Two Is Enough: The Joy of Not Publishing

During this month in 2013 and 14, I was busily preparing to publish my books, A REDLIGHT WOMAN WHO KNOWS HOW TO SING THE BLUES and THE BRONZE RULE. In fact, this is the first April since 2010 (five years ago) that I am not either writing, rewriting, editing, or trying to publish a book.

I started writing my memoir in February, 2011, completed the first draft in September, and then spent more than a year sharing it with several first readers, as well as revising and editing it, while trying to find a publisher. As I said in the Author's Note, written in September, 2012, my experiences trying to find a publisher were not as happy as my writer's-block-free writing experience. In that note, I encouraged future writers of memoirs to "sleep" (i.e. have sex) with a celebrity or "star" in a reality show before they start to write.

After I was told by an agent (a black woman) that no one would publish a memoir by an unknown English professor, although she admired me and would love to be my friend (I didn't need any more friends; I needed an agent, so I didn't contact her again), I focused on small, independent and university presses. In February, 2013, I sent the well-edited memoir to one independent publishing company through the computer. I have still not heard from that company. I did hear from the editor of another company based in New York. The editor's comments in response to my prologue and sample chapter were helpful and encouraging, but he recommended that I focus on university presses. I tried Northwestern U Press, thinking that they would be interested in my book since I'm an alumni and wrote about events that happened there when I was a student during the late sixties. My rejection letter came about a week after I mailed my entire lengthy manuscript to that press. Clearly, the NU editor(s) did not read it. It was after that rejection that I decided to self-publish, eventually picking Amazon as my "vanity press."

I was sufficiently satisfied with my first Amazon experience to quickly write and self-publish a second book. I hoped that this much shorter book would find a wider audience, but it actually sold fewer copies than the first one, maybe because it didn't win a Kirkus Reviews award the way my memoir did. I also became disillusioned with the company when I realized that all of the books I sold weren't necessarily being counted. I didn't care about the royalties, but I did care about the number of books sold. A social media friend who lives in England showed me that she had the memoir on Skype, but it was never credited to my account. At that point, I realized that I had no way of knowing how many of my books were being purchased by people I didn't know.

Fortunately, while I was trying to promote my books on social media, I discovered a new forum for my wit and wisdom--blogs and social media posts. So now instead of having to spend months writing, editing, and publishing my commentary, I can write and post what I want to say in an hour or less. I can (and do) comment on events as they are happening. I can also reach a wider audience with my social media commentary than I can with my books. I was proud that my memoir sold more than 50 copies (probably more than half of them to people I know) in less than a year since I read that most self-published books sell fewer than 50 copies, but in about ten months my profile on google+ has been viewed 11,119 times, and I have 54 followers (only two of them people I know). Some of those people probably just looked to see who the hell this crazy woman sounding off on politics (or less frequently literature and pop culture) was, but others read my posts, and some read the sample passages from my books. (One conservative woman became so obsessed with me that she ordered and read my 1979 dissertation; I hope she enjoyed it.) While my goodreads blog posts have not been as popular, the most popular one, my 2014 reading of two Barbara Rogan novels, has been viewed 727 times. The views for two other posts, my February, 2014 discussion of friends and my January, 2014 explanation of why I hate ULYSSES, have also reached triple digits (142 and 167 views) without the help of a tweeting author (Ms. Rogan).

As a reader and author, I know that my books will not be missed. Everyone seems to be writing a book or two or three, which is why it's so hard for us unknown self-publishers to find an audience. A few years from now, I might decide that I have more to say about my life or about politics/the media/education/pop culture than I can say in a blog post, but right now I am happily enjoying not publishing.