Publish or Die! Part 11: That’s a whole lot of blood for nothing.

“You should leave Brown Girls alone for awhile,” Viking Woman advised me the other day, “and work on your other novels instead. See if you can’t get those ones published.”

Yeah, good one, honey. Because, after 20 years as journalist, being reduced to washing soiled knickers in a seniors’ residence isn’t humiliating enough. Now you want me to return to banging my head against the front gate of the Ivory Tower of Publishing? I’ve done that for a dozen years now — I have so much disappointment stored up, I could bottle and sell the stuff.

I have a confession to make: I only write for money. That’s why I made such a good reporter — if someone paid me the big bucks, I’d put my blood and soul on the page for them. I’ve worked the equivalent of several months’ worth of unpaid overtime to polish those words into precious nuggets of stories. Pay me every two weeks and I’ll die for you. Or, at the very least, type very fast.

In basic terms, money = words. No money = I’ll be over here in front of the TV.

Except that isn’t how it works when it comes to publishing a book, is it? In that business, you put your blood and soul on the page and all you get in return is a stain on that page where the literary agent spilled his coffee when his secretary used a bit too much teeth while administering her boss’s morning blow job.

Simply put, I’m a mercenary. I don’t possess a burning desire to write. I don’t have words bulging out of my brain demanding to be committed to paper. I’m not awakened in the middle of the night scrambling for a pen because a fully-formed plot arc burst forth from a dream like one of those Alien chest-bursting things.

Writing is hard slogging and I like to be rewarded for my efforts. I once had a student job where I was paid at the end of each workday and loved it. It’s all about instant gratification, baby. I want it all and I want it now is, I believe, how Freddy Mercury once put it.

Even this blog was started with the idea of scoring cash via Google ads. Except, according to my sources, only one blogger in the entire world — Heather B. Armstrong — actually makes any serious money from ads on a blog site. That’s because she’s not afraid to — figuratively speaking, of course — put her vulva on display for her fawning mommy fans. And, one suspects, because her husband spends his time using random computers to log in 50,000 times a day. Lucky bitch.

So the only reason I bother writing this blog at all is to embarrass my children and leave a legacy for their offspring. Good ole Gampy Bitemymoko, they’ll all reminisce one day, he sure was a miserable old fart. But cuddly in a lumpy sort of way.

Having the tenacity and the ambition to stick to a writing routine no matter what the future of the project is why I admire my UK friend at newtowritinggirl.wordpress.com. This English rose is participating in the annual NaNoWriMo competition. I’m not quite sure how that abbreviation rates on my Lame Scale, but it stands for National Novel Writing Month. The goal, according to nanowrimo.org, is to complete a 175-page (50,000 words) novel between 12:01 a.m. Nov. 1 and midnight Nov. 30.

NeToWriGir (as I like to call my UK friend) is keeping track of her daily output in her November blog postings and, to date, appears to be doing her best to bang off the 1,667 words she’ll need to average each day to reach her goal. I have no idea what her novel is about but maybe, if I send e-chocolates, she’ll let me read it when it’s finished.

While I wasn’t involved in a competition at the time, that’s pretty much how I wrote the first draft of Brown Girls. My goal was to average 1,000 words a day and thus be finished in 120 days. I maintained that average for several long stretches at a time, amazing myself in the process because I don’t nornally tend to be very disciplined, especially when it comes to coffee and O’Ryans sour-cream-and-onion chips.

In the end, it took me some 270 days to finish the book, but that included a number of drafts and several weeks of editing and snipping and polishing.

Was it worth nine months of my time? My bank account would issue a resounding no. But I (and several others, including the Langley library) now own a book with my name on it. When it comes to having your ego stroked, nothing feels better (and you won’t spill your coffee in the process).

Should I turn my attention to the Brown Girls sequel and the other five or six novels I have stored on my computer in various stages of completion? I’m going to say yes.

And I’m going to start tonight — right after I check what’s on TV.

***

You can buy Brown Girls at http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1937.

At least he was gentle when he kicked my dream to death: Publish or Die! Part 10

Graham Beattie is an important man in the New Zealand publishing world. I know because he told me. He is so important, in fact, that, despite a request from a close personal friend, he was still far, far too busy to offer me more than a few stale crumbs of advice from his table of publishing experience.

