I’m going to let my son develop my brilliant marketing plan

My daughter recently suggested I start promoting my book again. Seeing as how this suggestion came shortly on the heels of an email from an area library requesting I do an author “meet & greet,” her comments seemed like kismet.

Well, Fate can try to shove me around all it wants, but I’m not gonna do it.

For one thing, the book was published over four years ago; for another, I have only about 20 copies of the paperback left. Not enough to bother hawking them to an unsuspecting library ladies’ reading group.

I did some book signings back when the thing was first published, but my heart was never really in it. I get nervous speaking in front of crowds. Not that there were often groups large enough to be called “crowds” at my signings. Stephen King may generate crowds; I generate gatherings that could ride comfortably en masse in the backseat of a Yugo.

But even small, Yugo-sized groups give me the heebie-jeebies if I’m expected to speak to them. It’s a psychological block of some sort and I’m too old to bother sorting it all out now.

These days, when a reader expresses an interest in obtaining a copy of the paperback, I just send them a free one. At one time, I had some sort of system set up on PayPal where folks could purchase the book, but over time, I’ve forgotten how it works. Ditto the listing on Amazon.

I’ve actually sold quite a few copies of the eBook version on Amazon and the money’s just waiting for me there. But I don’t know how to get at it. It involves passwords I’ve long since forgotten, along with whatever user name I used to set up the account.

I think you can still buy the eBook there (wait a minute, lemme check) … yup, it’s still available there, at Apple iTunes and a few other online eBook retailers. I’m not trying to promo the book here, really. Because even if you do buy a copy, I’ll never see that money.

I could probably contact these retailers and try to get a live human being to set me up with new passwords and all that malarky, but frankly, I’d rather spend that time mowing my yard, grilling a steak or drinking a cold domestic beer. So I never seem to get around to it.

If you’re beginning to think I’m a lousy business person, well, duh. What tipped you off?

The Lovely Mrs. Taylor gets on me once in a while about trying to up the marketing efforts a little bit, but I think she knows she’s fighting a losing battle. I just can’t seem to get excited about self-promotion. I know some folks love that stuff, but for me? Yawn City.

That doesn’t mean, however, that I can’t still make a few bucks with the book. My oldest son, Jordan, has gone through several copies over the years. So far, I’ve given him the books for free. But if I start charging him, I could sit back and let the cash roll in.

I don’t know if he’s ever actually read the book, but he always takes a copy with him when he knows he’s going to be hanging out at the beach or a pool. He sits there in a chaise lounge pretending to read and when a girl asks him what he’s reading, he replies, “Oh, my dad’s book. He’s a writer.”

He counts heavily on the girl in question not knowing that I am, in reality, a nobody. The girl then says, “Oh, your dad’s a writer? What’s he written?”

And so the conversation begins, Jordan works his dubious charms – no doubt lying liberally about my fame and popularity – and in no time, he has a date for the evening. I can’t believe it works, but apparently, it does. According to the kid.

He usually winds up giving the girl my book, at which point he needs another copy. If I only had more amorous sons, I could rake in some serious scratch here. All without having to do any promotional stuff or remember any passwords.

OK, it’s not much of a marketing plan. But it’s a start.

Mtaylor325@gmail.com

(616) 745-9530

Read my book, or maybe you should wait for the next one

I made a terrible mistake the other day: I read my own book, the one published a few years ago, “Looking at the Pint Half Full.” (Lest you think I’m trying to hawk my book here, you should know there’s only a handful of copies left, or maybe none. The last few were available only at Robbins Book List in Greenville and it’s possible they’ve sold out by now, in which case I should stop by the store to pick up a check so I’ll have beer money this weekend.)

I had never read my book before. I mean, I read it as I was writing and editing it, obviously, but never after it came out in print. I’m not sure why; it just never occurred to me to do so.

I only read it the other day because it’s the only “print” book in my house. I had just finished my last unread Kindle novel and my Internet connection was down, so I couldn’t download another one.

I read my book because that’s all there was handy.

Now I wish I hadn’t.

Why? Well, first off, it’s not as good as I thought it was. The book is (mostly) a collection of my newspaper columns, some from 10 or 15 years ago. I’m a better writer now than I was then and some of the phrasing feels clunky to me. Also, there’s one chapter in which I discuss my old rotator cuff injury. For reasons I will never understand, I referred to my boo-boo, repeatedly, as a rotator “cup” injury. What’s a rotator cup injury, or for that matter, a rotator cup? I have no idea, but there it is in my book!

