Maplewoods Mirror Number 7

 

SOME LESSONS FROM A MIDDLE-AGED WRITER

 

After the steady and critical interest in my first book of fiction, The Middle-Aged Man and the Sea, which shot out of the gates with a great review in the Los Angeles Times on January 2, I’ve been mostly involved in marketing that book, but also keeping my eye on what’s next. 

 

Like many if not most writers, I prefer to work on the next challenging story rather than the next way to promote my work.  I’m not naturally outgoing, after all, nor a PR agency.  Additionally, until I started teaching, I’d never done anything about my fear of being in front of people.  Teaching knocked it out of me.  It took me two years, however, before I no longer had to psyche myself up each time before entering my classroom. 

 

Until shepherding The Middle-Aged Man and the Sea into the world, I didn’t connect my years of working in the CalArts Office of Public Affairs to ways of promoting myself.  In the nineties, I had helped many others by writing press releases.  I needed a V8 moment for me to see I could do it for myself, too.  While I have much to learn about marketing books still, I’ve come to realize a few things.  If you’re in any of the arts, or yearn to be, many of the following thoughts may apply to you, too.  Artists can be timid people.

 

Here are ten realizations I’ve had as an author with a new book:

 

1)     The Middle-Aged Man and the Sea is one of an expected 200,000 new titles this year with ISBN numbers and available to bookstores.  That doesn’t count the probably 100,000 other titles produced without ISBN numbers by print-on-demand publishers such as Lulu, iUniverse, AuthorHouse, Xlibris, and others.  So how is my one little title going to stick out from so many other books?  If I don’t market it, no one else will.

 

2)     The number of column inches in newspapers and magazines for book reviews is shrinking.  In going after those inches, I’m in competition with the major publishers and big PR agencies.  Still, having written press releases for others, I learned what goes into a press release, and I grabbed the attention of the Los Angeles Times for my book.  It can be done.  Learn how to write a press release.

 

3)     I’ve also learned that the Internet is a great place to get attention.  There are a number of literary blogs.  I’ve appeared in a half dozen blogs in this country, plus ones in Ireland, England, and the Czech Republic.  Contact the literary blogs.  Start with Mark Savras’s “The Elegant Variation,” http://marksarvas.blogs.com/elegvar/ and then click on his fabulous list of other sites on the left side of your screen.  Scroll down a little.

 

4)     Publicity is short-lived.  The two best shots-in-the-arm were the reviews in the Los Angeles Times and the mention in Entertainment Weekly.  Sales rose for about two weeks each time then quickly fell.  Hence, you have to keep at it.

 

5)     Word-of-mouth is the goal.  It’s like nuclear fusion.  Once there’s a core of people who like your book—created by little jolts of publicity—a chain reaction can start.  That’s how The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, a first-time novelist, hit the best-seller lists.  A Kaiser doctor, Hosseini was born in Afghanistan and had English as a second language.  He was not a sure thing.  However, Hosseini’s book is well-written and dramatic.  Word-of-mouth spread.  Fusion hit.  I have not attained nuclear fusion with my book yet.

 

6)     For all the interest in the Internet, including my advice above, it’s been in the print media where I’ve had the strongest sales response.  Newspaper circulation is getting steadily eroded, one-and-a-half percent per year.  Nonetheless, book readers seem to read newspapers and magazines more than online articles and reviews.  Aim for as many newspaper book editors as you can.

 

7)     Marketing is as important a tool for writers to learn as grammar.  Of the more than seven hundred writing programs in the country, few seem to offer any classes in marketing.  Perhaps such a class doesn’t mesh with writing theory, but America is a difficult place to be creative for a living.  You don’t go to the newspaper to find ads for “Help Wanted: Novelist.”  Ads for sculptors, dancers, filmmakers, oboists, well-paid actors, and poets are as rare as tiger wolves, too.  Hence, you need to educate yourself in marketing.  I’ve been helped along by Carolyn Howard-Johnson’s The Frugal Book Promoter: How to Do What Your Publisher Won’t.  (Star Publish; ISBN 1-932993-10-X)

 

8)     Print-on-demand technology (POD) is gaining a foothold in the publishing world.  A POD press is basically a specialized photocopy machine for books.  You pump in digital files for the cover and the text, and out pops a copy of a book, perfectly bound and cut to size.  It looks exactly like a “real” book, one printed on an old-fashioned press.  Traditional publishing requires a publisher to have a large print run—say, ten thousand copies—in hopes people will buy it.  The publisher sends the copies to a distributor, and the distributor sends the books to bookstores that order it after marketing has been done.  Bookstores can return unsold books for credit.  If a book doesn’t sell, it’s “remaindered”—those special sale books you see for a few dollars at the big bookstores.  It’s basically sold for production cost.  Hence, there’s a lot of shipping and waste going on the traditional way.  POD books are only created when there’s a need.  Some of the books you order on Amazon, for instance, are not really on the shelves, but rather are printed within 24 hours and shipped.  There’s less waste the POD way, but it costs much more per unit—which is why bookstores usually can’t return them.  Hence, bookstores are hesitant to stock POD books.  In the future, bookstores may have their own POD machines and act like a one-hour photo.  If you want a book, presto, it’s printed.   I mention this because right now it’s difficult to get POD books in bookstores.  If you want big sales, seek out an agent who will get your book to traditional publishers.  Traditional publishers, too, may end up promoting your book far more than you can.

