What I've Learned about Being a Hybrid Author

He who would do great things should not attempt them all alone. ~ Native American Proverb, Seneca

Yes, I’m both a book publicist and an author. And back in 2005, when I was lucky enough to be represented by an agent and, later, have my first novel, Coyote Heart, accepted by a small press, I was overjoyed.

My first years of being traditionally published were good ones. I traveled to four different states promoting the book at bookstores, libraries, festivals, fairs, writing conferences (where I spoke, on occasion) and, since the book had a Native American theme, at local pow-wows and regional gatherings.

After a few years, since I was busy with my book publicity business and college teaching (along with helping both of my kids with applications, recruiting, and move-ins at their respective colleges), I left more of the marketing to the publisher and focused on writing my second novel, Favorite Daughter (part one of which will be released later this year).

Flash forward nine years later, and the publishing world had shifted its focus. Many brick-and-mortar bookstores closed their doors, the publishing giants capitulated and stuck their toes in the ebook waters, and a number of authors, including me, decided that being traditionally published was no longer the only way to go.

In 2013, I hired an attorney and was able to obtain the rights back to my first novel. And I decided to self-publish a collection of short stories that I had written many years ago.

But that isn’t the end of the story - once I decided to self-publish my short story collection, Face Value: Collected Stories (and the second edition of Coyote Heart), I was faced with the decisions all self-published authors encounter.

Here’s what I’ve learned as a hybrid author:

1. If you’re self-publishing, it’s worth every penny to hire professionals to do your editing, formatting, cover design, and (for first-timers) uploading.
When I began the process of putting Coyote Heart out after regaining the publishing rights, the first task was having a professional editor scrub it so I could reissue it as a true second edition. In addition to giving it an overall grammatical proof, the editor I hired, Carol Newman Cronin, deleted entire paragraphs and whittled sentences down to their tightest form. I also hired cover designer Troy O’Brien, who (bless his soul) was infinitely patient with me and sent numerous proof copies, along with making uncountable tweaks and design changes, until the cover layout was just right. And my formatter, author and artist Bridget Chicoine, spent many days designing section marker motifs, adjusting spacing, and making improvements to the layout until we had a final version we could both be proud of. I purchased ISBNs and asked Devin Whipple and Moana Evans to help me upload the books to Amazon, Barnes & Noble Nook, and other sites.

And, yes, I could have done all of this myself. But I view the people I hired – my editor, my cover designer, my formatter, my uploading gurus – as experts in their fields. I relied on them to guide me in making decisions in all of these areas and deferred to their judgments when I wasn’t sure which decision was best. And I feel blessed to have had their expertise and guidance to rely on.

2. There are a lot of distribution options for self-published authors. If you’re not sure where to place your book, let the experts guide you.
Deciding where to place the book online involved a lot of decisions I didn’t have to make as a traditionally published author. In its first iteration, Coyote Heart was marketed primarily as a print publication and distributed through Ingram and Lightning Source. I was able to help my traditional publisher by putting together a marketing plan for the small press department at Barnes & Noble, so we could get distribution through its stores, and I also helped him to eventually distribute the book in ebook format.

But after regaining rights to the book, I had to decide if the second edition would go the same route. After examining the different options offered by Createspace and Lightning Source, I decided to go with Createspace. Similarly, I had to decide where to place the ebook versions of the novel. There are many options and choosing which to go with was, at first, a little daunting. Luckily, Moana and Devin were both there to guide me through that process, helping me to place the book with the right online sources (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, draft2digital, etc.), to get it to my target audience.

3. Every author has a different reason for writing a book and should market accordingly.
Deciding who my readers were and how to list the book were important decisions. The publisher for the first edition of Coyote Heart had relied on me to do the majority of the marketing, so I was able to learn quite a bit about where to place it and who its likely readers would be. I also discovered where it sold well, where it was least likely to sell, and where I might consider other options for it, which has helped me to make decisions about how to promote this second edition.

But unlike many other authors, my goal as a writer is not to sell so many books that I can quit my day job. I like my day job. My writing goals are to create stories that others will (hopefully) find interesting and beautiful and to improve my craft as I continue to write. I enjoy the learning process, as well as the writing process (and now, the process of self-publishing), but the primary purpose behind my writing will always be to simply create and explore, as I see fit.