There’s also a typo in there somewhere. Only one, but it bugs me. How did that typo sneak past me? I’ll admit, I did most of my editing on the book while sitting in my favorite booth at Moose Winooski’s, a little pub in Clawson, where I was living at the time. It’s possible the 40-ounce, two-dollar drafts they serve there had something to do with that typo; I’ll never know for sure.

Also, there are too many chapters about my last divorce and all the horrifying dating experiences that followed. Some are funny, but a couple are just darn depressing. 

And why did I write about losing my job and my house? I have no idea, other than it seemed like a good idea at the time.

At least I had enough sense to include the column about hopping trains during summer vacations back when I was a kid; it’s my personal all-time favorite, although I’ve never had a reader mention it as being one of his or hers.

I guess the book’s OK, if a little uneven. If it was someone else’s book and I the reviewer, I’d probably give it 2.5 stars out of four.

They say a writer is his own worst critic.

I hope that’s true.

mtaylor325@gmail.com

My book signing was a success. For Sweet Annie

I picked up enough cash at my Saturday book signing to pay the bar tab I ran up later that evening. I didn’t pay it, Sweet Annie did, but I could have. And we had prime rib, so, all in all, I consider the signing a rousing success.

As I mentioned in a previous column, I was scared shirtless (that’s not a typo — this is a family newspaper!) about doing a public event. I needn’t have been.

The folks who showed up were very nice, especially Lois, who said I was “handsome.” That’s not a typo, either, and she said it with a straight face! Yes, really. All I can say is, Lois must be a heckuva poker player.

Since I’m not Stephen King, there was no long line out the bookstore’s front door and I had plenty of time to chat with everyone who stopped by. 

I spoke with snowbirds June and Mike about their upcoming trip to Arizona, where they plan to hide out until the ice melts next April. I offered to accompany them as their houseboy, but apparently, they can do better by way of domestic assistance.

Carla bought a copy of my book for her son, who lives in the U.P. Carla sends my newspaper column to him every week, in part because I remind her of her son. I hope Carla hasn’t mentioned this to the poor kid, since a comment like that can only be interpreted as an insult.

My neighbor, Linda, from across the lake, also attended, even though she could drop by my place any time if she really wanted a copy of my book.

So rather than being the flop-sweat fest I had anticipated, the signing was … well … kinda fun. 

Also, I liked hanging with Kevin, the guy who manages Robbins Book List, where the signing was held. He’s the first person I’ve met who likes beer as much as I do. Plus, he’s a Gove Scrivenor fan. (You would be, too, if you’d ever heard him play, which you haven’t, because almost nobody has. That’s another story.)

The only downside to the whole affair was this: I couldn’t get over the feeling that nobody was really there to see ME. They were there to see my g-friend, Sweet Annie.

Annie stood by my side, like a good woman in a bad country-western song, to lend moral support. But it wasn’t long before I noticed a disturbing trend: Everyone — EVERYone — who showed up, shook my hand, introduced him-or-herself, and then turned to my honey and said, “And YOU must be Sweet Annie!” At which point they would toss me a copy of my book for signing and thereafter ignore me completely.

Annie, more poised than Marie Antoinette prior to her “Let them eat cake” faux pas, engaged each reader with a charm and grace any political candidate would spend millions to replicate. She was definitely the star of the day.

I was the schmendrick sitting next to her.

But I don’t mind. In fact, watching her converse with these folks, genuinely interested in what each had to say, I couldn’t help but feel proud. 

You know that scene in “The American President” in which Annette Bening suddenly begins conversing with the French ambassador in his native tongue and Michael Douglas is duly impressed? It was like that.

I was hoping somebody from France would show up, just so Annie could speak French to them (she does, you know; speak French, I mean).

At any rate, I now have a plan for all future book signings or other public events I’m coerced into doing. From now on, I’ll simply stand by the door, shake hands as folks come in, and then point them to Sweet Annie. She can take it from there.

I’m crazy about that girl. After all, she did pick up the bar tab.

Mike’s book, “Looking at the Pint Half Full” is available at Robbins Book List in Greenville and in ebook format from Amazon.com. Contact Mike at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

C’mon, Mike, don’t fear the Reader…

You are SUCH a chicken, Mike Taylor; a coward; a complete and total wimp! You are pathetic! What are you, a man or a mouse?

(Squeak.)

Nope, it’s not working.  I was hoping that by berating myself I could work up some nerve, in much the same way as did the Cowardly Lion as he approached the throne of The Great and Powerful Oz.