Beattie did manage to take five seconds out of his hectic schedule to suggest I contact the New Zealand-based TFS Literary Agency. I did just that, sending a query letter to someone named Chris Else on June 22. Included in that letter was the entire text of the wonderful, magnificent, ego-pumping review Brown Girls received from Working Girl Reviews. Nothing like glowing comments from a neutral source to cause a literary agent to sit up and salivate.

Yeah, right.

Skip ahead 43 days to Aug. 5. Yes, that is more than six weeks later and, oh look, still no contact from Else or anyone, um, else at TFS to a query that takes 129 seconds to read. I know because I timed it.

Aug. 4: I send a short e-mail to Mr. Else asking — ever so politely — if he ever did receive my query and, if so, would he mind sparing 129 seconds to peruse it.

Aug. 5: In what can only be considered a strange coincidence, Mr. Else writes back the very next day after my e-nudge. To his credit, he apologizes for not contacting me earlier. But now he has concerns about the review I included with my query. Does this mean Brown Girls has already been published?

Aug. 6: Not so anybody noticed.

Aug. 6: Another e-mail from Mr. Else: Have I approached any other publishers or agents with Brown Girls?

Aug. 6: No.

Aug. 7: In that case, he asks, can I flick him the first 10,000 words.

Aug. 7: I can’t hit Send fast enough.

Aug. 19: This time, it only takes Mr. Else 12 days to write back:

Hi John

Thanks for the opportunity to look at Brown Girls. It’s good but I fear it isn’t good enough for us to want to take it on. The problem, in brief, is that a number of the characters, including your main character seem a bit cliched. Plus, I think we would have a much better chance of selling it in NZ if the main character were a (sic) NZer and not an American. Sorry.

Chris

Funnily enough, Mr. Else’s e-rejection arrived the very same day I received this comment from a member of authonomy.com:

Your writing is short, fast, and precise. The vivid imagery is amazing. “yellow fangs. greasy slobber.” “400 pounds of fat and sweat.” This is really, really good writing. (John R. Lindensmith, authonony.com)

Which, strangely enough, came after these comments:

The writing in this is deliciously taut. All the characterisation is good, minor as well as main. The MC (main character) is a bit of a hackneyed photo-journalist meets ’tec, but you infuse him with a back story of his novel and some mystery about his manhood that works to get over that. (Marc Nash, youwriteon.com)

. . . this is extremely good, very polished, writing. It feels complete to me as a reader. The plot’s good, and it slowly builds up intensity. There’s a real feeling of being there amongst the action. (Charlie Chuck, authonomy.com)

You set up the conflict – both social/political and personal very quickly, giving this pace and intrigue. Brilliant. (Elinor Evans, authonomy.com)

Five comments from five different people, four of whom are wannabe writers who are also voracious readers. In other words, the kind of people who actually buy books, thus providing agents like Mr. Else with their mortgage payments, courtesy of author commissions.

Five people. Four positive reviews. So who, exactly, has their head up their ass when it comes to assessing Brown Girls? Yeah, I thought so.

I pointed this out to Mr. Else (the difference of opinion; not the head/ass part) when I wrote back to thank him for taking a look at my writing sample.

I really wasn’t expecting a reply but, again to his credit, Mr. Else did reply:

Hi John

It’s not what I think so much as what I think potential publishers would think, which, of course, is certainly not what a potential reader would necessarily think. There’s nothing to stop you trying a few NZ publishers direct. There is not necessity to work through an agent in this marketplace.

Best

Chris

What I didn’t bother pointing out to Mr. Else was that it would take very little effort on my behalf to change the main character from an American to a Kiwi. As it is, I’ve already changed Jack once, because he started out as a Canadian.

But Mr. Else has already made up his mind and so I’m letting this one go. Because it will only turn into a pissing contest and no one wins those.

It’s just too bad they’re pissing on me.

Today’s special: Redemption, only $4.69: Publish or Die! Part 9

I was thisclose to packing it in. To placing my MacBook in a sack of rocks and dropping it off the wharf at the Ahuriri Marina.

I had once taken joy in writing. Hell, I’d once made my living by writing, in the glory days before newspapers started hemorrhaging money and journalists.

