writing – Page 22 – Patricia J. Parsons

Backstory, Book launches, Book promotion

Making old manuscripts live again

Posted on 1 May 2014 by Patricia J. Parsons

An old manuscript gets a 21st century makeover.

Earlier this week Jennifer Alsever wrote a piece for CNN Money called “Guerrilla Marketing for Books.” A cautionary tale for would-be authors, it tells the story of shrinking promotional budgets at traditional publishing houses and the lengths to which authors now must go to get their books to stand out from the ever-increasing numbers of both traditionally and self-published books. The truth is, it has been ever thus – unless you are a big-name author.

One tactic mentioned in the story is of an author who commissioned a jewelry artist to make necklaces that are featured on her book’s cover as well as a new perfume based on one of her fictional characters. The amount of work and money involved for an author in doing this is staggering to consider. This, however, reminded me of an event in the provenance of one of my recent ‘new’ books Confessions of a Failed Yuppie. Stick with me for a few minutes!

If you’ve been reading Backstory for a few years or even months, you might have realized that the “backstory” I’m trying to tell is the anchor of my own experience in writing and publishing. More than that, though, my objective is to explore the issues that are important to all of us who are more than passingly interested in reading – and writing. Sometimes I rant about things that have annoyed me; sometimes I tell you a story of my experience. Sometimes I tell you a real backstory to my writing: what inspired it, how it developed, what happened next. This post is one of those true backstories.

In the early 1990’s I was on a rant about the Yuppie lifestyle. So I decided to write a book about it – but rather than a non-fiction examination of the phenomenon, which would have been more akin to my writing experience at the time, I decided to write a novel – a satire of sorts. I felt strongly, though, that I wanted it published no matter what, so I did what self-publishing authors did at that time, I sent it to a vanity publisher. (For the working definition of a vanity publisher, you might want to surf back to last week’s post: The confusing world of 21st century publishing jargon: A glossary for writers).

In due course, a box full of hard-cover copies of Yuppie arrived on my doorstep. What to do with them? Those were the days before book promotion through online networking channels was de rigeur. Indeed, there were no social media channels. Just imagine such a world! I decided that the first order of business would be to have a book launch. But before the launch, I’d need some “merchandise.”

The old Yuppie cover and the mug: "I confess: I'm a failed yuppie" with a "reject" stamp! — The old Yuppie cover and the mug: “I confess: I’m a failed yuppie” with a “reject” stamp!

I created a design for the front of T-shirts and for mugs and had dozens of these pieces of paraphernalia created – all at my own expense, of course – and had them available on the day of the pary. I also had a poster-sized blow-up of the cover of the book so that it could be the focal point of the party, next to the book-shaped cake that adorned the dining room table. I then created a guest list and sent out invitations.

As parties go, the event was a great success. We had door prizes of T-shirts that the guests obligingly sported and everyone went home with a signed copy of the book.

As the weeks went by, a number of the guests told me that they had enjoyed the book and when was I going to write another one?

The book, naturally enough, never sold. Getting a self-published book reviewed in those days was not next to impossible, it was completely impossible. And since there were no social networks available to promote it, short of taking out advertisements at great expense (I did that once) and going door-to-door with a pile of books (which didn’t sit well with my personality), the book would languish with thousands of others. And so it did. Until last year.

Writers have lots of finished and unfinished manuscripts hiding on their hard drives or taking up space in filing cabinets. I know that most of us should toss most of it, but sometimes a manuscript draws us back and that’s how I felt about Yuppie.

So, I took out the hard-cover copy with its tattered edges and began to write rewrite the book. It’s now a 21^st century Yuppie story, and taking advantage of the digital advances, I decided to make it available once again.

Two decades in the making, Confessions of a Failed Yuppie lives again, and it starts with a definition of Yuppie:

“YUPPIE”: A Definition

Acronym for Young Urban Professional, usually occurring in a married pair (often male/female but not necessarily). Categorized as upper middle class or at least moving in that direction, ambitious, well-educated. Characterized by excessive concerns about appearances. Lightly narcissistic. May have money or at least leverage. But not necessarily. Normal habitat is the urban condo, sometimes the single-family dwelling of dubious heritage in a downtown area with a postage stamp for a yard, for which a bidding war took place prior to acquisition. Yuppies with children often move to larger, more impressive dwellings. Diet consists mainly of cocktails, organic kale and the latest gastronomic fad. Would not be caught dead in a North-American-produced automobile brand. Skis in winter, does hot yoga, plays squash (it’s making a come-back), and quietly brags all year round. Widely thought to have become extinct in the early 1990’s. Not so much.

