3Guys1Book: Surviving the Odds as A Debut Novelist
Dan Wickett
· 5 months ago
Man you guys are cooking over here lately.
To be very honest, and I truly mean this, we do not read cover letters for the cv aspect of them before we read the work itself. We'll read the introduction, to see if they're letting us know early on that the work is a paranormal romance, or a YA novel or something that we generally do not publish so I can take a quick peek and verify it's not for us - one less manuscript on the big ass pile we wake up to every day.
Of the authors we've signed, I don't think we really had an idea, when we were getting ready to make the offer, of what sort of audience they already had, or what type of self-cheerleader they'd be.
Hell, our first author was living in China when we signed him - that's when book tours get pricey, when you start off with a flight from China to Detroit. We learned some lessons with his tour, find the places that the author has an audience, find a local to have the author read with that might also bring in a decent group of listeners, etc.
I will say, we've solicited writers because of stories we've read in literary journals. We've even signed an author based on a single long story, and knowing that we'd previously liked some of his non-fiction.
We also want to develop long-term relationships with our authors. It's pathetic to me, but an author like Peter Markus is never going to sell 50,000 copies of any of his books, but if we can be smart about our business, and print up the proper number, send galleys to the right people, and then sell to his current audience and continue to slowly grow it, we'd love to publish every other book he writes.
In terms of the community building though, obviously the guy with the Emerging Writers Network is going to agree on that concept - it's been what I've tried to convince both readers and writers alike for ten years now. And I think it works. There are authors whose books I've discovered because of friendships with other authors that told me I HAD to read them. I know authors that have picked up blurbs because they struck up email relationships with other authors after sending them a nice note about liking their work.
And we've certainly had plenty of authors suggested to us at Dzanc by those other authors that we've been friendly with, including those that we've published.
Jonathan Evison
· 5 months ago
. . . thanks for sounding in, dan-o . . . i'm betting roy kesey is the author you signed based on his stories and non-fiction stuff . . . if peter markus can sell 5k books everytime, and maybe grow the readership a bit each time, and you guys dot your 'i's, operate responsibly, that makes peter markus a good lonterm investment right? especially if you can keep his backlist moving . . .
Dan Wickett
· 5 months ago
Actually JE, Kyle Minor was the guy. Steve read his novella in The Gettysburg Review and emailed me and said we need to get this guy's story collection. I'd read a bunch of Kyle's non-fiction and some of his fiction to that point, and knew him maybe even more from his time editing and publishing The Frostproof Review.
Roy - for our first book we asked the editors of about 5 or 6 literary journals that we loved if they knew of anybody that they'd published that hadn't had luck yet getting a story collection deal. Aaron Burch of Hobart mentioned Roy so he was one of maybe 10 or so authors we solicited.
At that same time, we were already getting in unsolicited manuscripts. JR is dead on about grabbing the attention of the publisher. Suzanne Burns is a prime example. She followed our deal back then and sent in two stories, one of which was Tiny Ron. For about three months Steve would email me once a week - "Have you found that story about the little man yet?" Man if only he'd said TINY man my sorting/searching would have been so much quicker.
But he couldn't forget that story, bad as he is with names of people, and it's been like that with every book we've published. Hesh Kestin was the same way - sent us one of his three novellas and it was incredible. We HAD to read the other two. Not wanted to, we'd have driven to NY to find his house and confiscate his computer if we had to.
Dzanc actually follows the Richard Nash advance theory. If we sell between 1500 and 2000 copies of an author, and we're smart enough to print 2000 until we've seen that growth, that reason to bump the next one up to 2500, we can break even on our books and publicity. It's all the other stuff that Dzanc does, DWIRPs, Dzanc Prize, etc. that costs us money that we don't have them generating money for us - but that's where we've become, we like to think, creative in our fundraising efforts - write-a-thon last year, the Dzanc Creative Writing Sessions, the Short Story Month Essays anthology, etc.
But yeah, if we can keep an audience of a couple thousand for an author and actually grow it to 3 or 4,000 over a few years and sell more copies of his/her backlist, get them to the status where maybe a couple of classes per year are teaching the work, etc., we think it's more than worthwhile.
And there are authors we want to work with - Markus is a great example. I think what he's doing is incredible - the stories he's written about the two brothers by the muddy river, etc., Brian Evenson wrote a fantastic essay about them for Unsaid issue 2 (which is available in full, online over at www.unsaidmagazine.com) - he believes that Markus is coming close to inventing his own language, based in English, but his use of repetition to advance his stories has nothing to compare to. Bob, or Man on Boat, the novel we published, is a book that many people have told us they finish and immediately re-read. We've got a collection of those brother's stories coming in 2011 and we'd be happy to continue publishing Peter.
We also like to think that we do enough for our authors, that Dzanc's name is getting out there enough that we're not a publisher an author/agent is going to use as a stepping stone to New York. We expect our authors to come back to us with that second, third, etc. book because we are the perfect publisher for them and their work, just as we feel they are the authors for us.
jonathan evison
· 5 months ago
. . .another great post, dan . . . i think it's important for authors to try to find long-term homes . . .too many people just "sell-up" (which is usually a myth-- ie an advance is only and advance) . . . if richard hadn't left soft skull, i'd still be with him for west of here . . .instead, i was lucky enough to find a great home at algonquin, and hope to stay there for the next book as well . . .
