Congratulations! You’ve got a book deal. Now here’s the bad news: your publicist (your third) has left the company, your editor had a nervous breakdown, and everyone’s lost faith in your little book that could. You could sit at home and wallow over your stacks of autographed books or you could power on the laptop and be a guerilla. This week on Writers Revealed, learn from four authors who have successfully marketed themselves online. From MySpace to Virtual Book Tours to videos, learn how you can be your own marketing & publicity machine.

EXCITED? Then chat live with Kevin Smokler, David Wellington, Andi Buchanan and Josh Kilmer-Purcell, this Sunday 7PM EST/4PM PST. We also have three copies of David Wellington’s book to give away to our lucky readers/listeners! So leave a question here or feel free to phone in on Sunday and you might just score a free copy of Thirteen Bullets! More about the books and authors after the jump.
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Another terrific show! Joshua Ferris and I talked about office life and how it’s possible that the people we spend 9-12 hours a day with, how we know all these incredibly personal things about these people, we may not actually really know these people at all. We talked about groupthink and how it was essential that varying characters emerge from the “group” so we get to learn about them all, so there is more authentic truth of how offices really work and how we are all really distinct from one another.

Also discussed: boundaries at work, workers and are they office property, Chris Yop and the chair, Tom Mota’s rants, is the office their home? the furniture really theirs? the need for truth, the anxiety of layoffs, hysteria in the workplace, and why we call conversations in the office ‘gossip’ rather than communication and dialogue. Also, although the office can be rote and soul-sucking, it can also be a refuge, a place that some could call home.

Click Here to Purchase Joshua Ferris’s When We Came to the End

Michelle Goodman jumped in and we chatted immediately about how she left the 9-5 world and how she escaped being a wage slave. She offered great tips on how to make the leap and change your career:

1. Calm Down. Don’t Jump off the Ledge
2. Do Your Research. Don’t just browse the web and read books. TALK to people in the field in which you want to enter. Pound the pavement
3. Get Real with Your Finances and set realistic financial goals and budgets for yourself
4. Learn More about Business. Take classes, learn online, immerse.

We also chatted about how to find the career you’re passionate about, how to deal with procrastination, how to work at home and not go crazy, and how to make the leap from one industry to another…

Key websites to visit:
-score.org: great info for small business owners, learn about and take affordable classes
-anti9to5guide.com - Michelle Goodman’s website. Read the stories of other women who made the leap, how they did and how you can too.
-nolo.com: all the scary legal stuff translated to a language you can understand
-mediabistro.com: terrific resource for freelance writers

Click Here to Purchase Michelle Goodman’s The Anti 9-5 Guide

Missed the show? Click here to listen to the podcast of Writers Revealed.

This week on Writers Revealed: Joshua Ferris, author of the novel Then We Came to the End. We’ll be chatting about his novel, the drone of office life, the dot.com era, whether the office is a surrogate of one’s home, and what’s the deal with Chris Yop and the chair anyway? (hint: it’s in the book!). And as soon as I received Michelle Goodman’s incredible book, The Anti 9-to-5 Guide: Practical Career Advice for Women Who Think Outside the Cube, in the mail (I ripped the package open with my teeth, people), I knew I had to have her on the show. Click here to access the show & we’re taking callers so feel free to share your questions, LIVE!

About Then We Came to the End:
Then We Came to the End charts the end days of a Chicago ad agency caught in the burst new-economy bubble. As the firm’s employees watch those around them laid off and wait for their own walking papers, they obsess over one another’s behavior and the secrets co-workers may or may not be keeping. In Ferris’ descriptions of entire floors closed off and abandoned as the firm shrinks, and of workers clinging to a futile illusion of business as usual, there’s a tragic and palpable hubris.
- from the Small Spiral Notebook Review

More Links
Joshua Ferris’s website
Powells.com Interview

About The Anti 9-to-5 Guide: Practical Career Advice for Women Who Think Outside the Cube The days seem long with too much time for work and the nights seem short with too little time for sleep. What’s a modern girl to do? When you have a passion you want follow it, when you have a dream you want to make it reality, but when you have bills, they must be paid. It often appears as though you can’t have the best of both worlds. Today, lots of women would love to integrate their passion with their career and are seeking advice on how to do just that. Michelle Goodman, a self proclaimed, “wage-slave” has written a fun, reassuring, girlfriend-to-girlfriend guide on identifying your passion, transitioning out of that unfulfilling job, and doing it all in a smart practical way.

More Links
Michelle Goodman’s website
MediaBistro Interview with Rachel Kramer Bussel

Update! Publishers of both books are sending over *free* copies for our readers/listeners! If you have a question for any of the authors, do leave it on the comments section or feel free to call in on Sunday!

If you missed out on yesterday’s Writers Revealed show, feel free to click here to listen! Leslie Bennetts and I chatted about the perils of economic dependency and how stay-at-home mothers (through rigorous and sound financial and career planning) can keep current while out of the job force (and the startling statistics that reveal, after only a year, how a woman’s earning power can sharply decline). We discussed how The Feminine Mistake is not another salvo at the Mommy Wars but more that it raises awareness and criticism of U.S. policy issues - why aren’t women’s choices equally rewarded? Why don’t we provide financial security for women who choose to remain at home? We talked of the marriage dynamic when there is a soul breadwinner (after me having screened Todd Field’s Little Children that afternoon) and how that can possibly change the relationship from one of a partnership to a parent/child dynamic. Bennetts addressed her critics who spoke of her narrow demographic (the educated, affluent Northeast) and we discussed statistics that show children of stay at home mothers fared no better than children of working mothers.Want to listen to the show? Click here! And thanks to all who submitted terrific questions!!! I used a great deal on the show and I’ve contacted those who will receive their copy of Leslie Bennetts’s book.

This Week on Writers Revealed (6.10.07) Joshua Ferris, author of Then We Came to The End