These days, I sit my unemployed ass down in front of my computer and question the wisdom of wasting good electricity on bad ideas.

As a novelist, I’d hit a wall. A huge, hard, intimidating expanse that impeded any forward momentum.

Having grown weary of banging my head against the closed doors behind which black-hearted literary agents sit snickering, I’d edited my book, Brown Girls, for the umpteenth time and posted it on Smashwords, where it is available for sale in several different ebook formats (http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1937).

There it sat, glory shining from every polished word, on the Smashwords home page. For about three seconds. Until the next 7,000 wannabe authors did the exact same thing as me — posting their deathless prose, submitting their mailing address and then sinking into the nearest chair with a view of the mailbox to await the arrival of the postman bearing a huge sack of royalty cheques.

In the meantime, to garner more attention (because writers are expected to not only supply their own PR drums but to bang them as well), I joined the Authonomy website (authonomy.com), which, to date, has turned out to be nothing more than the slush pile for HarperCollins (and, yes, I am now naming names after being discreet in Publish or Die! Part 8). The site is basically a popularity contest where the best way to move up the rankings is to play nice with others and hope they reciprocate. And where every Forum features one more writer admitting they have two chances of actually being published by HR: zero and none.

At one writer’s suggestion, I also joined youwriteon.com, which is more of a blind taste test — the samples you are asked to review are generated randomly and you have no idea who is going to be looking at your work, so you can’t cajole them into saying something nice. That all sounds a bit fairer except . . . except to date I have handed in six reviews and have only received one in return.

That’s the bad thing about being between jobs — everyone assumes you have plenty of time to waste.

What I should be doing with that time — rather than trying to say something (anything!) positive about the drivel I’ve encountered at both review sites — is writing. I’m about a third of the way finished with the sequel to Brown Girls. I’ve got at least four other books percolating in my brain. I have a completed novel from 12 years ago that is begging to be dusted off and loved again.

And then I hit that wall. That great, soul-sucking vortex of frustration where you could search in vain forever for a single crumb of encouragement.

Smashwords certainly wasn’t supplying it — I posted Brown Girls on May 17. To date, I have sold one (1) copy. I have earned $4.69. Yes, that is in US funds. Yes, that is $7.24 NZ. No, I do not feel any better.

The darkness was nearly complete. I was closing my MacBook and eying the stones in our yard.

And then . . .

And then a young lady calling herself newtowritinggirl happened.

We’re not exactly strangers, her and I. She is, in fact, the owner of the only ebook copy of Brown Girls ever sold. But buying something and liking it can be two different things.

Fortunately for my ego — and my MacBook and any sea critters in Ahuriri Harbour — newtowritinggirl appears to have enjoyed her adventures with Jack Nolan and Nurse Heather and Maina.

She sent this comment to my blog page: “I read it. I loved it. I will rave about it to anyone that listens!”

She posted this entry on her own blog (newtowritinggirl.wordpress.com):

The book was Brown Girls by John Wesley Ireland.  I read a review of it at Workinggirlreviews and had to read it from this.  I don’t know if it was the setting of the novel, the plot or the review, but I knew I had to read it.  Smashwords give you the first 20% free, a very good idea – especially in this case.  Ireland couldn’t have timed it better if he tried.  The last page of the 20% left you on  a cliff hanger.  I had to buy it to find out more.  HAD TO.  I’m very glad I did, it was great. I’ll do a full review of it when I have a little more time.

Today I am feeling better about life. Today, I am friends again with my computer. Today, I want to return to the Cook Islands, or Gisborne or New York state or Greece or B.C. — to wherever my next book is  set.

Today, I am a writer again.

Thanks, newtowritinggirl. Thanks for the puff of oxygen you breathed onto the dying embers of my creativity.

Should we ever meet, dinner’s on me. Anything you want.

Just as long as it doesn’t cost any more than $4.69 US.

I used to be a writer. Now I’m a pimp: Publish or Die! Part 8

CIRCLE JERK: Group masturbation during which participants, usually males, sit or stand in a circle, pleasuring themselves or each other.

I’ve heard of circle jerks but, good Catholic boy that I am, I’ve never actually participated in one.

Until now.

