I saw a film last night that should be required viewing for every woman who’s ever felt disempowered no matter her color, by every mother, by every judgmental school administrator, and by every male of every race. It’s called DOLORES and is the story of Dolores Huerta, the little-known mother of the Farmworkers union (to Cesar Chavez’s father) and eleven children. She, along with the farmworkers, forced change at a time when the growers refused to consider their workers more than slaves. She demanded better treatment in the fields, that workers not be sprayed by pesticides, that they be paid fairly and that they have clean, safe places to live. She was a friend of Bobby Kennedy’s who’d taken up the farmworkers’ cause and was by his side when he was assassinated at LA’s Ambassador Hotel. She later fought for women’s rights, LGBGT rights and was one of Hillary’s surrogates in the last election. Today she is still fighting at 87. It’s just what and who she is, and she’s never let the fact that she is both Latin and female get in her way despite daunting obstacles, both outside and even within her own patriarchal community. Peter Bratt, the film’s director, made the film at the urging of Carlos Santana, and it took 5 years to complete. Bratt was there last night, fielding questions from many with connection to Dolores or knew her story (I did not). One person sitting in the audience at the NW Film Center was a former attorney, named Art Johnson. He was the lead prosecutor against the San Francisco Police Department after one of its officers took a baton to Dolores (over 50 at the time and not a threatening presence) during a protest, beating her and landing her in the hospital with life-threatening injuries (you see it happen in the film). Johnson, clearly moved and fighting tears, rose to tell the story of how he and his team won a settlement from the SF police department and when he told Dolores the terms, which would pay her to $2000 a month for life, her response was, “This isn’t about the money, but we’ll use it to reform the police department.” When she recovered, she did that, culminating in an entirely new policy and rulebook for the department. It was Dolores who came up with the call to action, “Si se puede,” making the farmworkers believe they could make change happen. You’ll recognize the call as, “Yes We Can,” used by Barack Obama (he gave her credit) in the lead up to election. In this horrific political climate we find ourselves in in 2017, the film gave me inspiration to resume the fight. It’s traveling the country and will air on PBS next Spring. #shepersists #couldabeenamuff

https://www.doloresthemovie.com/aboutnew

Of course you have to do something to get noticed, and thereby sell books. But if everyone’s doing the same thing, hanging out on social media at what Mary Walters calls the equivalent of an online water cooler, then it’s going to be hard to stand out, right? Ever watch a Twitter stream go by? Who has time? Certainly not other writers; they’re either writing or sending out their own tweets that no one is reading. With all seriousness, there are very few writers on social media scouring other writers’ posts to find authors they don’t know about so they can buy their books. Like the majority of the reading public, swamped with too many choices, they’re looking to trusted sources to help narrow them down and those trusted sources are still in the pocket of the few major publishers who put out books written by the chosen ones—star writers like Franzen and Grisham and celebrities with ghost-written memoirs. Okay sure, a few new writers squeak into the big 6 every so often to give the rest of us hope, but chances are they knew somebody. What’s that old trope about success: 10% inspiration, 10% perspiration and 80% luck? Put that against the backdrop of declining book sales and what we’re looking at, people, is a rather bleak landscape for the rest of us. A tree may grow in Brooklyn but not without a lot of help.

“All right,” you say. “Enough cynicism and negativity.” You read blogs to be uplifted. “Can’t you give us some positive, concrete and constructive advice?” Well here it is… Get Over Yourself. Stop whining and kick on, as my old riding instructor used to say. Just get on with it. If you are writing books, you are very lucky. You could be destroying your kidneys as a long distance trucker. You might be working at a slaughterhouse or as an Andy Gump servicer.  Don’t misunderstand: we need these people. They are doing things that society needs. But us? We are writing books. What a luxury. How lucky we are! You can complain about lack of book sales; it may even be healthy to vent but be real—these are rich people problems.

You have to ask yourself why you write. Is it because you want to be famous and make a lot of money? Because—and it’s the same with acting—these are not, nor have they ever been, good reasons to write books, Doh! Accepting reality with respect to writing is figuring out why you write. If you have something to say, you love to write and feel great having written, then you’re following your calling and should keep doing it for no other end than these. If you enjoy social media, and think it’s helping, I’m not saying don’t do it, only that I wouldn’t believe what the snake oil folks are pitching: that being big on social media will get you book sales. There’s no syllogism there.

