All My Family's Interesting Scandals - Including the Weird Stuff in the Freezer

by Celia Hayes
(San Antonio, Texas USA)

He was, too. A resident alien.

"Our Grandpa Was an Alien" started as a group of essays about growing up in my eccentric family that I wrote for the mil-blog "Sgt. Stryker's Daily Brief" - now just "The Daily Brief" (www.ncobrief.com). My father was a research biologist, my mother a stay-at-home mom, but both had very firm notions about raising children. My father brought home stuff from the lab that stayed in the freezer for years, we had all kinds of odd pets and my mother was extremely adventurous about cooking exotic stuff for dinner - all of it made a wonderful series of essays over two years, and finally I got tired of emails from blog-fans asking "So, when are you going to put all this into a book?"

I didn't go as far as to put together a proposal and send it around to the usual suspects among literary agencies and mainstream publishers; quite honestly, I knew it would have pretty limited appeal. Another blogger and fan recommended Booklocker.com as a POD publisher. They do not offer an extensive package of editing and publicity services to their authors - I couldn't afford it anyway! Their business is to assist you in putting together a nice book and printing it; anything more is strictly on a DIY basis. They offer extensive marketing advice - it's up to you, if you take it or not.

Mostly, I didn't - I put a link on the blog, swapped doing reviews with a couple of other writers and readers. I think I have about broken even on it. Everyone who wanted a copy bought it through "The Daily Brief", although I think I am getting some follow-on sales from readers who liked To Truckee's Trail looking for my other writings.

It was an interesting project - I think of it as my "training wheels" book!

Visit Celia's website.

May 22, 2008
Rating

They called it "Pre-selling"
by: Steve B.

Celia, back when I was writing for Hollywood, the money folks would talk about "pre-selling" a movie.

That meant lining up your "bankable" stars and your "bankable" director, and maybe your "bankable" script (if it was adapted from a popular book), then selling in advance the distribution rights in the "territories." (The definition of "territories" was anywhere other than the U.S.)

The idea was to line up enough money in advance of actually making the movie that you knew you would break even. Whatever monies you grossed in the States were gravy.

To some extent, that's what you did with Our Grandpa Was An Alien. You had all that bankable demand in the "territories." (In your case the Territories was your Sgt. Stryker readers.) Anything you sold to the other 6 billion people in the world was gravy.

That's a nice way of doing business without risking going broke. Other self publishers might think about whether they have any "territory."

All My Family's Interesting Scandals - Including the Weird Stuff in the Freezer

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All My Family's Interesting Scandals - Including the Weird Stuff in the Freezer