One Indie Author's Journey to the Big 6 and Back Again (a publishing saga as illustrated by my hair)

1976: Hat Hair

This is me at the time of my first professional writing gig. In 1976, I was an 8th grade misfit at an academically boffo but ideologically stifling Evangelical school. Girls in my class consumed True Confessions Magazine every month. (Who loves porn more than Puritan's, right?) Reading the stories typically titled "My Father Sold Me" or "A Sophomore's Secret" or some such, I thought, "Heck, I can do that." Because I knew virtually nothing about sex beyond the vague "pulsing" and "engorging" alluded to in True Confessions and the "manroot" physiology of my book-a-day Gothic romance novel habit, my erotic tragedies relied heavily on witty dialogue and lush descriptions of locations, current pop music and fast food. For $1/page, I wrote customized stories starring a classmate and her made-to-order crush. In cases where the crush was a real boy who failed to live up to expectations, a brief epilogue featuring his untimely death could be had for a quarter. Word spread, and I expanded my business to a local roller skating rink, passing off the folded pages in the privacy of the grimy girls' bathroom like a drug dealer. On the first day of 9th grade, I was ironing my hair on the ironing board and branded a broad stripe down the front of my nose. This pretty much set the tone for my high school years.

1981: Hippie Busker

Here's me at the time I started writing my first novel, originally titled MacPeter's Midlife Crisis. I'd given up ironing my hair, and apparently, it was particularly humid the day this photo was taken. In 1981, I was a late night DJ at a rock station in Helena, Montana, crazy in love with a brilliant but damaged Vietnam vet, and supplementing my income busking at bars and tourist attractions. The novel started as a script I intended to enter in a playwright competition. During my super-useful college career as a theatre major, part of my Stanislavsky acting training included writing character studies, and mine usually ran about 12 times the recommended length, spinning out elaborate backstory and imagining offstage scenes. I was still reading a book a day, but had moved on to Tom Robbins, Irving Stone, Eudora Welty and all things Bronte. I worshiped authors, and it never occurred to me that I could have a book published. I was writing this story purely for the love of laying words in a row, and needless to say, it was about a late night DJ and the brilliant, damaged Vietnam vet with whom she was crazy in love.

1994: Bald is the new black

Here's me when I started writing my second novel, Sugarland. I was diagnosed with lymphoma in 1994, shortly after my husband and I moved to Houston with our two small children. After years of dabbling, I'd finished my first novel, now titled Last Chance Gulch, queried it to six dozen agents and publishers and collected six dozen rejections. I had zero hope of ever being published, but in the crucible of chemo, I suddenly understood why I was writing: because I'm a writer. So I wrote.

1996: Chemo-fro and Mr. Clean

Here's me when I got my first book contract in 1996. Gary started shaving his head to be in solidarity with me during chemo. And no we're not on the same cricket team; the sweats were 3/$10 at Wallgreen's, and we were flat broke. And that's not a wig; my hair came back jet black and kinky a la Shaft. The amazing Fred Ramey (now at Unbridled Books) pulled my first novel from the slush pile, masterfully edited it from a 124K word swampland to a lean, mean 93K word fiction machine, and literally saved my life. Fred gets the credit for the most fitting book title of my career: Crazy For Trying. The advance was $4,000. We promptly took the kids to Disney World. While Crazy For Trying was in the pipeline, I lost my remission and turned to adjunct therapies to supplement the chemo. Above my desk was posted Isaac Asimov's famous two-word answer to being asked what he would do if he knew he had one year to live: "Type faster!"

2004: Redhead with Redbone

Here's me in Good Housekeeping Magazine in 2001, when they featured a Book Bonus excerpt from my memoir Bald in the Land of Big Hair, which got my name on the bestseller lists for the first time. My second batch of regrown hair was straight and mostly gray, so I was a different shade of red almost every month. I was also exploring my new publishing career, which was wide open, because I'd stumbled into it with no preconceptions, expectations or plans. And nothing to fall back on. Marjorie Braman, my fabulous editor at HarperCollins, encouraged me to write a syndicated newspaper column while I got busy on another novel. That led to an advice column for a national magazine. In 2004, I was invited to do my first collaboration at Simon & Schuster, which led to a collaboration at Random House, which led to a whole lot of other stuff, but I did eventually finish my third novel, The Secret Sisters, which was pubbed by HarperCollins in 2006. Ghostwriting was something I'd never really thought about until I started doing it, but these great stories came along, and I'm a writer, so I wrote them.

2011: The American Blonde

And here's me in 2011. I've done more than a dozen books, several of them NYT bestsellers, and worked with fantastic editors at five of the Big 6. I've learned that publishing, like personal style, is a process of constant reinvention, adaptation and a whole lotta get over yourself. The decision to indie pub my backlist ebooks and forthcoming fiction has opened a thrilling new chapter. I'm not leaving traditional publishing behind. I plan to work hand in hand with my agent and transition my indie pubbed ebooks to print deals with standing houses.

