Miss hazel Rides Again
QUESTION: What happens to a really good book if nobody hears about it?
ANSWER: Usually it goes gentle into the good night of the publishing netherworld.
BUT, because you made my second novel, The Healing (2012) such a success, The View from Delphi (2004), is getting a another chance, something that NEVER EVER happens in the publishing industry. Maiden Lane is a small publisher, but has a courageous vision—to give a second life to deserving books that, through no fault of their own, were overlooked upon initial release. True to their natures, the book’s heroines, Miss Hazel and Vida Snow, are not going down without a fight! Maiden Lane Press has big plans for this battling duo. They are banking everything on the renamed version, Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League. Gorgeous new cover, snappy title, a fresh rendering of the story, AND a 25 city tour!
So here’s the pitch.
Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League is a re-imagining of my first novel and will be released on February 4th, hardcover and paperback. A book needs to sell a minimum 3000 copies in a week to make New York Times Bestseller List. This guarantees the book gets noticed.
I’ve been told putting together a preorder campaign, by asking all your friends and their friends, fans and potential fans, relatives and even that literate-looking stranger sitting next to you on the plane, to preorder the book is a great way to get on “the list.” That way, the title can “bank” future sales, which won’t be counted until the day the book is released. So all pre-orders will show up on Feb. 4th, making it a stellar week for Miss Hazel. (At the end of this email, I’ve listed some specific things you can do to “up” the preorder numbers.)
I really want Miss Hazel to have a shot at the big time this go-round. I hope you do to. In this violent, racially fragile world of today, the lessons imparted by Hazel, Vida and that brave band of African American women of Delphi, Mississippi, are needed now more than ever.
So here’s the “ask.” To preorder, go to your favorite bookstore’s website, or Amazon, or Barnes and Noble, or most any other outlet. You don’t get charged for the book until it is shipped. Usually, they ship a week or two before the release date. So this is one way to get your copy before anyone else!
This favor I’m asking will especially please mother. She’s the inspiration for Miss Hazel and hand-sells the book to every new resident at her assisted living facility. Don’t disappoint my mother. Believe me. That’s not something you want to do.
Oh, did I mention it’s a great read?—so say Pat Conroy, Lee Smith, Cassandra King and Meg Waite Clayton, each a major literary star. They’ve all sworn to it. In fact, I’ll quote best-selling author Lee Smith:
“Here it comes---barreling down the track like a runaway train, a no-holds-barred Southern novel as tragic and complicated as the Jim Crow era it depicts. Author Odell is taking it all on: issues of class as well as race--- hope, love and idealism along with evil, greed, downright meanness and cruelty. You will fall in love with both main characters: Vida, the young unwed black mother living with her revered minister father, Levi, and her mixed-race child ; and innocent Hazel, unable to escape her white trash upbringing, who finds more community with Vida and the other maids than with the upper class white women in the Delta town of Delphi, Mississippi. Odell escapes stereotype by diving deep into all his characters—way down below the apparent surface of, say, corrupt white sheriff Billy Dean Brister; or the all-powerful old white Senator in his mansion The Columns just outside town; or the town whore, Sweet Pea; or the ambitious up-and-coming car salesman, Floyd Graham, determined to rise above his raising and drag his wife Hazel along, too. These characters are as deeply complex as the times, the plot as winding as those roads that Miss Hazel keep driving and driving in her big car. MISS HAZEL AND THE ROSA PARKS LEAGUE is a big brilliant novel whose time has come.” —Lee Smith, New York Times bestselling author of The Last Girls and Guest on Earth
Oooh! That gives me chill-bumps. And Australia Random House is so confident in the book they are offering a money-back guarantee to all Down Under buyers!
Again, to preorder, just go to your favorite bookstore’s site, or Amazon, or Barnes and Noble. Remember, you don’t get charged until the book is shipped.
C’mon, join the League and give these two women (Miss Hazel and Vida) the voice they deserve.
Thanks again.
Jon
Ideas to Motivate Folks to Preorder
1. Word-of-mouth remains the best way to sell a book. Friends read what friends read. I’ve attached a Press Release PDF lauding the book. Please share. Or send folks to my fabulous new author’s website.
2. Recommend Miss Hazel to your Book Club for a Feb-March discussion and ask them to preorder. I enjoy Skyping and doing phone conference calls with book groups, so that may be a possibility. Here are the Reading Group Discussion Questions which appear in the back of the book.
3. Recommend Miss Hazel to your school, class, club, association, library, or bookstore for the February Book Selection or group read in honor of Black History Month, the 60th Anniversary of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the 60th Anniversary of the Emmett Till lynching, Rosa Parks’ 102nd Birthday, or March for Women’s History Month. The book deals with ALL of these topics. And tell them I LOVE dong public appearances if they want me.
4. Give Christmas presents that can be redeemed in late January, early Feb. (Frankly, if they don’t want a book for Christmas, do they really deserve a present at all?)
5. Send the PDF and my website to your contact list with a short personal note. Say you are doing it for a friend—people are much for accepting of that than they are of some pushy author promoting himself...yeah, I know.
6. Tell your local bookstore and library what we are up to. If they need reader copies of the book, in-store promotional material, posters, etc, we have it all ready to ship.
7. Some of you work for the media, have blogs, write reviews, contribute content—you know what to do. Here’s a link for author photo, bookcover jpg, press release, bio, etc.
8. Share any suggestion with me that I haven’t thought of and I’ll relay it.
9. Above all else, please remember not to make my mother unhappy.