Before you crinkle your face up like a cat’s arse while going “Ewwwwww,” let me explain that I am, of course, speaking metaphorically. Painting a word picture, as it were. That’s what I do, as opposed to say, having a real job and a savings account.

I recently signed up to a website, run by a major publishing company, where writers can parade their wares and have it commented on by their peers.

I’m not going to name the site or the publishing house because, while most of the writing is crap, every so often, a rep from the publisher rolls up his metaphorical sleeve, dips his hand into the toilet and pulls out a turd. Said offering is, supposedly, poked and prodded by an editor and, if properly digested and compacted, the creator may (I said “may”) be offered a publishing contract.

It’s a big enough carrot to cause thousands of writers to extrude millions of words, all in the hopes of being the one offered the Golden Teat. Ever seen a sow lying on her side while her brood snuffles and snorts and tramples each other in their hungry haste to grab a nipple and start suckling?

Welcome to my life.

It’s a big enough carrot that, should anyone from the publishing house be trolling blogsites, stumble across this one and form the impression that I am somehow criticizing their endeavor, my book might just be flushed in an act of vengeance.

I’d really like to avoid that trip down the gurgler, if it’s all the same to you.

Writing a book is easy. Publishing a book is easy — countless numbers of POD/vanity publishers will gladly take your money and replace it with several cardboard boxes filled with tomes bearing your name.

Selling a book is a bitch.

I once met a lady from Aldergrove who was pitching her book at the Chapters store in Langley. She’d been published by one of the Big Boys — St. Martin’s Press, if memory serves — and then shown the door and instructed to start flogging her own product if she wanted to earn any royalties.

I showed up at her reading with the intention of asking how she’d connected with one of the Big Boys, only to share in her embarrassment when the audience consisted solely of me. Because we’re all family in the writing world, I was polite and said yes when she asked if she could read from her book.

It was an historical romance of some kind, the sort that conjures but one thought: “How the **** did that get published?”

My point is, despite a contract with a major publishing house, she was left to market her own work, no different from the effort I am now putting in with my own novel, Brown Girls.

I have blogged the hell out of the fact my book is now available — in assorted ebook formats — on the Smashwords website (http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1937) and, for all that work, have, to date, sold the grand total of zero copies. In any format.

And so I posted the first 19,000 or so words of Brown Girls on the above-mentioned site and have been working my tail off ever since to raise its profile. There is some kind of logarithm used to power your book up the rankings (yes, there is a posted explanation of how this process works. No, I did not read it. Yes, I am a man. What’s your point?)

To elbow your way to the Golden Teat, you need to be placed on other members’ Watchlists or, ideally, their Bookshelves. You do that by offering book swaps, a sort of “I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours” idea where you read the posted samples and say really nice things about them. The unspoken agreement, of course, is that, in turn, they will say really nice things about you. And then the two of you will both move one ranking closer to the sow’s belly.

Are you understanding the circle jerk metaphor now? (I know, it took me 700 words to get to the point. Bite me.)

To date, I have received some very favorable comments. But then again, so have others, whose writing I consider to be — how can I put this delicately? — junk.

It’s a game. I know it. And I’m playing it. As hard as I can.

I’m writing polite, generalized critiques instead of the sequel to Brown Girls. It’s a terrible price to pay. But I promise, just as soon as I sign my three-book, multi-million dollar deal, I will get serious about my fiction again.

It’s going to happen — I’m sure of it.

Any. Day. Now.

Publish or Die! Part 7

You know those heart-warming stories about the 29 rocket scientists who rejected some poor schmuck’s manuscript? And how the 30th person to encounter the book — someone who obviously had no idea how the whole literary agent thing is supposed to work — somehow managed to perceive the sheer genius on the page that everyone else had somehow missed?

And how the book, once published, made a bazillion dollars? And how those 29 rocket scientists were left looking like the idiot assholes they really are?

In that vein, I present another rejection from my own personal collection of rocket scientists:

***

I apologize for the delay in getting back to you. Unfortunately, it’s taken
longer than I’d hoped to catch up from my maternity leave.

Thank you so much for submitting your query to BookEnds. While your work
sounds intriguing, I’m afraid I just don’t think it’s for me.

I wish you the best of luck.