4. The best way to sell a book is to write a good book.
Enough said.

5. And an even better way to sell a book is to write more books.
Readers who like books by certain authors want more of them, and the sheer volume of self-published books out there has turned selling books into something of a numbers game. So, the more the merrier – I plan to keep writing and continue to learn and grow as an author. But how and when I do it is up to me. This is one of the many perks of being self-published: the only pressure to produce is what you place on yourself – you can crank out a book a week, if that’s your style, or spend years dabbling with different story ideas. It’s up to you (which goes back to point #3 – how much you produce depends on your reasons for writing). And that part I really, really like.

Links: Coyote Heart, Face Value: Collected Stories

What Can I Do with $600?

A self-published, first-time author recently contacted me about publicity for her YA novel. “I only have $600 to spend on promotion,” she told me. “What can I do with that?”

Well, there’s actually quite a bit of exposure that can be obtained with very little cash. I charge $50 per hour for my services, so $600 will buy 12 hours worth of work. There is much that can be accomplished in 12 hours – I can generally get a news release written and up on the news wires, book signing events for a few months out (depending on the author’s platform and willingness to travel), and possibly even squeeze in a little media work.

It’s most important that authors get out there and let readers know about the book. I tell writers that book promotion is like dropping a stone in a pond – the more they get out and talk about their book, the more readers who hear about it will tell others and the word will spread from there. Many authors put their books up on Amazon and create a website or blog and think their work is done. But without some face-time with readers, the books most likely won’t have the word-of-mouth ripple effect that comes from hearing other readers talk about it.

Despite the increasing dominance of the ebook market, authors can still sign at bookstores, and I urge all authors to do so now, while there are still some stores out there (they won’t be around in the future, if current market trends continue). Although most remaining Borders stores have embargoed book orders, there are independent bookstores and other chains, like Barnes & Noble, that are still hosting authors. Many libraries will host book signings for authors, and authors should consider appearances at non-traditional venues (schools, colleges and universities, stores, airports, professional organizations, literary and street fairs, etc.) where their book and subject matter have a fit.

Generally, when I take on any new client, the first thing I do is write a press release announcing the book’s publication and get that up on the newswires. Next, I like to book events, usually for six months out. Once the events are lined up, I will call media (usually about three weeks prior to each event date) to line up print, television, and radio spots. It’s best to have some events to promote, as well as the author and the book, when calling local media, so I find that having events scheduled is extremely important before lining up media gigs.

Having an online presence is important, too. I urge my clients to create active websites and blogs and set up accounts on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter and reading/reviewing sites like Goodreads, Library Thing, AuthorsDen, and Shelfari.

Finally, I can’t stress enough how important it is to have written a good book. Even if an author were to spend $600 to do some event and media bookings, it’s all for naught if the book is poorly written or riddled with errors. If an author hasn’t had a professional editor work on it, I generally recommend that s/he spend the $600 on having the book professionally edited, rather than waste it on promotion for a poorly written book. Likewise, I recommend that authors hire professional designers to create their book covers and professional photographers to take their author photos. Having a book that is well-written and professionally designed will help make an author’s $600 publicity expenditure worthwhile.

Ten Writers Who Became Famous After Their Deaths

Note: Many thanks for this guest post by Anne Miller, a print journalist from Houston Texas, who writes for Online Degree. You can find out more about Anne and Online Degree at www.onlinedegree.net. -PM

The old cliché states that artists and writers never achieve true fame or appreciation for their creative output until after their death. While the advent of bestselling authors who peddle their wares on television, radio, and other media outlets, the seductive cult of celebrity has begun trickling its way into the literary world at a much faster pace than yesteryear. But the following writers never had a chance to see the greater influence and love that their painstaking, passionate work earned due to dying before receiving recognition. Some, of course, never actively sought critical or academic renown for their novels, short stories, essays, or poems – though their intentions do not exclude them from proving the old adage true.

1. John Kennedy Toole

Following his disheartening 1969 suicide, John Kennedy Toole would go on to leave a permanent mark on the American literary landscape with his hilarious and heartbreaking A Confederacy of Dunces. His route towards history is indelibly marked by tragedy and well-known to anyone familiar with the brilliant novel and its lesser-known companion The Neon Bible. Toole’s mother Thelma brought the found manuscripts to Loyola University New Orleans professor Walker Percy in 1976. Initially skeptical of her claims that her son was a phenomenal writer, Percy found himself surprisingly bowled over by the grotesquely entertaining Ignatius Reilly and Toole’s pitch-perfect depiction of life in New Orleans and rallied to find a publisher for A Confederacy of Dunces. Louisiana State University agreed, and in 1980 Toole went on to win a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for the novel. Today, it remains a much-beloved work of American literature with a healthy and continuous following – studied frequently in high school and college-level English classes across the United States and subjected to many painstaking dissections by scholars and academics.

