Paths to Publication: Sisters in Crime, New England, Workshop

I used to go to Decorators’ Show Houses with a friend to marvel at the ways other people could spend their money. I never expected to have a room like anything I saw in one of the houses. I went just for fun. My friend, on the other hand, went to pick up ideas. She wanted to get one or two ideas each year that she could try out in her own home. I thought that was realistic.

On Saturday, March 29, 2014, Sisters in Crime New England held a daylong workshop on the many paths to publication—traditional, small press, self-publishing, or a combination of two or all of these. Writers on five panels talked about their experiences finding agents, working with editors, choosing to self-publish, learning the ups and downs of going it alone as an Indie, marketing, and more. They shared their experiences, discoveries, advice, and support.

I’ve been published in all three ways, beginning with a reference work in 1988 followed with 8 novels from commercial presses and 1 as an Indie, but I knew I would learn something. And I did. I picked up two or three ideas to try out in my own writing and publishing career. Not all of the ideas suggested would work for every writer, but there was, I think, something for everyone, the beginner, intermediate, and expert (whatever that one is). So, here are the ideas I liked best for my career and I plan to try them on my new Anita Ray mystery coming out in May 2014. For the Love of Parvati is set in the hills of central Kerala during the monsoon. The story features a family estate, a very lucky goat, a temple, and a leopard, along with the rains.

First, I liked the idea of a marketing giveaway. Many writers do bookmarks, so it’s hard to make mine stand out in the pile. One writer puts a miniature of her book cover on a matchbox. Another made small seed packets with her book cover and planting information. I decided to go back to an earlier idea I’d had and set aside, but this time approach more realistically—recipe cards. I can cards for the many dishes mentioned in the Anita Ray books. I love Indian food and I know I’m not the only one, so I think a few simple recipes on recipe cards might be fun.

Second, several writers talked about the groups they belong to, and how they can extend their advertising reach by getting a mention in the organization newsletters or magazines. I like that idea, so I’m looking at unconventional sites for reviews or mentions of the book. A dear friend has a cooking blog and plans to showcase the book along with a recipe for an Indian dish. He came up with the idea when I told him about the book, and I’m grateful to him for the offer and for sparking the idea.

Third, I’m used to handing out bookmarks whenever I do an event, putting them on chairs and sliding them into any book I sell, and leaving them with booksellers. All that is standard procedure. But I am now going to experiment with adding them to everything I mail—bills, donations, etc. I’m curious to see if that has any effect on sales or what kind of feedback I’ll get.

These are not very original ideas, but they will give me a new way to reach readers and, I hope, stimulate me to think of more ways.

  

Not for Writers Only: The Other Kind of Interview

My next novel, For the Love of Parvati: An Anita Ray Mystery, will be published in May 2014, so of course I’m thinking about promotion and events. A mainstay of the writer’s life is the interview, especially on a blog or in a newspaper. We are used to the long list of questions about how we write, where we get our ideas, how do we do research, what are our goals, favorite characters, and how did we get our agent or publisher. Then come the questions on favorite colors or vacation spots or clothing that are meant to reveal something about our personal character and quirks. The questions leave room for answers about our pets and families. I’ve answered and asked variations on these questions dozens of times, but there is another interview that we hear less about.

New writers may get their first exposure through an interview on cable TV. This may not go farther than the hometown but it can be excellent practice for something bigger. After appearing on a number of local shows and watching other writers and speakers on various topics, I have a few suggestions.

First, keep your hands in your lap. Many of us are expressive, enthusiastic types and our hands fly up at the first hint of something interesting. We wave our hands, spread out our fingers, turn our palms upward our outward, all in tune with our words. Our hands are the baton of the speaker, leading the audience in response. But they are a distraction. Hold your hands loosely together and keep them in your lap.

Second, come prepared with questions. I expect the interviewer to have done his or her job, but many don’t get a chance to read the book you’ve written or research the social issue you want to talk about, or even care about the charity event you’re promoting. If you don’t come prepared with solid questions for the interviewer to ask, you may face a very uncomfortable fifteen minutes or even longer. I generally come with a fact sheet or some printed material I can give the interviewer, just to make her job easier. She’ll thank you and she’ll remember you the next time you call to ask for a segment of her show.

