Getting my hustle on

Published December 19, 2012 by Sandee

meanspiritedtales

I’m getting my hustle on for my book and may be doing more readings.  I envision waddling up and down Broadway wearing a flappy sign with a picture of my book Mean-Spirited Tales on it, front and back.  Maybe I’ll hurl copies of my book from a tray to passengers on the A train.  Really — no.  I did read an article about a man who makes boo koo dinero selling candies on the train this way.  Hurrah for self-employment!  High falutin publishers, kiss my grits — no I totally take that back.  But the threat of the self-published author is on the rise.  Just saying.

I used to think it was cheesy.  But it’s not now — not since I’ve done it.  It is more reputable than it was in the past.  Though there is snobbery about it.  At this point I’m just glad to have sold enough to buy groceries, socks, candies, and Styrofoam skulls.

It’s brilliant that people have read something I’ve written, and that they’ve paid either ninety-nine cents for the Kindle version or nine ninety-five for the hardcopy.  I’ve always dreamed of making money writing.  You’ve all helped to make that come true.  Each and every last one of you out there in TV land.

I spoke to a woman who manages space for vendors.  She explained the system to me.  It wouldn’t be cost-effective for me to buy space to sell my book.  But I appreciated the feedback.  Much love to her.

I spoke to a gentleman at a bookstore today.  He said they were always concerned in getting numbers in for book signings.  He told me that he had been disappointed in the numbers of people that writers had brought in for their readings.  He asked if I thought I could bring in 20 people.  I told him I had 25 people for my last reading at the Indian Road Cafe.  I believe more people would have come if it weren’t at 10:30pm on a Halloween weekend.  I hope I didn’t exhaust my numbers in the last reading.  I so hope some of you come to my next one.  I’ll give out candies and promise not to read War & Peace.

Haha!  — Wouldn’t it be messed up if I invited everyone to my reading, and read a technical book on statistics instead – leaving everyone baffled? – Hey, wait a cotton picking minute! – I must back track to what I said up there about the Kindle version of my book – it’s only ninety-nine cents!  So why isn’t, like, everyone buying it?  That WSJ article about marketing my book is a liar – yes, an article can be a liar.

I thought titling my book Mean-Spirited Tales would be cheeky.  But maybe people don’t like “Mean.”  They take it literally.   Maybe I’ll change it to Saccharine Tales of Banality.  Haha!

23 comments on “Getting my hustle on

  • You go girl! I am loving the book myself– laughing alot. Perfect book to read on my break from school. Keep us posted on your where abouts. If you travel one state over let me know.. like the Danbury area? or are you sticking to NYC?

    • I’m so glad you’re enjoying the book Audra! I appreciate your kind words. Who knows, I may just be in that area some day. My family may be moving around there. I would definitely let you know if I should be at the local bookstore, library, etc.

  • You’re on a roll!!! Book signings and readings… what’s next? You’ve impressed all of us with your talent and determination, Sandee. Twenty-five? I bet you could get 100!
    Maybe we could write testimonials/reviews and you could enlarge them and put them on a poster board next to you at the signing? Like they do for Movie posters?

    “Wickedly Brilliant. Sandee Harris is hilarious!” – Lisa

    “Fresh and Original – a must read!” – Audra

    LOL! Okay, so we don’t have any clout, but still, it’s a cute idea, right?

    • Thanks Adrienne! Hey you’ve given me an idea — I think I’ll conjure up that image throughout the day as well for entertainment value. I’ll just add a cigar butt hanging out of my mouth and I’ll be shouting, ‘Git ya copy a Mean-Spirited Tales heah!’

    • Of course I was kidding talking about those crazy marketing methods. But I am looking around at bookstores and maybe I’ll do libraries. May as well fill up my time during hopefully what will be only a hiatus in my working status.

      • I figured you were kidding, but I still like the idea of book hurtling…

        I have to figure out that whole library-number thing that you need to have in order to have your book catelogued in a library. I’m hoping to do an upcoming post on that–a Library of Congress/library entry to follow-up the copyright post.

  • Comment?

    Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

    WordPress.com Logo

    You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

    Twitter picture

    You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

    Facebook photo

    You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

    Connecting to %s

    %d bloggers like this: