The First Public Reading

To quote Elle Woods, “Omigod, you guys!” I have just been invited to do the first public reading of Oklahoma! Hex—this Friday night!

So here’s the story. I posted my Monday post on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception as usual. In it, I put out into the Universe that I am a best-selling author including the notion that I am invited to do readings. That same day I had also promised to call my book editor to catch up. I didn’t get him, but I did leave a message.

He called me back today (Tuesday) with an invitation to a gathering place called The Center for New Words in Cambridge, MA on, believe it or not, Temple Street! (How appropriate!) They do a monthly open mic night on the second Friday of each month called Mouthful.

The Center for New Words has a delicious tagline . . .

where women’s words matter

The Center for New Words is dedicated to a simple mission: To use the power and creativity of words and ideas to strengthen the voice of progressive and marginalized women in society.

There’s no question in my mind. Words have power—otherwise, why would I be a writer? Certainly, I believe in the creativity of words—otherwise, why would I write fiction?
And, progressive? Marginalized? Yep, no problem.

So I’m going to meet my editor for dinner, actually catch up, and give the first of many readings from my novels. How cool is that?

Remember what I said on Monday? I have no idea how any of the events will string together to create myself as a best-selling author. Except one. It’s the one I cling to when things seem to be slow, or not happening at all.

Here it is: If I want to be a best-selling author, then God wants the same thing for me. I simply get out of the way, and let Her show me how to get it done!

How’s your new pregnancy coming along?

Complaint Department

Well, well, have I had a rollercoaster with Amazon.com. My website was just about ready to launch save the e-commerce part of it when I realized that I needed to get on the horn to Amazon about selling my ebook and my audiobook.

Great, I thought, Amazon has amazing customer service—this ought to be a piece of cake. Au contraire!

In between emails to their Digital Services Department that went unanswered (not even so much as an autoreply) for three weeks, calls to their Help Line which took me to Seattle and India and all sorts of places in between, as well as all sorts of Customer Service workers who really did try to help me despite their ignorance of their own systems, I ended up exactly nowhere on the e-commerce front with Amazon.

So I did what I always do when Customer Service is a nightmare. I wrote a letter. It appears below.

Sanctuary
101 School Street, Suite Three
Somerville, MA 02143
617-764-0344
SeedsDrCorso@comcast.net



26th September 2008



Mr. Steve Kessel, Senior Vice President
Amazon Digital Services
605 Fifth Avenue South
Seattle, WA 98104

Dear Mr. Kessel,

I write to tell you how thoroughly dismayed I am at the alleged digital service that Amazon has, in fact, not provided to me in the past three weeks. It has been so unlike the Amazon I know and repeatedly patronize that when I, by some miracle, landed upon your address, I decided I had to write to you.

Given my usually stellar experience with Amazon Customer Service of any kind, when it came time for me to publish and distribute my new e-book, Dr. Susan Corso’s Seeds I-X, and my new audiobook, Oklahoma! Hex, I thought immediately and first of Amazon. Isn’t that what you want? I should think so.

After climbing around on Amazon’s Seller pages, and becoming thoroughly bamboozled (truthfully, unless one already knows how to sell on Amazon, there’s no finding it out from your Seller pages), I hired someone far more techno-adept than I to figure out how to sell my ebook and my audiobook.

Over three weeks ago, Mary van den Berg wrote to digitalrights@amazon.com in my behalf to inquire as to how to sell both projects on Amazon. Then she wrote again three days after hearing nothing from the first inquiry. Three days after that, I wrote to the same address. I also called Seller Support, spoke to a terrific young woman named Krystal who went to her team leader Tony to find out why I had heard nothing from digital rights, not even so much as an auto-response. Whilst they couldn’t answer that, they did provide me with the information that ebooks needed to go through a new Amazon company called Mobipocket. Great, I thought, I can start the process myself! Her email is included herein. {Give the woman a raise for excellent customer service!}

Little could I know. Mobipocket is unnavigable without prior knowledge of how it works. There is appreciably no tech support whatsoever. Their forums page bears a note stating that we may ask our questions in the fora, and that they “will do [thei]r best” to answer our queries within a week. A week is a lifetime in technology, and you know it! Furthermore, there is no phone support at all, so even if I did want to invest my valuable time in figuring out the time difference and calling France, I couldn’t.