Maybe you’d like to read the rest. Or not.

Publishing, Self-Publishing

The confusing world of 21st century publishing jargon: A glossary for writers

Posted on 21 Apr 2014 by Patricia J. Parsons

“So what are you writing now?”

This is a question I often hear from friends, relatives and colleagues alike. They know that I’ve written a dozen or so books – among other things – but I don’t really think they get me as a writer. I’m a hybrid writer. Or at least that’s the word I used to use. Maybe I’m just a promiscuous writer. You see, I write both fiction and non-fiction, and I publish mostly through traditional publishers (which are…?) and independently (whatever does that mean…?).

So, what am I writing right now? I have a fiction (sort of lifestyle satire again, but then what does that mean?) piece on the go, but the book I’m supposed to be writing is on writing and publishing in the twenty-first century using both research and my experiences. This latter piece has me thinking about definitions of the confusing array of terms in the new world of publishing. Since I’m a strong believer that we need a common understanding of terminology before we can discuss any issue, I thought I’d develop a glossary of terms – and I thought I’d share it with you as a work-in-progress.

So, herewith (great word, isn’t it?) I offer you the working definitions of publishing-related terms that I’ll be using in my upcoming book.

Author

An author is someone who has published a book, article, paper, poem, report etc. The act of publication is what differentiates between someone who is engaged in the act of writing and an actual author. Method of publication does not matter.

Traditional Publisher

A so-called traditional book publisher is an organization that takes the financial responsibility for all aspects of publication including acquisition, editing, publishing, distributing and promoting. Consequently, this publisher garners a hugely larger percentage of the book receipts than does the author of said piece. Traditional publishers often make their publishing decisions from an array of solicited and unsolicited manuscripts based on their prediction about marketability. Judging from the number of traditionally acquired flops, they are not very good at making these decisions (You probably know that J. K. Rowling’s original Harry Potter manuscript was rejected at least a dozen times. See “30 famous authors whose works were rejected (repeatedly, and sometimes rudely by publishers”).

Trade Publisher

A trade publisher is, in contrast to a scholarly press, for example, a traditional publisher that produces books for what is referred to as a ‘trade audience.’ A trade audience is you and me in our everyday lives. A trade publisher might specialize in fiction of a certain type or non-fiction – but only non-fiction that has a wide appeal.

Literary Publisher

This is a term that I struggle with. A self-proclaimed literary publisher will be able to tell you, nose in the air, precisely what they do. However, looking in from the outside, it is not quite so clear. So, for my purposes, I am defining a literary publisher as a traditional publisher, usually of the independent variety (see below) who refuses to wear the title of trade publisher, believing that his or her works are a cut above in artistic or literary merit.

Vanity Publishing

Vanity publishing is when an author pays an organization a large sum of money up front for the following services: editing (sometimes), formatting (usually), cover design (if you’re lucky), printing and binding (always), distribution (only if you count filling the author’s personal orders) and marketing (not on your life). Of course, it is self-publishing. The term may have been used as early as the 1940’s, but self-proclaimed Vanity Publishing expert Jonathan Clifford seems to think he coined it in 1959.[1] The term is never used in a positive way, just as the word itself would suggest. As I discussed in a previous post where I admitted to vanity publishing one of my earliest books, “Presumably it was vain for an author to pay to have his or her book published. I’ve never been sure why it isn’t ‘vanity recording’ when a musician pays to have a CD recorded and subsequently distributed…” The term is often used when making snide remarks about the inferiority of self-published work. Note: Vanity Publishers always publish(ed) works under their own imprint.