Sincerely,

Kim Lionetti
BookEnds, LLC
136 long hill road
gillette, nj 07933
908-889-0623
http://www.bookends-inc.com

***

Dear Kim:

Actually, considering I submitted my query letter to you way back in early January, I’d actually forgotten about it. Not given up on it. Forgotten.

As in: Your opinion no longer has any bearing on my future.

That’s how far I’ve now advanced past the point of needing rocket scientists like you to grant me the keys to the kingdom.

Oh, and just for the record: It’s going to feel so good when I prove you wrong.

See ya in the e-universe.

Kind regards

Signed:

Bite my, um, moko

Publish or Die! Part 6

At what point, during the process of sharpening your pencil, do you end up with nothing more than a pile of well-intentioned shavings?

I’m asking myself that question these days as I reach the quarter pole in my final polish/edit of Brown Girls before I publish the new and improved version.

The novel, set in the Cook Islands and starring Jack Nolan, was first published in 2004 by PublishAmerica, back in the bad old days of POD publishing, before Lulu somehow made such endeavors glorious and worthwhile.

The book was originally comprised of some 212,000 words. Before submitting it to PA, I’d given it several reads in an effort to weed out typos and replace missing words and ensure that suspense and thrills were actually present in what I’d classified as a suspense thriller.

Viking Woman did the same, as did former Langley Times workmate Brenda Anderson. PublishAmerica had an editor do a cursory scan, but that resulted in little more than “jandal”s being changed to “sandals,” a misguided correction I then had to go back in and fix.

And out into the cold, cruel world went my first child. That it drew much acclaim and kind reviews was a bonus, a very much appreciated bonus.

After I negotiated the return of the publishing rights from PA, I turned for help to my new friend, Jeff Buick, a Calgary-based writer working in the same genre. Jeff initially made several suggestions, before he sat on my manuscript for some 10 months and then left me dangling, e-mails unanswered. (Yes, that was somewhat rude and thoughtless and unkind of him, but I will let that go now and assume the God of Karma will deal with Mr. Buick at some future date.)

At Jeff’s urging, I changed Jack Nolan from a Canadian to an American, the thought process being that citizens of the great and wonderful US of A won’t read a book about people who aren’t exactly like themselves. Jeff also advised me to limit the Cook Islands Maori words that I’d used because, he explained, Americans tend not to tolerate any language but their own, The Kite Runner be damned.

Another suggestion I can attribute to Mr. Buick (who has, at last glance, NOT won the Pulitzer Prize for literature) was to make the novel shorter. Because, you guessed it, American readers = no patience for lengthy tomes.

In the end, I compromised: Jack is now an American and I snipped some 20,000 words, but I did keep the native language. The one constant from my 2004 foray into publishing was that readers felt transported to Rarotonga when they read Brown Girls and I was deathly afraid to lose that magic via the Delete tab.

Viking Woman feels the same way. She has not read the new version (the penultimate editing was kindly done by California-based writer/Facebook friend Alice Grey: fishbonesandmilk.typepad.com) but her chief concern is that I have somehow sliced the soul out of my book all in the name of streamlining.

I value Viking Woman’s opinion. Partially because I have no choice, since our contract contains that whole “love, honor, obey” clause, but mainly because she was right there with me in Rarotonga when I experienced the events and met the people that inspired the book in the first place. One of the major female characters is based on my wife and whole slabs of this character’s dialogue are reproduced verbatim, and so you can understand her concern.

(In the spirit of full disclosure, some of the early editing of Brown Girls version 2.0 was also based on advice from Lisa Rector, who once upon a time wrote a column for my Sports section in the Langley Times, before marrying New York-based literary agent Donald Maass, moving to the Big Apple and starting her own manuscript editing business, which you can find at thirddraftnyc.com. And, yes, that was a free plug. And, yes, Lisa, you do owe me. And tell your parents I say hey.)

All of which brings me back to my opening metaphor. At what point in the editing process do you stop following other people’s advice and suggestions and personal opinions? I could quite possibly ask 100 people to give me editing advice and quite possibly receive 100 more comments.

All fine and good, and some of them might even be helpful, but none of them would be based on the heart and soul and inspiration that stirred me initially to sit down and spend nine months (the first time around) of my life banging out this book.

