, cringe, cry and most importantly, think.”

Wow! But her last paragraph really blew me away:

“Once you finish the book, you will take stock of your own health and that of your family’s. If you want inspiration, Lifeliner has no shortage packed into its pages. An excellent book to read and pass along to anyone from those interested in true stories, medical history and those interested in anything to do with health. Lifeliner isn’t just a book, but a voyage about TPN, living with adversity and the power of human will.”

I submitted this idea to three free press release sites, so we’ll see how it goes.

Press Release: A Gift for Mother’s Day: Young Mother Battled the Odds for Her Children

A Mother’s Day Gift: the True Story of a Young Mother Battling the Odds for Her Children

Also a press release has gone out to the world, telling all and sundry about Lifeliner. Actually a couple of press releases. I’m liking the wording, and I hope they tickle someone’s fancy!

For readers, it’s a great place to find new writing, new authors or writers, photos and related videos, to create a network, and to participate in forums and a point-counterpoint blog. I’ve barely begun to learn how to use all its features, and, as usual, keeping involved with all the reading that’s part of it is going to be a challenge! However, I gotta get myself out there, so even baby steps are better than no steps!

Join to view more of my writing, latest book talk, author events, and meet a network of enthusiastic readers.

The online community for authors, writers, poets and their readers.

Meet Shireen Jeejeebhoy

I had heard about these from somewhere and had thought, “What a good idea!” For those who want to get the quick and dirty about what Lifeliner is about, a video is the ideal method. I’d intended to try and do it myself, but eventually had to admit it was beyond me. Still, I didn’t know how else to get one done, and I’d just about given up on the idea when Reader Views reviewed Lifeliner and, at the same time, informed me of all the services they provide authors, including PreViews aka book trailers aka book videos.

In my usual way, it took me awhile to make up my mind whether to contract with them or not to produce a video, but once I did say yes, the video came together pretty quickly. The producer, like everyone else at Reader Views, was extraordinarily helpful and pleasant to work with. Our biggest challenge was deciding on the music, but in the end it all came together nicely.

I’m very excited and pleased with the book trailer and invite you to watch it on my website — the YouTube embedded video is situated top and centre on my website’s main page — or for a larger, high-quality version, please visit Veoh. I hope you enjoy it!

We got there early, giving ourselves plenty of time to get there. thinking the inevitable Shireen-book-signing snow storm would slow traffic down, but surprisingly it didn’t. Two men, who had found my event information on Facebook I believe, showed up first. Very chatty, took a couple of bookmarks, and promised to buy my book at the World’s Biggest Bookstore. Here’s to hoping they will. As one man who came into the café to buy a cup of tea said, after all the time it took me to get Lifeliner finished, there should be glasses of champagne raised all around. Alas, no sale with him either, but a bookmark he did take. A friend of my parents showed up in support, which really touched me, and she helped me not to notice the clock so much as she, my parents, and I talked about errant radioactive mice and the obesity gene.

Two ladies who came in later were very interested, after my mother nudged me to be more bold and approach them, and bought a copy. Alright! You see, they too had come in for Roberto’s flavourful coffee, not for the book signing. But they left with stomachs happy and book in hand. I finished the late afternoon event enthusiastically chatting with Carmelina, a Tri Delta sister who came out to support me. In true Tri Delta fashion, we only stopped gabbing after we exited the warm café in to the chilly night and our shivering finally got us to say good night and part ways. That was a good end to the event.