I’ve mentioned before how terrified I am of making public appearances, right?  I know I have. Yet, for reasons I can’t fully explain (greed), I have a book signing coming up Saturday, Oct. 27.  It’s at Robbins Book List in Greenville, just for a couple hours beginning at 1 p.m.

Sounds easy, right?  I mean, I already know how to sit; I know how to sign my name; I know how to smile and say thank you.  One would think this gig had a zero learning curve.

So why am I suddenly beginning to smell like poultry?

Well, first off, there’s the very real possibility nobody will show up.  Maybe, just maybe, I’m not as wonderful as I think I am, nor as universally loved.  

I base this possibility on the fact nobody showed up for my 50th birthday party except my then-wife and kids.  Despite my having mailed out a dozen invites a week earlier, it was just the four of us.  At that party there was tequila and a live band, so whatever embarrassment I felt at being stood up was soon assuaged through the liberal application of Cuervo and classic rock.  

As I understand it, there will be no tequila at the book signing; no live band.  If nobody shows up, I will have to face the humiliation without, um, distilled assistance or rock & roll.

Then again, maybe people WILL show up, people who read my column or have already read my book.  They will expect me to be funny, clever, articulate; all things I can easily fake in print but never seem able to pull off in real life.

I’ll stutter, I’ll mumble, I’ll blurt inappropriate things I will deeply regret later on.  I’ll make a fool of myself.

Regardless of whether anyone actually shows up, I’m doomed.

This is all made so much worse by Helen Simonson. Simonson’s book, “Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand,” was chosen as this year’s One Book One County selection for Montcalm County. Everyone who’s read it says it’s a great novel.

That’s fine.  What’s NOT fine is Simonson herself.  She was in town last night to speak to an audience of about 400 readers (myself included) and she was brilliant.  She was articulate, interesting, entertaining … everything one expects an author to be at a book signing.

I sat in the front row, enthralled — like the rest of those gathered at the high school — with her clever stories, witty observations and wry sagacity.  Her book was a best seller and she’s done a lot of these appearances; she made it look easy.

And maybe for her, it was.  If so, that serves only to make me feel even worse about my own pathetic lack of social graces.

Sure, part of Simonson’s charm came from her British accent. “Put your hand up! This is a robbery!” sounds altogether charming when you say it with an English accent. An English accent is the polar opposite of a German accent, where even a statement such as, “I love you, darling,” tends to sound like wine glasses being cruelly crushed between two large, wet stones.  I’m fairly certain German is the language Klingons revert to when they want to sound scarier than they do in their native tongue.

Anyway, her accent was part of her charm, but not all of it.  She was collected, cool and in complete control.

I hate her.

No, that’s not true.  I thought she was great.  I just hope folks who attended her signing don’t show up at mine.  I can’t follow an act like that.

Sweet Annie has agreed to accompany me to the signing to offer moral support, but I suspect she plans to wear dark glasses and a fake Groucho mustache.  No need for us both to go down in flames, I guess.

Dallas Ford Lincoln, a fellow author, friend, and man with the names of two car companies in his monicker, also will be there signing his latest book. So if nobody shows, at least I’ll have another writer there with me suffering a similar fate.  I don’t know if misery loves company, but I do.

Ah, if I only had da noive.

BUY MY BOOK, YA CHEAPSKATE!  Available in eBook format at Amazon.com and in paperback at Robbins Book List and Greenville and online by clicking the links over on the left, there.  mtaylor@staffordmediasolutions.com (616) 548-8273

If only I had loved Spiderman just a little bit more…

My younger brother William collects comic books, Star Wars memorabilia and “action figures” (known as “dolls” to people who don’t collect action figures). I used to think he was a nerd, but he’s actually a pretty cool guy. He was married, has a couple kids—who also collect comic books and action figures—and lives a fairly normal life.

I usually only see Bil (that’s not a misspelling, by the way; he dropped the second L several years ago, don’t ask me why) at Christmas or when somebody dies. We don’t live far apart, but it always seems there’s something else going on.

Bil, along with my sisters and most of the rest of the family, still get together every Sunday at my sister’s place for dinner and whatever game is on TV; football this time of year, I think. I’m the artsy-fartsy one in the family, so it’s my job to know nothing about sports, a job I take seriously and perform to the best of my ability.

At any rate, I stopped by a couple Sundays ago, mostly because someone sent me a spam e-mail—which looked like the real thing—indicating my dad had died. Why someone would do something like this is anybody’s guess. I called my sister immediately and she assured me that—though he’s now using a walker—my dad is still kicking. Just the same, I decided to stop by and check for myself.

