TPC is committed to a multimedia marketing strategy (we are, after all, blazing through the information age…), and to aid in getting the word out about our HOT new novel, have produced a video trailer for SELLOUT. This is an actual scene from the book – check it out!

Did you all peep the cameo from TPC’s very own Omar Luqmaan-Harris?

Many thanks to Sameerah Luqmaan-Harris and Ayo Cummings for their fantastic portrayals of Tammy and Sheryl, and Multivision Productions, for helping to bring our vision to light. We are just so happy with the finished product–doesn’t it make you wanna go out and buy the book?

For my first formal book club meeting, I have to admit, I was on point…for the most part.

Omar and I arrived at Olive Garden in Smyrna, Georgia, the designated hot spot for the Urban Divas first meet-and-greet with this new author named James W. Lewis. I spotted a few of the lovely Divas at the bar, just chillin’, catching up with each other, having a few “dranks.” Although somewhat nervous, I met up with the head Diva Stacie and chit-chatted a tad. Then I mingled with a few other members, getting to know each one. In no time, my nerves went beddy-bye.

No, they didn’t – I’m lying. Would they tear me a new one because they hated the book? How would they react to remarks made about black women? Shoot, how would they react to me?

About fifteen of us eventually sat at a mile long table with me at the head feeling like King Jaffe Joffer from Coming to America. Then we engaged in a surreal moment–the dissecting of each main character in SELLOUT. Crazy, I’m telling you. Although I tried to stay cooler than a naked man in an igloo, I was a giddy twelve-year-old inside. I don’t think you heard me. They were talking about my book! Not just talking, but breaking it down! And I was cheesing it up as I watched each member discuss Terrell, Tammy and Penelope, my lead “children” of SELLOUT.

We read the book club questions (so glad I added them in there!). Some members had their issues with certain parts, but generally they really enjoyed my baby. One revelation shocked me, though: Several members did not want to read the book simply because of the title. Didn’t expect that at all. I guess “sellout” hits the gut hard for some people. Good thing is the members that chose to read SELLOUT were completely surprised at the plot. Guess you can’t always judge the book by its cover.

I had an excellent time with the Divas. Lot of suprises, laughs, smiles, pictures–all that. No criticisms either, just an honest discussion about race, dating and what they liked and disliked about SELLOUT. Mostly liked.

Can’t wait for the next one.

Serendipity can be defined as an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident or simply as luck or good fortune. The TPC3 joined forces due to one serendipitous text message eight months ago and serendipity continues to play a strong role in their success.

Their second major public appearance since the launch of SELLOUT was slated to be the inaugural Atlanta Black Book Expo (ABBE). Heading into the ABBE it didn’t look like it was meant to be, as James had a family emergency just days before the August 7th event. Omar remained on stand-by waiting to hear back from James and Steph as to whether they would still be participating or not.

Plans to reunite in Atlanta on August 5th were postponed as James flew home from Florida that morning, and Steph, being the ride or die, stand-by-her man woman that she is, embarked on an epic thirteen hour road-trip north from Florida to Maryland, that took her a little too close to a tropical storm that had descended over Virginia. On the morning of August 6th, Omar awoke to a text message stating that Steph and James would be driving back down to Atlanta that morning. The ABBE was back on.

You should know, loyal readers, that Omar is habitually nearly missing flights. That Friday was no exception. He left work later than he wanted to and made it to his gate a mere thirty minutes before scheduled take-off only to learn that his flight had been delayed an hour. Relieved, Omar headed to the Continental Presidents lounge for a drink and a comfortable spot to continue working. When he emerged from the lounge at 6:15 pm, he got back to the gate just in time to see his plane pushing back! Luckily, Omar was serendipitously awarded the last seat on the also delayed last flight to the ATL. Back to the lounge for him.