Dan Wickett
· 5 months ago
Whoops - that Evenson essay on Markus was in Unsaid 3, not 2 - here's a link:
I've always agreed with that sentiment, JE. Even before becoming a publisher. It seems that sticking with the same group of people over years should, if all are working well together, develop an overall strategy to continuously develop an audience for said author.
That said, there have been a few cases I know of where an author hated to leave, but the combination of money AND the fact that the other editor was at the top of his/her game too made it all but impossible not to.
With Richard leaving PLUS the fact that you're working with Adams and Algonquin? Completely makes sense.
Another I know loved where his first novel was published after a couple of University Press titles, but Gary Fisketjon and Knopf came calling for novel number 2 - he's got his fifth or sixth with Gary and Knopf coming out soon. It would have been damn tough to say no to Fisketjon PLUS money close enough to say go ahead and quit your job.
One other thing we've started to try and do is joint efforts, mainly in terms of readings, with other smaller publishers. We had a reading in NY last year with Peter Markus and J. Kornreich of Marick Press, plus some Best of the Web authors and Aaron Petrovich of Hotel St. George Press MC'd for us. It looks like we'll have Robert Lopez doing a reading or two this fall in NY with Victor LaValle (read his Big Machine in August) of Spiegel & Grau. Kyle Minor went on a 30 city reading tour with Kathleen Rooney whose book was published by University of Arkansas Press - in these cases we shared expenses, publicity duties, etc. with the other publishers.
jonathan evison
· 5 months ago
. . .yeah, i read with minor in seattle, and we had a great crowd . . . we all (meaning half the attendees) went to a bar across the street afterward-- which perfectly illustrates one of my earlier points . . .
Dan Wickett
· 5 months ago
I think that's a great point - the hitting a bar, or something like that - both for the published author, and just as importantly, for the not published author.
I know this is a totally different thread and maybe one you guys don't want to explore, but it always amazed me to see how relatively few MFA students from UM hit readings in Ann Arbor. Oh, if the writer was brought in by the program students were there, but in a four week period maybe two years ago, once per week we had Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Ander Monson, Tom Bissell, and Arthur Phillips come in to read. There were students at Bissell's reading.
I had the pleasure of walking down to Ashley's and hanging out with Monson, an old friend of his and Aaron Burch of Hobart (plus a student from Grand Valley I think that I'm blanking out on who exactly he was). Ander hung out with us for a couple of hours and cool as it was for him to meet his audience, Aaron and that other student, via conversation, picked his brain on a multitude of topics.
Just as anybody with a novel in progress should be reading your words here, I can't believe that MFA students aren't out at readings full force. I realize they're busy - cop out, like I'm not, running Dzanc and the EWN and raising three kids? Like JE isn't with all those bunnies waiting at home to be fed, not to mention the new little one?
It's the chance to hear, and ask questions of, etc. of somebody that's made it. That got through the publishing maze to the point of being sent on a freaking reading tour.
I'll kick the soapbox back under the table now.
scrimp
· 5 months ago
What do you think about authors who give their novels away via a blog or website to garnner interest? www.beatitudesinneworleans.blogspot.com
jonathan evison
· 5 months ago
. . .i think giveaways are an excellent idea and a great way to build an audience . . . i think it pays to be somewhat selective in terms of who you give them, too-- and i don't mean in terms of "how important they are," rather how much enthusiasm does the potential reader express, or what lengths will a potential reader go to to get a free copy . . .for instance, i went through all the people who put "all about lulu" on their amazon wish list and sent them free copies . . . i've heard back from a high percentage of those readers . . . you don't just wanna' stand at a truck stop giving them away . . .you have to work to improve your odss . . .
Gina Frangello
· 5 months ago
Great dialogue between Dan and JE, in addition to a great post in general! Other Voices Books totally shares Dan's/Dzanc's philosophy of working with writers over the long haul and building audience over time and with vigorous championing of a writer's long-term career. No doubt this is why we're happy as a Dzanc imprint--I think Dan, who had followed Other Voices magazine for quite a number of years--knew we had similar philosophies about this kind of thing, and so far I think it's working really well for both presses. OV Books published Tod Goldberg's first collection, SIMPLIFY, as our inaugural title in 2005, and we're putting out his second collection this fall. Tod has published numerous novels elsewhere--including his Burn Notice series--but for his collections, OV is his "home" and the only place he even submitted the new book. Tod's someone I first published in the magazine in probably 1998, so I had been a fan of his work for years--published him maybe 3 times in the journal over the years--before we did his book. Similar stuff with another of our writers, Allison Amend. Dan Wickett actually emailed me and took me to task when she wasn't the very first OV Books writer because he knew we both loved her work, and she was one of the authors I recommended to Dan when Dzanc launched though they went with Kesey (whom we'd also published in OV and loved) instead. But Allison Amend ended up as an OV Books author in 2008 . . . what I mean by all this is that, yes, the business of publishing in literary magazines and building readership is not so much about literary agents and big NYC publishers, but because many of those involved in the lit mag world are also involved in the indie book publishing world--the readership overlaps in a major way, as do potential future editors, etc., who then will consider your work very seriously, or even solicit work from you, when they launch a press if they've become major fans over a decade already. JE, JR and co--your discussions here are always awesome!