Self-Publishing

Self-publishing differentiates itself from vanity publishing in that the term vanity has been dropped. That’s really all there is to it. Make no mistake about it: self-publishing is vanity publishing without the moniker. The twenty-first century has provided self-publishers with a digital world wherein the possibilities are almost endless. Self-published books can be as bad as most publishing snobs always thought vanity-published books to be, or, equally, may be as good as any book out there. Self- publishing is differentiated from traditional publishing in that the author takes complete financial responsibility for the editing, publishing, distribution and marketing aspects of authorship and reaps the lion’s share of the benefits. It need not have the stench of “vanity” about it. But it might. Note: Self-publishing need not be done under the imprint of another entity such as a publisher.

Subsidy Publishing

Subsidy publishing is characterized by a financial subsidy that is provided to an author to partially cover the costs of publishing. The subsequent publishing is usually done through a traditional publisher. Some people suggest that subsidy publishing is the same as vanity or self-publishing. However, that ignores the situations where subsidies are offered by non-profit or governmental organization to support the publication of the work of academics in a scholarly publishing world where there is no money to be made, but costs to be covered. Thus, I think it needs its own category.

Independent Publisher

This is a tricky one because there is a difference between being an independent publisher and the act of publishing independently (see below). For my purposes, an independent publisher is one that uses a traditional publishing model of acquiring work from an author and shouldering the burden of the financial responsibilities while at the same time maintaining independence from the big, corporate publishing houses.

Supported Self-Publishing

Supported self-publishing is a business model where a publisher provides services to a self-publishing author at a cost. Packages are offered and services can be purchased a la carte depending on the size of the company. There are large, corporate ones who try to sell a variety of expensive services (they make their money from selling services to authors, rather than on selling books. In fact, this business model does not even require them to sell books – their profit streams accrue from selling unsuspecting authors services, that after the editing is paid for, they don’t actually need). A whole cottage industry of services to self-publishing authors has spring up – for better or for worse.

Publishing Independently (also known as Self-Publishing)

When an author decides to forego the submission-rejection-submission-rejection merry-go-round of the traditional publishing world, he or she steps into the process of publishing independently. The author takes full financial responsibility and can choose from a variety of types and sizes of self-publishing and supported self-publishing platforms. The possibilities are endless: from companies who will simply print your book n demand (e.g. Lulu or Createspace), or distribute it electronically (e.g. Smashwords), offering only if you want it other services, to large behemoths like iUniverse who sell a wide variety of expensive packages and individual services and will continue to market to you even after you’ve said ‘no’ if you publish with them.

Indie Author

This is a widely used term among ‘indie authors’ themselves and for my purposes refers to anyone who chooses to publish without benefit of a traditional publisher. It is neither a positive term, nor is it a negative term – it is simply a term. It does not refer to an author who publishes through an independent publisher as I have defined it.

E-Publishing

E-publishing is digital electronic publishing where both the process and the product are digital. Traditional publishers, independent traditional publishers, self-publishers etc. can all utilize the concept of publishing for electronic distribution. When e-publishing first began, it was often a route that was taken after a book was published in hard copy. Today, more and more books (and journals and magazines etc.) are available only electronically.

Cooperative Publishing

Cooperative publishing is a publishing process independent of the traditional model where authors form a cooperative in which each one contributes financially and in writing-editing capacities to publishing works by each member of the cooperative. As I said in a previous post on cooperative publishing:

“Some people who have written about cooperative publishing consider it to be a publishing model that represents the middle ground between traditional and print-on-demand publishing. Although this might represent cooperation between an author (who pays) and a “publisher” who is contracted by the author, it still says self-publishing to me. The model of cooperative publishing I’m suggesting here is based on a business co-op model where, as the CCA says, the business (in this case the publisher) is owned by the members who use its services. In the case of a publishing co-op that I’m suggesting is worth exploring, the owners both use the services and are the “employees.”

In terms of financial compensation, the members of the co-op all take the same percentage of the royalties from any of the publications.

