I'm Looking for a New Assistant

UPDATE:  This position has been filled. Thanks so much to everyone who applied!

Hey everybody.

Last year I dipped my toe into the water of something I've always dreamt about: having a Personal Assistant.  I hired indie author Jess Eppley, and put her to work on all of my marketing, rights projects, agent solicitation, that sort of thing.  And it was everything I imagined.  I could just sit down and write, while my PA attended to marketing so well the job paid for itself.

Now, having weathered (God, I hope) the hardest part of the pandemic, I'm in a position to be able to hire a PA again.  I've been kind of reluctant to put something out on Facebook or Twitter because I can imagine when posting a job announcement you'll get swamped with a bunch of completely unqualified applicants.  So here's hoping (tentatively) that if you've read more than 280 characters of me talking about this, you're someone who can actually help, or know someone who can.

What I'm looking for is someone who can work for ten to twenty hours a week.  Basically, I can happily fill up that time for the near future, but you take on as much as you can handle and set your own schedule.  Work would all be sedentary and remote.  Picture: drafting hundreds of e-mails, FB posts, tweets, and so forth, then keeping track of it on spreadsheets.

If you have experience in indie publishing, that would be ideal, because I won't have to explain all the ins and outs to you.  But if not, as long as you are organized, pay close attention to detail, and have a pretty strong command of the written word I can use you.  I actually think the ideal candidate would probably be someone who is interested in a career in writing, for instance a college student majoring in journalism or creative writing, because I think the skills and contacts you would pick up as my PA could serve you in the future.  So, it could just be a job if you have secretarial skills, but if you have publishing aspirations, it could be something closer to an apprenticeship.

If you know somebody like that, or you are somebody like that, shoot me an e-mail to skozeniewski at yahoo and we'll discuss.  Thanks, everybody!

A Personal Favor

Hey, everybody!

I'm a little embarrassed to be writing this blogpost, but I like to think that what people like about me (if you like anything) is that I try to be up front and as transparent as possible. Hell, I have an entire series of articles on here called "Making the Sausage." Even when I'm faking it to make it...I'll usually straight up tell you I'm faking it to make it.

So, here's the deal. THE PERFECTLY FINE HOUSE got a little bit fucked. That's just the long and short of it. Wile E. and I worked for years on this baby, Grindhouse Press put months and countless dollars into advertising and producing it, and by the time all was said and done, it dropped on March 16, 2020.

Now, if that date sounds familiar, it's because that was the same week the pandemic emergency was declared in the U.S. I'm not going to lie: I put out a few tweets, but I really wasn't focused on marketing PFH that week, or, really, in the months since. So, PFH got a little bit fucked.

Grindhouse's business strategy is to attend a ton of conventions, and move a ton of paperbacks at those conventions. It's been a great strategy...up until this year. Some small presses focus on e-books, some try land a big fish to help the little fish, some spend thousands on marketing...anyway, the point is, Grindhouse is a great press, which is extremely good to their authors, financially and otherwise, and it just so happens that their marketing strategy suddenly became untenable. So, PFH got a little bit fucked.

Wile E., as it happens, has a customer-facing day job, one that did not go away due to the pandemic, but one that got much harder as a consequence. At the end of his 12- and 16- hour shifts, he's been lucky to get home and see his family and get some ZZZs before doing it all again. So, PFH got a little bit fucked.

And I'm not quite as overwhelmed at the day job, but I did just start a new job...and I'm carrying my old job...and one of my old direct reports retired...so I've been doing three people's jobs since April. And trying to figure out how to do that all remotely. And at the end of the day, marketing books has not been at the top of my frazzled mind. So, PFH got a little bit fucked.

We are lagging terribly on reviews. I haven't been able to reach out to reviewers and bloggers, neither has Wile E., neither has Grindhouse. I'm going to start. I'm going to try. But I also recently lost my personal assistant, and she was a godsend with doing this work last year. While I had Jess, I could write every time I sat down. Now, every spare minute I get I have to choose between writing and marketing and review querying and soliciting agents and seeking out foreign publishers, and all the other time-consuming shit that goes into being an indie author. So, PFH got a little bit fucked.

Like I said in the beginning, this is an embarrassing post to write. It's embarrassing because I want to appear in public as the guy who's always got his shit together. And it's embarrassing because some of you reading this are out of work and don't know what to do with your kids, and have a million other issues on your mind, and my book's marketing woes probably seem like more than just First World Problems, they probably seem like Top 1% First World Problems or some shit. But, as I said, I try to shoot straight, and there's the straight truth.

So, what I would really like to ask is, if you've read THE PERFECTLY FINE HOUSE, could you please take two minutes and leave a review?

A five word review is fine. Any star rating is fine. I'll take "I think this book sucked" and one star over no review any day, trust me. I've written and spoken many times about the importance of honest reviews over exaggerated positive reviews. Anyway, if you can help me out with this, I would consider it a personal favor, which you can call in, Godfather-like, sometime in the future. Thanks, everybody!