Folks, independent authors need a friend. As opposed to other "helpful" web sites, job and organization sites, where you have to not only pay to join, but need to pay extra if you want to have a more detailed profile, Jerry is providing this for free. There must be interest if authors from 30 countries are signed up. When Susan Haley, Lois Stern, Donna Jaske and I decided to create a panel at the Infinity Publishing Conference on how we developed an authors community, we invited Jerry to be part of the panel because of his expertise in the field and his commitment to independent authors. What better friend could we have than someone who has been on the inside of the publishing industry and knows the machinations inside and out? His Q&A on the co-publishing concept was well done in the fact that he anticipated the questions that might be asked. Jerry allows use of his material in Tips for Writers and when the Amazon mess broke, I used his comments almost exclusively in my own newsletter. When I learned my sister-in-law in Tucson was a writer and then saw in one of Jerry's newsletters that there was a women’s writers conference in Scottsdale, he told me if she contacts him, mention that me and Jerry know each other. That’s a friend. We need a friend because: 1. We start out with a brush painted against us because we published POD and therefore our books are poorly written, something our community has disproven, but that is known only to us. 2. The New York Times and other newspapers don’t review POD. Book review sections in newspapers are getting smaller, which makes our chances even more limited. 3. Chain stores and some independent book stores don’t want to order our books or will carry a few copies on consignment. 4. Amazon has announced the Book Surge conditions in order for them to carry POD books, which by the way, I wouldn't have known about if I didn’t read it in Jerry Simmons' newsletter. Everywhere we’re being squashed out. Maybe a couple of us get lucky and have a breakthrough with an interview in a mainstream publication or radio/TV program, but that is the exception not the rule. The camaraderie of our Authors Helping Authors, the sharing of our successes, newsletters with each other’s writing is nice and important, but it still doesn’t get our books in Barnes & Noble and Borders. Maybe a few of our friends, colleagues and relatives know about a book that they wouldn’t otherwise have known about. There is only so much we can do with our time and knowledge. As a publicist, web site designer and author, one of the most difficult things for “the creative people”: authors, singers, and artists to understand is that they are a business. They have a product to sell and even family members with the possible exception of a few needs to pay for it. My aunt bought 5 copies, one for her and my uncle, one each for her daughters and one for her neighbor. The “creatives” don’t know how to price themselves or market themselves. How can you sell something if people don’t know that it exists? They’re hesitant to pay or lack funds to pay for the help of an expert. Also as a publicist, I have wrestled with the issue of charging a reading fee to look at an author’s book to see if it is something that I would enjoy promoting. The association of literary agents says it is unethical to charge a reading fee. My business consultants told me I wasn’t an agent and time is money. I had one book that had substantial grammatical and spelling errors; the spelling of the main character was one way on one page and another on the next page. I was so lost trying to follow it, I couldn’t get past Chapter 2. I can’t represent someone with that poorly edited, if edited at all, book because it will make me look bad. There was the other case, where an author sent me a 600-700 page book. In some ways the book was well written, but he never attributed his quotes! I had to constantly reread to figure out who said what. I entered the Writer’s Digest Independently Published Awards last year. I didn’t win, but received a summary of the judge’s evaluation. Maybe the best part of the summary was “There were few (if any typos) or editorial errors that marred the enjoyment or reading of the text. Well done.” They were, however, the only ones who didn’t like the cover. :) If we need a screening system to present a better image of the independent authors so be it – and maybe they’ll become my clients. :) We can worry about who will be on the screening panel and how they’ll be selected as this idea develops. It is a shame that a client I’ve worked with on two books and about to start on the third one doesn’t have her books in the chains. Everybody loves her presentations. Bob O’Connor has written two fascinating historical fiction books, The Perfect Steel Trap: Harper’s Ferry 1859, about John Brown’s attack on Harper’s Ferry and The Virginian Who Might’ve Saved Lincoln, which shows great depth of research and he makes the telling interesting. I see a Ken Burns documentary in those books. With the health care crisis and issues of malpractice insurance in this country, Margo Corbett’s Lead Your Way to Better Healthcare: Help Doctors Help You, though I haven’t read it, should be prominently displayed in book stores and she should be on talk shows. Pat Nowak, author of 40 Cars That Owned Me, about the 40 cars he’s owned, which in itself is remarkable, tells the humorous story of how he got Jay Leno interested in his book because he knew Leno liked cars. Pat received a call from Leno on his cell phone while driving. Leno knew of an automobile store that would love the book. All that is great, but did Leno review the book? Or better, how come he didn’t have Pat on his show? This is not to dismiss the creative efforts of the authors and the cooperation among authors, but we need someone to take it to the next level, to advocate on behalf of independent authors. When talking about web sites, I sometimes use the analogy in the movie Field of Dreams. “Build it and they will come.” They then transition to see this line of cars to see this baseball field in an Iowa cornfield. What’s left out is how did they get those cars to line up and why should people care about a baseball field in the middle of an Iowa cornfield? Build a web site and people will magically come to it is a farce. I’ve seen people who don’t put their web site address on business cards or in their advertising and then complain that nobody is coming to their site. The same goes for “write a book and they will buy.” Nobody is going to buy your book if they don’t know about it – and they can’t get it easily. Nobody wants to be parted from their money on a scheme, but this idea, even in its rough draft form, seems well thought out and as mentioned by others, if we convene a group and mention questions on our minds, then the plan will then be refined. Plus authors will feel they had a say in the process. Instead of asking negatively, “What do we have to lose?” we should ask, “What do we have to gain?” Michael Kleiner Michael Kleiner Public Relations and Web Design http://www.kleinerprweb.com Author, Beyond the Cold: An American’s Warm Portrait of Norway http://www.beyondthecold.com