Suggestions needed

My husband and I are going to a convention in October related to the plane he flew, which is a big part of my book. I gave a presentation at my husband's squadron in 2007 and their response was good.

There will be displays at this convention and there will be wives there.

What I need help with, and you are all probably getting bored with my talking about this, is how to approach this organization to ask to sell my book there, which now is only a manuscript, but could be a book by then, by some way. It would be a great place to promote this book, especially since wives often get kind of left out at these things.

Suggestions on how to do this are welcomed.

Carol

On the website for this organization they have the following quote supposedly by Ernest Hemingway, although I have not found anything to substantiate this claim of credit to him as yet.

"You love a lot of things if you live around them. But there isn't any woman and there isn't any horse, not any before nor after, that is as lovely as a great airplane. And men who love them are faithful to them even though they leave them for others. Man has one virginity to lose in fighters, and if it is a lovely airplane he loses it to, there is where his heart will forever be."

This is what I am up against in getting this book published. I have no stars, bars, or wings. But I'm not giving up.

Carol ,

I don't kow what I am talking about here, but could you presell the books?

This is great--it gives you a deadline . Decide that you have to have your book in publication and it will be someway.

Have you decided to go fiction or true?
Make a decision and go with it.

You have said you are not focused, this will focus you .

Carol,

You say you have no stars, bars--your husband must have a few, Make him help you. put him on as a coauthor.

Might as well have both of you rich and famous!

If the guys liked the book sell them one and give the wife one if they buy at the convention.

Wait a miute--why are you trying to sell your book?

You have forgotten our training..

Your book will be in a bookstore, you will have thousands of dollars in your pocket--your advance.

Boxes of free books will come to you. You are still in the "sell them from the trunk of your car mentality".

You are the author not a book salesperson. Remember!

It is good you have me here to remind you! Obvioulsy, I forgot for a bit also.

Carol Troestler wrote:

On the website for this organization they have the following quote supposedly by Ernest Hemingway, although I have not found anything to substantiate this claim of credit to him as yet.

"You love a lot of things if you live around them. But there isn't any woman and there isn't any horse, not any before nor after, that is as lovely as a great airplane. And men who love them are faithful to them even though they leave them for others. Man has one virginity to lose in fighters, and if it is a lovely airplane he loses it to, there is where his heart will forever be."

I found the quote, Carol, but not in a book by Hemingway, and no confirmation that he did actually write it:

http://books.google.com/books?id=pQVvxiEckYkC&pg=PA37&lpg=PA37&dq=%22

You will find the quote halfway down the page.

Shelagh,

You really are amazing. I did a whole bunch of searches and couldn't find the exact quote.

This quote will be in my book, and I think saying it has been "attributed to Ernest Hemingway,' will be the way to put it.

My brain wheels are turning.

Carol

Perfect!

Told ya.

Carol,

Spend your advance now--get a Mount Blanc pen, hire a security guard to watch over the pen. Get a four foot- high hair do and a huge diamond ring.

Wear a very glitzy, glittery jacket with a black dress. Put your nose in the air and your book will sell.

... and here is the exact reference to the journal:

http://books.google.com/books?id=SdJV-1A-wuwC&pg=PA22

Carol,

You've got mail.

Alice has a good idea.
Creating a market for the book will certainly give an agent something to think about. With "x" number of people saying they will buy, together with a total number of members in the organization, will add to the potential. Listing other similar organizations with stats will further assist with an initial target market.

Don may have the help you need, Carol. My own advice was alreasdy expressed by Marie, a unit newsletter or magazine to announce it.

Marie ,

You get the A for today. It was a great suggestion.

I should have stopped before I started.

I was thinking as I typed it and I don't think it came out the way I meant it to.

I think Carol is remarkably focused and I greatly admire her resolve. I have no idea how long a person should seek a commercial publisher--one year, two or ten.

What I meant was if she had a deadlne of October that would help her.

