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Notes from a Boy @ The Window

Tag Archives: self-publishing

From Heat Checks to Hail Marys

13 Monday Sep 2021

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Work

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Tags

Failure, Fear of a "Black" America, Hail Mary, Heat Check, Narcissism American Style, Next Steps, Publishing, self-publishing, Sports Analogy, Writing


Heat Check, Hail Mary, between Steph Curry and Aaron Rodgers (cropped and spliced), September 13, 2021.

This is my final (maybe?) essay in my series More Confessions From an Educated Fool. I do need help, to keep me from self-publishing a third book, to make the leap into writing beyond the freelancing. I ask, but I don’t think I ask correctly. Or, maybe people just don’t like me. Anyway, the essay is less than 1,000 words. Please read.


Make no mistake. This post is a plea for help to reach the next stage as a writer, to get a book out into the world with some measure of success. I’d prefer not to go the route of the self-published manuscript this time, where the book has no chance to reach more than a few hundred people or maybe a couple thousand people. For those who are better positioned as writers, I’m not asking for your first-born child. However, if you have enjoyed my stories, my blog, or my published work over the years, maybe, put in a word with an agent if you have one? Or, maybe, if I ask you to read a chapter of my latest ms, that you read it and give me feedback? Or, maybe even, just the least bit of encouragement to hang in there?

My latest manuscript is titled Narcissism, American Style: Essays on Racism, Narcissism, and How to Get to a Post-Western World. (I do have an alternative title, Sage’s Gold.) It was originally supposed to be a series of essays on America’s narcissism, its origins, permutations, and the damage it has done and will do to the world if left unchecked. After I had published a piece in The Atlantic on the hidden psychological costs of college education for first-gen students five years ago, I did a heat check, put together an initial proposal and a cover letter, and sent out my idea to agents. Two immediately responded, but said no (or didn’t respond) after I sent them my initial drafts. Oh well!

Then, I started writing out the essays, all to figure out what direction this book should take. I had two epiphanies along the way. One, I needed to make my mostly US-focused book one that challenged the West, and that meant testing out parts of essays as articles. Two, I needed to figure out where this world is headed as long as the US and the West remain steadfast in leading and exploiting resources and lives.

That’s where all my articles with Al Jazeera come in. After years of mostly writing articles on education and Black and US identity, I mostly dropped looking at K-16 education reform and debates in 2017. Al Jazeera gradually gave me the platform to write about my topic for an international audience. And despite Al Jazeera’s flaws, it was an opportunity I needed.

But after a while, having figured out how to turn longer essays into digestible article- and op-ed-length chunks, the obvious question to me was, Who’s gonna offer me a contract for a collection of essays that were mostly published as articles internationally — especially in these elite New York streets? That was in the fall of 2018. It occurred to me that I could take another approach, to embed these essays as conversations about a post-Western and post-US world. That made me think of Derrick Bell and his best-selling allegories, published as the nonfiction books And We Are Not Saved and Faces at the Bottom of the Well. Bell demonstrated the necessity of critical race theory to describe the permanence of racism within the American matrix in both books. I needed to do something similar, an ms where systems of racist and class-based oppression had been destroyed as part of the climate-change apocalypse, but the narcissism of our current age lingered on in this new world order.

In early 2017, I had written a post where I envisioned a descendant of mine in Olivia, and what her post-Western and post-US world might look like. I sensed this could be useful in furthering my book idea. I began writing up allegories based on my vision of Olivia in 2018, and worked them out for most of 2019. I wasn’t sure I could completely mesh these allegories with the fuller version of my published pieces, or with those essays I hadn’t published. This was why I asked friends, colleagues, frenemies even, to take a look at earlier drafts. My PhD-ed colleagues mostly didn’t get it. My writer buddies told me they liked it, with two telling me “less is more.” Or, they were like, “Can you even sell this in today’s market?”

Then I fully committed. After separating the nonfiction essays from the allegories about Olivia’s world to rework them as standalones, I sensed in my bones that they needed each other. I spent much of 2020 writing and rewriting to bring the two halves together, but cutting and rewriting anything that didn’t fit. Once I got sections to the point of “this works,” I began contacting publishers, agents, and colleagues again. Some obviously liked what they read, but because Narcissism, American Style was now both nonfiction essays and speculative allegorical fiction, they didn’t “know how to sell this book.” It didn’t matter that I identified Bell, Patricia J. Williams, Kiese Laymon, Octavia Butler, and Erica Armstrong Dunbar (among others) who had successfully done what I am doing now in varying degrees with their books.

