Read more about: Indie Book Awards

Love Like a Dog was also awarded the Bronze medal in the Great Lakes Regional Fiction category from the 15th Annual Independent Book Publisher Awards.

The awards were celebrated on May 23rd, 2011 at the Providence Club in NYC. There were 3,907 overall entries.

Read More about: Independent Publisher
and check out more about my awards on Facebook!

Love Like a Dog furthermore received an Honorable Mention in the General Fiction category of the San Francisco Book Festival, which is part of the DYI Convention (Do it Yourself awards in Film, Music & Books).

Read more about the San Francisco Book Festival

Here are some photos of me at the awards ceremony!

Yet the reason to struggle to be published is to be read. You make money for the publisher from the sale your book and its subsidiary rights, so you can survive financially as a writer, and write other books, books that hold meaning for someone besides you. If being read doesn’t matter to the writer, there are no holds barred. Why just dream? Write away.

Are we really, still now, a land of dreamers?

I got to bed tense, because lately my effort to gain readership has me overwhelmed, exhausted, half-crazy with self-doubt. I have written about pit bulls. The whole nation paid attention to Michael Vick’s pit bulls for awhile. A friend of my mother’s suggests I join Michael Vick on his community service trips to under-privileged schools where he tells kids how bad dog fighting is. I must phone Michael Vick, get him to read my book, and he’ll want me to join him, because why would he say no to me? Everyone around me has taken PR 101. I paid for CreateSpace to send out 3,411 press release copies about Love Like a Dog. Not ONE magazine, radio or news show, newspaper, or personality responded. This is because Michael Vick does not know about me yet.

I dream about Michael Vick. I am running from room to room trying to get something done. Each room is filled with stacks of papers I must sign, fold, or press into envelopes. Each room has people in it, talking on their phones, shouting out at me with questions I can’t hear well, questions that must, however, be answered. I am trying to get to all the rooms, but I repeatedly get stalled. In one room, someone I don’t know is gesticulating, waving papers at me as my phone begins to ring. I understand, at this moment in the dream, we are all trying to promote my book but the whole thing is crashing, tumbling. The phone rings and rings. I dig and dig and dig in my purse for my red phone, and just as I grab it, it goes silent. I check voicemail and guess what? I’ve just missed Michael Vick’s call. His deep voice tells me that now he has missed me. I know, somehow, I’ll never catch him again. I turn to the people in the room, and shout: “Hey! Things have to change around here. I’m supposed to answer Michael Vick!”

We have books in the living room, our bedroom, both children’s bedrooms, and my husband’s office. They crowd the attic, the basement, and rest many stacks high along three big bookcases the full length of the hallway upstairs. Others stacked on the foyer shelves.

I find it painful to part with books I have read, certain that some brilliant passage that nourished my soul will be stripped from me forever if I give up the book it is encased in.

Which is why it is particularly hard for me to celebrate when my readers (whom I love and am so grateful for and want to hug) say, “I just gave your book away to my mother…my dog walker…I sent it to my friend in Cincinnati.” Two weeks after the book came out, there were used copies available on amazon.com. Pre-owned! How do people do it???

This is why Kindle is doing so well. Will an e-reader ever suffice for my mother? What will she have to say about the neighbors?

That night, a well-intentioned friend called. “I wish I knew how I could help you get the book out there,” he said. “Have you tried pet stores?”
“Yes.”
“Have you tried bookstores?”
“Yes.”
“What about Rogation Days?”
“????”
“That’s when everyone in the Episcopal Church brings their pet to church to be blessed. You could set up a booth and sell your book!”
But Jesus chased the moneylenders out of the temple.

Did you notice the reverse spelling of G-O-D is D-O-G.

Readers have written back to me. I’m sharing a couple of comments because this is what happens in self-publishing. What will happen to you.

