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To anyone who plans to self-publish a book or, have the publishing part thrust on you as we unwittingly did, let me tell you that the road will be rough. Every step you take will inevitably require more patience than you thought you had, more time than you can spare, and more steps than the Empire State Building. BUT, if you believe in your project as we do Celebrate Green! you can prevail.

This Monday morning saw my to-do list topped by two biggies.

Last night I received a message from a buyer for a store (one of hundreds in a chain), who wants desperately to stock Celebrate Green! She asked if the book is available from their primary distributor or whether we had been approved to sell to this chain. I told her no on both counts, but asked for her help because we really, really, really want to be in these stores. She said she would see what she could do, but she got me thinking that I should contact this particular distributor.

Here's a quick lesson on book distribution if yo [...]

Doctor, I'm baring my heart to you. Here are my symptoms (which probably apply to 90% of the women here from time to time):

• Sleep deprivation due to insomnia, light sleeping, early alarm.
• Brain paralysis, inability to organize thoughts.
• General malaise, fatigue. See "sleep deprivation" above.
• Tunnel vision - can only see the million things that need to get done.
• Inability to sit still, especially when there is still laundry to do (and there's always laundry to do.)
• Short temper, especially when partner fails to effectively read my mind.
• Extreme chocolate and coffee cravings.
• Constant recurring daydreams of taking a vacation.

Don't send me to the funny farm just yet, recognizing you have a problem is the first step to recovery right? Part of the problem with being a business owner, a wife, a mother, an entrepreneurial thinker, and a woman in general is that the To Do list always grows.

(Side note: I once tried the Franklin Covey method but it took too much time for m [...]

This is off my topic of PR and goal, but it’s such a major event that I thought I should address it and see what the overall opinion is.

Lehman Brothers, the fourth largest U.S. investment bank has just filed for bankruptcy. With debt listed at $613 billion, it’s the largest bankruptcy in history! And when you think about the fact that Lehman Brothers has been around for 158 years and even survived the Great Depression, it’s pretty mind boggling! We’ve also lost Merrill Lynch, which was bought out by Bank of America for $50 billion.

This is a huge blow to Wall Street and the economy as a whole and will trickle down to all us little people. On the upside, it might mean huge sales this Christmas! How do you all feel about this?

The last day of my first 5 day meditation retreat...all Buddha'd out.

I got tons done this week/weekend and I somehow managed to not have a thrombosis about it. It is possible that sometimes I can be a bit melodramatic about all of the work I need to get accomplished.  The fact of the matter is it always gets done. Maybe it's not today, tomorrow instead...but still, the world will not cease to spin. When I focused on just finishing the task that was in front of me, it not only happened, but it was actually kind of pleasant.  Who knew? Check it out, I'm on fire!

-Worked out with new trainer Joy twice this week.  Although my legs and arms are broken, I am looking forward to looking just like Halle Berry in the next 6-8 weeks.

-Sent deposit off to my designer along with a list of deliverables for the blog's re-design.  I cannot tell you how freaking stoked I am for this!  Producing and collaborating on projects like this is my jam.  I love watching all of the pieces come togeth [...]

Corey and I were invited to have a booth and speak at Green Edmonds (a city north of Seattle), an event organized by Green for Good We write montly articles for their newsletter and are their "Green Celebrations Experts."

While I've done a lot of "speaking," I really don't enjoy it unless I can make it a lot of fun, which naturally I always try to do. So I came up with the idea of a "show 'n tell funshop," (who likes the idea of a WORKshop?) and that's what we prepared for the Edmonds event.

Through a lot of joking around and silliness, we showed people how to set a beautiful eco-friendly table whose components cost almost nothing either in $$ or damage to the Earth. We had no idea whether it would sail or bomb or how many people would attend. Turned out we did great, but the audience was almost non-existant. BUT, the people who did watch gave us great, positive feedback so that we know we're on the right track. Since speaking is going to be a good chunk of our PR for the book, [...]

This week, I've been doing an unintentional experiment.  It's not one I ever intended to try, but my level of swamped this week has kept me from doing any of my usual marketing. 

The first thing that you have to understand about my marketing plan is that most of my marketing efforts are centered on the dozen or so small business forums that I post at on a daily basis.  I've done this pretty much every day for two months or so. 

I answer general legal questions and often have to talk people out of some very dumb ideas.  No, really.  In fact, I post here on the STS legal café too.  (Got a question?  Ask.  I'm happy to help.)

The continual posting has won me quite a few clients and some good traffic to my website.  As an added bonus, those posts often inspire my blog posts at my legal blog, the Blog of Burgess.   

More importantly, I've been recognized (both by reputation and by actual endorsements) on several of the larger forums as someone who offers good, useful advic [...]

Can you see me doing a little dance? Can you see me waving my arms? Jumping up and down? Today has been a good, good, good day (despite the rain). 

Before I get to the good, I have to say: this risk taking and goal setting is like riding a roller coaster. Some days it all feels like a big uphill battle. Nothing seems to be going right. Daily site traffic might be down. Perhaps someone makes a passing comment that just isn't empowering (like the guy who told me the photos of me on my site should be re-taken because he didn't think I looked good in them!). A PR placement falls through. Sometimes I go online to do one simple thing--like try to link my Google Adwords to my Google Analytics and 14 hours later (okay slight exaggeration) I still haven't done it--or anything else.

Well, this morning just rocked in every way. Where to start? Where to start?

1) At first I was going to write a blog about only one thing: site traffic. My goal by the end of the week was to break the 500- [...]

Oh my gosh, this week has flown by with my desk piling higher and higher, my email in-box about to explode. So many details. Like this one.

It turns out that when you send review copies to SOME bloggers so they'll review your book, they turn around and sell them. Not only do they make money off of the review copies, but a. they don't tell you they're going to do this and b. they undercut the price you're selling them for.

What can you do to stop these nefarious thieves? Evidently not too much, actually. The main suggestion is to stamp REVIEW COPY NOT FOR SALE across the front cover and on the page sides so that at least if they go to sell the books, they MIGHT have a little problem, because hopefully it's difficult to sell a book that looks so ugly and besides says "Not for sale."

I was going to follow the lead of most other people when I had a thought. You know if you send someone a book they don't want and can't sell, what are they going to do with it? Throw it in the trash, [...]