It’s been a spring filled with exciting opportunities to share The Black Girl Next Door with readers around the country. In the coming days, I’ll share what I’ve learned and the effect my travels have had on my writing.
Here’s the link to the Authors@Google I did presented in February. It was an amazing experience. I enjoyed a warm welcome. Google is an amazing place.
Enjoy!
Later today, tune in to The New York Times Book Review podcast to hear my conversation with Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of The Book Review. Tonight, at 6:05 pm, you can listen to WQXR, 96.3 FM when they will play the same interview as part of the program, Inside the New York Times Book Review. I truly enjoyed this conversation and would welcome your thoughts.
I also invite you to check the Sunday, February 8th edition of The New York Times. The Black Girl Next Door will be featured again! Share your thoughts , about what you read and hear.
In the past few weeks, I’ve had the pleasure of talking to people across the country. At book events, on radio programs, and via the web, people have shared their own powerful journeys through integration. I have been humbled and amazed by their courage and candor.
I began writing The Black Girl Next Door because I couldn’t find a book like it on the shelf. As I travel and listen, I’m learning that all kinds of people connect with my girlhood. More than that, I connect with their experiences. Each account adds texture to the fabric of our shared humanity. Thanks.
Like so many others of my generation, I spent my girlhood living in the shadow of Dr. King’s dream of integration. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed the year before my birth, so I only knew his legacy.
Few, if any, Americans had any idea what would happen when the segregationist barriers that had defined this nation for centuries began to crumble. Children, like me, riding buses to new schools and playing soccer together, were the first to find out.
The 1970s and 1980s were daunting years for American “race relations” precisely because black and white Americans began living next door to one another and had to confront the shared and separate histories that no one discussed in polite company.
The history of integration, was, and remains, the history of children.
In Palos Verdes Estates, California– the polite and well-heeled suburb where I spent my youth–Civil Rights was not part of the curriculum. We didn’t discuss Dr. King, or any other Civil Rights leader in school.
On August 27, 1983, after my mother, sister, and I returned from a European vacation, we stopped in Washington, D.C. and joined nearly 500,000 people to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the March on Washington and press Congress to create a federal holiday honoring Dr. King.
That day, I was a fourteen year-old girl who had spent her childhood living off the beaten path of blackness. I had never attended a protest rally. I had never been surrounded by so many other African Americans. I had never seen white people in the minority, and yet so comfortable in their solidarity.
I had heard Stevie Wonder’s song, “Happy Birthday” countless times before on the radio. But standing in that crowd, I felt that song in an entirely new way. I watched people raise their fists in time with the beat as they sang that song. On that scorching Washington afternoon, that song was a chant for justice, a celebration, as much as a demand.
As summer yielded to fall, I listened to the political debate over the proposed holiday with new ears. The polite tones in which people denounced the legislation couldn’t cover the raw emotion and anger surging beneath the surface. I recognized that stiff-lipped fury from my own hometown. I realized that the opposition was a matter of more than candles and birthday cakes.
When Senator Kennedy’s King holiday bill passed in October, I was overjoyed. I watched President Reagan signing ceremony on the news. I thought back to my day in Washington DC, to Stevie Wonder’s song and the small part I played in history.
Birthdays, like school dances and soccer games, can change the world. Happy birthday, Dr. King.
This morning, both The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times reviewed my first book, The Black Girl Next Door: A Memoir. The New York Times review made the front page of the Weekend Arts section and featured both pictures of the book cover and me. The Los Angeles Times article was similarly prominent and lengthy. Both of the reviews were both thoughtful, engaging and mostly favorable; as much as any writer could ask.
Writer friends and folks from the publishing world helped me understand the rare achievement of having both major papers review my book on the same day. It almost never happens, much less to a rookie writer like me. What has happened to me is almost unheard of.
Of all the books published and submitted for consideration, The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times picked my book out of the stack and paid attention to the words I wrote from my gut. I know I’m blessed.
But for as gratified as I am by the recognition that the reviews represent, I want to explain why today was a dream come true for me.
This morning, my child awoke at 4 am complaining of itchy skin. Like so many other mornings, I tended him and helped him get back to sleep. We sat down to our usual breakfast and then I took him to school.
I made a batch of vegan chocolate chip cookies last night and dropped them off at my girlfriend’s house so that she can munch them tonight as she supervises a teen slumber party.
Sure, I tried to find a copy of The New York Times and asked my mom to set aside a copy of The Los Angeles Times. But I only read each review once.
This afternoon, after my son and I came home, the love of my life stopped by with extra copies of the New York Times and a loaf of Italian bread. We set the newspapers aside because he had to get back to work. He kissed me and gave me one of his signature hugs.
My son and I have laid out blankets on the floor and are watching television, his weekend treat. I’m wearing a worn fleece jacket and the same sweats I put on this morning.
Today was a dream come true because, through the breakdown of my marriage and a painful divorce, I wondered if I would ever feel truly loved and accepted. I wondered how I would ever actually finish the book I had longed to write. I wondered if my decisions to divorce his dad and quit my fancy job had scarred my kid beyond recognition.
This evening, I have my answers to those questions. Today, like so many other days before, my man has shown me that he loves me regardless of how many books I sell or what reviewers say about my metaphors. My book is on bookstore shelves and is being discussed. My kid is okay, and so am I.
The only think more remarkable than having the Los Angeles Times review my first book is having The New York Times write a review the same day!
