The Author's Journey

27 Jan 2010

A beyond-all-expectations conversation with K. at Oceanview. She is definitely on board, so it’s two down and one to go in terms of team building. In retrospect, I created my own difficulties by not giving M. and K. more credit – particularly M. So many of the people I have dealt with in business over the years were stupid that I tend to assume the worst, which is probably not to my advantage. In any case, I now “get it.” I understand the selling process, and that means I can figure out how to help it along.

Basically, there are the chains, the independents, and the online sales channels. For the chains and independents, the first key objective is getting books on the shelves. Oceanview uses conventional sales reps for the chains. Each rep represents somewhere between five and ten publishers, probably closer to five is my guess. The reps actually visit the buyers for the chains face-to-face and pitch their “Fall line” (or whatever season it is) one book at a time. So the importance of a single line that encapsulates what a book is about is huge. (Mine is, “It’s a thriller about a college student who gets addicted to one of those online role-playing games.” More about that in another post.)

Based on the cover, the pitch, and the publisher’s reputation, the chain buyers either buy or don’t.   The buyers, I have heard, revel in their power. With bigger publishers, where the buyers and employees of the publisher deal directly, the buyers often agree to place an order only if the publisher changes the cover design.

The bottom line for me is that there is no way to influence this situation.

The independents are a different story.

To be continued…

Follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/magicmichael (Magicmichael is my twitter name.)

Read the first chapter of Fortuna right now at www.fortunathebook.com

 Note: I’m using the blog format here to post a journal I have been keeping for some time. We will catch up to the present in a couple of weeks.

December 29, 2008

Kimberley uses a lawyer to negotiate her contracts who refuses to have any contact with “the author.” I feel like I’m the victim of stereotyping, as though authors, simply by virtue of the work thye do, must be difficult, irrational people who could only get in the way. I don’t like this situation, but at the same time I see its merit. There is truth in most stereotypes, and I know very well that every extra person involved in a negotiation makes getting a result more difficult.

Instead of complaining, I do an end run. I call Oceanview’s CEO, Susan Greger. I explain that I’m not going to be involved in the negotiations, and actually don’t want to be. But… this lawyer works for me, and ultimately has to do what I say. So don’t hesitate to call me if you come to an impass. I want this deal to happen.

As it turns out, they’ve already had one exchange and it went well. “Don’t worry,” says Susan, “She’s just doing her job. As a matter of fact, she actually helped me with a couple of things in our standard contract that made it better.”

All is well.

January 28, 2009

The contract arrives, and, as I anticipated, it is awful. I have never seen a contract that so favors one side over the other, and I’ve seen plenty. I have to grant Oceanview first right of refusal on my next book (not so bad in itself), but I also have to agree to the same terms as Fortuna. There’s no “best seller clause” that allows me to renegotiate if Fortuna sells millions of copies, gets reprinted in 17 languages, etc.

Equally bad, they only pay me royalties once a year, in the year after I earn them – which means that it could be six years from the time I started spending substantial time on the book before I see any money beyond the advance. As a first time author, I have no leverage in this situation.

I sign.

February 11, 2009

A celebratory lunch with Kimberley, again at the Buckeye. How time marches on. Phil is not with us because he has left Halsey-Reece. In fact, he has left publishing altogether. Kimberley doesn’t even know what he’s doing. She suspects he’s uncomfortable communicating with her since she put so much energy into grooming him and he just skipped out. There is no rancor in her voice as she tells me all this, but I wonder.

I bring up the matter of the outrageous contract. “I know, I know,” is her response. Most of what I object to has become standard industry practice.

And what about the missing best seller clause?

“Don’t worry. If Fortuna is a best seller, we’re going back to the table.”

To be continued…

Follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/magicmichael (Magicmichael is my twitter name.)

Read the first chapter of Fortuna right now at www.fortunathebook.com

 Note: I’m using the blog format here to post a journal I have been keeping for some time. We will catch up to the present in a couple of weeks.