Hi Anne,
> I received your book and loved it!! I couldn’t put it down. I stayed up
> until 3am the first night reading it, then finally made myself go to sleep
> since I had to work in the morning. As soon as I woke up I started reading it again and ended up being an hour late for work!
>
> Thank you so much for sending copies to give to adopters. I look forward to passing it out.
>
> I write an online column for Examiner and would love to write an article
> about your book. A short interview, perhaps? Would that be ok? I can email you the questions if you agree. Here’s the link to my page there.
> Thank you so much for writing Love Like a Dog.
>
> Rebecca Novak
> Shelter Angels Pit Bull Rescue

Here is the link to the article she wrote:
Online article about LLAD:

Okay, I’m Polyanna. This feels darn good. As if a) writers and b) readers are all this big world needs to create the fullest cycle of literature. Meanwhile, the whole publishing empire is collapsing. I think they have forgotten, really, about a) writers and b) readers.
My favorite, favorite reader comment shared by Toni Phillips, the founder of the amazing shelter http://www.mariahspromise.com/, is:

>You’ll love this, almost as much as I do … while I was here in the barn checking email etc. Mike (her husband) was in the camper READING YOUR BOOK!!!! That may not seem a big deal, BUT I’ve only seen Mike read one book in TWENTY YEARS and that’s his Bible!! He was really enjoying it …

This is a recent exchange of emails, through my permissions person, four months after first requesting permission to use two lines from a Smokey Robinson classic.

Thank you for your email dated August 2, 2010.
  
As your deadline has approached (we had offered a tentative publication date of June), the author will need to remove the lyrics from “Tears Of A Clown” from the publication as approval has not been granted.

But the question remains; will permission be granted later?   Should we wait and hope, or was this a permanent clear-cut denial?  The reply to this question was:

Thank you for your email dated August 3, 2010.

 The request has not been denied regardless, however I can not guarantee any sort of a time for a response to arrive.
Sincerely…

This is the lyrical world of permissions we live in.   Did you know that when you write a book, you must program half a year’s delay to your publication, if you need permissions?  Let this be a warning.

It is a full-time job.

CreateSpace produces the book  (…  Love Like a Dog), but I have to build a marketing plan.  Sure, I’ve pruchased the press-release packet they provide.   But no book comes into the world kicking and crowing because of a press release.

Marketing starts with: what is your “target goal?”  Mine is to get my book read by pit bull owners and rescue shelters.  It’s a novel about a pit bull rescue that changes a family.

Know your motive:  I came to write it because, years ago, I started volunteering at C.A.R.E., an animal shelter in Evanston, Illinois.  There I discovered pit bulls.  This led me to
D.A.W.G’s court advocacy program, where I followed a core of ardent volunteers who track animal abuse and dog fighting cases.  I interviewed police officers working Chicago’s Animal Care & Control (then headed by Sgt. Steve
Brownstein), following them on raids of suspected dog fighting rings.  This is how I became obsessed with telling a story about the ends to which humans will go against, and for, this misunderstood
breed.

First Mistake: My tag line is: “This is a novel about a boy, his single dad and the pit bull they rescue.”  In describing the upcoming book to my doctor I use this line and he says: “I’ll give it to my eight-year old daughter.”  OMG!  It has dog births and human sex and violence!

Much Research: I buy and read every dog magazine I can find.  I clip and copy names of dog networking sites and writers who write about the bully breeds, and record the addresses of professors who teach texts in which animals are the subjects in Animal Studies programs and departments.  Two favorite students help me for low wages.  We troll the Internet for advocacy sites.  We email, seeking URL links, and offer future copies of the book as donations.  Getting any reply back is super good luck.   I am glued to the computer from 8 a.m. – 7 p.m.  And I’m not writing.  Fiction, I mean.  I’m emailing, list-making, letter-writing, and phoning contacts.  I have done this for four months straight.  First between classes.  Now that it’s summer, I’m a full-time publicist.

Though I am grateful for every single person who replies (each actually a huge gift, an important connection to these misunderstood dogs), I feel self-indulgently sorry for myself for not being able to write.  When you self-identify as a writer and have been alone for so many years, dependent on the habit of solitude, that meditation practice of sorts which is writing, it is hard to dislodge yourself from seeking that “signal” instead of scurrying about in the ‘noise.”  I feel thin (not physically unfortunately), but mentally.   It feels lonely to talk/write/email to a lot of people you don’t really know, day after day.  This is my writerly defect.   Salesmen have a gift for talking to people that I lack.

