The Growing Mind

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My Persian Paradox: Memories of an Iranian Girl by Shabnam Curtis is not the first story to be shared, and will not be the last, but there is a need for more stories to show the different pieces of this complex puzzle called humanity. Sharing her story, Shabnam aimed to contribute to and enrich the diversity of voices. When we share stories and know each other on a more profound level, we feel the authentic human connection, we create empathy, we sense a true belonging. True belonging is to be part of something while we keep our identity and accept ourselves and others for who we are. Fitting in is hiding some aspects of our personalities, something emotionally painful. It kills our self-worth and makes us a victim. Belonging creates self-worth and freedom. Belonging and authentic connections are basic human needs.

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A Short Story

When I went to pick up Maman so we could food-shop for my book launch party, she climbed into the car wearing her usual beautiful smile. I said Hi, and when she did not reply, I glanced at her. Her lips shivered, and tears rolled down her cheeks. She said she had been up until 2:30 a.m., reading the first half of my book, a memoir. Since the book is in English and her best language is Farsi, it was a chore she had managed with a dictionary. “You made a monster of me,” she said brokenly. “Was I that bad when you were a teenager?”

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In the rooftop bar of Eaton DC, skeptical of attending a religious event, I didn’t know what to expect. When Nafisa Isa enthusiastically started introducing the program, people cheered and hollered. Sitting in the second row, I turned back to see the people cheering, and saw more than 100 people mostly with dark hair and olive skin, like me. All the chairs were filled and people were standing by the bar.

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(1500 words – 10 minutes read)

An indie author has to wear a lot of different hats. One of the most difficult ones for me is playing the role of the publicist. It is a new paradigm, with a steep learning curve, and little room to make mistakes. Why? 1) It’s A LOT of work that consumes time and money. 2) A mistake can harm my infant reputation. Ok, I don’t want to scare anyone. If I am doing it, everyone else can do it. It’s a slow progress that needs a lot of devotion and resilience, especially when hopelessness wants to take a major role. 😊

Let me share Shabnam’s story as a publicist and what she has done so far. In short, publicity is all about connecting to other people.

