First off, thank you for subscribing to my newsletter.  Some of you may have subscribed a year ago and forgot you did.  Some might have done so more recently.  But rest assured this is not spam.  This is Michael Jacoby Brown writing to you and thanking you for waiting (if you were waiting!) for the newsletter you signed up for.

I never really thought I would ever publish a book.  I started writing it about 12 years ago, first writing some stories about organizing,  and I have a learned a lot  — not only about writing a book, but, more importantly, how to distribute and sell it.  It does not do much good to write a book, and spend years doing so, if no one gets to read it.  And with about 300,000 books published every year (I think that is the figure — but in any case it is a lot!) it takes a lot to get noticed.  And I have been hard at work at getting noticed.

Since I published this book myself, and set up my own “publishing company” to do so, it has been a steep learning curve.  Some of the learning has been fun and some frustrating.  But when all the books arrived on a big truck on a clear summer day in June 2006, and we unloaded the ballets of 84 boxes of books (2,000 books total) on my driveway, I guess we were in business.  Luckily it was not raining that day and my wife and I managed to store all of them in our (dry) basement.  They made two pretty big piles and luckily we had just finished a pull down stairs to our attic so a lot of stuff that had been the in basement was now in the attic.

From those 84 boxes that arrived about a year ago, all are gone but one.  I learned to get them to Amazon where a few hundred have been sold.  A few hundred have been given away as review copies, and rest have been sold.

I had much good luck along the way.  I found Geoff Staples of Hostricity in Dallas, Texas, thru my friend Gail Leondar-Wright, who set up my web site and Papal account to sell books on-line, and we sold some on-line.  When PayPal emailed me the first time, “You’ve got cash,” I thought  that was pretty cool.  Amazing to have money electronically transferred to my new “business” bank account.

I worked hard to get reviews, fand am still working hard, ollowing the advice of Dan Poynter and Publishers Marketing Association.   By being somewhat of a nudge,  (I mean persistent) I got Library Journal to review the book and it got a “starred” review, the best you can get. Library Journal, for those non-librarians of you out there, is the major journal that librarians read to determine what books they buy for their libraries.  Getting a starred review means many libraries buy the book.   (To get them to review the book, I had to convince them I had a distributor, and a small distributor, Quality Books, agreed to distribute it. Some fake it til you make it here, but it worked.)  So sales from libraries started coming in.  I was lucky to have found PMA — the publishers marketing association — thru Dan Poynter’s  book on self-publishing.  PMA has been a God-send.  PMA is a great example of a cooperative association of small publishers, sharing information to help people learn how to publish and market books.  I went to their PMA University in New York last year to learn what I could about book marketing and publishing.  Thru PMA I entered a contest to get my book accepted by a major distributor ( a necessity to get into bookstores ) and was accepted by Independent Publishers Group in Chicago, a well-respected distributor, which put my book in their  Small Press Selection.  It cost me $300 to get into their network, but I figured it will be worth it.  We will see.  My book is now in their Small Press Selection catalog which allows books stores and others to easily buy it.  They won’t buy from a puny publisher like Long Haul Press.

But that doesn’t mean we are home free.  Not by a long shot.  Although IPG has a national sales force, they also have many other books they rely on for sales.   I still have to get the book stores interested in ordering my book and thinking it will do more than take up precious shelf space.  So to do that I need to get people to want to buy the book, and that means I need to get publicity, especially book reviews, and that is where I am at now.  I spent $140 to get a very long list of magazines and other media in the US and Canada from IPG, and have been going thru that list, e-mailing and calling and sending out review copies of the book when it seemed like a magazine might review it.  I leave a lot of messages, send a lot of e-mails, and occasionally some get thru.

Sometimes I actually get to talk to a human. Many are actually quite decent.  And talking on the phone to a real human beats leaving voice mail.  Some actually have returned my calls.  Andrew Cockburn in California, for example,  told me to send a review copy to Ron Jacobs in North Carolina.  I did and he reviewed the book in Z-Net, an Internet  magazine, and gave it a very good review.  Ralph Nader’s office called for a copy and he put it on his summer reading list,  just a week or so ago.  I think my Amazon sales spiked a little from that review.

So, now, if you are still reading about this saga, I could really use your help.  If you know anyone who knows anyone who knows anyone who has a close relative or friend they once met on an airplane or used to live next door to and went to college with and grew up with the wife of the editor of that magazine,  (you get the idea) please let me know.

Sending review copies of my book to “Editor” at a magazine means the book gets put in a pile with other 200 books that arrived in the mail that day.

If you know of any conferences I can speak at, meetings that might use my help, please let me know.  I can travel some, and, frankly, would much rather speak, teach, run a workshop than write.

So, basically if you have any ideas of people who might like the book, please let me know.  You can call me: 781 648 1508, cell: 617 645 0226, email me at MBrown7387@aol.com, stop by my house at 10 Brattle Terrace, Arlington, MA 02474.  My house is a little hard to find so call first.  But I will feed you.  And if you come soon, the raspberries are really coming in now.  And thank you.  Organizing is always a collective effort and I hope getting this book out will be one too.  — Michael