But I've grown up a lot. I've been to the puppet show and seen the strings, as they say. I began my writing career delivering stories directly into the hands of readers, so indie publishing feels like coming full circle. On roller skates.

I've given up trying to color my hair dark. The few strands that aren't white are bleached blonde to blend in. The only thing that hasn't changed is that daily longing to find the right words, the compulsion to set them down on paper. And so I write.

UPDATE: Flash Forward to 2017: Mrs. Grey will see you now...

Bronx Zoo Cobra Returns to Cash In...with a Book Deal?

Tell me you didn't see this one slithering our way. That most famous of deadly, venomous serpents, the on-the-lam Bronx cobra, has been lured back to captivity...with a reportedly two-million dollar book deal.

Yeah. I kid you not. Some publishing numbskulls decided to offer the giant book deal, not to the actual reptile, of course, but whoever the quasi-clever prankster was who set up the meteorically-popular Twitter account, @BronxZoosCobra, wherein the cobra allegedly cracked wise about its alleged adventures in New York City. (In reality, the two-footer never left the reptile house.)

But what's really shocking is that, according to forensic publishing accountant, Flora Lipso Day, the acquiring Snakespell Books, is actually a new Imprint from of a famously-financially-strapped publisher that collectively owes its authors and vendors millions.

When asked for comment, beleaguered editorial holdout A. Kirsch Leers states: "We at Snakespell are absolutely not paying this advance out of the earnings owed our authors and vendors. We are making a prudent investment that we believe will allow us to recoup sufficient funds to repay all our creditors. Someday. Hopefully."



Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, By Kamalnv (Own work) [CC-BY-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

The Art and Economics of Ghostwriting

I was asked to share some thoughts on "The Art and Economics of Ghostwriting" in an article on AOL Daily Finance.

They say "everyone has a book in them." I say everyone has a spleen in them, too. In both cases, it takes a particular skill set to get it out. Obviously, baseline writing talent and solid knowledge of the craft are required for this job, but a good ghostwriter is also a good listener, meticulous researcher and all-purpose book nanny, with the ability to keep the client's secrets, build a bridge between the client and publisher, and completely set ego aside...

The article goes on to answer the three most common FAQs: "What does a ghostwriter do?" "How do clients and ghosts find each other?" And, of course, "How much do ghostwriters get paid?"

Read the rest here.

Show me the money (Forbes reports the 10 highest paid authors)

Who's making bank writing books? This article in Forbes reports the top ten literary green grossers in the 12 months ending June 1, 2010 and adds some insight to the hard data.

First, the list:
1) James Patterson $70 million
2) Stephanie Meyer $40 million
3) Stephen King $34 million
4) Danielle Steel $32 million
5) Ken Follet $20 million
6) Dean Koontz $18 million
7) Janet Evanovich $16 million
8) John Grisham $15 million
9) Nicholas Sparks $14 million
10) JK Rowling $10 million (the world's first billionaire author has fallen on hard times since the end of the Harry Potter series, but she seems grateful and philosophical as always. I don't anticipate an Authors Guild telethon for her or anything.)

So what might we learn from them and apply (albeit in microcosm) to our own writing careers?

These writers work incredibly hard, but it's also about branding. The article reminds us that Patterson's latest book deal "involves penning a carpal tunnel-risking 17 books by the end of 2012 for an estimated $100 million." It goes on to say that JP "writes all his novels in longhand" but doesn't mention that the hand is attached to someone else's arm. Patterson's enormous income is largely based on a franchise business model; if you loved a Denny's Grand Slam Breakfast in New Caney, Texas, you know you can get the same thing in Holmen, Wisconsin, so rather than risk $6.99 on the mom and pop place down the street, consumers most often go for that known quantity. Different cooks, same menu. Patterson employs a posse of co-authors. I hope he's sharing the wealth equitably.

Another key aspect to thriving as a writer is diversified income sources. Book advances are just one component. Movie rights are huge for everyone on the Forbes list. Backlist love will keep King's heirs raking it in for generations to come. The article also notes that King is "prolific, and not just in books: A recent profile noted that over the course of a few weeks this year he had a story published in the New Yorker, a review of a Raymond Carver biography in the New York Review of Books, an article in the horror magazine Fangoria and a poem in Playboy."

There's foreign sales, TV series spin-offs, action figures. Steele's income included a large settlement from a former assistant who'd embezzled from her. The vagaries of the marketplace, blind luck, serendipity, and the unknowable chemistry of God and mass audience account for the rest. I'm slightly encouraged by the fact that the list is only 60% male, saddened by the fact that it's 100% white.