This is amazing. I’ll need time to digest the actual reviews, but I am grateful for the recognition of the book and my work.
Here’s the link to the New York Times review: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/09/books/09book.html?emc=eta1
Growing up in greater Los Angeles, I read the Los Angeles Times whenever I could. Long before I moved east, it was the paper of record. So you can imagine my awe at having my first book reviewed in its pages.
http://www.latimes.com/features/books/la-et-book9-2009jan09,0,2669736.story
A few posts ago, I announced the launch of the official Black Girl Next Door website: http://www.theblackgirlnextdoor.com
Now I’m going to detail the process of its creation and share some things I learned along the way.
First, web presence is a vital dimension of book promotion. Think of it this way: the web is “awake” when you are asleep and your site is like a 24 hour open invitation for readers to become familiar with you and your book.
You can’t simply rely on the publisher’s website to promote your book.
Your book certainly needs to be featured on the publisher’s website for several reasons. SEO or search engine optimization is a key and publisher’s websites have a lot of pull in terms of SEO. I’m no expert but engines like Google and Yahoo rate sites in terms of traffic and age of the site. So places like simonsays.com are very powerful because they attract so many visitors. Although your book will have a page, it may not be prominently featured on the first page of the publisher’s site. Check out The Black Girl Next Door at Simon Says to see what I mean. Placement on the site is key, but as a rookie author you may not have much control over that.
Unless you are familiar with web design I’d say hire a pro for the job. Professional help is a worthwhile investment in your book and your writing career. Again, the site is your book’s virtual home: it should be as inviting and lovely as it can be.
Of course, there are lots of web designers in the world, and I have used providers I found on Odesk and Elance for other projects.
But for theblackgirlnextdoor.com, I asked my editor to recommend someone with experience designing author and book sites.
That’s how I found my way to a guy named Jason Chin. He’s an author and web designer who runs Cleverbird Studios and really knows his stuff. He has designed some wonderful author sites and had worked with my publisher before. He was a complete pleasure to work with—patient, savvy, and responsive.
Here are the basic elements of author/book website design:
• About the Book (put the flap copy here)
• About the Author (write an engaging bio but keep it relatively short)
• Buy the book links for online retailers
• Press and Praise
• Author Questions and Answers
• Video and Audio clips
• Original Content (essays or additional material related to the book)
• Links to related articles or other sites
Jason and I are working together to implement the next phase of my web presence, and I’ll let you know what I learn about video and audio, book trailers, social media, and more about marketing as we go along.
After weeks of diligent work, the book site is live and launched! I welcome all thoughts and comments.
http://www.theblackgirlnextdoor.com
I headed to New York City a few days ago to meet with the Touchstone publicity folks about the marketing plan for The Black Girl Next Door. It was a thrilling, overwhelming and confusing meeting.
I’m in no position to offer advice, but I want to offer some insights that might encourage authors and aspiring writers.
Note: The following list represents what I have learned but have not yet mastered.
1) It’s never to early to consider marketing and book promotion.
My book proposal included a brief discussion of marketing and promotion, but I spent most of the space talking about the target audience rather than how to REACH that audience.
2) The craft of promotion is an important as the craft of writing.
Once you complete the manuscript and it goes into production, all energy and effort shifts to talk about promotion. Promotion is a craft and a skill so spend some time getting educated. Scour the web, take a look at what has worked for other books like yours. Publicity folks and others want to know what YOU are prepared to do. They want to know how YOU plan to promote you book. In other words, if you don’t tell them, they may not have time to create a particular plan for your book.
3) It’s all about your platform.
Get used to hearing this word–it’s your calling card. Your platform is your brand, image, and base of recognition and operation. Your network and contacts are another crucial component of your platform. The stronger and bigger your platform, the bigger the advance, the more attention in terms of promotion. That leads me to the Catch 22: When you are a newbie writer, you may not have a huge platform. If you lack a platform, you will have to build one by connecting to communities of interest to you. The web is a great for this.
4) It’s all about your list.
No, I’m not talking about your list of allergies of favorite foods, I’m talking about your email list. Yes, you need to develop an email list. You need to manage it and keep it updated. I’m learning about how to do this and will keep you posted.
5) You and your publisher might share the same goal but might have different agendas.
You and your publisher are united in the quest to sell as many books as possible. But publicity is all about contacts and insider information, both of which are assets. Publicists cultivate relationships that they want to control and may not grant you the direct access you might want. Don’t wast time being offended. Understand the business. Cultivate your own contacts. Be open, but be aware of how and what information you decide to share and recognize that you are cultivating proprietary information as well.
6) Get creative.
Think “off the grid” about how you might promote your book or connect with potential readers.
7) Get help.
Most newbie authors can’t afford to pay a private book publicist. But there’s a great deal of help and information available to motivated writers. Note: Keep checking my blogroll to see what I’ve found in terms of resources. Recognize that you might want to pay for a consultation or seek out other authors who will be willing to share their experiences.
Get organized.
This is not the time to write on scraps of paper or on your hand. Set up a datbase, get an email list management program. Keep track of the sites you visit.
9) Get serious.
You can’t be half-hearted about promotion. If your lucky, the publicity people at the press will focus on your book for a few months before the release and then watch the results of what they’ve done. After that, they have to move on to the next new thing. Again, don’t waste time being offended. GET CLEAR AND GET IN GEAR.
10) Never give up.
No one can define how much energy you are willing and able to devote to promotion or spreading your book’s message. Don’t substitute other people’s expectations for you own.
