Ugenia Lavender and the Geri hype machine

A year ago, as I was finishing the first draft of Drive to Nowhere, I heard about Spice Girl Geri Haliwell's plans to launch a new children's book series based on a girl called Ugenia Lavender.

Ugenia would be sassy, incredible, energetic and ingenious. "She's flawed and yet she's inspirational, and she challenges the world she lives in," Geri proclaims on the official Ugenia Lavender website. Her dad, Professor Lavender, works in the dinosaur museum and "Ugenia goes to him when she's got a problem, as she does in The Lovely Illness", Geri says.

I groaned. What about sassy and smart Eeare Kindred, daughter of single dad Captain Epic Kindred? Similar 'bizarre' names... bags of attitude... Eeare, a heroine for the Facebook generation with her own imperfections? The one I'd thought up in 1992 and had begun writing faithfully about in November 2006?

Was Eeare (and Drive to Nowhere) going to be sidelined by Ugenia's adventures and the Geri hype machine before her own story had even begun?

Thankfully, I soon realised, these feisty and 'flawed' girls can live side-by-side. For Ugenia is only nine years old; a completely different role model for a completely different 'girl power' market. Eeare is fifteen; an adolescent, who is more like the eccentric outcasts in the movie The Breakfast Club than the small troupe of misfits in the Ugenia adventures (although I've only heard what the video says on the Ugenia website).

Even so, I'm still jealous of the publicity Ugenia has received solely on the back of the Geri/Spice Girls music 'brand'. Already I've seen articles pushing Ugenia in women's magazines, gossip websites and blogs (here's a leak of one of her books). No doubt closer to the release date, around May 2008, we'll see posters, interviews on TV and so on. Oh well. We self-publishers can only dream of that kind of hype!

Banned by social networking sites everywhere?

The trouble with promoting a book yourself is that you don't really have a budget. Mine's been stretched to the limit with the postcards, promotional copies and press packs I've sent, or am sending, out.

So, there's always the social networking route, right? Potentially millions of people stumbling over your creation... virtual buzz on forums everywhere...

Well, I've tried hard to use social networking as a promotional tool for Drive to Nowhere, and I'm having little joy after receiving warnings lately from various companies!

First there was Bebo, the social networking site that's popular with my demographic -- the 13 to 24s. Bebo has a section called Authors. It allows you to share your works in progress, add fans and create a special page dedicated to your story/novel/poem/whatever.

I spent three hours creating a customised skin for the page, which basically means the page's theme is all Drive To Nowhere-related stuff. I also posted three free chapters of my novel on the page, and on the blog I mentioned that the book was now ready to purchase on Lulu.com (I saw another profile mentioning their Lulu book, too!). I submitted the page for possible inclusion on the Authors homepage.

I told a few people about the site, but only about six people visited it. Next time I tried to visit, the page was broken. Thinking it was a temporary error, I left it for the day but the problem still persisted. I could log in and see my Author profile, but when I clicked through to the page there was an error message.

Frustrated, I emailed Bebo to ask them what was wrong. I later received the response:

You have been reported due to inappropriate content or conduct. We are unable to enter into detailed discussions regarding this, but we do evaluate each case ourselves before sending a conduct warning or cancelling a membership and regret that we have need to resort to this course of action. You were in violation of our Terms of Use, please read the abstract below. You can access our full Terms of Use by clicking on the following link or copy and pasting it into a browser window: http://www.bebo.com/TermsOfUse.jsp.

Excuse me? I was reported? This reminded me of when I was kicked out of the university library in 1996 for 'chatting' online.

I clicked on the Terms of Use link and was still flummoxed. I still am, although I figure they may have considered my measly link to my Lulu shopfront as 'disseminating unsolicited advertising'. I wouldn't think that was grounds for deletion, and even if it was, I would have appreciated being told what I'd done wrong, and given a chance to delete the links. After I'd conducted a social networking investigation on Bebo and other websites in 2006, the amount of stuff I'd seen on Bebo (bullying, porn, spam, drug use etc) was by far greater grounds for deletion than my piddly little website. And when I reported the pages to Bebo back then, it took them a long time to get rid of them. Even the Google Ads at the time were inappropriate. Bebo has stepped up its game since then but had it now become almost too vigilant?

Undeterred, I boycotted Bebo and moved on to Facebook. As I'd joined the London network, I thought I'd take a look at the Marketplace where you could list items for sale. I had a few books in my possession and an Amazon link now, so I could try and sell books direct or send them to my Amazon site where I might make a sale.