 

9)     Artists on the whole have to be their own best promoters.  If you paint a painting, who’s going to buy it if you don’t get it out there somehow?  If you dance, how are you going to perform if you don’t seek performances? The truth about POD publishing is, however, that most people do seem to use POD as vanity publishing.  They want to be published, so they click along the Internet to one of many new publishing services.  They upload their text, and a simple cover is created using a cliché image or two, and, presto, it’s done, with typos, grammatical problems, wordiness, and all.   Shoppers can go to the POD publisher’s website to buy books, but most POD titles sell under a hundred copies—mainly to friends and family.  Because my first job out of grad school was with a publisher, I learned what a publisher does: engage a professional to edit the text; engage a professional to design a few possible covers; do some market research by trying out different covers; then send the book to reviewers after choosing a publication date at least three months down the road to give the reviewers a chance to review.  Hence, I’m using the same model for myself.  My upcoming book, Who Lives? (see below) has been with reviewers for two months already.

 

10) You need a follow-up book.  What are you going to do next?  I happen to be writing a novel, but Who Lives? is in the pipeline.  That’s the next story, I’m happy to say.  See below.

 

 

WHO LIVES?

 

In 1996, a producer friend of mine, Brenda Friend, gave me an article from a 1962 Life magazine.  “They Decide Who Lives, Who Dies” said the piece’s title, and a dramatic two-page spread showed six figures in silhouette. 

 

 

This anonymous group of ordinary citizens, selected by doctors in Seattle’s Swedish Hospital, had the unenviable task of selecting ten critically ill kidney patients from over 100,000 dying in America to be the test subjects for a new device, the kidney dialysis machine.  The doctors thought the device might allow lives to go on.  In fact, it did; now dialysis is routine. 

 

I was fascinated by how the committee chose the few lucky ones.  The article, however, did not go into great detail.  I wanted to know more.  The debates had to be incredible, selecting one person over another.  What values rated highly for saving a person?

 

My curiosity led me to write a play, Who Lives?, making my own committee with members as different as possible.  I included a union leader who pushed for the working guy.  I had a Catholic priest, who wanted strong Christians.  I included a housewife, who wasn’t sure what she wanted at first, and there was a female grad student on the cusp of atheism and feminism.  With a few others, my committee spoke as if on its own, and I simply typed.  My lead character was brash and at times unlikable, a lawyer in the mold of Roy Cohn—and he was interesting.

 

When I finished, I researched the real committee more and found the name of one of the original members, Reverend John Darrah, who was still alive in his eighties in Seattle.  He told me he was the only living survivor of the committee.  He read my play, felt it wonderfully accurate in spirit, and endorsed it.  I ended up meeting him a few times, a superb man. 

 

I showed the finished play to Brenda, who liked it so much, she wanted to produce it—and she did.  It premiered in July 1997 at the 24^th Street Theatre, with Deborah Devine directing.  The run was successful, receiving great reviews and a Pick of the Week by the L.A. Weekly. 

 

The Northwest Kidney Foundation in Seattle was willing and eager to underwrite a production at the Seattle Repertory Theatre.  Then the Foundation was bought by another foundation, and plans for the play were scrapped.  I was so disappointed, I simply moved on.  I wrote another play, Eriah Won, about a garbage barge, its captain, crew, and a few passengers lost in the Bermuda Triangle.  I thought of it as an existentialist comedy.  After a number of staged readings, honing it, I moved into fiction, where I’m having a good time.

 

This summer, I picked up Who Lives?, which had simply sat on a shelf for years.  I read the play, taken by it, a stranger to my own work.  I launched into a light rewrite, tweaking a few characters and improving pacing, and I had five people, three of them playwrights, read the play both for content and for errors.  Finally it was done.  What next?

 

I’m publishing it under my own imprint, White Whisker Books.  It will be published December 15^th, and Amazon.com should be taking customer pre-orders soon.  My bigger goal is to get the play produced again.

 

Following my realization in #9 above, I’ve spent six months preparing the book for publication, getting such things as a Library of Congress Control Number and LC and Dewey Decimal classifications, as well as spending time on the cover with my book designer, Daniel Will-Harris (www.will-harris.com).  I test marketed three covers.  In fact, I went to some of the readers of this newsletter for their reactions. 

 

The final choice I’ll explain next month along with a memory of Ireland.

 

 

A SPECIAL OFFER FOR THE HOLIDAYS

 

I’ll be receiving my first copies of Who Lives? in about a week.  It, like The Middle-Aged Man and the Sea, will retail for $12.95.  Readers of this newsletter may buy either book for $12 plus $3 shipping—a total of $15 each.  I’m happy to write an inscription of your choice, too.  Make the check out to Christopher Meeks and send it to:

 

726 Portola Terrace

Los Angeles, CA  90042

 

If you want me to inscribe it to friends and family, just say so.  I’ll send the books first class to wherever you want in the U.S.  If they’re to go out of the country, send me an e-mail asking the postage rate, and I’ll look it up.  The books make great gifts—and I’ll wrap them for free (or my daughter will; what are kids for?)

 

Otherwise, you can get the books at Lulu.com or Amazon.com or the bookstores listed on my website.  Who Lives? won’t be available elsewhere until at least December 15.