Omar’s flight, delayed from 8:00 pm until 11:15 pm, took off at 11:45 pm. Landing in Atlanta at 1:15 am, he texted Steph and James to see where they were. Once again, serendipitously they had just pulled off the highway very near the airport, so they swung by and scooped him up. What are the odds that a 13 hour car drive coincides with a missed flight, a last seat, and a three hour delay!

The lucky streak continued the following day as the TPC3 ended up stationed right behind the DJ booth and sound board. Radio personality Marcel from http://www.wmarfm.com was broadcasting live and became clearly intrigued by SELLOUT and James, eventually offering him a nationally broadcast interview!

TPC3 @ ABBE

James would need to be on point for his close-up…

So now that TPC has a book that has been edited and printed, and our 3-person street team has hit the ground running, the orders have been trickling in.  It’s a beautiful thing, watching the balance in our paypal account steadily rise, collecting 10s and 20s from folks who are eager to get their hands on this hot new novel.  :)  For me, this has definitely been the fun part of this whole experiment, almost worth all those sleepless nights spent in SELLOUT pre-production.  And while I naively thought that I might get a break from the 24/7 hustle as I passed the torch to my sales and marketing team, instead I found that our success required me to don yet ANOTHER hat — the TPC accountant. I mean, somebody has to count the money, right?

When I was Program Manager at Cultural Studies, I was responsible for managing the budget, so I am no stranger to crunching numbers. So rather than pay an accountant to handle our books, I decided to take it on.  Yes, this is another HUGE task to add to my already full plate, but honestly, I just don’t trust anyone else to do it, lol. Accounting and bookkeeping is also a highly transferable skill, so I figured, what the hell–what I learn now will come in handy for years to come, as TPC is not the only business I plan on starting (have I told ya’ll about my editing firm? Stay tuned — I got big things poppin’! .  So I ordered myself a copy of Quickbooks and started assembling accounting resources so I could read up on all I needed to know to keep our books clean and manage our bottom line.

Man, I had NO idea what I was getting into!  This accounting stuff is no joke.  I plan to write a TPC technical blog outlining all the various components of accounting for publishers, but in short, managing the books is a lot more than just keeping track of income and sales.  All income and expenses need to be categorized for tax purposes; sales tax has to be paid; shipping costs and paypal transaction fees need to be accounted for; inventory needs to be tracked, along with the various price points (retail price vs. friends and family discount vs. book club discount vs. comp copies); royalties need to be calculated and paid; profit and loss statements generated, as well as cash flow projections; etc, etc.  And that’s just the tip of the iceberg!  There are intricacies in this accounting business I never would have imagined!

With the help of Quickbooks (and the 570 page manual, which I read pretty much from cover to cover), I’ve successfully set up TPC’s chart of accounts and bookkeeping system.  Time-consuming, yes, but also incredibly satisfying to have expanded my skill set in such a useful way.  TPC is really taking this DIY concept to heart, but every penny we save on outsourcing we are able to reinvest into making mo’ money!

I never thought I’d like going to the post office almost everyday. Well, I do now. I’ve gone “postal” up in here–and I’m loving it.

With a box full of 7 x 9 envelopes that TPC bought from Costco (came out to 27 cents per envelope!), my book fits in them perfectly, like a SELLOUT sleeping bag, nice and snug, the perfect bubblewrap bedding for shipment to any destination. From as close as San Diego–to where-the-hell-is-that spots in Australia–I’m more than happy to blast off copies of SELLOUT on some international rendezvous courtesy of the postal system.

It just feels good. Simple as that. Someone ordering an autographed copy of my first born gives me the chilly-willies inside. Smiling all hard, I pull out my ball-point pen, autograph the book (trying to be careful not to misspell or leave out a word), then slap on an adhesive label with the TPC logo on the envelope. Once I “Sharpie” the address and seal my baby inside, I take my happy butt down to the local USPS and send it off to its new home–hopefully to give someone as much joy as it has given me. So damn official!