Thanks for the quote. Now, I'm really interested in that Hemingway book.

I have a proposed cover, poster, pictures of my husband's squadron then and the last decade. My husband did help with the book, but he knows better than to tell me what to write, only makes suggestions and corrects errors, like my thoughts there could be photo missions night and day in 1962. There just wouldn't have been much to see in those night photos in those days.

Considering it a work in progress is a good idea. And perhaps the "selling books out of the back of my car mentality" will never cease.

You always get the creativity moving here. This is like writing a query letter.

Reaching a point where I no longer go for the big time military publishers is something I need to consider. I told my husband the other day that if he had stayed in the Marines and become a general, my book might have been published by now. But he did just what he needed to do, so there really are no regrets and it wouldn't have been worth getting a book published.

Carol

Carol, Since you have your promotional materials ready, I would pick up the phone and call the organizer or leader of the conference committee and
let them know the gem that you have, and that it is ready for publication. I have done this a couple of
times, and although it is nerve wracking the first time you do it, it's
very effective. People want news, stories, and things that will have a positive impact on their conferences and meetings. Introduce yourself as an author, rather than someone who lacks rank and title, and you might be really thrilled at the response.

I wish you much success!

My Last idea:

Do all of the things that have been suggested.

Do they have a roll call?

At his Army Reunion, my husband announced that I had written a book and people wanted it.

Thanks to everyone.

I've got the website and am working on my request.

I'll check for phone numbers, but I think emails are all that is there.

Carol

Hi Carol, my .02c is that I wouldn't ask them until I was sure I had something to sell (e.g., the finished product). Others will probably approach the organizers with similar requests.

What kind of book is it, is it a authoratative report on a war or event in history? If so, and you feel that your lack of credentials ("stars and bars") are keeping it from being published, why don't you try a different angle, such as writing from the distaff POV? An onlooker's view of the events, a spouse of a participant in the event. And shop it that way.

LC,

Throughout this day I have written a new first chapter. This thread got me thinking, along with Hemingway's quote. Oh, to be an author like that who just keeps influencing others!

Anyway, here it is. This is what I will send the organizers of the convention along with a few particulars of what I want and a picture of the cover.

**********************

I have neither stars, bars nor wings of gold, but I was there in October of 1962 watching as Kennedy gave his seventeen minute televised speech. My children were there as we picked them up from their cribs at three in the morning to take them to the squadron ready room where I said a tearful good-bye just before my husband left in his F8U crusader jet loaded with sidewinder missiles. And I was there the next day when a phone call told me to keep my car filled up with gas, stay close to home and be prepared to head north if called again, as C-130s took off constantly with all the equipment from the base needed for war, resounding ever in my memory.

Hemingway once said,

“You love a lot of things if you live around them. But there isn't any woman and there isn't any horse, not any before nor after, that is as lovely as a great airplane. And men who love them are faithful to them even though they leave them for others. Man has one virginity to lose in fighters, and if it is a lovely airplane he loses it to, there is where his heart will forever be."

And my husband loved that plane, and the men he flew with meant the world to him, and at times someone who could fly a plane twice the speed of sound and do maneuvers even the developers of that plane might not have even known possible, casts a big shadow.

And what I knew then and what I know now are quite different. Then I thought we could be at war within days, and now I know we could have been at war any moment.

How did we get on the brink of nuclear war? How were we successful in averting the war to end all wars then and in the next decades? What of the government officials who were deciding on the fate of the people of the world?

And what of the people of the world: the children, women and men waiting at home then and now? And how far have we come from those fateful days in 1962?

With this writing, I have tried to answer those questions

It was almost perfect.

I like it so it is close enough --don't get it any better or I will be bugged by it.

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!!

I have spent more time writing this first chapter, which could also be an introduction, or a summary for a query letter, than writing the whole book.

And I'm also into marketing here: service personnel, their wives, and their kids.

I am learning even at this advanced age.

And Alice, I certainly wouldn't want to bug you.

Carol