2. Franz Kafka

Today considered one of the quintessential existential (and, to a lesser extent, modernist) writers, many unfamiliar with Austrian writer Franz Kafka’s life will be shocked to discover that his intensive influence never coagulated until after his 1924 death from tuberculosis. Kafka actually spent much of his short life working in insurance and factories with the occasional dabbling in theatre. Most of his dark, deeply psychological short stories, novels, novellas, letters, and essays never saw publication in his lifetime – in fact, he ordered his contemporary Max Brod, the executor of his estate, to burn every manuscript without reading them. Obviously, Brod disobeyed these last requests. As a result, Kafka’s descriptive exploration of the more twisted, unknown corners of the human psyche entered into the literary canon. Loved and appreciated throughout the world, critics laud works such as The Metamorphosis, The Trial, and many, many others as some of the greatest literary contributions from the 20th century. They have gone on to heavily inspire not only other writers, but artists, musicians, and other creative types as well.

3. Henry Darger

A curious figure, Henry Darger enjoyed acclaim as an outsider artist and writer after Nathan and Kiyoko Lerner, his landlords, discovered the massive cache of pen and pencil drawings, watercolors, collages, and manuscripts he left behind. After moving into a Lincoln Park, Chicago apartment in 1930, he remained there until his death in 1973. Darger worked menial labor jobs in a hospital before retiring in 1963, and lived an exceptionally solitary existence revolving around attending mass and collecting discarded magazines, newspapers, and books that served as references for his art and inspirations for his stories. Growing up in a traumatic Catholic mission house after his mother’s death forced his being given up for adoption, Darger channeled many of the anxieties and frustrations he experienced into 3 gigantic literary works and a couple of smaller ones. The preservation of innocence and protection of abused children stood as the main themes of his entire creative output, with the seminal 15,145-page The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion as the most visible and popular example. He kept several diaries, some of them about the daily weather, and also penned The History of My Life (a 5,084-page autobiography) and the 10,000-page Crazy House.

4. Emily Dickinson

Like many beloved writers before her and many after, Emily Dickinson spent much of her adult life living like a hermit and was dismissed as a mere eccentric until shortly after her nephritis-related death in 1886. She attended Amherst Academy and studied literature, math, Latin, the sciences, and other disciplines and counted William Wordsworth and Ralph Waldo Emerson amongst her many influences. Keeping to herself, most of her family and peers knew her as a passionate gardener while in private she penned some most unorthodox poetry at the time. Only a small handful of her almost 1800 poems were published during her lifetime, and her sister Lavinia burned a few of her posthumous leavings upon request – mostly letters. However, Dickinson failed to leave behind instructions for some of her notebooks, and as a result her first volume of poetry hit the shelves in 1890 with the help of supporters Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd. Critics received it with a largely mixed response, though later scholars would come to heap praise upon her experimentations in slant rhyming and unconventional punctuation and capitalization.

5. Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath did, in fact, find a modicum of literary recognition in her lifetime before committing grisly suicide in 1963. In 1955, she even won the Glascock Prize for “Two Lovers and a Beachcomber by the Sea.” Following her graduation from Smith College, she guest edited at Mademoiselle magazine to much disappointment – an experience that inspired her celebrated semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar - and published the occasional poem in the Cambridge University newspaper Varsity. Plath struggled with mental illness all her life, finding solace in her confessional works that discussed her overwhelming emotions with raw, open honesty. However, this intimate peek into her tumultuous inner life gained far more momentum after her death, with 4 children’s books, 6 works of fictitious and nonfictitious prose (including diaries), and at least 7 volumes of poetry attributed to her name after 1963. Prior to that, she had released The Colossus and Other Poems to a small but largely positive critical base that would later come to prefer her posthumous works. She even won the first posthumous Pulitzer Prize for poetry for 1981’s The Collected Poems. It was the publication of The Bell Jar that fully solidified her place in the American literary pantheon, though. Written under the pen name “Victoria Lucas,” it had been accepted for publication and hit the shelves one month before Plath’s suicide – meaning she never had a chance to actually enjoy the subsequent adulation.