Getting book sales is not a science. It’s an art form and one that’s rarely displayed using social media where most of what gets posted is noise. We all know that in order to sell, wherever it is you’re selling, one needs to get attention. But how? Securing a photo of Oprah carrying your book on her vacation would jump start sales in the same way Michelle Obama has launched the career of many a young fashion designer by wearing their creations. Having that photo would work in a magazine, on TV and possibly on Twitter too if you could get it retweeted (good luck getting those fake Twitter followers to retweet you). But how do you get Oprah (or Matt Damon or Sophia Vergara) to carry your book? Well, you could stalk them (not recommended) or you could Photoshop a picture of them holding your book (also not recommended). Sigh of frustration. So what do you do to get attention?

There’s no magic path to success and if there were, it would soon no longer be magic as everyone would be doing it. While it’s true we’re all supposed to be hawking our books to get noticed, I submit that most writers don’t like selling; we particularly don’t like selling ourselves. Interestingly—or stupidly—I have chosen four different career paths: playwright, mediator, actor and novelist and each of these requires other people to “like” me in order for me to find success. And for each of these endeavors I have discovered a few truths about making a sale or getting a job, which usually work when I have the energy to follow my own advice. Nothing revolutionary; just a couple of things to keep in mind when you’re feeling frustrated at having to sell a book when what you want to be doing is writing your next one:

1)    Meeting people face to face is still the best way to build fans—particularly when no one knows that you or your book exists. Though writers are generally content keeping their own company, it’s good to get out in the world. Consider it “research” if you need a better reason than selling yourself. You can try giving your books to people who seem interested and ask if they’ll write a review. Volunteer to speak to groups that might find commonality with the characters in your stories.

2)    Be in the social media agora because these days not being there looks weird but don’t have unreasonable expectations about the benefits. Post on a regular basis, even if it’s only once a month, just to keep up the presence. Alternate between the “Hey you, buy my book” type of post and a more nuanced post about the world of your characters. If you can learn Hoot Suite or some other scheduled release software, you can set up a a lot of tweets ahead of time, so you don’t have to think about it. Use social media but don’t expect much because it is what everyone else is doing. If you don’t do something differently, you’ll just be part of the noise.

The main advice I have is to keep writing because the thing is selling books and writing books are different art forms and you can’t be angry with yourself if you’re good at one and not the other. We all need to be realistic about the chances of our books being discovered; especially if we’re not willing to do what it takes—coming up with something new—in order to be noticed. If you write because you love it and couldn’t care less if anyone bought your book, you’re probably the type to find solace in the stories of Vincent Van Gogh and countless other artists who found no purchase during their lifetimes. On the other hand, if selling means a lot to you, then you gotta get out there and meet people, pitch and talk and smile and hope that eventually you’ll get lucky. Do you know the Daft Punk lyric, “I’m up all night to get lucky?” Even those hot sexy guys at the top of the pop charts know if you’re not out there playing the game, no one knows you’re there. In large part, we make our own luck.

Ann Royal Nicholas is the author of The Muffia series of books, Homegrown: The Terror Within (under the name Cialan Haasnic) and Wine for Dummies (Royal Mack). www.annroyalnicholas.com

Forget what you may have heard about The Muffia—banish the thoughts of lesbian pornographers and the militant English mums who expose bad mothering. The Muffia is, in fact, my Los Angeles based, all women’s book club. That’s right; we read books—not even particularly sexy books. Our Muffia came into existence in 2001, years before either of the other claimants despite the fact that The Muffia has just been released. Oh my, that sounds provocative doesn’t it? What I meant was that my novel, The Muffia, which is based on the Muffia book club, was released; not the Muff members themselves. We find release quite regularly, thank you.

It was after the twin towers fell. A group of us—friends for the most part—found ourselves talking about how life was suddenly more precious, our hold on it more tenuous. Tragedy has a way of bringing people closer so we weren’t unique in this. All of us, it seemed, sought greater connection. So we decided to start a book club. It was a way for us to come together and share our lives over a book we’d read, or, I should say, were supposed to have read. Somewhere along the way we started calling ourselves The Muffia.

There are 10 of us Muffs (in the book there are 7, which is hard enough to keep track of). And when we get together, we share so much more than books: Marriage, divorce, relationship drama; bar mitzvahs, births, deaths… menopause. When we meet, we always share a good meal and wine—often copious amounts of wine, which probably explains how we thought it was a good idea to call ourselves The Muffia.

The Muffia book club works and because I’m so grateful to be part of it, I will endeavor to provide some tips for making your existing book club more successful; or, if you’re thinking about starting a club, a few ideas you might want to consider before you do.