Gina Frangello
· 5 months ago
But the other thing I want to say here that's so important for the indies is the necessity of knowing your own level of resources and maximizing that for your own benefit and the benefit of your authors. I'm concerned about an indie publishing model that seems so prevalent--the kind of "use all the money and staff time on printing as many books as possible, and then don't actually support any marketing efforts for those books" model. Both OV Books and Dzanc keep our lists relatively small (OV's is VERY small: only 1-2 titles per year) so that we can literally live and breathe a title for about a year's time, at every level of operation. We do very extensive creative editing/revision work with our authors (sometimes extremely extensive, reading revisions or asking for very specific creation of new chapters/stories for up to a year of intensive back-and-forth before a book goes to press) and then serious, hardcore copy-editing (which I know from my experience as an author is not always provided in a truly intensive way by small indies) and then arranging the author's book tour all over the country, funding part of it, and sending out anywhere between 100-200 review/publicity copies of the book ourselves, without the author needing to quit their job or hire a freelance publicist to get this job done. When I published my first novel, my publisher had/has what I consider a great list of authors and books and I had long admired their aesthetic, and they're awesomely cool people . . . but their business plan beyond "finding good books" was nonexistent. They sent out 20 review copies, didn't provide copy-editing, and didn't set up a single event for me. The fact that the novel was reviewed at all or went into a second printing was because I was working my ass off and I had also hired a freelance publicist out of my own pocket. At OV, we WANT our writers to work their asses off, but we don't feel we have the right to require them to do that unless they see we're working as hard as they are. That said, if an author isn't willing to build community, spend the time, tour and read and blog, then all of our efforts don't amount to much. The connection between an author an his audience--especially when you're talking about an audience in the 2,000 first-printing range--is vital and a publisher can't do all that work for you. Any author who has gotten lucky enough to find a publisher should make it his/her business to network in a sincere (not self-serving) way and support other authors/presses they like, go to readings, read other blogs, form relationships on FB and other sites, and really put themselves out there--go read anywhere that'll have you, and even if you only sell 4 copies those 4 people, if they like you enough, may tell 40 people about your book later on, or maybe one is a blogger and touts you. No effort is too small, especially when so much today can be done online for free.
It really is three guys.
· 5 months ago
...we try to give away books as part of an interview, or conversation with an author, it usually gets a great response...
Josie
· 5 months ago
them from building a large following.
I've been thinking about book promotion a lot because I think I'd be good at that game and I was glad to see that many of my ideas are echoed here and in the links I found in this blog. It feels like a shared vision or at least mutual consensus.
There are more writers and wanna-be-writers than ever before. What will make the difference in whom has success and whom does not lie wholly in the readership they build first hand - not through company ads.
Nash is right, Twitter won't save publishing but it damn well may save an author from perpetual anonymity in the literary realm.
Politicians shake hands and kiss babies and writers must blog and comment in the thread.
As always, looking forward to more of your insights, JonE. Soon as I figure out how to send you a farting unicorn emoticon sliding down a rainbow for a humpday celebration I'll send it right over.
Literary groupie lovin', Josie
Josie
· 5 months ago
So many things I want to say after reading this blog. First - thanks for all the valuable personal insight. So much of getting published is mysterious, ya know? It's like a fluke of nature or something. Nice to see how the game works from various personal experiences.
I've been following the writers in online communities for years now and I tell writers regularly - You must participate in the comment box, aloof won't cut it.
I tell them writers only do half the work. Without readers writers have no value. That isn't something a writer, isolated in work, sweating blood and emotional angst on the page day in and day out wants to hear but it's the truth. Writing is a team effort folks! Once the book is written - it's only a half baked thing. Only when a work is read is it truly complete. And it is always the number of readers that dictates the level of success.
Josie
· 5 months ago
Pt2)And yet still I find that readers are not respected in literary circles. Writers will shmooze over one another but dismiss the common reader in the comment thread. "They're not a writer. What do they know."
When I cruise through the blog communities and I see a writer comment to other writers in the thread and leave the stranger un-replied to, the one that says something like, "I've been reading here for ages but never left a comment but today I had to comment to say how great this was" I always think... that writer just lost a dozen sales, maybe hundreds.
I tell my writer friends to reply to EVERY comment. “Make shit up. You’re a writer for cryssake!”
Josie
· 5 months ago
Pt3)A lousy writer can have success if s/he has enough social appeal. Everyone knows this and the "serious writers" feel like their work should speak for them that they shouldn't have to make nice for the crowds. It's a strange cocktail of insecurity and arrogance that keeps them from building a large following.