This is where I stand right now, about to make another run at finding a publisher this fall. I need any and all help I can get. I have previously reached out to folks who have agreed to read and critique, and then, nothing. Sometimes, I find myself trusting no one. The pandemic has made this mistrust worse. If people can’t consistently keep a mask on, how can I put faith in anyone to read my manuscript with care and honesty, assuming they actually read it at all? It would be one thing if I didn’t think my work was good enough. But even the most self-disparaging of writers knows when they’ve written something publishable, if not for themselves, then for the world. This is my Hail Mary. I pray someone will see or sense it, and respond.

Boy @ The Window Update

03 Friday May 2013

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, Mount Vernon High School, Mount Vernon New York, Pittsburgh, Pop Culture, University of Pittsburgh, Youth

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Apple iBookstore, Breaking News, iTures, Publishing, self-publishing, Smashwords.com, Third Party Distribution


iBookstore-logo-300x100

Final Cover

Latest news: Boy @ The Window is now available in enhanced digital (i.e., video, pictures and links) mode, via Apple’s iBookstore (through iTunes). Yay me!!!

Also, I’ve dropped Smashwords.com as a third-party distributor. Unlike many authors, I understand html/css code, and I have time to review and fill out contracts. Plus, getting support from Smashwords was like pulling teeth out of an elephant’s mouth with a teaspoon.

You can purchase Boy @ The Window for $4.99 through this link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/boy-the-window/id643768275?ls=1. And, it’s also available for the Kindle world on Amazon.com. Enjoy!

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Potential Boy @ The Window Book Covers

07 Thursday Feb 2013

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, Mount Vernon New York, Youth

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

616, 616 East Lincoln Avenue, Book Covers, Boy @ The Window Book Covers, Mount Vernon High School ID, self-publishing


Boy @ The Window Front Covers, February 7, 2013. (Donald Earl Collins).
Boy @ The Window Front Covers, February 7, 2013. (Donald Earl Collins).
Boy@TheWindow.FrontCover4
Boy@TheWindow.FrontCover3
Boy@TheWindow.FrontCover2
Boy@TheWindow.FrontCover

I know. It’s barely been a month since I declared that I will self-publish Boy @ The Window this year, through the most reputable self-publishing program I can find, of course (see my post “The New Gameplan for Boy @ The Window” from last month). But I had to start with something less substantial than finding old photos from the Hebrew-Israelite years of my now deceased idiot ex-stepfather and of my younger siblings, paying a copy editor to comb for grammatical errors or setting up a version of the manuscript for eBook format. So I’ve posted some book cover designs I’ve been working on these last couple of weeks. I like some, but I’m not wedded to any of these (and will likely revise in the next month or so, even without additional input).

So please take a look, tell me which potential book covers you like or hate, are boring or spark no particular feelings at all. Give me you feedback, good, bad, ugly or indifferent. I’m a big boy – I can take it!

The New Gameplan for Boy @ The Window

05 Saturday Jan 2013

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, Mount Vernon New York, Pop Culture, Youth

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Book Publishing, Commercial Publishing, Editors, Fear of a "Black" America, Gameplan, Independent Publishers, Literary Agents, Manuscript Development, Marketing, Revising, self-publishing, Siege Mentality, Stubbornness, Writers, Writing


Siege of Burgos (Spain), 1813, by François Joseph Heim. Pic taken December 23, 2012. (1970gemini via Wikipedia). In public domain.

Siege of Burgos (Spain), 1813, by François Joseph Heim. Pic taken December 23, 2012. (1970gemini via Wikipedia). In public domain.

It’s a new year, and with the beginning of all years is a chance to execute new plans, or for most people, to make resolutions they often don’t keep. Such is the case for me regarding my coming-of-age memoir Boy @ The Window. Hopefully I’ll be in the first category of plans for my new year and not in the latter. After five years of beating my fists on the walls of literary agents, acquisition editors and commercial publishers, I have to do far more than hope.

And my fists have needed a few months to heal after the past few years. In all, I contacted somewhere around 140 agents, editors and publishers since the end of ’07 about Boy @ The Window. One in four asked to look at either the first few pages, the first couple of chapters or the entire manuscript. Only two of those agents agreed to represent the manuscript, and then, with major conditions. One went as far as to suggest that I only focus on my family life, as if my preteen and teenage years in Humanities had no impact on my development at all. The other thought I could sell Boy @ The Window better if I turned it into a work of commercial fiction.