I looked at the other advertisements on the Facebook Marketplace. These included get rich quick schemes, 'work from home' modelling solicitations, £5 Nintendo Wiis and other general detritus. Surely my ad about my book was in no way violating their terms of use?

So, I proceeded to list the item. Then yesterday, I get this:

You posted a Marketplace listing that violated our Terms of Use, and this listing has been removed. We do not allow spam, nudity, drug use, attacks on an individual or group, or other obscene content. Continued misuse of Facebook's features could result in your account being disabled. If you have any questions or concerns, you can contact us at warning@facebook.com from your login email address. The Facebook Team

Hmm. My book is for teenagers. Spam? No. Nudity? No. Drug use? No. Attacks on others? Er, no. Obscene content? No.

I logged in to Facebook and above the News Feed I was greeted the warning message that repeats the content of the email I received. I'm supposed to tick a box and 'acknowledge' that I have read the information. I refuse to tick and acknowledge this unless I get answers from Facebook about why my posting was deleted when, again, there are all these other spammy posts being chucked on there.

So, each time I log into Facebook, I'm going to see that message. And I'm leaving it there.

Update: 24 hours later, I received a response which said:

Your listing was removed because we do not allow users to advertise services or businesses using the Marketplace feature. If you would like to advertise your business in the future, please consider using our Facebook Ads system. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Hmm. I don't think it was a service or business, but the second part of the paragraph proves what I thought. They just want me to buy their ads.

I'm almost thankful for Murdoch and MySpace. Despite the chaos, the site is so crammed with ads and people promoting themselves, it's almost as if they've given up and let us get on with sorting it out ourselves! Don't get me wrong, if something is genuinely violating the Terms, then I'm all for taking it down -- and quickly -- but I just don't see how my tentative attempts at promoting a self-published novel have been greeted with such dismay. I guess they just want to see the money.

Does anyone even look at Google Books?

When you buy a Distribution package through Lulu, which gives you an ISBN and online listings at retailers worldwide, you also have the option to enable Google Book Search. Your book's PDF file is sent to Google where the text goes into its searchable database.

The entire book is scanned but you can only read snippets of copyrighted books and publishers can remove their books if they no longer want them scanned. Books that are out of copyright can be downloaded as PDFs.

I like the idea but whether it will drive sales remains to be seen.

The Google Books 'About' page contains a testimonial about how great it supposedly is. One author writes: "Lack of exposure is the primary reason that a book like mine would fail in the marketplace. Your search engine is the primary way that people find their way to my website, and subsequently, my book." Another says: "If we have hope as authors in the digital age, it's in projects like Google Book Search."

It may take two months for your book to be indexed once submitted, and mine isn't on there yet. But when it is, will I see a jump in sales all of a sudden? I don't think so. Maybe it's not so big in the UK, but I don't hear of people using Google Books Search regularly. Still, it is only in Beta (testing) mode and I do like the idea of books being on there -- it's a nice concept. I managed to discover through the Book Search that I was cited in three publications, which was pretty cool. It also seems to be a useful source for students, historians and other researchers.

Another testimonial said their book's sales rank "jumped 85 per cent" on an online retailer's site. Sounds good in print, but if mine did that, it would jump from 1.2 million on Amazon.com to 200,000 or something -- not a huge achievement by any means!

Marketing Drive to Nowhere

Marketing a book when you have just self-published a novel is hard work.

Two weeks ago, I:

• Wrote a press release using PrLeap which was made available on Google News, Moreover and other outlets to help increase search engine traffic and visibility for key word searches.
• Sent out around 25 press packs to UK and Australian magazines, newspapers and booksellers. This included the press release; some included a colour illustration of the main protagonist. I also included a see-through envelope containing a selection of glow-in-the-dark stars. Some lucky (random) people may have also received glow-in-the-dark planets and even an ammonite or piece of obsidian (volcanic glass)!
• Did some social networking - created a MySpace page for Eeare and linked to my press release on Facebook. Actually, Eeare's picture has been subconsciously seen by dozens of journalists all around the country in a screen shot of her MySpace page this week and by about 150,000 other magazine readers - let's hope subliminal 'advertising' does work!
• Sent my book to the British Library's legal deposit office to make it official.
• Sent a few emails to family and friends to encourage them to buy the book.
• Donated a copy of the book to my local library. They might want to sell it off, but so long as someone reads it, I'll be happy.
• Checked how my Distribution went. Now, my books are available on Amazon, Play.com, Lulu.com, The Book Depository and more, with more to come. Images and meta-info now need updating.