I've been thinking about book promotion a lot because I think I'd be good at that game and I was glad to see that many of my ideas are echoed here and in the links I found in this blog. It feels like a shared vision or at least mutual consensus.
There are more writers and wanna-be-writers than ever before. What will make the difference in whom has success and whom does not lie wholly in the readership they build first hand - not through company ads.
Nash is right, Twitter won't save publishing but it damn well may save an author from perpetual anonymity in the literary realm.
Josie
· 5 months ago
Pt4)Politicians shake hands and kiss babies and writers must blog and comment in the thread.
As always, looking forward to more of your insights, JonE. Soon as I figure out how to send you a farting unicorn emoticon sliding down a rainbow for a humpday celebration I'll send it right over.
Literary groupie lovin', Josie
lol - See this is what happens when you let laypeople comment!
It really is three guys.
· 5 months ago
Josie, you're right, when writers respond to our posts, we always thank them, (and write back, but they never post a comment) but not enough do, it's really strange, we told their agent, publicist and publisher about the post, we're promoting their book, for free, and we're excited readers, maybe they are shy? Maud Newton just got back to me from over a year ago when I reviewed her story, she gave me great insight as to why she took so long, and that's amazing...I'd love it if every writer we reviewed or interviewed wrote something in the comments...but is that asking too much?
Dan Wickett
· 5 months ago
Gina's dead-on as usual and she's right, she and I had had more than enough e-conversations for me to know that the OV philosophy fit in perfectly with the Dzanc philosophy. It was probably the easiest decision Steve and I have made since day one.
And Josie, in my personal opinion you could not be MORE right about treating readers well, even if they're not writers. I am NOT a writer. When I started writing book reviews for the EWN back in 2000, there was no reason for anybody to listen to me - I was a QC Manager for an company that slit steel coils into narrower steel coils and had a BS in Statistics. But over the course of the last decade I've told as many people that would listen about great books, author, publishers, bookstores, reading series and literary journals.
I think that is exactly what readers do - they do more word of mouth publicizing for you than anybody else.
Josie
· 5 months ago
Not too much to ask at all, JE. There was a time when we practiced a little thing called social graces. Simple things like thank you cards have gone the way of many written traditions but the contruct of etiquette is meant to engineer relationships that extend farther than we can perceive. The practice may be waning but the value of social graces is still ever present.
It is precisely that which keeps me from typing out a long line of vulgarities at Blogger for attempting to edit my comments... apparently Blogger thinks I'm too wordy. Can you imagine that? ;)
Thanks for sharing that Dan. I feel encouraged to pursue my literary career interests after reading your comment.
I'm not a writer either but I have a lifetime of reading under my belt and several years now of cruising the literary cyber-hood, rubbing shoulders with writerly types, and connecting with blogging readerships. Add to that the wealth of info from those teaching and promoting the art and field of published works ... and boy have I learned a lot.
jonathan evison
· 5 months ago
yes, josie, i think you'd be a great book publicist! and btw, the comments from "it really is three guys" are my brilliant associate JR's . . . and gina, thanks for sounding in along with dan . . . the fact that this blog is offering writers live access to editors like you two make it a really great resource . . .
Josie
· 5 months ago
Sorry Mr. Rice. I owe you one o'them farting rainbow sliding unicorn emoticons after that mix-up!
James P. Othmer
· 5 months ago
Great posts. It's amazing how much things have changes since John Updike gave his BEA speech a few years ago, the partial gist of which was that promoting one's work was unbecoming for a novelist. Group readings are a great way to ensure a decent crowd and expose your work to a much broader readership. JE and Knock put on a killer event last month in Washington that I regret missing, but I couldn't make the numbers work on $700 transcontinental flight. I'm also a fan of retreating to the bar afterward. However, after one of my first readings at the excellent McNally Robinson, at which I sold about a dozen books, I went to a nearby dive bar with, coincidentally, about a dozen friends, and picked up the $250 tab. On the way home my wife suggested we should probably rethink the big shot tab-picker-upper model. I have no problem working hard to attract an audience for a book or at a reading, but you can only hit up friends and family so many times. Then again, I haven't broken out the jello shots, yet.
Jonathan Evison
· 5 months ago
. . .ha! i feel you on the tabs, jimbo! . . .my solution was to make one of my best friends my tour manager--after three kamikazes he insists on picking up all tabs! . . . i went way over budget on my tour, but i'm pretty sure it has paid for itself by now, and will pay dividends into the future . . . could i have used that extra 2k this winter? hell yeah . . . but something deferred is . . .uh . . .um . . .something deferred, i guess . . .
Michael Balkind
· 5 months ago
I am intrigued after reading your blog - Surving... My second book is soon to be released and I am working as hard as I can to achieve success in this brutal business. It is seriously an uphill battle but one I intend to win or die trying.
Can I interest (persuade, beg, bribe) one of you gentlemen in evaluating and or reviewing an ARC of my upcoming novel, Dead Ball. It is the second book in my Deadly Sports Mysteries series and has received some good endorsements. (John Lescroart among others.)My first book, Sudden Death was endorsed by James Patterson & Clive Cussler. I would love the opportunity of having one of you take a peek at it. Please.
