Posts
All my life, I've wanted to be a novelist. From the time I sat in the window seat of an Indiana farmhouse and wrote a blow by blow description of my cat chasing down and eating a mouse, other people have commented on my work and how they liked it.
In a few short months, I'll be a novelist. Not a newspaper reporter; that I did in the 1980s in south Florida. I interviewed governors, senators, drug dealers and won awards for my series a Day in the Life. In 1998, I had a book on divorce published called 101 Little Instructions for Surviving Your Divorce, a book with thought-provoking statements about mental health and wellness during the process. I didn't know very much about what an author was expected to do to promote a book in those days, though I sent out copies and did some radio interviews.
Since then, I've had many other pieces published, online and off, newspapers, magazines, even two stories in the Cup of Comfort Volumes for Divorced Women and Adoptive Families. Most of those stories promoted themselves for as far as they went. I didn't have to do much.
But I've come to the conclusion that after twenty years of really pushing at it, trying to score that agent and hit that big sale just isn't going to happen for me at this time. I want people to read my writing. I could just post it all here. But realistically, I'd like to make some money off it too.
In looking at small press, I've met several editors who deal right with the authors, no go-between needed, and even discouraged! Marketing support, suggestions for promotion are shared, and we get the chance to one-on-one with people who share our enthusiasm. It's wonderful. It's creative. It's....time consuming....
At the same time, consider, that at this moment I have five manuscripts IN THE HANDS of an editor.
Not lying around some agent's slush pile. Not waiting for some spring intern to find that I have no references to fashionable shoes in chapter three, so the entire book should be tossed. Not waiting for the interminable back and forth of mail exchanges. I am blessed and fortunate, and by using this, my best shot at contact with a live person, I have in fact been offered and signed a contract for my first novel. I have two unique promotion ideas that we'll be fleshing out as we're closer to the book release in September, in addition to all the items the publisher has already created.
It's happening. Along with her request for the rest of the series to be known as The Clan Elves of the Bitterroot. But I'm still trying to connect with other editors, find homes for my other "children." It's happening. I have no time to sleep any more. *L* But maybe I'll catch up on that later, between stops in the book tour, hmm?
“Do or do not... there is no try.”
Yoda's words don't only apply to the use of the Force.
Perennially, one of my writing groups, Pennwriters, debates between those who have been published traditionally and those who aren’t about which writers “should” do.
The old guard insists that if you want to write novels you must get them to one of the five big houses, get the publicity machine and promotion. Of course this means you have to get an agent.
If you’re a writer who has tried to do either, chances are 99 times out of a hundred, it’s just not happening.
The old guard then cites the urban legends of authors who just kept sending out until sure as heck, that 101st letter did it. And maybe they did. More power to them.
Over the last year, I’ve read a lot about the state of publishing, and indeed about the world of communication in general. Time Magazine did a whole series of articles about publication in the digital age, and their conclusion is that the traditional routes are no longer exclusive.
Lev Grossman’s article said “Publishers Weekly (PW) predicts that 2009 would be ‘the worst year for publishing in decades.’ A lot of headlines and blogs to the contrary, publishing isn’t dying. But it is evolving, and so radically that we may hardly recognize it when it’s done.”
At the same time, newspapers are closing their doors, magazine and book publishers alike laying off staff, and paying markets, in the way we have always thought about them, are drying up.
Also at the same time, the whole concept of access to the masses has changed. Once upon a time, you needed to be cherished by Harlequin or Doubleday to even have your book see the light of day, unless you wanted to type out versions on your old Royal typewriter, one at a time, to circulate them. The Internet has changed that game.
Now authors have options. They can self-publish through Lulu.com or iUniverse, or epublishers which pay a royalty for books available digitally, or in print books. As I pointed out recently on my writer’s blog:
If I were Stephen King, my books would be available online at Barnes and Noble, Amazon, at the publisher's website, and all the other ordering sites.I'm not Stephen King. But when The Elf Queen comes out this fall, you, the reader, will be able to order it online at Barnes and Noble, Amazon, at the publisher's website, and all the other ordering sites.You will be able to order it in hardback, paperback or for your favorite e-reader like the Kindle, Sony, Ipad and more. So what's the difference to the average reader?
Writers don’t need the fancy publicity tour, either. Authors like CJ Lyons and Christina Katz, aka Writer Mama, tour online, guest blogging in as many places as they can. Cost? Your time. The Internet has millions of outlets to reach the people who want your work.
Many professional artists are choosing non-traditional routes to promote work they want to do, and it’s starting to make headlines. Musician Jill Sobule found the traditional music business wasn’t working for her–and didn’t get money in her hands– so her latest album was funded entirely by donations from fans and giveaways. Screenwriters like Joss Whedon are thinking outside the box with projects like Dr. Horrible’s Sing-along Blog, which first appeared on the Internet for free, but afterward started collecting revenues.
Communication venues like Twitter bring the celebrity even closer to fans, and news you want to share with many more people. Email and forums bring artists directly to their public, for the kind of one-on-one connection that sells readers, just as it sold Barack Obama to the American people at election time.
So we can all dream about that blockbuster sale, movie rights and New York Times listing right out of the gate. We can even work at it around busy lives of work, parenting and other distractions for forty years. Maybe some of us will get it.
But in the meantime, don’t you have something to say? Don’t we write so others can read? What’s the sense of having fifteen polished manuscripts in a drawer collecting dust? Maybe instead we should be out there exploring the new digital publishing world, meeting our readers, and sharing what we have to offer.
Welcome to my fellow CoyoteCon attendees! It's my privilege to share this with you, and I hope you come back again soon. :)
Recently I expanded my writing goals in response to a couple of opportunities that cropped up, just to see what would happen.
Normally, I write novels. Period. I'm not great at poetry, even though it's a lot shorter, because I think it's so difficult. See here. I've written short stories from time to time, but I always feel like I have more to say than that. My main blog continues to say what I need to say, now more than two years in, and my articles and reviews at Firefox News are geared to Web reading.
But when our Pennwriters rep sent out a prompt from National Public Radio's Three-Minute Fiction, for Round Three, that lonesome newspaper lying on the table did suggest a story to me, and I put together the piece of flash fiction and sent it in.
About the same time, I ran across an invitation at Writer Unboxed for a writer who had not yet published a novel to become part of the group that creates the wonderful material on the blog.
I wasn't sure I was up to it, as the site was voted one of Writer’s Digest’s best 101 websites for writers in 2007, 2008 and 2009. The interviews were fabulous, the commentary from the other writers interesting and helpful. But...I gave it a shot.
I'm pleased to say that I was one of the top 14 semi-finalists out of 187 entrants, and as such, I will be entitled to publish a column with them each year, and perhaps more, if all goes well. Talk about Snoopy dances all around!
Add that excitement to the ongoing dialogues I'm having with editors and agents about my novel manuscripts, and I'm feeling an awful lot like a writer these days. How about you?