1)    “Who” is your book club?                                                                                                    

What brings you or holds you together? The key is finding what it is you share. Are you alumnae from college? Residents of a cul de sac? Certainly you share the love of reading but there has to be more to fall back on when the book conversation dies, which it will. The Muffs talk about everything, often very personal things. On those rare occasions when we’ve felt a book was not worth belaboring, we have been known to spend evenings talking about our kids or parents; or a Muff’s recent sexy escapade. This gets down to choosing the members of your book club. For me, this is the single biggest reason for The Muffia’s success: We like and respect each other. Though we’re certainly different and disagree about the books a lot, no Muff gets bent outa shape when another Muff tells her she’s full o’ fluff (expletive replaced). So build your book club to last.

2)    Anticipate and head off conflict.

Even when you share an identity or focus with others in your club, if a certain member is disrespectful of others’ opinions or book choices then feelings get hurt. The Muffs have simply decided that a big reason we’re in a book club is to be introduced to books and opinions we might not have thought of ourselves. Therefore we are not to complain when a Muff picks a book that sounds unappealing. We have a South African Muff and without her, I never would have read Please Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller. Yes, it’s an odd title but we all loved it. Sure, Muffs have picked a few duds as well but even then, we still get something out of them.

If you do have a “problem” member, one way to handle him or her is to hire a sort-of “moderator” who conducts the club like a class. Two of my friends are in this type of club and wouldn’t have it any other way. The leader ensures that those who are less forceful get a chance to speak and also acts as a buffer. Leaders often help choose a book and provide critique from outside sources. This wouldn’t work for The Muffia because the Muffs are all terribly opinionated and don’t really care about outside sources.

3)    Share the duties.

A Muff doesn’t have duties other than her annual turn at hostess, which is hardly a chore. To be a hostess in The Muffia means you get to choose the book, organize the food and have book club come to your house. Good food and drink are great for putting people at ease and for getting the conversation going. The Muffia is no different. And we all make an effort to have delicious dishes and yummy desserts whenever we meet. There is the duty of scheduling, but the way we handle it is to know from the get-go that there will be multiple group emails with everyone weighing in. We thought about using an online scheduler but nixed the idea as too impersonal. Ultimately, we like the silly emails.

In a book club where there’s a leader, there are likely responsibilities such as dues collection or ordering food and these should probably be rotated so no one feels put upon. Again, it gets back to choosing your group wisely, genuinely liking the people in your book club and having some flexibility because being in a book club is supposed to be fun. (See #1 above)

4)    Limit the guests.                                                                                                               

When new people enter any established group it by necessity changes. The Muffia is made up entirely of women and we do not permit men. That said, we did have a male author once.  We read J.R Moehringer’s memoir, The Tender Bar, because one of the Muffs knew him. It was a fun night despite the fact we had to curtail our ordinarily randy conversation (He probably would have been fascinated). Occasionally we have a female guest but ONLY if every Muff says yes and ONLY if she has read the book!

5)    Watch out for “Big” books.

It’s probably smart not to choose books that are too long. Then again, some hefty volumes read fast and some short ones read slowly.  A few Muffs are big readers and have chosen weighty tomes with no harmful effects. And guess what? It’s not the end of the world if people don’t finish a book. There’s no guarantee people will finish the book when it’s only 250 pages! There’s still a lot to talk about. That said, if a Muff shows up without having read the whole book, she has to expect spoilers—that’s her penance for not finishing. The thing is, she knows this going in and is sensible enough not to get annoyed.

Being part of a book club is not to be missed and the best book clubs are populated by people who bring out the best in you—like The Muffia does for me. Nurture those relationships, the stories you read and the stories you’re a part of. You’ll reap the rewards.

Do you belong to a book club? How do you make yours work? What was your book club’s favorite read?

Ann Royal Nicholas is a writer, actor and director whose career spans 30 years and is comprised of work for stage, film, television and individual consumption. She has contributed columns forVine Times and Touring & Tasting, as well as articles for Los Angeles Times and The Chronicle of the Horse. Her novel, Homegrown: The Terror Within (written under the pseudonym, Cialan Haasnic), is joined on shelves by The Muffia, the first of a “chick lit” series published by Water Street Press. Originally from the East Coast, Ann currently lives in Los Angeles with her son.

This piece first appeared as a guest post on the Shelf Pleasure blog. Shelf Pleasure: a destination spot for women who love reading (www.shelfpleasure.com)

The Muffia is available everywhere. 10% of all profits from book sales will be given to girls and women’s causes in the U.S. “Buy ‘The Muffia,’ help women.” If you know of any worthy groups, let us know who they are.

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