Michael Balkind www.balkindbooks.com mbalkind@hotmail.com
jonathan evison
· 5 months ago
. . .way to hustle, michael! cussler and patterson are a pair of logrollers . . . did you solicit their input yourself, or did your publisher solicit their endoresements?
Michael Balkind
· 5 months ago
Jonathan- Thanks for the return comment. The Patterson & Cussler blurbs on Sudden Death were obtained by me. I have been a sales and marketing guy for a long time. I will hustle till I drop. Hopefully I'll sell a few books first.
Would you or one of your partners on this forum care to review Dead Ball? It would mean a lot to me.
Michael
jonathan evison
· 5 months ago
. . .well, michael,can't promise a review given the sheer volume of books we receive, but send it along and maybe we'll make a mention--as likely as not about your hustling tactics . . . hit me up at my regular addy at my website (jonathanevison.com) . . .
Natasha Solomons
· 5 months ago
Thanks - such a great post. I'm clearly taking your advice to heart, as I'm not lurking but leaving a comment...
I'm a debut novelist (such a strange term - makes me think of dancers making debuts, but with writers prancing across a stage, scattering words). My novel 'Mr Rosenblum's List' is coming out April 2010 with Sceptre in the UK and Little, Brown in the US.
I oscillate between excitement and sheer insomnia inducing anxiety. I know how few debut writers have success, and I'm trying to do my best blogging bit despite being a Luddite. I'm being encouraged to Twitter too, though since it seems to take me ninety thousand words to say anything, I'm not really sure that this would be my natural form. At the moment, I'm on quite a tight schedule for my second book and am finding it hard to blog as often as I should.
You guys are writers too, so do you find it hard sometimes to find the balance between writing and essentially promoting your work?
Kelly Cherry
· 5 months ago
Just want to mention one thing, an obvious thing, but I didn't see it in the posts (I did merely skim some of the posts): Often writers lose audiences because editors, publicists, and agents jobjump A LOT. Moreover, big publishers will make all kinds of promises about sustaining a lifelong career and then drop an author instantly if a single book doesn't earn a set amount. I applaud all the good sense and energy in these posts and join in the sentiment that authors must help get their books around, but simply believing that will not guarantee that one's editor, publisher, or agent will believe it.
Dan Wickett
· 5 months ago
Great point by Kelly. I know that one of our authors had a book deal for his first novel many years back. His editor left and his book never saw the light of day.
I do think that's an advantage of a smaller publisher, especially those where the owners are the publishers and not a case where the publishers have gone out to find funding, or brought in Managing Editors to run things for them.
Obviously it's not foolproof, nothing is, Richard Nash leaving Soft Skull may not have been a surprise to everybody but I know it caught me off guard. And he's certainly not the first to leave a smaller house.
There are places that come to mind though - Unbridled with Fred/Greg who have now worked together for what, 20 years?, and have brought their authors from house to house in their trio of stables; Two Dollar Radio where Eric and Eliza started from scratch, etc.
jonathan evison
· 5 months ago
. . . to address natasha's question about balancing writing time with bloggin/promoting time, i find myself at a huge advantage to almost every writer i've ever met . . . that's all i do . . .i don't work, that's how i make time . . . i'm broke most of the time, but i'm getting by . . .thank god for film money . . . my friend carol cassella (author of oxygen)is a freaking doctor and has two sets of twins and still gets it done writing wise, though she has little to no time for blogging and promotion . . .it's a grind . . . my hats off to any writer working full time and still wearing the other hats!
Larry
· 5 months ago
The major publishers are looking for home runs. If your first book is a single or a double, they'll give you another shot. After that and no dinger, and you're under the bus.
When I broke in (2000) my publisher threw us a bash one night while we were at Bouchercon. There were 19 of us there, with only one "name" author among us (Jan Burke). A few of us hit singles and doubles.
Now, 9 years later, there are only two names from that group that are still on the shelves that I can find. The one's I've talk all lost their contracts. No home runs after 2 to 4 tries, it's under the bus.
The point is to write BIG BOOKS that stand a shot at going over the fence. Certain stories are made to be bestsellers -- high concept, wildly original stuff -- while literary and series fiction has to fight the odds.
jonathan evison
· 5 months ago
. . . you're right about windows of opportunity, larry . . . i'm glad i followed lulu with something really ambitious because i wanna' go out swinging . . . i know several writers who had some success with a debut (let's call them doubles), then ended up selling earlier novels to their publishers while the iron was hot . . . in every case, the second (aka earlier) book failed them . . . if you're going to brand yourself as an author rather than a title in the literary fiction game, i think you need to show your readers (as well as the critics) some sort of growth or progression with each novel (at least up until number four . . .
Patrick T. Kilgallon
· 5 months ago
Thanks for the information. Does it helps to write a serial chapter every two weeks or so to build up readers' interests? I think Scott Sigler of the 'Infected' did that. I have been trying that myself with my second dystopia horror novel but the results seem slow to someone like myself who likes instant results. Any thoughts on that?