I should’ve seen the writing on the proverbial commercial book industry wall long before today. Between the shifts in the commercial publishing marketplace since my experiences with Fear of a “Black” America between ’99 and ’04, the Great Recession’s impact on the industry since ’08, and the rise of the ebook in the past decade. All three pointed to one simple fact. If one wasn’t already a successful author prior to a decade ago, or famous, or with a significant connection to commercial publishing (e.g., a journalist, an editor, or even an editorial assistant), one would face a long, hard walk through the traditional route of publishing a book.

Boxer David Haye displays his bruised knuckles, January 12, 2011. (http://www.thesun.co.uk/)

Boxer David Haye displays his bruised knuckles (cropped), January 12, 2011. (http://www.thesun.co.uk/)

But I’d made up my mind the moment I began working on Boy @ The Window in earnest in the summer of ’06. I didn’t want to self-publish my second book, not after a year and four months of promoting Fear of a “Black” America. While on some level I successfully promoted my first book (I have receipts of my royalty checks to prove that), selling a thousand copies while spending $3,500 to do so for a semi-academic book on multiculturalism was nothing like I had envisioned the process back in ’99.

I persisted in the idea of traditional commercial publishing for the manuscript. I dutifully attended writers conferences, book fairs and other opportunities to meet other authors, potential agents and a few editors. I wrote and rewrote my query letter and proposal, with more revisions than I probably did on the Boy @ The Window manuscript itself. I sent out my letters, took phone calls when they came, reached out to folks for help. And all to end up concluding that I would be in need of dentures by the time a commercial publisher would lukewarmly pick up my manuscript for its list.

Now, even my harshest critics (myself included) consider Boy @ The Window a solid manuscript. So the issue has never really been the quality of the story or the writing. The issues come down to an industry in seismic flux and to me as a person. With my own career in transition and without the obvious examples of success (I’m not regularly booked for TV programs, I have yet to make my first $1 million), I can’t say that I’m in the public eye enough to sell 10,000 copies of my book per week for three weeks, and at least 5,000 a week for three months. That’s the industry threshold for groundbreaking nonfiction success these days.

So dreams of sugar plums or $100,000 advances aren’t exactly dancing in my head these days. But much has changed since I published Fear of a “Black” America in the past eight and a half years. For one, ebooks rule the book publishing marketplace, enabling any aspiring (if not talented) writer to self-publish or to publish independently. Add to this the mix social media, like my blog, Twitter, Facebook and other connections, and nontraditional publishing may well make as much sense as working with an agent.

Intermediate pass route game plan (with at least one running back as blocker), November 2011. (http://www.npengage.com).

Intermediate pass route game plan (with at least one running back as blocker), November 2011. (http://www.npengage.com).

This means much more work — and money — on my part, though. I’ll need to hire a copy editor, figure out artwork, finalize pictures, implement my proposed marketing strategy, plan a date for publishing to coincide with marketing, and so on. But I also realize that few commercial publishers do this work for authors anymore, anyway, as they’ve slashed their promotion and marketing budgets. The advantage, then, goes to people like me, with some means for publication and enthusiasm for my book.

I realized all of this at least two years ago. Apparently, so did my wife. When I finally decided to go this route for Boy @ The Window a few weeks ago, she said “I thought you should’ve done it two years ago, but you weren’t ready.” Meaning that I wasn’t ready to dismantle my siege guns and remove my land minds around the commercial publishing castle. Now that I have, I can say with a high degree of certainty that I will publish Boy @ The Window this year, 2013, short of an apocalyptic event.

Promoting Fear of a “Black” America

04 Saturday Feb 2012

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, Politics, Pop Culture, race

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Book Signings, Boy @ The Window, Fear of a "Black" America, Hard Work, PR releases, promotions, self-publishing, Social Media, Website, WHUR, WPFW


Fear of a "Black" America front cover, July 2, 2004 (Donald Earl Collins).

It’s been seven years since my first radio interview and book signing for my first book, Fear of a “Black” America: Multiculturalism and the African American Experience (2004). In all, I spent sixteen months actively promoting the book, through PR releases, contacts at universities and through my work at the Academy for Educational Development, and a huge volume of email exchanges and phone conversations. Between this nearly full-time work, my full-time job, and being a full-time parent and husband, I was exhausted by the end of ’05.

It’s unbelievably hard work to promote a book. Especially a self-published one. Not to mention, one that I’d proclaimed as an in-depth response to the conservative movement’s “Culture Wars” on all things “multicultural.” One that was a combination of personal vignettes with interviews and historical research to tell the story of African Americans and other groups of color coming to grips with their notions of multiculturalism in education and in their everyday lives. Granted, it was immediately available via Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble/B&N.com and the now out-of-business Borders.com. But if I’d done nothing, I would’ve sold maybe one hundred copies in ten years.

