I’ve been silent about my book since April. This was for a good reason: I was in SHOCK. After a few months of promoting “Bobo’s Daughter” I was sent an email saying my publisher was filing for bankruptcy. I knew it was time to regroup using the lemons and lemonade theory.

During the past few months I found another distributor for me and the other authors once represented by Book Pros. I arranged to have my books shipped from one location to another and then tried to find my books that were stolen through the U.S. Post Office. Yes, on top of the publisher going bankrupt I had a hundred books lost, fresh off the press, by the U.S. Postal Service. My most dreaded fear was that I would find them months later offered for a minimal price on Amazon. That dreaded fear came true.

Even though I filed MANY complaints and lost merchandise reports, NO ONE helped me. I called so many times I was getting to be on a first name basis with the Customer Service Representatives. Quite frankly, I think I can understand why the U.S. Post Office is going under: no one cares.

“Lost” merchandise through the U.S. Post office is sent to a warehouse in the Atlanta area, stored and later auctioned off. Even though I begged employees to look for my books the answers I received were vague. It couldn’t be that difficult to contact the authors of the books, I thought, whose contact information is clearly marked. But, it was.

I self published Bobo’s Daughter 10 years ago. Did it all myself and published through Morris Publishing. They first started having success when they published church cookbooks. Years later they expanded and published for self published authors.

I knew that I needed to protect the story and the name of my dad and wasn’t willing to “sell” my story to a mainstream publishing house. Self publishing for a first time unknown author seemed to be the best fit.

I sold 900 copies of the paper back version of Bobo’s Daughter in nine months. Then 9/11 happened and no one bought anything. At a normal book signing I would never sell anything less than 30 copies. After 9/11 I would walk away from a book store only selling 4. It was clear something had changed in our country. We were frozen in fear.

To be continued . . .