All Comments
To be very honest, and I truly mean this, we do not read cover letters for the cv aspect of them before we read the work itself. We'll read the introduction, to see if they're letting us know early on that the work is a paranormal romance, or a YA novel or something that we generally do not publish so I can take a quick peek and verify it's not for us - one less manuscript on the big ass pile we wake up to every day.
Of the authors we've signed, I don't think we really had an idea, when we were getting ready to make the offer, of what sort of audience they already had, or what type of self-cheerleader they'd be.
Hell, our first author was living in China when we signed him - that's when book tours get pricey, when you start off with a flight from China to Detroit. We learned some lessons with his tour, find the places that the author has an audience, find a local to have the author read with that might also bring in a decent group of listeners, etc.
I will say, we've solicited writers because of stories we've read in literary journals. We've even signed an author based on a single long story, and knowing that we'd previously liked some of his non-fiction.
We also want to develop long-term relationships with our authors. It's pathetic to me, but an author like Peter Markus is never going to sell 50,000 copies of any of his books, but if we can be smart about our business, and print up the proper number, send galleys to the right people, and then sell to his current audience and continue to slowly grow it, we'd love to publish every other book he writes.
In terms of the community building though, obviously the guy with the Emerging Writers Network is going to agree on that concept - it's been what I've tried to convince both readers and writers alike for ten years now. And I think it works. There are authors whose books I've discovered because of friendships with other authors that told me I HAD to read them. I know authors that have picked up blurbs because they struck up email relationships with other authors after sending them a nice note about liking their work.
And we've certainly had plenty of authors suggested to us at Dzanc by those other authors that we've been friendly with, including those that we've published.
Roy - for our first book we asked the editors of about 5 or 6 literary journals that we loved if they knew of anybody that they'd published that hadn't had luck yet getting a story collection deal. Aaron Burch of Hobart mentioned Roy so he was one of maybe 10 or so authors we solicited.
At that same time, we were already getting in unsolicited manuscripts. JR is dead on about grabbing the attention of the publisher. Suzanne Burns is a prime example. She followed our deal back then and sent in two stories, one of which was Tiny Ron. For about three months Steve would email me once a week - "Have you found that story about the little man yet?" Man if only he'd said TINY man my sorting/searching would have been so much quicker.
But he couldn't forget that story, bad as he is with names of people, and it's been like that with every book we've published. Hesh Kestin was the same way - sent us one of his three novellas and it was incredible. We HAD to read the other two. Not wanted to, we'd have driven to NY to find his house and confiscate his computer if we had to.
Dzanc actually follows the Richard Nash advance theory. If we sell between 1500 and 2000 copies of an author, and we're smart enough to print 2000 until we've seen that growth, that reason to bump the next one up to 2500, we can break even on our books and publicity. It's all the other stuff that Dzanc does, DWIRPs, Dzanc Prize, etc. that costs us money that we don't have them generating money for us - but that's where we've become, we like to think, creative in our fundraising efforts - write-a-thon last year, the Dzanc Creative Writing Sessions, the Short Story Month Essays anthology, etc.
But yeah, if we can keep an audience of a couple thousand for an author and actually grow it to 3 or 4,000 over a few years and sell more copies of his/her backlist, get them to the status where maybe a couple of classes per year are teaching the work, etc., we think it's more than worthwhile.
And there are authors we want to work with - Markus is a great example. I think what he's doing is incredible - the stories he's written about the two brothers by the muddy river, etc., Brian Evenson wrote a fantastic essay about them for Unsaid issue 2 (which is available in full, online over at www.unsaidmagazine.com) - he believes that Markus is coming close to inventing his own language, based in English, but his use of repetition to advance his stories has nothing to compare to. Bob, or Man on Boat, the novel we published, is a book that many people have told us they finish and immediately re-read. We've got a collection of those brother's stories coming in 2011 and we'd be happy to continue publishing Peter.
We also like to think that we do enough for our authors, that Dzanc's name is getting out there enough that we're not a publisher an author/agent is going to use as a stepping stone to New York. We expect our authors to come back to us with that second, third, etc. book because we are the perfect publisher for them and their work, just as we feel they are the authors for us.
http://www.unsaidmagazine.com/magazine/issue3/evenson_markus.html
That said, there have been a few cases I know of where an author hated to leave, but the combination of money AND the fact that the other editor was at the top of his/her game too made it all but impossible not to.
With Richard leaving PLUS the fact that you're working with Adams and Algonquin? Completely makes sense.
Another I know loved where his first novel was published after a couple of University Press titles, but Gary Fisketjon and Knopf came calling for novel number 2 - he's got his fifth or sixth with Gary and Knopf coming out soon. It would have been damn tough to say no to Fisketjon PLUS money close enough to say go ahead and quit your job.