Third, know how to move the interview along. I once faced an interviewer I knew and liked but he wanted to know exactly where my novel was set. I explained that the relevant part of South India was subtropical, very close to the equator, but that wasn’t enough for him. Was it like Florida? No, hotter. How hot? I gave a few temperatures. But every time I thought we were done with this, he asked another question about weather. I was sucked into a downward spiral. I still look back on that interview with confusion. I don’t know what more I could have done to answer the question, but I do know I could have come prepared to change the direction of the discussion.

Fourth, experienced interviewers will tell you that when you are ready to make a direct pitch, look straight into the camera, and talk face to face, so to speak, to the audience, the person sitting at home and watching. It felt very odd to me to do this, but I figured the interviewer knew his business. After all, it was his show. So, when the time came, I swallowed my nervousness, looked directly into the camera, and asked the people watching me to make a donation. (I wasn’t promoting a book this time; I was asking for support for a charity.) If you prepare for this, you’ll look less uncomfortable to the audience, and they will be more likely to respond positively.

Fifth, keep in mind that your audience can be people who have little or no interest in you or your book or your cause. I imagined the audience of cable TV shows or off-hours local commercial TV shows to be sitting at home watching TV while someone made dinner, folded the laundry, or waited for a better show to come on. This was my audience. I was wrong. A friend who was taking a writing class at night told me that she and her fellow students were hanging out in a bar when my interview was scheduled to run. They persuaded the bartender to turn the channel to the show and the entire crowd in the waterfront bar watched me talk about a novel set in India. I can’t vouch for the level of attention but it certainly taught me an unexpected lesson. Your words will be heard in the oddest places. Choose them carefully.

Check out my books at www.susanoleksiw.com or on Amazon.

The Book Launch: Selling the Book Today

On a recent evening I had the pleasure of listening to Tempa Pagel discuss her new book, They Danced by the Light of the Moon, the second in her Andy Gammon series. I’ve known Tempa for twenty years, when she signed up for a writing workshop in New Hampshire and later joined a writers’ group I started. We still meet as a group, and watching her success is especially pleasing.

Launching a new book is work, as is the follow-up of establishing an audience for it and its sequel. As different as we may be as writers, we all face the same challenge—finding readers. Tempa held a book launch and party at a local bookstore, and invited everyone she knew in the area. She gave a brief talk, about forty minutes, and then took questions and later signed books. The bookstore owner provided refreshments for a wine and cheese evening. Tempa began her talk with a joke, talked about the origins of the story and her research, which involved learning about two historic buildings in the area, and historical events that informed her novel. She maintained a balance between information and humor.

Twenty years ago the book launch would be followed by events at other bookstores and libraries and interviews for radio, television, and newspapers. New writers might send hundreds of postcards to libraries throughout the country, and visit area bookstores, offering to “sign stock,” as it was called. Writers offered (and still do) writing workshops and classroom visits. For all but the most successful writers, selling a book was a person to person job. It meant getting in the car and making contact with owners of bookstores and buyers at libraries. The writer was in a sense following the path of the book salesman, who went with catalogues to individual bookstores recommending specific titles because he knew the bookstores' clientele, knew what people in the area bought. These sales people are all but gone now.

With the advent of the Internet, selling books changed dramatically, so much so that some writers never have to leave the house to establish a readership and sell thousands of copies a year or a month. They establish a presence on Facebook and sites where readers gather—Goodreads, Librarything, or the Reading Room, among others. They post stories to interest readers on Wattpad and other sites, and they network wherever readers gather to discuss books and find recommendations. They email libraries with book flyers, send out newsletters, and hold virtual book launches without ever buying a stamp, a bottle of wine, or a piece of paper.

Every writer finds a way to find readers, but we are always learning more. James Moushon queried dozens of writers to identify what writers use now. It’s interesting to read through and see the number of resources writers have come up with. Not everyone follows the same path; most writers use a mix of social media, finding the ones they’re most comfortable with and focusing on those. But all of those interviewed agreed on one point—finding readers is about building relationships. Each reader tells another, and on it goes. We might do much of the work in front of a screen now, but in the end it is still a person to person job.

The writers interviewed mention several sites that might be of interest. The survey and its link are given below.