The truth of the matter is that, at this point, I have stopped listening to other people (except, of course, for those faithful readers who have spent five years demanding a sequel — soon, I promise). I will finish this final polish and then send it out for the world to judge its merits (stand by for more information on that process.)

Sometime in the future, I hope Jeff Buick actually reads the new version of Brown Girls. This time, however, he’s going to have to pay for it.

Publish or Die! Part 5

Disclaimer: I submitted a query letter re: Brown Girls to San Francisco-based literary Nathan Bransford. He rejected it. Therefore, I believe him to be an idiot misguided. This is not sour grapes. This is human nature. This is also my own personal opinion, Mr. Lawyer Man.

The following is excerpted from Mr. Bransford’s March 4, 2009 blog entry “You Tell Me: What Do You Love About Writing?” (nathanbransford.blogspot.com).

In sum: throughout the past two hundred years, someone could write a perfectly good book, but there was one big barrier standing in between the author and their readers: publishers. As much as I’d like to think the publishing industry is always right, well, it’s not.

But here’s what’s going to happen in the digital era: anyone will be able to publish their book, and there will be no distribution barrier. The same eBook stores that stock Stephenie Meyer and Dan Brown will stock, well, you. Readers will be the ones who decide what becomes popular. There will be no intermediary. It will be just as easy to buy a book by you as it will be to buy the HARRY POTTER of the future. Your book will be just a few keystrokes away from everyone with an internet connection (and their tablet/eReader/iPhone/gizmo/whatchamacallit of the future).

Just think about it: no wondering how in the world your book is going to find its way past a publisher into a bookstore. No more print runs! No one will be doomed by a publisher and bookstores underbetting on their success. No more bottleneck. No more que……… well, there will always be queries. Sorry!

Books will finally be able to live and die by, well, themselves, not by the best guesses of the publishing industry. Now, am I, the agent, writing my own obituary? Nope. I don’t think so. If anything things are getting more complicated, and authors will still need agents to navigate the business and negotiate with the Amazons and Sonys and Apples and whoever else rises up in the future. There will still be subrights to negotiate and distribution deals and all sorts of challenges that authors will be hardpressed to face on their own. We’ll still be here.

In reply:

Dear Mr. Bransford

This is going to come as a HUGE surprise to you, sir, but there is only one “big barrier” between my book and the reading public and its name is you. Well, you and the rest of your cabal.

I mean, come on, every new writer is commanded to never bother the Big Boys in the Ivory Tower Publishing World with their pitiful snot-pile of a manuscript. Instead, we are instructed to submit query letters to literary agents, who will act as a filtering system, gleefully flushing away the excrement and ensuring that not a single my-baby-produces-better-work-in-his-diaper book is ever published. And I think everyone will agree that you are doing an excellent job. And by that I mean, are you frickin’ kidding me?

I don’t know about you Mr. Bransford, but this system bears a striking resemblance to allowing a condemned man his choice of rope. It’s all going to end badly, of course, but offering the illusion of free choice is supposed to make the drop somehow less painful.

To blame the publishing houses for keeping us writers on the outside with our noses pressed against the castle’s windows is a childish shift of blame. I’m assuming this also means when a book explodes onto the bestsellers’ list, you, the agent who pulled that particular nugget out of the sewer with your bare hands, do not take any credit.

Pull the other one, friendo.

As for your future job prospects — once writers take full advantage of digital publishing and so no longer require your services to destroy our souls and crush our egos — I hope you’re good at working with your hands. Because there will be a squeegie in one and a spray bottle in the other.

Oh, don’t give me that face. I’ll still flip you a coin, as opposed to the bird you flipped me, but it won’t be anywhere near the amount you would have made from selling my book.

Nope, I’ll be keeping ALL that money, in return for doing ALL the work. This is going to be SO much fun.

Oh, and too bad you won’t be able to read my book, seeing as how you’ll be selling your Kindle to afford your next Happy Meal.

As for those deals and negotiations you mentioned, the only thing you’ll be navigating is the route to the welfare office.

The good news is you will have plenty of company on the unemployment line. You’ll find all their names by simply Googling “literary agents.”

In the meantime, I’ll enjoy your blog. You know, while you can still afford a computer.

Yours sincerely *chortle* *snicker*

Bitemymoko

Publish or Die! Part 4

Here in New Zealand, if you ask a Kiwi a question for which there is seemingly no answer, the reply will be: “How long is a piece of string?”