Sure enough, my old man was alive and well and watching football, though when he’s in his easy chair and fixated on the tube it’s sometimes hard to tell for sure.

We all had a big dinner courtesy of my sister Carol and then sat around talking until the kickoff for the Big Game (the one they’d been watching earlier was a Little Game, apparently). It was during this pre-game conversation that I learned Bil had recently opened a comic book store in Grand Rapids.

I was impressed. Imagine, one of my wayward clan operating a legitimate business rather than engaging in the drug-running and off-track betting parlors which have supported the Taylor family for so many generations.

Bil, who in “real life” is a nurse, said it was something he’d always wanted to do. I thought about it and realized it really was the culmination of a lifelong dream for my bro.

From the time we were little kids, William and I both read and collected comics with the ravenous appetite of a starving weasel set loose in a henhouse full of portly pullets. Superman, Batman, The Hulk, Captain America, Thor, Dr. Strange…we read ‘em all.

My collection was carefully arranged in a large, dusty pile beneath my bed. I kept my comics there for two reasons: 1) I didn’t care what happened to them, and 2) they excelled as camouflage for the torn-out pages I had purloined from my old man’s “Playboy” magazines.

Bil’s comics were read once, tucked into cellophane bags and placed—carefully—in a dresser drawer, later to be transferred to acid-free boxes and stored in whichever room in the house had the closest thing to a humidity-free atmosphere. Even back then, he was planning for the future.

My brother William was the ant and I was the grasshopper.

He continued collecting through the decades until he had hundreds, thousands of every type of comic imaginable. I, meanwhile, got rid of my comics as soon as I was old enough to no longer need a place to hide my girlie mags.

And now he is the proprietor of Bil’s Used Books and I’m eking out a living as a freelance writer and eating a lot of Ramen noodles.

If I were Aesop, I could find a moral here somewhere.

Contact Mike at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

A self-serving press release is no easier to write than a dating site profile

A couple years ago my wife left me. I liked her a lot and it was no picnic. But the most uncomfortable aspect of the entire experience took place months later when I tried to create a “profile” for an online dating site.

It didn’t take me long to figure out it’s impossible to write about oneself while sounding simultaneously A) confident, B) desirable, C) intelligent, and D) humble. It’s easy to accomplish one, maybe even two of these things at the same time. But all four? Not so easy.

I settled for B and D. Then I discovered online dating is the work of the Devil, designed to empty my wallet while introducing me to escaped mental patients.

Now I find myself in a similar situation. My book has shipped. And as a relatively unknown author (OK, completely unknown) the burden of promotion falls squarely on my delicate, birdlike shoulders. A big part of the whole “promotion” thing is writing a press release.

I sat down to do so this morning—three hours ago now—and have got no further than the headline: “Local author publishes humor collection.” Doesn’t exactly snag your attention, does it?

“Elvis dances naked at Princess Di memorial!” would garner more eyes, for sure, but that doesn’t really convey the message I’m trying to get across here, which is: “Buy my book!”

Maybe I should see what other, more successful, authors have done to promote their books. Gimme a sec to Google some stuff…

OK, I’m back. Turns out every author has his or her own approach to promotion. Stephen King, for instance, gazes spookily into the camera and says, “I have written a new book. It is about a possessed tree frog.” In Stephen King’s case, that’s all he has to do. People buy his new book if it’s about cement drying on a newly-poured sidewalk in Schenectady.

Well-known humorist David Sedaris has a web page even uglier than mine, but he’s a much better writer, in terms of both style and substance. Also, his essays appear from time to time in the New Yorker, which undoubtedly boosts book sales, at least among the sort of people who read the New Yorker (Psst: liberal Democrats and Woody Allen).

Dean Koontz has an awesome website, even better than Stephen King’s. And he suffers from none of that “false humility-itis” which seems to plague me. To read Mr. Koontz’s online press release, you’d think he had cured cancer, rather than written a bunch of mostly-scary books with remarkably similar plots (scary monster, helpless victim, 500 pages of chase scene, dead monster).

I’m pretty sure all the authors I checked out have people to write press releases for them. If my mom were still alive, I’d make her write mine; she always had good things to say about me, even if those things weren’t altogether true.

Instead, I think I’ll amend my headline to “Local author writes book about Elvis dancing naked at Princess Di memorial.” It’s a lie, but look man, I have all these books to unload.

More Reality Check online at http://mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com or www.mlive.com. Email Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.