And I don’t mind standing in long lines at the post office anymore, either. Why? Because I’m shipping my pride-and-joys to people who obviously like what I do from afar. And that’s a beautiful thing, for real.

My goal is to become on a first-name basis with every postal worker in the downtown office. I want them to say, “Hey, James, how many copies of SELLOUT are we sending today? Oh, by the way, I loved chapter five!”

Can’t wait for that moment.

Sit right back / and hear a tale / about a marketing cat / trying to turn fans into sales / he dwells on the web / like 24/7 / persistence and tenacity are his only weapons / imagine his disappointment / when the plan doesn’t work out as sketched / but he keeps on pushing / ’cause tomorrow might be the best day yet!

Back when the only stories TPC was slangin’ were our own fledgling birth tales, I had a brilliant idea of how we could simultaneously build our online fan base and virtually guarantee gigantic sales of SELLOUT and the novels to follow. We would put our entire operation on display like the store windows on 5th Ave during Christmas. We would take a page out of the Julie/Julia playbook and expose our triumphs and tragedies for the entertainment and education of the world.

My next big idea was around how we could use facebook as a platform to success. Fans would jump from FB to this site and love every minute of the interaction. Once again we saw a rapid initial uptake (mostly existing friends and family) but then the numbers flattened and stopped growing altogether. As it usually does in these moments, my never say die attitude kicked in and I had yet another genius idea. Because James’ was in the contemporary fiction realm, all we had to do was friend fans of authors who wrote books in the same genre.

Setting a target of 25 new fans a day we began hitting up total strangers on FB. My partners were initially reluctant with this approach (Steph actually never agreed with it), but not me. I dove in head first. Next thing we knew, the fan numbers were climbing again! Going door-to-door was surprisingly successful. Only a handful of people protested my friend request, so I figured it was all good.

I then decided to experiment with facebook ads. Setting a daily ad budget of $10 I figured I’d let FB stalk likely candidates for a while. And sure enough, fans began to join our movement in droves! We launched the SELLOUT fanpage with another ad and our success continued. I was so bullish on the facebook strategy by this point that I adjusted our pre-launch sales forecast way up. There was no way we wouldn’t easily blow past 1,000 books sold in the first six weeks, right?

Wrong. People may like you on facebook and they may even comment on what you’re doing every now and again, but asking them to buy something…on facebook? That’s like walking into a busy happy hour and tapping people on the shoulder asking them to buy a book. And that’s when my stalking went into overdrive.

I became obsessed with transforming our FB fan base into loyal readers, trying everything I could think of to grab people’s attention in that crowded bar we call facebook.

Much love goes out to the early adopters who actually took me up on my many offers. But even more love goes out to those of you who haven’t yet opted in. Because all of this stalking is actually making me a better marketer. So I’ll be seeing you on a homepage, update, event, or inbox near you.

By the way, did you know you can get a personally autographed copy of the hottest book of the summer for just $10 (plus shipping) by clicking this link?

Well hello there TPC loyalists!  Have you missed us?  :) The TPC3 have been very busy, now that we have officially transitioned from “aspiring authors with a dream”, to bonafide publishers!   Six months ago, the TPC3 (aka Steph, Omar, and James) came together to start a publishing company.  After six months of intense labor to 1) get our company set-up and 2) get our debut novel ready for printing and distribution, we finally have a product to push!  SELLOUT by James W. Lewis is now available for sale on our website (autographed for $10 plus shipping), amazon.com, and BarnesandNoble.com.  We also have e-book versions!  It’s wild to see the tree we planted just six months ago bearing such luscious fruit.  But as we move into the new stage of “selling”, the TPC3 find themselves facing a whole new set of challenges.  How do we most cost-effectively market this book?  How do we keep track of sales and manage inventory? And as the orders trickle in, how do we make sure our customers get the book in in a timely manner?  Before, we were writers, functioning primarily in isolation as we labored over words on a page.  Now we’re out there, smiling, schmoozing, and slanging books!  24-7!  Not to mention the fact that in a few weeks we need to begin production on WHEN LOVE ISN’T ENOUGH by Stephanie Casher, which is scheduled for release in October 2010!  The hustle never stops for the TPC3!