Hybrid Publishing

I think that it’s safe to say that there is much confusion between the terms hybrid publishing and hybrid author. Unless we can make a clear differentiation, then we can’t communicate about it as I mentioned at the outset of this glossary. So, I’m going to go with a clear demarcation between the two. Hybrid publishing is a situation wherein a publisher has a model that has aspects of both self-publishing and traditional publishing where everyone (from editors to marketers) gets a percentage of the royalties but that the author is not asked to pay for publishing costs. David Vinjuarmi, who often writes about publishing, did a piece in Forbes on hybrid publishing that I think covers many of the bases. For his piece see: “How Hybrid Publishers Innovate To Succeed.

Hybrid Author

A hybrid author is one who has published books and/or other pieces through both the traditional publishing model and via a self-publishing route.

That’s me. I’m a hybrid author. However, I’m also a promiscuous one: an author who publishes in a number of genres.

Let me know if you think the glossary is helpful – and if you’d like to see other concepts added. P.

[1] Neil Nixon. 2011. How to get a break as a writer: Making money from words and ideas. Troubador Publishing (U.K.) . p. 311. See also the archived web site Vanity Publishing http://www.vanitypublishing.info/.

Ideas generation, Writing

Books I wish I had written

Posted on 2 Apr 2014 by Patricia J. Parsons

Writers are usually avid readers. I suppose that it is expected of us, and possibly even required – although I’m certain that many of the classics were written by authors who did not read widely since there was so little to read (this is a theme I’ll get back to in a later post). I’ve given some thought before to the books that shape us as writers, but I’m still left wondering if others might be a little like me. Sometimes, when I come to the end of a book, I have a deep feeling that I wish I had written this book. It occurs to me that an examination of those books might provide insight into what we ought to be writing about – rather than simply always writing about what we think we should be writing about (or worse, only what sells).

I wish I had written…

Over-Dressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion by Elizabeth L. Cline. This book affected me even beyond my deep feeling that I wish I had written it. An important examination of an industry that affects all of us in one way or another, this book is one that needed to be written, and needs to be read. This feeling of a book that needs to be written, coupled with my interest in the subject matter were the factors that perhaps conspired to make me wish I had written it. The author, Elizabeth Cline is an American journalist whose commitment to the investigation of the North American penchant for disposable fashion resulted in a story that had my head spinning – although much of it did not come as a surprise – and I avoid disposable fashion like the plague, given my penchant for quality.

I wish I had written…

Deluxe: How Luxury Lost its Luster by Dana Thomas. As I closed the cover of this book I had a very distinct feeling that it was one I should have written! A social history of the luxury goods industry, the book is also well-researched, lucidly written, informative and entertaining. The fact that it focuses on a topic that has been of interest to me since I started researching the marketing tactics of luxury goods manufacturers in my day job (don’t ask!) might also make it the kind of book that I would have liked to have written.

I wish I had written…

The Thoughtful Dresser: The Art of Adornment, the Pleasures of Shopping and Why Clothes Matter by Linda Grant (who is also a novelist). This book had me at the following statement on page 10:

“I consider it to be absolutely normal to care deeply about what we wear, and detest the puritan moralists who affect to despise fashion or those who love it. Who shrilly proclaim that only vain, foolish Barbie dolls, their brains addled by consumerism, would wear anything but sensible clothes made to last. As if appearances don’t matter when, most of the time, they are all we have to go on. Or sometimes all that is left in the ruins of life.”

This paragraph encapsulated for me the conundrum of my life as a professor and writer – and someone who has always enjoyed the fun of dressing. On a university campus, dressing fashionably is viewed in much the way Linda Grant describes. She nailed it. Oh how I would have loved to have written this book for my colleagues to read!

So, these books all do seem to have things in common. But what strikes me most is the fact that they are all non-fiction. I hope my inner writer is listening. I’ve been focusing my future writing on fiction – which I love to produce – and yet the books I wish I had written are all research-based, narrative non-fiction.

A few years ago during one of my many searches for an agent (two searches were successful; neither of them sold my manuscripts), one of them snottily said the following to me: “If I had a dime for every bona fide non-fiction writer who wanted to write fiction, I’d be rich.” Then she refused to represent any fiction I might produce. I guess I should have been happy to have been referred to as a bona fide non-fiction writer, which I suppose I am.

So I think I’m going to consider this analysis of my own reading interests. Don’t get me wrong, though, I love to read fiction. I just wonder how much of it I should be writing.