One other thing we've started to try and do is joint efforts, mainly in terms of readings, with other smaller publishers. We had a reading in NY last year with Peter Markus and J. Kornreich of Marick Press, plus some Best of the Web authors and Aaron Petrovich of Hotel St. George Press MC'd for us. It looks like we'll have Robert Lopez doing a reading or two this fall in NY with Victor LaValle (read his Big Machine in August) of Spiegel & Grau. Kyle Minor went on a 30 city reading tour with Kathleen Rooney whose book was published by University of Arkansas Press - in these cases we shared expenses, publicity duties, etc. with the other publishers.
I know this is a totally different thread and maybe one you guys don't want to explore, but it always amazed me to see how relatively few MFA students from UM hit readings in Ann Arbor. Oh, if the writer was brought in by the program students were there, but in a four week period maybe two years ago, once per week we had Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Ander Monson, Tom Bissell, and Arthur Phillips come in to read. There were students at Bissell's reading.
I had the pleasure of walking down to Ashley's and hanging out with Monson, an old friend of his and Aaron Burch of Hobart (plus a student from Grand Valley I think that I'm blanking out on who exactly he was). Ander hung out with us for a couple of hours and cool as it was for him to meet his audience, Aaron and that other student, via conversation, picked his brain on a multitude of topics.
Just as anybody with a novel in progress should be reading your words here, I can't believe that MFA students aren't out at readings full force. I realize they're busy - cop out, like I'm not, running Dzanc and the EWN and raising three kids? Like JE isn't with all those bunnies waiting at home to be fed, not to mention the new little one?
It's the chance to hear, and ask questions of, etc. of somebody that's made it. That got through the publishing maze to the point of being sent on a freaking reading tour.
I'll kick the soapbox back under the table now.
www.beatitudesinneworleans.blogspot.com
Other Voices Books totally shares Dan's/Dzanc's philosophy of working with writers over the long haul and building audience over time and with vigorous championing of a writer's long-term career. No doubt this is why we're happy as a Dzanc imprint--I think Dan, who had followed Other Voices magazine for quite a number of years--knew we had similar philosophies about this kind of thing, and so far I think it's working really well for both presses. OV Books published Tod Goldberg's first collection, SIMPLIFY, as our inaugural title in 2005, and we're putting out his second collection this fall. Tod has published numerous novels elsewhere--including his Burn Notice series--but for his collections, OV is his "home" and the only place he even submitted the new book. Tod's someone I first published in the magazine in probably 1998, so I had been a fan of his work for years--published him maybe 3 times in the journal over the years--before we did his book.
Similar stuff with another of our writers, Allison Amend. Dan Wickett actually emailed me and took me to task when she wasn't the very first OV Books writer because he knew we both loved her work, and she was one of the authors I recommended to Dan when Dzanc launched though they went with Kesey (whom we'd also published in OV and loved) instead. But Allison Amend ended up as an OV Books author in 2008 . . . what I mean by all this is that, yes, the business of publishing in literary magazines and building readership is not so much about literary agents and big NYC publishers, but because many of those involved in the lit mag world are also involved in the indie book publishing world--the readership overlaps in a major way, as do potential future editors, etc., who then will consider your work very seriously, or even solicit work from you, when they launch a press if they've become major fans over a decade already.
JE, JR and co--your discussions here are always awesome!
When I published my first novel, my publisher had/has what I consider a great list of authors and books and I had long admired their aesthetic, and they're awesomely cool people . . . but their business plan beyond "finding good books" was nonexistent. They sent out 20 review copies, didn't provide copy-editing, and didn't set up a single event for me. The fact that the novel was reviewed at all or went into a second printing was because I was working my ass off and I had also hired a freelance publicist out of my own pocket. At OV, we WANT our writers to work their asses off, but we don't feel we have the right to require them to do that unless they see we're working as hard as they are.
That said, if an author isn't willing to build community, spend the time, tour and read and blog, then all of our efforts don't amount to much. The connection between an author an his audience--especially when you're talking about an audience in the 2,000 first-printing range--is vital and a publisher can't do all that work for you. Any author who has gotten lucky enough to find a publisher should make it his/her business to network in a sincere (not self-serving) way and support other authors/presses they like, go to readings, read other blogs, form relationships on FB and other sites, and really put themselves out there--go read anywhere that'll have you, and even if you only sell 4 copies those 4 people, if they like you enough, may tell 40 people about your book later on, or maybe one is a blogger and touts you. No effort is too small, especially when so much today can be done online for free.
I've been thinking about book promotion a lot because I think I'd be good at that game and I was glad to see that many of my ideas are echoed here and in the links I found in this blog. It feels like a shared vision or at least mutual consensus.
There are more writers and wanna-be-writers than ever before. What will make the difference in whom has success and whom does not lie wholly in the readership they build first hand - not through company ads.
Nash is right, Twitter won't save publishing but it damn well may save an author from perpetual anonymity in the literary realm.
Politicians shake hands and kiss babies and writers must blog and comment in the thread.
As always, looking forward to more of your insights, JonE. Soon as I figure out how to send you a farting unicorn emoticon sliding down a rainbow for a humpday celebration I'll send it right over.
Literary groupie lovin',
Josie
I've been following the writers in online communities for years now and I tell writers regularly - You must participate in the comment box, aloof won't cut it.