Check back throughout the week as the TPC3 provide updates on how their managing the transition from writing books to SELLING books!

Reserve your copy of the book best selling author Jessica Tilles (Loving Simone) says is “A rare, fresh read…Lewis reminds me of my favorite author, Eric Jerome Dickey, keeping the dialogue lively and the action zipping along.”

Click here to read the first three chapters of SELLOUT!

People who date interracially are often called traitors to their own kind.  Self-haters.  Sellouts.

Loan Officer Tammy McDonald has just come out of another failed relationship with a wannabe thug. To break this destructive pattern, she leaves her home city of Dallas for San Diego. As she settles in rainbow California, fantasies of meeting an ebony prince fade, so she eyes Dale Bristol as a potential ivory replacement.

Terrell Jackson is San Diego’s only black optometrist. Women regularly drop in for more than just eye exams, but he stays true to his girl Tasha until a wet dream unleashes a ridiculous outburst. Fed up with her jealous fits, he denounces the common “dedramanators” in his life–black women.

Even though Penelope Miller was raised in the South by a racist father once affiliated with the KKK, she can’t ignore her attraction to black men. But she never expected to fall in love with one…nor did she expect her “interracial felony” to threaten their lives.

SELLOUT follows these three individuals and the consequences of dating outside their race. In the quest to find what they think is missing in their lives, they encounter guilt, fear and mess they never anticipated…including murder.

What are you waiting for???

PURCHASE YOUR COPY TODAY!

My first booksigning. Crazy. It almost doesn’t make sense that I can put the words “my” and “booksigning” in the same sentence, but as of June 24th, 2010, I can marry those words together. I learned a lot from that day, too. In this video, I reflect on what the experience was like.

June 24th, 2010 – Atlanta, GA
W Perimeter Hotel

I descended the elevator from the sixth floor to the lobby as my stomach churned butter into cream. It was 9:15 am. Walking through the lobby and finding James and Steph setting up our booth, I wondered how long it would take for us to make our first sale. Even though it was pretty quiet overall I had no doubt we would be successful. But I felt the anxiety I typically experience just before a big corporate presentation or a big basketball game back in my balling days.

There were only two or three other vendors setting up alongside us. I noticed them gazing curiously over at the three of us, surely wondering which of us the author was or whether the three of us had penned the book together.

Ironically, either response would have been met with an affirmative head nod.

SELLOUT may have James W. Lewis’ name on the cover and spine, but is also has the TPC BOOKS logo there as well. That means that James’ rep wasn’t the only one on the line here and probably explains the jagged spike in my heart rate as conference attendees began to pass by – clearly intrigued by the SELLOUT cover, poster, and ultra dapper author before them.

It’s one thing to do the behind the scenes work to bring a book to life, it’s quite another to face real-life potential readers. I had to stop myself from overanalyzing their every reaction and tic.

Some people engaged the three of us directly. Others read the poster and picked up a flyer. Many picked up the book itself and read the back cover copy – some stoic, other wearing their interest all over their features.

As for the product itself, I was supremely confident. Not only had James written a character-driven provocative evocative page-turning novel, but our fans had helped us design the cover and crystallize the back cover copy. So we weren’t alone – we were repping the nearly 3,000 collective fans of Stephanie Casher, James Lewis, Omar Luqmaan-Harris, and Qwantu Amaru…the real Pantheon Collective!

And when all was said and done, eighty percent of people who stopped by our booth left with a copy of SELLOUT gripped in their possession. Not bad for our “soft launch”. A launch that only six weeks before seemed almost certain of not happening (props to Steph’s superhuman copyediting skills). It’s really a testament to James’ talent and the power of three people living their dream. If we can do it, anyone can!

BWRC Exhibition Footage