Your Book Launch: Marketing Methods and Ideas Used by Outstanding Authors – A Study

http://bit.ly/1luAbo3

Litigation and . . . time

In 2005 I learned about a class action lawsuit against Google through a writers’ organization. This one is different from the current lawsuit against Google for unauthorized digitizing of the world’s library. The one I’m talking about here is Literary Works in Electronic Databases Copyright Litigation. I received a notice yesterday (actually three notices by mail) telling me that I had filed three claims, two were disallowed, but the third was being processed. I filed my claims within the deadline and sent paper backups. In 2005. In the interim I heard not a word.

I remember filling out some of the paper work for this claim. Even more vividly I remember going through my files and listing every piece of published writing done within a certain period, and being very surprised at the number. I hadn’t realized I’d been so prolific in writing nonfiction on a variety of topics. A lot of the works were book reviews, and I have no idea how those will fare in this claim. I also recall receiving an email that certain works wouldn’t be allowed because they hadn’t been copyrighted. I sent them copies of the copyright registrations by registered mail.

This is the second class action lawsuit that I have found myself benefiting from. A few years after I published an article in Clues: A Journal of Detection (1996), I received a letter stating that the university had sold the rights to articles published in the journal without receiving permission; a group of writers (as I recall) had sued, and here was my piece of the settlement. In the envelope was a check for $750.

I don’t know what the settlement in this current lawsuit will be, but I do know that some of it will depend on my registration of copyright with the Library of Congress. While it is true that today a writer owns the copyright of a work the minute it is created, it is also true that those who register the copyright with the Library of Congress will collect more in the way of monetary damages than those who do not register their copyright.

I did nothing to bring about the settlement with Clues. I filed a lot of paper for the Database Litigation but I had nothing to do with filing the lawsuit and following up. I occasionally receive a request for information on whether or not I flew a certain airlines within a certain period, and after that I might receive a small check as part of a settlement. I’ve occasionally received a voucher for a small amount of money.

After the Snowden and NSA debacle, no one should be surprised that someone somewhere out there is misusing someone else’s information or work but it is still a surprise to me—a pleasant surprise—to find that others are fighting back, even as I wander about in ignorance, and that I have been included in the settlement.

And as a result, I will continue to register my copyrights even when others tell me it’s a waste of money. And I will also continue to pay my dues to the various writers’ groups who keep track of these things like lawsuits and let their members know that it’s now time to sharpen those fingernails and get clacking on those keys, and file those claims.

I don’t know if I’ll get much in the way of compensation, but I’m looking forward to getting a check in the next . . . few years.

The litigation is in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, in re Literary Works in Electronic Databases Copyright Litigation, M.D.L. No. 1379.

Just how much of your book do you own?

I have been watching the Google lawsuit and settlement talks play out over the years, and with each announcement, mostly in favor of Google, I went from anger and disbelief, to confusion, and now to a glimmer of understanding of how writers could find themselves not quite owning their own work. I stumbled across this insight while reading Robert Spoo's book on how copyright protections (or the lack of them) affected the introduction of modernist literature in the United States, with a focus on Ezra Pound and James Joyce. 

Without Copyrights: Piracy, Publishing, and the Public Domain, by Robert Spoo (Oxford University Press, 2013)

I came across this book by accident. When I picked it up in a local library after being drawn in by the title I expected something that would seem relevant to me as a writer grappling with the changing environment for commercially and self-published writers. The challenges facing writers opposed to Google’s digital copying program are nearly overwhelming, and I was stumped to understand why courts found it so easy to rule against writers and in favor of Google and others. I still don’t understand completely, but I have a better understanding of how we got where we are and why Google has been successful so far.

Robert Spoo, well recognized in his chosen field of copyright law and literature, is interested in how copyright laws, or the lack of them as we understand them today, interacted with modernism in literature. He takes for his example the writer James Joyce, and his attempts to have an unexpurgated Ulysses published in the United States.