I tell them writers only do half the work. Without readers writers have no value. That isn't something a writer, isolated in work, sweating blood and emotional angst on the page day in and day out wants to hear but it's the truth. Writing is a team effort folks! Once the book is written - it's only a half baked thing. Only when a work is read is it truly complete. And it is always the number of readers that dictates the level of success.
When I cruise through the blog communities and I see a writer comment to other writers in the thread and leave the stranger un-replied to, the one that says something like, "I've been reading here for ages but never left a comment but today I had to comment to say how great this was" I always think... that writer just lost a dozen sales, maybe hundreds.
I tell my writer friends to reply to EVERY comment. “Make shit up. You’re a writer for cryssake!”
I've been thinking about book promotion a lot because I think I'd be good at that game and I was glad to see that many of my ideas are echoed here and in the links I found in this blog. It feels like a shared vision or at least mutual consensus.
There are more writers and wanna-be-writers than ever before. What will make the difference in whom has success and whom does not lie wholly in the readership they build first hand - not through company ads.
Nash is right, Twitter won't save publishing but it damn well may save an author from perpetual anonymity in the literary realm.
As always, looking forward to more of your insights, JonE. Soon as I figure out how to send you a farting unicorn emoticon sliding down a rainbow for a humpday celebration I'll send it right over.
Literary groupie lovin',
Josie
lol - See this is what happens when you let laypeople comment!
And Josie, in my personal opinion you could not be MORE right about treating readers well, even if they're not writers. I am NOT a writer. When I started writing book reviews for the EWN back in 2000, there was no reason for anybody to listen to me - I was a QC Manager for an company that slit steel coils into narrower steel coils and had a BS in Statistics. But over the course of the last decade I've told as many people that would listen about great books, author, publishers, bookstores, reading series and literary journals.
I think that is exactly what readers do - they do more word of mouth publicizing for you than anybody else.
It is precisely that which keeps me from typing out a long line of vulgarities at Blogger for attempting to edit my comments... apparently Blogger thinks I'm too wordy. Can you imagine that? ;)
Thanks for sharing that Dan. I feel encouraged to pursue my literary career interests after reading your comment.
I'm not a writer either but I have a lifetime of reading under my belt and several years now of cruising the literary cyber-hood, rubbing shoulders with writerly types, and connecting with blogging readerships. Add to that the wealth of info from those teaching and promoting the art and field of published works ... and boy have I learned a lot.
My second book is soon to be released and I am working as hard as I can to achieve success in this brutal business. It is seriously an uphill battle but one I intend to win or die trying.
Can I interest (persuade, beg, bribe) one of you gentlemen in evaluating and or reviewing an ARC of my upcoming novel, Dead Ball. It is the second book in my Deadly Sports Mysteries series and has received some good endorsements. (John Lescroart among others.)My first book, Sudden Death was endorsed by James Patterson & Clive Cussler. I would love the opportunity of having one of you take a peek at it. Please.
Michael Balkind
www.balkindbooks.com
mbalkind@hotmail.com
Thanks for the return comment.
The Patterson & Cussler blurbs on Sudden Death were obtained by me. I have been a sales and marketing guy for a long time. I will hustle till I drop. Hopefully I'll sell a few books first.
Would you or one of your partners on this forum care to review Dead Ball?
It would mean a lot to me.
Michael
I'm a debut novelist (such a strange term - makes me think of dancers making debuts, but with writers prancing across a stage, scattering words). My novel 'Mr Rosenblum's List' is coming out April 2010 with Sceptre in the UK and Little, Brown in the US.
I oscillate between excitement and sheer insomnia inducing anxiety. I know how few debut writers have success, and I'm trying to do my best blogging bit despite being a Luddite. I'm being encouraged to Twitter too, though since it seems to take me ninety thousand words to say anything, I'm not really sure that this would be my natural form. At the moment, I'm on quite a tight schedule for my second book and am finding it hard to blog as often as I should.
You guys are writers too, so do you find it hard sometimes to find the balance between writing and essentially promoting your work?
I do think that's an advantage of a smaller publisher, especially those where the owners are the publishers and not a case where the publishers have gone out to find funding, or brought in Managing Editors to run things for them.
Obviously it's not foolproof, nothing is, Richard Nash leaving Soft Skull may not have been a surprise to everybody but I know it caught me off guard. And he's certainly not the first to leave a smaller house.
There are places that come to mind though - Unbridled with Fred/Greg who have now worked together for what, 20 years?, and have brought their authors from house to house in their trio of stables; Two Dollar Radio where Eric and Eliza started from scratch, etc.
When I broke in (2000) my publisher threw us a bash one night while we were at Bouchercon. There were 19 of us there, with only one "name" author among us (Jan Burke). A few of us hit singles and doubles.
Now, 9 years later, there are only two names from that group that are still on the shelves that I can find. The one's I've talk all lost their contracts. No home runs after 2 to 4 tries, it's under the bus.
The point is to write BIG BOOKS that stand a shot at going over the fence. Certain stories are made to be bestsellers -- high concept, wildly original stuff -- while literary and series fiction has to fight the odds.