I’m reminded of the impossible answers every time I draw near to the stone walls of Castle Publish. It’s here I encounter the first line of defence against howling mobs brandishing their manuscripts.

These defenders are the literary agents and they will gladly eat you alive for breakfast and then later pick their teeth with your ribs.

In a scenario straight from Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, there are magic words required to pass into the promised land beyond the battlements but these words have nothing to do with uttering “Open Sesame” and everything to do with a query letter.

But while the query is the key, the shape of the keyhole keeps changing, depending on which of the gatekeepers you talk to (or website you visit).

From what I can gather, the format can be broken down into three paragraphs:

1) hook

2) brief synopsis

3) publishing/pertinent education, if any, or at least some experience/knowledge you brought to the writing process (in my case, I lived in Rarotonga, the setting for my book; the lead character gets a tattoo just like mine; the protagonist struggles to cope with strong female characters and that is pretty much the story of my life).

Those are the basic tools you will need. How you embellish the toolbox depends on which person is describing the ideal query letter. The maddening thing is, I’ve come across agents who, after giving an example of what they considered to be the perfect pitch, still rejected it.

Say what? Is the Spanish Inquisition still alive and well and no one bothered to inform us poor writing wretches how much torture we will need to endure on the path to eternal enlightenment (or at the very least, a movie contract)?

Let me get this straight — you can do everything right and still be wrong? Why does that sound like every inhabitant of Planet Man?

If no one in the industry can agree on the perfect query letter, then isn’t rejecting a manuscript based solely on a query letter akin to looking at a birth certificate and announcing the baby is ugly?

When I walk into a bookstore and peer at the thousands of books on display, my first thought is not, “Wow, look at all that talent!” Rather, it’s, “There is no frickin’ way every one of those writers produced a better query letter than me.” My second thought is,  ”There is no frickin’ way every single one of those books is better than mine.”

This is not me being an egocentric, deluded prat. This is me stating a fact. To date, everyone who has read Brown Girls (in its POD format or manuscript) has enjoyed it.

Sample comments:

LR: ” . . . just finished! Brilliant. With a few minor tweaks it should, without doubt, be in every major bookstore.”

ML: “I loved the book, my friends loved the book, and we are still waiting for Brown Girls 2.”

JB: “(It drew) me in, and that’s exactly what you want.”

If the general public is already sold on my book, how then do I convince the gatekeepers to read it?

While I ponder that, can you please pass me the string.

Publish or Die! Part 3

It’s been a good news/bad news kinda day in my ongoing quest to publish my novel, Brown Girls.

Let’s start with the good news because a smile can hide so much pain:

My great and kind and oh-so-talented friend, Calgary-based novelist Jeff Buick (and, yes, I am sucking up to him big time), remained true to his vow to start 2009 by removing Brown Girls from his In box, if only to stop me rubbing against his legs like a hungry cat.

He sent me several comments, one of which read: “So far I like it. It’s drawing me in, and that’s exactly what I want.”

I did mention that Jeff is a class act and a superb author, right? Check out his website (jeffbuick.com) and then get thee to a bookstore and buy all his novels. 

 

And now the bad news: my first form rejection letter of 2009 has arrived.

I found Nathan Bransford’s blog (nathanbransford.blogspot.com) via a tag surf on WordPress. Nathan works for Curtis Brown out of an office in San Francisco. His blog site is very informative and I recommend all wannabe writers check it out and read/heed his advice and tips.

The one thing that caught my eye was Nathan’s insistence on dashing all hope, ah, automatically rejecting everything, ah, answering all communiques as quickly as possible. His thought process is along the lines of, why let all these pesky queries from mouth-breathing, basement-dwelling losers clog up my e-mail server?

And, true to his word, I was rejected in a matter of a mere 15 hours. I’m guessing it only took that long because Nathan’s office was closed for the day when I sent my query and so I was forced to wait until he had his first morning coffee in hand before he summoned the firing squad.