Spoo’s history of copyright in this country is an eye-opener. Writers often talk about books in the public domain as though they had drifted into this ocean as a result of neglect or the passage of time or creation by the US or state government. But the public domain was in fact created by Congress through earlier copyright laws to ensure that those involved in the book business in this country had work here and didn’t face competition from outside the country. The only books that received copyright in this country were those that were printed and bound here, manufactured here; all others, no matter where they were published or by whom, were in the public domain. Once in the public domain, which occurred within a very short time after publication elsewhere, the book was fair game for anyone who wanted to publish it here. Writers who published abroad could gain a copyright here if they met stringent requirements, but otherwise the copyright failed in the US. This was the case well into the twentieth century.

Publishers who wanted to publish work by someone who had already published it abroad faced the Wild West of publishing for decades. In response to this chaotic world they developed something called the “courtesy of the trade,” or “trade courtesy.” This phrase referred to a gentlemanly agreement among the larger, more established publishing houses to let the first to claim the work to have it. If Publisher X announced through a magazine ad or in some other way that he was going to publish the work of a popular British poet, his colleagues left him to it. The trade courtesy was an understanding among publishers to not poach on others’ writers from their publishers, and to not try to undercut other publishers with cheap reprints. None of this was legally binding, and no one could stop another publisher who ignored the unspoken rules.

A publisher who ignored the rules was called a pirate. The term is not accurate because the publisher operating outside the rules of trade courtesy wasn’t breaking any law, but some felt so strongly against what he (it seems mostly a he) was doing that the term was used freely. Publishers who wanted to get ahead published anything that wasn’t protected by copyright, which meant almost everything published overseas. One of the more famous of these publishers was Samuel Roth, who hoped to publish James Joyce’s work, especially Ulysses.

A publisher who published with no regard to the gentlemanly agreements of others faced no legal repercussions but plenty of social costs. He was shunned and subjected to unrelenting negative gossip and boycotting, others published cheap work to undercut his prices, and writers might sue to get any monies they could extract. Public opprobrium could drive a publisher out of business.

Into this topsy turvy world came Ezra Pound and James Joyce. Joyce bitterly resented anyone taking his book and publishing an altered version, one cleaned up for the censors. Pound believed in disseminating literature, and in the end chose that over Joyce’s right to control his publishing in its entirety. When we think of Joyce’s lawsuit to get Ulysses into the US, we think he was challenging the prudish laws of the US. But in fact, Joyce first sued Roth for using his name for advertising without his permission. Joyce sued for damages he felt he must have suffered by not having control of his work, but in the end Joyce and Roth settled by agreeing to a consent decree (dated December 27, 1928). But even this had a very limited effect. This decree, according to the author, and despite Joyce’s grandiose claims, “has not been cited by a single court in a reported case” (p. 224). Joyce thought this decision would give authors their natural moral rights in the ownership of their labor, echoing Locke and European attitudes, but US courts and legislation have never gone this far (p. 225).

The second step in getting Ulysses safely into the US, where Joyce’s preferred publisher, Bennett Cert, could publish it, was to have it seized by Customs. Once this happened, the book was subject to the Tariff Act of 1930, and the Cutting amendment. This amendment made the object confiscated the defendant in a case, and forced the government itself to defend its actions. The sender and the receiver of the item in question, in this case Ulysses, were not part of the case. During Prohibition, according to Spoo, lawsuits were often filed against the truck carrying bootlegged liquor and the like.

Ulysses was confiscated, the case went to trial, and Judge Woolsey decided in favor of the book, in 1933. The book was free to enter the US, but it was still without copyright. Joyce’s great work was now subject to the trade courtesy practices that he and others abhorred, but he had no choice.

This is a story of stunning twists and turns and surprises in getting Ulysses published in the US, not the least of which was Joyce’s attitude towards his lawyers’ bills (he refused to pay them).

Equally surprising to me as a writer is that copyright as I have come to understand it only became law in 1976. Legislators have continued to tinker with copyright law so that even now the public domain is occasionally given a great book and deprived of another for a few years. It is a patently crazy system. The US didn’t sign the Berne Convention until 1989, when the US finally agreed to recognize foreign copyrights and afford works so protected overseas the same protection in the US. There is more, but by now you should have the idea that the history of copyrights in the US is anything but tidy and linear.

The text is dense, but the writing is free of academic jargon, in some cases delightful. The author makes every effort to explain the legal niceties in simple, clear language. I learned more about Ezra Pound and James Joyce in this book than I ever did in college English literature classes. Highly recommended.