It is no mistake that their homepage lists “affiliates” who do the work of converting any format of ebook into Amazon’s ONLY ebook format, Mobipocket. (Not only is it the only format, but it cannot duplicate exactly the intent of the author because any desired layout or formatting is not available whatsoever!) When I finally hired someone to do what I couldn’t do, I asked her for guidance on how I could learn to do the process myself. She told me, “Oh, it’s way too complicated to bother teaching you.”

This is not the kind of Customer Service I have grown to respect and rely on from Amazon, not by a long shot. What’s happened?

Wait, it gets even better. Determined as I am to have my books on Amazon.com, I tried Seller Support once again to see if I could get anywhere with Digital Rights. An earlier call with a team member whose name I did not capture told me that Digital Rights only deals with finding out IF one has the digital rights. I know I do because I wrote the books. But never mind. A responsible team leader named Jenny H. spoke to me and agreed that waiting thirteen days for a response to an email from any Amazon department was deplorable. She volunteered to find out what she could for me, and to email me back within 24 hours.

After two further calls to make sure things were progressing, I finally received an email from Jenny H. in the nick of the 24-hour time period. Her email to me is attached. The gist is that Digital Rights is no longer accepting digital content. It sounded a little odd to me, but who am I to argue with Jenny who got the answer from inside?

Imagine my surprise when I received an email from Digital Rights three days later telling me how delighted Digital Rights is to welcome my ebook to their catalogue. This email is also attached. I faxed them the form they asked for immediately but have heard nothing further.

Then a techno-savvy friend turned me on to Create Space for the audiobook. Excellent, I thought, I can do that. I registered, but the form wouldn’t let me upload a zipfile for the audiobook. I wrote to Customer Support because, once again, there is no phone support. To be honest, I think it’s ridiculous. Anyway, no answer for two days. Then I got the bright idea of writing to Create Space on their query form. Sure enough, even though I asked for a telephone call, I got an email within 24 hours expressing excitement that I wanted to do an audiobook with them and informing me that they are not able to assist me.

Mr. Kessel, who is able to assist me to sell my digital content at Amazon?

If you were in my position, what would you do? Would you give up on Amazon Digital Services? I don’t want to do this. Would you do as I have had to do and find another way to sell your digital content? I didn’t want to, but had to, do this.

So, here is what I’m asking you, the Senior Vice President of Digital Services for Amazon.com, because, quite frankly, sir, if you can’t get this done, then no one can.

Would you please assign a special, gifted, gentle, kind, knowledgeable troubleshooting wizard with a lot of patience and a sense of humor, and a direct dial telephone number and an email that both receives and responds to the needs of your customer, to hold my very pretty hand and enable me throughout the entire, unintelligible, A-to-Z process to sell my digital content at Amazon?

I know I’ll be glad you did, and I’m sure you will be too since you won’t get another letter like this one from me or, hopefully, anyone else.

If you got this far, thanks for reading this.

Yours most sincerely,

Dr. Susan Corso

Enclosures:
Emails from Krystal P.
Jenny H.
Digital Rights
Create Space

e-cc: Jeffrey P. Bezos
Roxy Caraway
Suzanne Rhodes

Imagine my total delight when I got up this morning to find a letter from the CEO (!) of Mobipocket—Amazon’s new ebook partner. Mr. Martin Gorner answered each and every question, and gave value-added service. He understands his own product.

Turns out that unless one knows HTML one oughtn’t to know how to use Mobipocket!

Further delight? Oh yes, I got an email from a David Keyes in Amazon’s Executive Customer Relations Department. I’ll write him back in a little bit. He’s willing to solve my every problem with Amazon.

I have yet to hear from the poor senior vice president to whom I sent the snail mail letter, but I will. Why? Look carefully at the e-ccs I sent. I included the Chairman of Amazon, Jeffrey P. Bezos, and Mr. Bezos, or his staff, have a Forward Button in their email program.

Voila! Solutions. Amazon Customer Service falling all over itself to assist me.

It’s the same principle one uses to stop a swinging pendulum, or a severe problem in one’s life. Grab the pendulum from the top to stop the momentum! For a severe problem, go to the topmost point of what you know about it and make the change from there. At the very least, the momentum will slow. At best, you’ll end up with your ebook on Amazon.

Ask, blessed one, and you shall receive.