6. Jane Austen

Considering contemporary media’s nigh-obsession with all things Jane Austen – a disconcerting many of them jettisoning the truly biting Regency satire in favor of focusing on the more profitable romances – it comes a shock to many that she never garnered hefty amounts of popularity in her lifetime. Austen did, in fact, publish several of her most beloved novels (Sense and Sensibility in 1811, Pride and Prejudice in 1813, Mansfield Park in 1814, and Emma in 1815) prior to her 1817 death from a disputed disease. Many literary critics and intellectuals spoke well of her spunky parodies of English society, though others criticized the novels for their failure to adhere to Romantic and Victorian philosophies and literary protocol. While never huge, they enjoyed a steady stream of moderate success, and her comprehensive Juvenilia series sent her family rollicking with its cheeky, anarchic humor. In spite of all this, however, Austen remained almost an entire unknown entity until after her death…when her brother Henry revealed in the biographical notes of the posthumously published Northanger Abbey and Persuasion (both in 1817) that she spent her entire literary career writing anonymously.

7. James Agee

Known during his lifetime as a moderately successful literary critic and co-screenwriter for the classic films The African Queen in 1951 and The Night of the Hunter in 1955, James Agee’s alcoholism frequently prevented him from ever achieving fame equal to his talents. A lifelong writer, he wrote for Fortune, Life, The Nation, and Time (he also served as a movie critic for the latter 2), published a volume of poetry (Permit Me Voyage), and released a largely ignored novel (Let Us Now Praise Famous Men) prior to his death by heart attack in 1995. Agee’s most celebrated and studied work, the autobiographical novel A Death in the Family, saw publication 2 years later and earned him a posthumous Pulitzer Prize in fiction in 1958. Afterwards, interest in his oeuvre skyrocketed and eventually earned him a place as one of the most respected American writers of the 20th century.

8. Nathanael West

As with many who worked as screenwriters in the 1930’s, Nathanael West never enjoyed great success for his literary prowess. Prior to his fatal car accident in 1940, West released 12 screenplays (and 1 remaining unproduced), 2 short stories, and 4 novels all while participating in a few writers’ seminars with the likes of Dashiell Hammett and William Carlos Williams. Most of his works – including the celebrated Miss Lonelyhearts (1933) and The Day of the Locust (1939) – drew from his experiences in the tarnished, writhing underbelly of the supposedly glamorous and idealistic Hollywood. It took his sudden and unexpected death to launch any real interest in West’s output, and the 1957 re-release of his collected novels only solidified his popularity. To this day, many regard The Day of the Locust as the quintessential Hollywood satire, offering a portrait into the shady wheelings and dealings of producers, actors, and other movie professionals vying for stardom and glory.

9. Anne Frank

The tragic story of Annelies Frank needs very little introduction. Fans of history and literature alike need to read the young girl’s diary, which she kept from June 12, 1942 until three days her capture by the Nazis on August 4, 1944. Frank died in Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp in 1945 at the age of 15 as one of the 6 million completely unnecessary Jewish murders during the Holocaust. Miep Gies, one of the women responsible for hiding Frank’s family from the Third Reich, handed her father Otto the famous account. He sought a publisher for it as a means of educating the populace on Hitler’s atrocities, and came to find a valuable ally in historian Annie Romein-Verschoor and her husband Jan Romein. The Diary of a Young Girl was first published in 1947 in The Netherlands, with much of Europe and the United States following shortly thereafter. Critics enjoyed the book as both a harrowing glimpse into life as a hated minority in Hitler’s Germany and as a well-written piece of literature in its own right. Though a teenager, Frank’s experiences granted her work a maturity beyond her years that paradoxically never tarnishes her childlike perceptions of the chaotic world. The result is an entirely necessary entry into the literary canon – a work that absolutely needs reading if humanity ever hopes to quell the possibility of another fascist genocide.

10. Theodore Winthrop

Better known as a Civil War soldier and one of the first Union fatalities, Theodore Winthrop made a name for himself as a Yale-educated lawyer and seasoned world traveler before enlisting in 1861. He published a few articles, short stories, sketches, and essays but garnered little attention beyond the popular, patriotic “Our March to Washington.” Only after his death at the Battle of Big Bethel shortly after entering the army did anyone pay much attention to Winthrop’s writings. His sister, Laura Winthrop Johnson, was responsible for compiling all of his poetry and prose for submission and an eventual collection. At least 5 of his novels hit the shelves posthumously, many of them drawing from his generous academic and travel experiences. However, it was his Cecil Dreeme that garnered the most attention. Challenging and progressive, he turned traditional perceptions of social, gender, and racial roles upside-down using New York University as his backdrop.

No matter their ideology, style, or motivations for writing in the first place, these talented men and women left their undisputed legacy on the literary scene only after passing on. They obtained the level of fame that inadequate, trend-chasing copycats or celebrity-worshipping predecessors and successors only dream about, molding and shaping the written word with oeuvres that far outlived the limitations of human flesh.