When we chose which stories to film for Lemonade, much of the final decision came down to logistics. They had to have lost a job in advertising. They had to be available on a specific shoot days in either LA, Boston, or NYC. And they had to be willing to tell their story on camera.
Unfortunately, some of my favorite submissions had to be shelved because one or all of those conditions weren’t met. But their stories still need to be told. So, once again, I’m leaping blindly into a world in which I have no knowledge or experience: book publishing.
Lemonade, the book will assemble a collection of essays from people telling stories of reinvention in their own words. Only this time, I don’t want to limit it to the advertising industry. Imagine all the inspirational personal triumphs that arose after the auto industry crash. Think of all the school teachers, engineers, and finance professionals who have found their life’s work thanks to being downsized. Those of us in advertising provide just one, very sheltered viewpoint of what’s possible in unemployment.
If you lost your job but found your calling, I want to hear from you. You can submit a simple abstract of your experience, or an entire 1k – 3k word essay. (I want this to be more about the quality of your story and less about the quality of the writing. If your story is inspiring enough, we’ll get it written.)
Here are the general guidelines for submission:
- It can be a 1-paragraph abstract, 3000-word essay, or anything in between. But is has to communicate your inspirational post-layoff story.
- The submission must be an original, unpublished work.
- There’s no submission fee or cash prize. This is simply a forum to tell your story and inspire others who need to hear it.
- All entries become the property of Please Feed The Animals and Fighting Monk, Inc (the legal entity for my business).
- I want to be ambitious about getting this completed. So all submissions must be received by November 30.
Please email submissions to me directly at erik@pleasefeedtheanimals.com with the title “Lemonade Essay.”
Thank you. And if anyone knows anything about the process of book publishing and wants to lend a hand, I’m not shy about accepting the help.
UPDATE 10/23/09: I realize after just one day that I won’t be able to read through all the essays myself. Please, submit just your abstract for now that summarizes your story in about 100 words. Thank you.
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My first thought was that this was similar to Studs Terkel’s “Working” and it caould be called “Not Working”. But it turned out that Second City beat me to it. http://bit.ly/3qhav0
You know I’d love to be all up in this.
Erik,
I have had experience trying to get books published. And it ain’t easy.
The first step is to find an agent to go out and hawk your book. Publishers rarely take solicitations from the writers themselves.
So my advice would be to get a copy of “A Guide to Literary Agents.” It’s a pretty comprehensive list of agents broken down by types of books they represent. Also, in that book are guidelines for submission that each agent requires. Every one is different, which makes for a lot of work.
And while many will allow online entries, a good number still want you to send your stuff thru snail mail.
Then comes the waiting game.
I am in the process of trying to sell a book version of Sucks to be You, and can share with you the submission work I’ve prepared, as a guide to you.
Let me know, and I can email it to you.
I’d recommend that you check out some of the popular writing blogs for writers aspiring to be published (such as A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing at http://jakonrath.blogspot.com, Write It Sideways at http://writeitsideways.com,
and Editor Unleashed at http://editorunleashed.com.
Some of the recent discussions have been about whether hard copies are essential. Both B&N and Amazon are distributing ebooks, and many bloggers are selling or distributing free e-books themselves. Book publishers start paying attention when sales approach 10K without traditional publishing intervention. As e-book formats evolve to enable reading on all kinds of portable devices (not just laptops and kindles), this route is becoming more common, and might be where PFTA should start.
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[...] If you have a story to tell, and would like to be featured in this book, you can get the general submission guidelines and details from his website, Please Feed The Animals. [...]
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