December 4, 2009

Friday afternoon, just as I’m locking up my home office to run an errand the phone rings, and it’s Charles Stillwagon, the Director of Events for The Tattered Cover, which I have now learned is a legendary bookstore in Denver. It is a coup that he even returned my call, but I’m not too surprised, as I managed to hit just the right note when I left a voice mail message for him the other day: “I’m a first-time novelist, my publicist tells me it would be impossible to do even a meet-and-greet at your store, but I thought I ought to confirm that and maybe just get a little advice.”

He’s a nice guy and we immediately hit it off. I learn a ton of valuable information in about ten minutes. If you want to do a signing at Tattered Cover, you have to have already sold some books to the store. Also, you have to pay an advertising fee. That gets you a listing in their Sunday Denver Post ad in the book section. (We laugh about the fact that the Post still even has a book section.)

I get the name of the buyer that Oceanview has to hit on to make a sale, and heartily thank him for his help. Then I send off an e-mail summarizing the conversation to the saleswoman at Oceanview, with a copy to the president. I include the key names, as names are important to people in sales, and I specify that she can mention my conversation with Charles, but can’t say or imply he said okay to a signing.

This morning, it occurs to me what we can do to take the next step: Get a review in The Denver Post. It’s not impossible. I have already figured out a way to hit on those book reviewers who are still left and make an impression, basically using a direct marketing approach. I know I can get them to read the first page. There is a question of whether or not the Post will even review a thriller, but there are ancillary issues that make it more relevant, such as the addition angle for online gaming.

There are three Borders outlets in Denver, and three Barnes & Nobels as well. This could be a perfect secondary market. As I type these words, I find myself wondering how much radio costs in the Denver market….

To be continued…

Follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/magicmichael (Magicmichael is my twitter name.)

Read the first chapter of Fortuna right now at www.fortunathebook.com

 Note: I’m using the blog format here to post a journal I have been keeping for some time. We will catch up to the present in a few weeks.

October 7, 2005

My father, Will Stevens, was a reporter for The San Francisco Examiner, one of the two dominant San Francisco newspapers in the 1950’s and 1960’s. (The other was The San Francisco Chronicle, which still exists.) He was also a novelist, short story writer and poet. On the weekends, starting Friday night, he would regularly stay up until three or four in the morning, typing on an old Underwood typewriter and smoking endless cigarettes. As a romantic figure, Hemmingway had nothing on him.

He worked at various projects for years, and, in his late fifties, finally got a break. The Examiner’s book critic, one Luther Nichols, left the newspaper business to become the West Coast acquisitions editor for Doubleday. My father showed Nichols his latest project, a book called Three Street, about the bums in what was then San Francisco’s Skid Row. Doubleday ended up buying it and it became a local (but not national) best seller.

I myself became a professional writer at the age of fifteen, when I began writing a weekly music column called Modern Music for my home town newspaper, The Vallejo Times Herald, where my dad had once been managing editor. In college I got one article published in the UC Berkeley literary magazine, not a small achievement, but after I graduated I abandoned writing for several years.

The insurance payoff from a rather severe auto accident that put me in hospital for nine months in my late ‘twenties gave me a chance to devote significant time to writing once again. I wrote two novels over a period of about five years, a techno thriller that almost made it into print and a semi-autobiographical spy novel that never went anywhere.

All the while, I was actually making my living as a writer. I started out on technical manuals, then moved up (in pay, at least) to advertising copywriter, and finally ended up working as a creative director, which still involved a lot of writing.

At a certain age, no matter how clever you may be, it is no longer possible to market yourself as a “creative,” the term used for writers and art directors by the marketing types who hire them. I transitioned into PR, specializing in high tech and education, and now spend most of my time writing marketing documents and web copy for large multi-national corporations.

This is not the ideal day job for a novelist. Most people have only so much writing energy per day, and if you use it up writing a speech for the CEO of a Fortune 50 multinational, that energy will probably not be there for your main character’s crucial interior monologue. But my freelance work does pay the mortgage, and it keeps me up to date on the technology that has played such an important role in my fiction.

To be continued…