Erosion by Lon S. Cohen

I just did this brand new printing process. It's called print on demand. You can publish a book, have it listed on amazon.com for sale, and get an ISBN number to sell it in bookstores. I just did this brand new printing process. It's called print on demand. You can publish a book, have it listed on amazon.com for sale, and get an ISBN number to sell it in bookstores

I picked Lulu because I heard a couple of published authors mentioning that they got their start by publishing on lulu.com first and then marketing the heck out of their books. The company takes care of fulfilling orders and printing. It’s called Print on Demand. The authors who recommended it also did podcasts of their fiction (or podio books as they are called now.) Lulu seemed to offer the best deal (no upfront fees). You need to convert your text to a PDF file and upload it. You get the ISBN number by signing up for their basic service (which does cost). It is a good deal. $35 or so for a free year on Amazon.com Marketplace and the ISBN number. Lulu also offers some other free marketing and informational downloads. I crafted a press release for the book with one of their templates.

Then I went to Amazon.com and uploaded the cover art. I submitting the inside PDF and covers for their "Search Inside" program, which lets you search inside the book. They have many options and I think that the Amazon.com placement even if it is only on their marketplace part of the site gives legitimacy to the book. (Plus it’s damn fun to see your book on Amazon.com.)

As for front and back cover art, I designed it myself using Photoshop. I used to be a Graphic Designer and an artist. The cover image is one of my mixed media pieces. It is called “Wire Face.” It was done in 1994 and is a pastel drawing on corrugated cardboard with metal wire.

It was critiqued very favorably last summer by my mentor at the Southampton Writer's Conference. Her name is Bharati Mukherjee, (Fiction Writer Bharati Mukherjee has taught creative writing at Columbia University, New York University and Queens College. She is currently a professor of English at the University of California at Berkeley. The author of several books of fiction, Ms. Mukherjee won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1988 for The Middleman and Other Stories. ) She liked the book because it is about a Native American who resorts to killing to exact revenge for the prejudice against him and she wrote a book about an Indian woman who becomes a serial killer. She also thought the themes of redemption for America's sins against Native Americans was a very good concept.

The story is about a Native American, driven to madness by his experience growing up in the small upstate New York town of Canyon Park being discriminated, molested and ostracized. In his mind, various characters of his tribe’s mythology and American popular culture vie for his soul. He terrorizes the residents of Canyon Park, murdering those he judges guilty, to punish them for their crimes against him and his ancestors. Strangely, since the killing spree began, there has been a deluge of constant rain adding to the dismal mood and hampering efforts to stop him while the resident also battle nature’s fury. Under these conditions, various characters gather from places as close as the local library, to as far away as New York City, to absolve their sins and stop their beloved town from being eroded away.

The title of my book not only refers to physical erosion under constant rain, but emotional, mental and cultural erosion as well. All the characters are eventually stripped bare in this trying time and face their naked souls, their dark inner parts that they are afraid to see and their true selves. Guilt is also a very singular theme in my story. America’s national guilt over the destruction of the Native American culture is weaved through the motivation of the characters as they struggle with the consequences of acts they committed in the past or the acts of their kin.

This is a first edition published by Lulu.com, a Print on Demand publisher. This book is available for representation.

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