I present his letter verbatim:

Dear John, Thank you for your recent e-mail and for reading my blog, I appreciate it. I regret to say that I don’t feel that I’m the most appropriate agent for your work. However, opinions vary considerably in this business, and I wish you the best of luck in your search for representation. Best wishes, Nathan

I present my blog post answer verbatim:

Dear Nathan, Thank you for your prompt reply. As I mentioned in my carefully-crafted query letter (designed by following your instructions to the letter and still, like an IKEA shelving unit, somehow coming up a few screws short), no one wants to stand on the trapdoor for 12 weeks while the man in the black hood fiddles with the lever. Better a quick drop into oblivion than days of bright and shiny hope. My only regret is I will not be paying you the commission when Brown Girls is published. And it will be. The next time I’m in San Francisco, I shall look for you, sitting on a corner, selling pencils out of a cup. I may actually feel a slight twinge of sorrow for you. Or it might be pity. I’m not sure, because, as you well know, opinions tend to vary considerably. Best wishes, John

 

If you’ve formed the impression that I’m not about to fawn all over literary agents who’ve rejected me, while also not giving a rat’s bum that this attitude may somehow result in me being blackballed by the entire industry, then go to the front of the class.

Would you smile and wave at the driver who just cut you off in traffic, playing nice on the slim chance you might meet one of his workmates sometime in the future? Me neither.

I’d flip him the bird and, given the opportunity, kick him up the ass.

Welcome to Publish or Die!, bitch.

If you’re going to piss all over my dreams, don’t expect me to shake your dick later and compliment your accuracy. Not in this lifetime, friendo.

Publish or Die! Part 2

I’ve just been informed Brown Girls is alive and well and making someone money. Unfortunately, that someone is not me, the person who actually wrote the book.

If that sounds a bit confusing — after all, these Publish or Die! posts are all about following Brown Girls on its journey to mass circulation — permit me to explain.

The suspense thriller, based on events and people I met while living in the Cook Islands, was ‘printed’ by PublishAmerica in 2004.

Notice that I didn’t say ‘published.’

That’s because PA is a Print On Demand (POD) company, meaning it prints a copy of one of its writers’ books only after it has been ordered and paid for. Yes, it does save warehousing costs, but if no one orders your book, not one copy will ever see the light of day.

This is how POD works, as opposed to a vanity press, where the author pays upfront for the actual printing process, just as you would for a business card or brochure.

But, in a relationship that seems somehow incestuous, PA makes it real money from its stable of writers. These keyboard tappers tend to be so excited about finally having their work ‘accepted’ after years of negative responses from mainstream publishing houses, that they  tend to order entire boxes filled with freshly-minted copies of their masterpieces.

They envision setting up a table in their local bookstore and spending entire weekends signing autographs for an adoring public.

The reality is slightly grimmer. It involves shuffling those same boxes of books — still mostly full — around the garage before, one sad day, putting all of them on the curb for the recyclers.

PA does little in the way of marketing and zero in the way of placing its product in actual bookstores. But all that information is easily found on the Internet and those people who sign with PA without doing some kind of research should not be allowed to whine later when their local Borders refuses to stock their deathless prose.

I knew going in what I wanted: a book with my name emblazoned on the cover, something I could hold in my hands like a new baby, one I could be assured wouldn’t grow into a teen and want to borrow the car.

And that’s exactly what I achieved. PA has a professional enough website (publishamerica.com) and actually pays royalties to its writers. If you squint in the right light, it could pass for a real publishing house.

Like all good PA writers, I bought copies of my own book. I, at least, had enough foresight and discipline and math skills to order only as many as I knew I could dispense. I gave away some copies, I donated another to my local library for all posterity, and then sold the rest to close friends and distant relatives — and very few actual strangers.

So when I hear used copies of Brown Girls are being offered for sale on both chapters.indigo.ca and amazon.com — not just copies, but signed copies — I can’t help but wonder who is flogging my work. 

I’m not terribly upset — I’d rather have the book circulated and read than gather dust on someone’s shelf, to be forgotten forever. My only regret is not making a cent from the $18.71 US being charged by Amazon or the $45.50 CDN it will cost you on chapters.indigo.ca ($65.64 CDN for a “clean and nice copy”!).

Now that PA has relinquished the publishing rights, I can only hope those sellers will use some of what they’re earning off my labor to buy Brown Girls — newly edited, freshly trimmed — when it returns to the marketplace.

I think that’s the least they owe me.