Event Planning: Also known as Experiential Marketing.  Also known as Getting the Word out.  Being There.

We have decided that if art is political, then it’s gestures matter.  So we, my student and I and husband and son and a friend, and a talented film maker are going to film the stories of people who have rescued dogs, especially pit bulls.  If Love Like a Dog’s rescue story has relevance it is because it is shared by the greater world.  Yes!  Unite!  Join!   This way, the chorus of voices will grow a bigger song, better, broader, and more complex and shared and fun.

Just that getting this organized involves:

Finding the film-maker

Setting up a “call for rescue stories ” email address

Creating flyers for vets offices and pet supply stores

Lining up interviews (an average or 3-6 calls/emails per story, a bunch of which fall through when the person finds out they have to go somewhere to be filmed)

Selecting a date & site (and an alternate date/site

Reminder calls

Objects to bring to the event: (which we hold outside the entrance to Montrose Beach Harbor)

List:

(Ugly old) folding Table

Tablecloth (elegant disguise)

Large scotch tape dispenser to attach flyers of the book & story sharing to the tablecloth

(Promotion! Visibility!)

Books (one donated to each rescue story-teller)

Easel; (to display a book upright)

Plexiglass Flyer holder: (why do they cost so much– $8 minimum!!!)

Rope Tugs with little tag: (to give away; note it took hours to prep these)

(the tag says: Let a Dog Tug @ your heart

Nothing says Love like a dog.

Share your story at:

Lovelikeadog.net

Dog treats (to entice stray dog owners & help dogs stay still 7 concentrated)

Icebox & ice: (it’s July in the Midwest; water & root beer & some goodies)

People food & blanket to sit on:

(Chips & salsa & more, because it’s my student’s birthday)

Raffle Box: (for dog owners with a spirit-of- gambling

Folding Chairs: (so the interview subject can sit down & help their dog sit, too)

Film-Equipment: (provided by the film-maker)

What Happens:
On the day of filming, none one of the ten people scheduled shows up.  It’s well, almost exactly like the publication ratio of  to non-fiction (one book of fiction is published for every ten books of non-fiction, if you remember).  One person calls to re-schedule.

Another lonely moment.

What You can’t Plan On: But, but, but because Thomas Wolfe is right and magic is always ready to happen, we start talking to any stranger with a dog, asking for their stories, and these people leaving the beach with their wet, tired, happy dogs, say, “Sure I’ll talk!  And we get seven interviews in the next couple of hours.    Carpe Diem!  Oh we seized the day.

Talk to us!
We’ll call you.  Right now.  Really.

Below which is a button:
Call me.

You type in your phone number and they call you right away.

Because I have lived a long life with its attendant struggles I am not used to such expediency and politeness.  I don’t have to press “1” or “3” or give a secret code number and wait 10 minutes before speaking to someone.  I can hardly believe it each time.

I have phoned about my proofs, how to navigate their site and understand their stages of production, how royalties work, the time frame for the press releases, the process of expanded distribution to bookstores. Usually, I’m given a pleasant but firm prognosis of a certain number of weeks a particular task completion.   And every single time, they have not only met, but anticipated their deadline.  Maybe I’m lucky.

I can’t swear to this but I think the CreateSpace big-wigs studied the Apple store model. Have you ever noticed how many people crowd each and every Apple store? It’s like a festival in there. But what is the big turn-on? Incredible staff support. Personalized staff support. When things go all monolithic, the deep-seated hunger we have to feel loved and cared for comes raging into full focus. Monolithic = alientation. But if a big organization hires a large service staff, and someone approaches you the minute you enter the door or the portal or whatever, you forget the size of the enterprise. You, the individual, are being listened to one on-one by someone whose entire mission is to grant your wish. Disneyland! Cinderella’s fairy-godmother is alive! This is great! One-on-one connection is big niche self-publishing is filling. They say: have a can-do attitude.