The Big Time?

     As pre-announced here late last year, my historical psychological thriller, TATTERDEMALION, is featured in this week's PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY as of today. TATTERDEMALION is also featured on Book Life's website. Please leave a "like" on its dedicated page or retweet it if you're on Twitter.

     So does this qualify as the big time? Well, yes and no. If you're a writer, the name Publisher's Weekly is going to be at least as familiar as the names of your own kids. It reaches 2.3 million people, many of them the Grand Poobahs of the Publishing Biz. But I'd already told you the story of how this ordinarily improbable listing came to be. But if you'd forgotten it, I'll retell it:

     Their affiliate site, Book Life, offers writers a chance to have them review one of their books for free. I submitted the book you see above, they rejected it. Then they rejected it again. Then they rejected yet a third time. All within 11 minutes.

     Now, as someone who's been at times victimized by the same form rejection letter from some agent's flunky for one proposal more than once, let me say this probably pisses me, and I'd wager a good number of other writers, off to no end. On our side of the desk, it comes off sounding like. "No. Oh, didn't I say No? I'll say it one more time, then: NO!"

     It may be actual disrespect, it may be an oversight or due to inattention or it may be a sticky server or internet connection. I don't care. It leaves an author feeling like shit, times three.

     So, I let Book Life know how I felt about their treble act of rejection then asked them how do I delete my account, since they left no instructions whatsoever on their site for doing so. A day or two later, I got an email from someone at Publisher's Weekly who wanted to put oil on the water so he made me a deal: If I hung on and kept my BL account active, he'd give me a $149 deal for free. That deal consisted of putting up a listing for the book of my choice on PW's website, BL's own index page, plus their newsletter and social media accounts on Facebook and Twitter. It'd all be seen, they promised, by literary agents, editors, producers and production companies

     So, today, the big day came, the issue dropped and... nothing.

     Despite the fact that millions had supposedly seen my listing, hundreds of thousands at least, both digitally and in print, I've sold one copy of Tatterdemalion all day. The mentions on both place's social media accounts have yet to appear and Book Life, while they technically had a section on self publishing on their index page, buried me on page 7 of the self-published book listings. A listing that, curiously, provided absolutely no link to a product page to which people could go if they wished to purchase it.
     (Addendum: I just heard from PW that mentions on their social media accounts, where it would've really counted, isn't part of the bloated $149 price tag. As it turns out, I actually have hundreds of more followers on my main Twitter account than they do on theirs and my FB author page has nearly as many likes as theirs.).

     That dedicated page, to which I'd linked above, had gotten a total of eleven Facebook likes despite my having put up all the links I've provided here on the 50-55 writer's groups to which I belong on Facebook. I'd also put them up on both my Twitter accounts. In other words, I've been doing the lion's share of the work and getting less than minimal results.

     So, thus far, this little experiment has been a huge bust and I don't expect anything to get livelier or better over the next six days. Apparently, if this is all you can expect after forking over $149 for a measly week's worth of publicity, then I'll publicly tell people to just save their money. Places like Publisher's Weekly, Bookbub and Kirkus are just money pits that promise you the moon and often deliver nothing.

     Ergo, it's up to you, people, to finally get this reissue of a novel I'd started over seven years ago, first published almost five years ago and reissued revised and with new cover art last April. I'm still pushing this book because this was one I'd started when I was almost 54 years of age then spent two and a half years writing and revising, a lot of a time for a guy that age to spend on one project to the exclusion of almost all else. But that's how much I believed in it then and especially now.

     Honestly, when I see the big deal made about a poorly-written and co-opted story like American Dirt that sold for seven figures in a nine house auction, while I'm still getting form letters for this and all my novels is enough to make me puke. Authors who've read and reviewed it have given me four and five stars and know a well-written book when they see it.

     So if you haven't already picked up a copy of Tatterdemalion, do so. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.