[title of show] & Vision

Sunday’s New York Times Arts & Leisure section had a story about a new Broadway show called [title of show]. It’s been around for a while and it tells the story of two writers who enter a theatre festival and write a show about two writers who enter a theatre festival. Here’s the link to the Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/13/theater/13simo.html?ex=1216612800&en=7248d15125e717a2&ei=5070&emc=eta1

The coolest thing about their Broadway opening this week is that they created it through the vision-to-reality process taught in the movie The Secret and through YouTube. The two authors saw the movie and decided to use YouTube as their pre-Broadway try-out. They put out the “rumor” that [title of show] was opening on Broadway, and they created short videos to get and keep the buzz going.

Thursday, this week, voila! [title of show] opens at the Lyceum Theatre. My point, however, is not that a show is opening on Broadway. My point is that they had and held a vision and then acted upon it as their inner promptings urged.

This is the backbone of the process of manifesting anything. Anything at all, no matter how difficult in our perception. As A Course in Miracles says right up front, “There is no order of difficulty in miracles.” I know, you see, because I’ve been working on one of my own, and pretty soon, I’ll be asking you, who read this blog, to help me. I’ll also be recording a short video for YouTube. I’ll also ask my personal email list.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and be public about my vision. You know I’ve recorded the text of my first novel from the series, The Healing Mysteries of Mex Stone. It’s called Oklahoma! Hex. I heard the first edit this week of just over seven hours and it sounds great to me. And . . .here it comes . . . my goal is to sell 50,000 downloads by 12/31/08. Yep, 50,000! Why not?

When I asked for guidance about how many to set as a sales goal, that’s the first number that came to me. I’m going for it. If two songwriters can create an opening on Broadway, what’s 50,000 clicks?

Spindoctoring the Self

You know I’ve just made a recording of the first of my Healing Mysteries of Mex Stone called Oklahoma! Hex. It should be in the mail to me even as I write. Yesterday, we spent the day driving to Vermont to meet with a web designer so that I can put the audiobook out into the universe and help people heal themselves by reading it.

Between Sunday and Monday, I received three big NO messages in my life. Yikes!

Here’s the NO spin:

The first one was from the first person I asked for an endorsement of the audiobook. I had been certain he’d say yes.

The second one was from a publisher who’d had my book for months. She did write to me, and I quote, “I think Mex Stone is a winner . . . ,” and then she made a request for rewrites that changes the nature of entire series.

The third one came from one of a pair of people with whom I did a very sticky counseling session last week; she just plain chose not to continue our work together.

What happened to me, through these three no messages, is my real subject here. This is how it went down . . . the inner spin, if you will.

The first one bumped my ego. Ouch! I spent half a day utzy—my skin didn’t fit, if you know what I mean. I had to quit working, take a nap in an attempt to sleep it off which didn’t work, and then I repaired to a novel I really wanted to read which scared the bejesus out of me because it turned out to be about something I truly fear. Argh.

The second one made me smile. I recognized it, you see, as a test of my own desire. I don’t believe the universe tests us—I believe we test ourselves. Do I really want what I say I want? Let’s see . . . my novels don’t fit into publishing pigeonholes. The protagonist is a lesbian and an intuitive. The novels are mysteries. The novels are spiritual. Box? What box? Yes, I really believe there is a reading public for my “cross-genre” writing.

The third one was a laugh out loud. I hadn’t enjoyed my session with these two warring siblings. Neither was yielding in any way and a parent had asked them to see me. The desire for healing hadn’t come from the two needing it. Oh bless them, bless them, bless them. And we think God forgets to take care of us?! Ha!

The YES spin:

I’ll get the endorsements that are mine to get.
The right publisher is on its way to me even now.
A new client called yesterday.

The best place to spin is at home. In all senses of spin.

Unlikely Allies

Reading the latest issue of Ode Magazine, the two words above caught my eye. They’ve stayed with me for more than an hour. In our hyper cyberworld, that's a long time.

Have you ever met, worked with, discovered, created, found unlikely allies? Have you ever been one? I’d venture that most of us have had both experiences.

The thing about unlikely allies that’s so important is that we can’t really anticipate them. That’s why they or we are unlikely.

Readers of this blog know I am a novelist. I have been writing novels for more than ten years. Today, on the phone to discover how I might acquire the lyric reprint rights for the first book, Oklahoma! Hex, I spoke to a young woman whom I could never have anticipated would be my ally. She will be, though.

This is why it’s important to reach out to those who qualify as likely allies because through that discipline you hold yourself open to unlikely allies.

Remember this? A stranger is simply a friend you have not yet met. Unlikely allies? Likewise.