Keep Fighting- A "Shout Out" to all the Outcasts

Have you ever watched a baby wriggling on a blanket on the floor? Maybe there is a toy a few feet away. Maybe it is just the end of the blanket. But whatever it is, they do not see the limitations. Few if any, will say to the baby, "Listen, kid you can barely hold your head up, what makes you think you can get that stuffed puppy? You're out of your mind!"

Some people will watch for a little while and then hand the baby the toy. Some will cheer the baby on. Eventually, the baby wins. He succeeds in moving enough to get what he wants. For now.

In some things we never outgrow our baby steps, but in many things we fight against a lot of naysayers. As we get older, those naysayers get louder and louder. Some of them live inside us, and fighting them can be an exhausting battle. We feel like we are spinning our wheels, or beating the proverbial dead horse. And truthfully, sometimes we are.

It takes that same "try because we don't know any better" mindset that we all held as infants to keep going. Progress is sometimes so minuscule that we can't see it.

In this past week, two things happened in my dealings with Lulu, publisher of my book, that I thought would take at least a week or two longer.

1. I got a small royalty payment for my books on Lulu. This is the first payment I have seen go into my Paypal Account so it was pretty exciting. Their promise is "by the end of the month."

2. The second edition of No Sensible People became available on Amazon.com. I've blocked further printing of the first edition, although Amazon still has at least 1 copy. The second edition is the less expensive book, with fewer pages. I didn't expect to see this until January.

Right after Christmas, I will send my only copy of that second edition to The Library of Congress. I want the book to be received after the Christmas, to be separate from the big rush on the Post Office.

I also want to scrounge up money to order a few new copies to be able to offer to reviewers or to sell myself as signed editions. I can't quite afford to order in "bulk" but if I can at least have a few copies I'd be able to mail them a little cheaper than Lulu. I'm going to donate a copy to The Loft library. I'm going to make promotional postcards and leave them around Minneapolis, try to get the word out more locally, especially since the story is set in Minnesota.

As a Lulu self-publisher, distribution beyond Amazon, Lulu, and myself would cost another $50. The Library of Congress listing cost me $30. Amazon was free. I'm hoping I can afford it in March. Hopefully, I will have sold more books by then and will try to get a couple independent booksellers to sell the book in their stores. I've designated anything I earn online, whether it is from book sales or writing online to be money that goes back into marketing or into my writing in one way or another.

I'll continue to search for my free options as well, and many of those are very time consuming. Sometimes I feel like I'm going nowhere. The stigma of self-publishing still over shadowing and it feels like a real leap of faith to keep going. But I do believe in my book. I believe that it's important to have it's message of finding a way to honor ways of thinking that you may not agree with, without selling out your own beliefs. We've experienced terrible division in the world and writing No Sensible People, for me was a way to combat that un-sensible division -- if only a little. The book declares no official political affiliation, and mentions no politician, but with the current global political climate, and so many issues at an apparent crossroads, I do think it is important to examine how we treat not only the issues, but one another.

The self-publishing industry is an outcast industry full of diamonds in the rough, books that don't always look just like the traditional, and may have a few extra imperfections. But they are still worthy. I will try to buy more of these books in 2009, because self-publishing is wriggling to the end of the blanket and we will get to that puppy as long as we don't give up.

I am looking at my Christmas tree, where my daughter has hung my collection of small stuffed animals from Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer's Island of Misfit Toys. It reminds me of the cast of misfits in my book, and how important it is to fight for them. How important it is to fight for one another.

And so I have given No Sensible People the following dedication-

"No Sensible People is dedicated to the contrasts of the human spirit, both internal and external, and to the outcast that rests within us all. May we have the strength to embrace it and grant it the respect it deserves."

Gretchen Lee Bourquin is the author of the novel No Sensible People. It is available on Amazon.com and Lulu.com