The Downside of Self Publishing

So now I have the product but I am not getting it to market. The product? My new book The Road Not Taken: Memoirs of a Reluctant Guerrilla. The book is easily accessible: the buyer can have it delivered to him/her by Amazon.com, BookSurge.com, Abebooks.com or Alibris.com. That's not the problem.

The problem is I have very scarce resources to promote the book. In fact if I am brutally honest, I have no resources. Zilch! Nada! Rien! Nil! Zero! So no press kits, no review copies, no bookmarks or business cards. I did send a print of the manuscript to the book editor of Essence magazine, Patrik Henry Bass and I am keeping my fingers crossed that he will run a review. But that's the story of my life: the inability to exploit opportunities.

But I have my finger on the pulse of new media although I am a little slow to exploit its benefits. I know I must open myself up to the various social networks I have signed onto: linkedin, Facebook and Myspace etc. We'll see.

I am working on articles related to my personal narrative including one on the process of self publishing. I am also working on another article comparing what is referred to as the summer of the gun - the spate of gun murders whose victims tend to be black- with a similar situation in London, England circa 2000.