• Website: I built my website through wix.com. They make it easy and fun to create your website. I searched and watched a couple of YouTube videos that helped me to learn tricks. It is a simple website and I will update the pages as I learn more and have more events.
• Social Media: Overall my understanding of social media for an indie aspiring author is to build up a platform over time and be patient with it. It certainly does not create sales even with more than 1000 followers. Of all possibilities for social media, I have Twitter and Facebook, Goodreads, and recently created a business account in Instagram.
  • In Twitter, when you find the right group, mainly other writers through #writingcommunity, it starts rolling. I started with almost 10 followers in summer 2018, I have over 1400 followers now. One of the rules of thumb is following other writers and attend a couple of discussions every now and then. It still does not give me a large number of impressions on my tweets but I count it as a good steady progress. The bright point was that I got two author interviews by attending discussions in twitter. They are available in my website.
  • In Facebook, I focus on writing groups that I have joined. Facebook algorithm is tricky and I heard only 2% of the people in your network get to see your posts. I notice out of 3500 people in my network, I only get to see posts from mostly 100 people in my newsfeed. I did not see the value in publishing an author page in Facebook and made my main account public. Facebook is mostly to keep up with the news from other writer fellows who are in FB only.
  • Goodreads was one of the tools I started playing with a few months before publishing the book. In order to request and get approval for an author page, you need to provide a publishing date. If that date changes later, you can update it. One mistake I made; I loaded the cover page that was not final. It seems I cannot change it after the first download. If I figure it out, I will mention it in later posts. I am still learning how to use Goodreads as a tool for book promotion. I have connected with more than 1500 people and ran a Giveaway (for $119) one month before my book was published. I gave away 50 kindle version and got one review out of that. Overall I have more 20 reviews and ratings. Of about 30 people I asked through Goodreads to review the book (Offered a free copy – separate than giveaway), I was lucky and got about 10 reviews. It made sense to pursue people who have reviewed similar books to mine. I hear this method works in Amazon for requesting reviews too but I have not practiced it.
  • Instagram is so far my favorite tool among all in social media apps. I opened a business account (free). The best part is people can follow hashtags and therefore using the relevant hashtags# bring great visibility to each post. This helps to get more followers and likes. You can use up to 30 #s in each post. There are also many book reviewers that I reached out and a few accepted to review my book. And following #bookstagaram & #bookstagramer give great visibility to what everyone else is up to with more possibility of finding events.
  • I have noticed some bookstores ask for social media accounts to check the level of my posts’ impressions which could be used against me, since I am still learning and haven’t created a huge platform but that’s only for popular bookstores. This part of the game takes a longer time and aspiring authors need to be consistent and patient with it.
  • Listening to Joanna Penn podcast with Frances Caballo, I learned it is better if we plan our posts for each week. Sundays could be for #authorlife posts, Mondays for a cheer-up post, Tuesdays could be a post on my upcoming book, Wednesdays a #bookbuzz for #bookpromotion and so on. I’ll try this scheduling strategy and will share my experience.
• Press Release: I sent out a press release (paid) one month before publishing the book, but got no contact/return out of it. Publishing a book by an unknown author is not news-worthy. I don’t recommend paid press-release. However, you need to prepare a press release to send it to book reviewers and radio and TV interview requests.
• Reviews: I decided to get a couple of professional paid reviews to begin with. I chose The Midwest Reviews and City Reviews. Then I reached out to major book reviewers.
  • I received a constructive review from The Midwest Review within two weeks. The review was also published on their website in March 2019 right before my publishing date.
  • City Reviews took more than two months. Their review included negative words. I didn’t take it. I accepted to exchange it with a month of advertising in their website but nothing came out of that. I don’t mind constructive feedback and review with *** but negative words and tone of voice in any review is unacceptable.
  • I have mailed copies of my book to major reviewers but have not heard anything yet. Major reviewers I have sent my book include Book Reporter, NPR, American Book Reviews, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, The Nation.
• Lecture Opportunities: I have been contacting colleges to introduce my book and ask professors for a book review. I also offer a lecture in case they find the book a related subject for their department. I pursue Psychology, Sociology, and Women and Gender study departments, related to the theme of my memoir. So far two schools have accepted me to give lectures in Fall and three professors have accepted to review my book.
• Pitching to Journalists: I tried the free version of Help a Reporter It is a lot of work to check all the subjects they send out three times per day and then pitch on the ones related to my book. I gave up on that, trying to find a better way.
• Reading Events: I have had luck contacting the reading events in the Washington D.C. area and that gave me visibility and encouragement. I am also capturing opportunities on open mic events.
• Bookstores: Contacting bookstores is complicated and a different experience. I will try to write a blog only for this one. I have one bookstore reading event (I didn’t have to pay) scheduled in June and had a book signing event in another bookstore that gave me some visibility.
• Author Interviews: I have started making a list of radios, podcasts, and TVs to request interviews. I have gotten three radio interviews so far through writing community. I am going to start with local radios.
• Submissions: One literary magazine has accepted one of my essays so far but I keep submitting personal essays to different literary magazines. Submittable is a great tool to find out about submission opportunities. To me this is a necessary part of author’s life to remain connected with the literary world.
• Book Festivals and conferences: Attending different book events such as book festivals, author appearances, and book readings help growing my network. I had a booth in Gaithersburg Book Festival in May-2019 which was a great success as far as expanding my community and selling books. I am now looking forward to attending Baltimore Book Festival in November. I am searching for other related festival and conferences to attend. Here is a list of Book Festivals in the U.S.
• Last but not least, reach out to friends and family members for their connection and build your network through that. Attend different events. It is a lot of work with slow response but please do not give up. Do as much as you can frequently. Build your author career through the cause and purpose your book offers. We are all in this together, step by step moving forward!

I hope this information helps. I’ll share more as I learn more. Until later…

Let’s share our stories,

Shabnam

When I look back, four years ago, I had a comfortable life. Today, I feel fulfilled. My book “My Persian Paradox” is released. It is now time to work on sharing this story with others. Maintaining a fulfilling life needs continues move full of actions. I am learning how to reach out to my readers. I will not stop doing it as each reader is a new gift in my life to teach me more, to bring more depth to my life (regardless of their positive or negative opinion about this book). A dear friend said, “Shabnam, this is the beginning of a new path for you.” It indeed is!

Let’s celebrate life!

Shabnam