Today has been a day in which I spent doing the necessary but least interesting part of being a writing: the business part.
I got up early. Mom and I went to Panera Bread and ate there. Then we went to the Nature Center. Mom was kind enough to buy me two books: The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate (a Newberry Awards book) and Archeology on the Great Plains. Then we went to Watermark. I have a card that I am going to use to sign a contract so that for $50, Watermark will sell my book (The Bible According to Eve: Women of the Torah)—5 copies of it. I can sell multiple books I have published if I want, and I can sell more than one book under that rubric, so long as it is published. I want to sell multiple sets of three. I will have to ask if that is publishable. However, I will not be able to run off the contract for a while, because I have already been to FedEx today and Mom probably doesn’t want to go back. More, as I will describe later, my only copies of The Bible According to Eve may be sold another way, God willing. After Watermark, I went to Book-o-Holic and they are selling three copies of my book. I donated one of my books to the library and sent a cover letter to the library asking to take part in Local Author Day, admitting that I only have remaining 4 soft cover copies of my book and 4 hard cover copies of my book. I do however have posters and bookmarks to hand out alongside selling The Bible According to Eve: The Women of the Torah.
At FedEx I took a list of names of libraries I had cut and pasted last night: every library in Kansas. I had taken the zip codes late at night last night and placed them next to the appropriate addresses. Afterwards I made a one-page cover letter, and I have a stack of fliers I shall send each library. Alas, last night I ended up with 10 pages of 42 addresses per page. Though I will be getting work on stuffing envelopes tomorrow (100 manilla envelopes only—I got the envelopes at Office Depot); I will have to wait till next month to stuff more envelopes after the first batch. I do hope, however, that I shall eventually get one letter to each library in Kansas, and then I have some addresses for Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Missouri.
I have looked at Watermark’s website and contract, but will not sign it till September, because I will need $50 and am using the 8 copies of The Bible According to Eve: Women of the Torah for Local Author Day this coming Saturday–God willing. Tomorrow I shall stuff and send my first 100 envelopes. However, for now I am taking a break with a root beer. I shall read some of The Napoleonic Wars: A Global History with a root beer… perhaps Mom and I shall eat out tonight—I am letting Mom decide where.
The business side of writing is the least interesting, most tedious part. Yet it has to be done if a person wants to be a serious writing, getting their work published and sold. At the risk of sounding desperate, I hope some of the people who read my Blog will look into the books I wrote to see if there are one or two worth buying.