Hello, It’s Hollywood!

When a writer sets out to publish a book independently or through a small press, s/he does knowing that pretty much all the promotion and PR is going up to him/her. If the author is lucky enough to have a friend or two who knows a little bit about marketing, that helps. Branding knowledge is very useful, too. When I started Parlez-Moi Press I had no idea where it would go or even what exactly I would do with it but I had an idea, I had a good corporate background in branding and marketing, and I had the Internet and a few skills to make use of. Starting out PMP was just an online place to promote articles and short stories but eventually it attracted other writers and other readers and expanded to promote others such as poet Peter Todd and Gloucester Policemen and authors Larry Ingersoll and Mark Foote.

In 2004 we published our first hard-copybook, a collection of poetry by Gloucester’s lovely photographer/poet/animal advocate Lila Swift Monell, Split-Image Focus. That little volume was a success and sold close to a thousand copies — quite an accomplishment for a slim volume of poetry.

Also in 2004 Mark S. Williams called about a the book he was working on, a memoir of his life as a Gloucester lobsterman. As everyone who reads here knows, and is possibly tired of hearing about, his book F/V Black Sheep was published this past summer by his own independent press, Silver Perch Press, which is sponsored and hosted by Parlez-Moi Press. Basically, this was just a matter of allowing him to retain all rights to the book while using the assets already in place for PMP. I’ve written a lot about the good things that have happened for him since then but, of course, there are long weeks in between exciting events so, to those, directly involved on a day-to-day basis, it isn’t quite as eventful as it might seem to readers here.

Thanks to the great review he got in National Fisherman, we have been pushing harder tog et into new markets and, yesterday, were out on Eden Road taking some promotional photographs to send with press releases. That was when the phone rang at his place. He didn’t get the call until he got back home.

No, it wasn’t Stephen Spielberg. But it was pretty good. The guy is a screenwriter who lives and works in Hollywood and has some very significant screen credits including three episodes of The Sopranos — doesn’t get a whole lot more impressive than that. He had a copy of Mark’s book that someone sent him. He read it. He loved it. He wanted to know more about it.

How can you not be excited by such an event? It’s what authors dream of and independent publishers don’t dare to hope for. After their phone conversation, when Mark called to tell me about it, I kept saying, “Are you being a jerk? Are you making this up? Are you trying to make me feel bad about the fight we had this morning?” (I told him he doesn’t have to ALWAYS be snotty to me.)

He told me the guy’s name. I Googled him. He’s for real.

Well, the guy was honest. He said it’s going to take awhile to make contacts and connections and try to get something rolling. He said, just keep doing what you’re doing and I’ll do what I can do. He asked for the first chance for an option. He said Mark was a helluva writer. He said his book is going places. He said keep writing. Hollywood called...... Wow.

Thanks for reading.