Lulu Love

I'm opening this thread to announce even more Lulu love.

In addition to everything else they're already doing for us, they're donating 25 copies of the book for us to send to media outlets... and they'll even ship the copies for us.

They're offering to feature us on the main page of the site.

One of the coordinators is offering to meet me in NYC this weekend.

I just can't tell you how amazingly wonderful they are.

I always knew I liked how straightforward Lulu is about its services, but now I know that there are some real angels running the company, too. Those who are writing blog posts about this project, please remember to include a thank you to Lulu... they deserve any good press we can give them. They're going way above and beyond for us.

You ever have one of those moments when the goodness of humanity just overwhelms you and you have to cry? I'm having one of those moments.

I just spoke to Tonya from Lulu for 45 minutes. First off, she spent the first 5 minutes thanking me for bringing her this great project, telling me how much fun it is to work on this. We talked a bunch about how she loves working at Lulu and seeing them build something great. I told her about how we always mention Lulu here as the most honest POD company-- that we admire how straightforward they are.

She asked what she could do to help us. She's been trying to find out how to get into alternative distribution markets, but there's a long approval process. They already submitted our ISBN data, so she thinks that bookstores will have us listed in their databases in about 2 1/2 weeks. They designed a storefront for us, and that'll be live on Halloween. They set up a separate link to order review copies at a discounted rate.

Then she asked if we were interested in having a few authors do podcasts-- reading their SoS essays/stories/poems, and they'd host it on the site. She's still thinking up interesting ways to help us promote. And she kept adding things like, "If you ever need us to send something overnight, don't worry about asking too much of us. We want to help. We can include your press release, or media kit, or anything you want to send... just tell us what you need."

She gave me her mobile phone # and we may meet up in the city this weekend, really just to hang out and talk some more. In the midst of all this, I said to her, "So, what can I do for you?" She paused a second and said, "Nothin'."

I said, "No, really. I have this great newsletter for writers, I write for Writer's Digest... I feel like I'm in a good position to help. Tell me what to do for you."

But, no. She really didn't want anything. Told me that she felt like there was a purpose here-- that every time she does something like this, there's a reason, a lesson, something. She wants to be involved because it's a great project, not because it's a smart PR move.

I've felt that way myself about so many things. I always feel like there's a reason I was "led" to each project I've worked on. I told her about my agoraphobia and about how I nearly cancelled at the last minute before I went to Vegas to interview Celine the first time... I was scared out of my mind. Had been on a plane once in 8 years and it was a disaster. Part of the reason I was "led" to that project, I think, was to help me tear that fear to shreds. (And as a reward, I got to meet and befriend one of the nicest celebrities in the world.)

Anyway. All I can say is that they're for real-- I'm sure of it. They're devoting manpower and resources to this project for no other reason than that they believe in us and want to be a part of something great. It was kind of funny listening to us try to out-thank each other. I felt like I just met a kindred soul. Pretty amazing experience.