My work to promote Fear of a “Black” America began about a year and half before it hit virtual and actual shelves in September ’04. I created a website for the manuscript (http://www.fearofablackamerica.com) in February ’03,  learning HTML in detail in three weeks’ time. Within a year, the number of unique visitors to the fledgling site varied between 500 and 1,000 a month. After three years of coming close — but still failing — to publish Fear through traditional publishers like Beacon Press, Random House and Verso, I politely moved on from my agent and decided to self-publish.

A couple of months into the process, I hadn’t much success beyond a couple of professors using copies of Fear in their African American studies courses (a completely random occurrence — they were in different parts of the country). My friend Marc took it upon himself to have me meet him and a friend of his for a long talk about how to organize a marketing campaign for the book at the end of November ’04. While they were certainly well-meaning, their advice provided no real insight into the process other than what I already knew. I just needed to be persistent.

That persistence paid off in early February ’05. In a span of three days, I did an evening drive interview with Howard University Radio (WHUR-FM) and a book signing at Karibu Books. Both, at least, gave me some momentum beyond Black History Month, as I continued doing book signings in the DC area and through my job up in New York that spring.

My promotions reached their height in April ’05, when I did an hour-long interview with Pacifica Radio DC (WPFW-FM) about Fear. There, I realized how much more interested caller were in my personal background and how that shaped my views of multiculturalism. I also learned that some of the callers — whom I didn’t know — had actually read my book. It made all of the groundwork I’d done to get to this point worth the effort. By then, I’d cracked the top 100,000 in the Barnes & Noble list (84,000), or roughly ten to fifteen sales per week, and the top 200,000 (161,000) on Amazon.com (another 10-15 sales per week).

WPFW 90.9 Interview (Part 1), Fear of a “Black” America, April 25, 2005

WPFW 90.9 Interview (Part 2), Fear of a “Black” America, April 25, 2005

During that summer and fall, I continued to promote Fear, with another interview on Pacifica Radio DC in August, and a book signing at Howard University Bookstore in October ’05. But I was running on empty. As fast as email was, it didn’t have the immediacy of what we now call social media. And in ’05, Facebook was in its infancy, Twitter didn’t exist, and Blogger was a relative novelty. Even with a website that received 4,000 hits and over 1,200 visitors a month, I couldn’t generate the cascade effect that I could right now.

My final act of promotion for Fear of a “Black” America came in August ’06, though John Kelly’s Washington Post Metro Column, “Getting Work Done – On the Way to Work,”  in which I talked about editing my book on Metro Rail for two years. By then, I’d pivoted to work on Boy @ The Window, knee-deep in reopening memories that hadn’t been well-considered when I was a teenager.

Between September ’04 and December ’05, I promoted Fear of a “Black” America using $3,500 of my resources, and made over $1,000 on the book, selling about 600 copies in sixteen months. Overall, I’ve sold over a 1,000 copies between ’04 and ’08. Those numbers are on par with most works published in academia.

But I was hardly satisfied. I knew by ’09 that with a social media apparatus, I could’ve sold ten times as many books. I knew that my memoir manuscript deserved more than the fate of self-publishing, that I’d want to find a path to a traditional publisher. Still, despite my moments of despair, I believe that my persistence in finding an agent and a publisher is the right way to go. It’ll make it easier to work hard in promoting Boy @ The Window. In that case, I’ll be doing it in the virtual light of day.

Boy @ The Window: A Memoir

Boy @ The Window: A Memoir

Places to Buy/Download Boy @ The Window

There's a few ways in which you can read excerpts of, borrow and/or purchase and download Boy @ The Window. There's the trade paperback edition of Boy @ The Window, available for purchase via Amazon.com at http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Window-Donald-Earl-Collins/dp/0989256138/

There's also a Kindle edition on Amazon.com. The enhanced edition can be read only with Kindle Fire, an iPad or a full-color tablet. The links to the enhanced edition through Apple's iBookstore and the Barnes & Noble NOOK edition are below. The link to the Amazon Kindle version is also immediately below:

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Boy @ The Window on Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-The-Window-Memoir-ebook/dp/B00CD95FBU/

iBookstore-logo-300x100

Boy @ The Window on Apple's iBookstore: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/boy-the-window/id643768275?ls=1

Barnes & Noble (bn.com) logo, June 26, 2013. (http://www.logotypes101.com).

Boy @ The Window on Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/boy-the-window-donald-earl-collins/1115182183?ean=2940016741567

You can also add, read and review Boy @ The Window on Goodreads.com. Just click on the button below:

Boy @ The Window

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