Perhaps the most important thing to note is that each of these writers broke the mold in some way. Each of them started out doing exactly what s/he wanted to do, and success wasn't instant or easy for any of them. That's really the only thing we can extrapolate: To thine own self be true. Because there are no secrets to success, no formulas, no golden tickets. We have to write what we feel called to write, knowing that money is just one of many yardsticks that measure success. There is no list for Top 10 Most Thrilled By the Perfect Word...Top 10 Most Grateful For First Book Deal...Top 10 Most Loved By Their Kids...Top 10 Office Window Bird Feeding Stations...Top 10 Mid-Day Home Office Conjugal Visits...all of which could be cross-compiled into a list of the Top 10 Happiest Writers.

Click here to read the rest of the Forbes article.

Answering Pub Perspective's Q of the day: "Has Digital and Self Publishing Devalued Authorship?"

Today on Publishing Perspectives, Edward Nawotka asks, "Has Digital and Self Publishing Devalued Authorship?" The gist of it:

...the very definition of “author” is changing. It is no longer merely used to describe a solitary writer working away in a room for hours on end. Today, it means the leader of a “tribe,” someone with their own community which they may have developed through their writing, blogging, Tweeting, et al. What’s more, technology has put the would-be “author” on equal footing with publishers: the cost of publishing — online or even in print — is free and/or accessible to most.

As a talented dabbler who developed into a person who writes books for a living, I’m not overly sensitive about other talented dabblers calling themselves “authors.” In my humble opinion, the definitions of “author” and “publishing” set forth above are more a devaluation of the important role others play in the production of a well-crafted book.

Writing a book without an editor is like applying lipstick without a mirror; I suppose a few people can do it, but they never look as good as they think they do.

The art of book design is something people don’t usually notice unless it’s done poorly, but a great design — from flap copy to font selection — makes a huge difference in the life of the book and the experience of the reader. (I was lucky enough to have Chip Kidd design the cover for my memoir, Bald in the Land of Big Hair, and I’m incredibly grateful for his contribution to that book’s success.)

The PR, sales, and marketing people I’ve worked with from Random House to the small presses are smart, business savvy, hardworking missionaries for the books they work on. The anal retentive copy editors and eagle-eye legal reviewers have vigilantly held my feet to the fire. My agent is my advocate throughout the process, keeping everything on an even keel, pushing for better positioning of the book, and shaking the money tree when needed. The head honcho at the publisher keeps the corporate boat afloat. Packing and shipping staff tote proverbial barges and bales. Bookkeepers tabulate royalty statements and (ideally) cut the checks that allow us all to do it for another day.

Of all the ridiculously unfair things about the publishing industry, perhaps the most egregious is that books don't have a rolling list of credits at the end. It takes a village. To dismiss the work of all these people as unnecessary is disrespectful and naive. If any one of them is sub-par, the book suffers for it. It’s scary to think people don’t know the difference, or worse yet, don’t care.

Marion Maneker breaks it down to the dollar in "Want to Know What a Book Really Costs?"

Yesterday on Slate's The Big Money, Marion Maneker offered an excellent just-the-facts-ma'am explanation of the hard and soft cost breakdown on books and ebooks in Want to Know What a Book Really Costs?:

Publishers say the physical costs of a book—paper, printing, warehousing, shipping and handling returns—account for only about 10 percent of the total. Digital distribution does not erase the need to spend on author advances, editing, marketing, and other functions.

Yes, Virginia, that can be true. Strictly defined, those costs are probably close to 10 percent of the retail price of the book. As astonishing as that may seem to nonpublishers, I'm not so sure the numbers support the publishers' case for higher book prices. So I did a little math for Jack. And I tried to show my work.

Maneker goes on to break it down to the dollar, and the real deal might surprise you. Check it out.

Oh, hell, why even pretend I'm not jealous?

Brunonia Barry makes me sick. She had a great idea for a novel, self-pubbed it with the gung-ho help of her husband, forked out money for an amazingly proficient PR firm, and ended up with a 2.4 million dollar book deal with Harper Collins.

In what friggin' universe does this occur? 2.4 million for one freaking novel? Come. On. In what freaking forty-four-double-D universe does that freaking happen?

I suppose these apocryphal tales of publishing industry glory-strikes are encouraging to some of my fellows in the foxholes on the frontlines of the industry, but it just makes me want to swallow a broken beer bottle. I hear something like that, and jealousy stabs me through the heart like a railroad spike. I'm sure that Brunonia is a wonderful person and a wonderful writer, who worked very hard and created a wonderful book. I have no reason to dislike her. From what I see in her blog, she seems like a heck of a nice gal, and frankly, the book sounds terrific.

Here's a bit about The Lace Reader from the starred review in PW(who's trashed me twice, may God be with them in their endeavors):

In Barry's captivating debut, Towner Whitney, a dazed young woman descended from a long line of mind readers and fortune tellers, has survived numerous traumas and returned to her hometown of Salem, Mass., to recover. Any tranquility in her life is short-lived when her beloved great-aunt Eva drowns under circumstances suggesting foul play.... Barry excels at capturing the feel of smalltown life, and balances action with close looks at the characters' inner worlds. Her pacing and use of different perspectives show tremendous skill and will keep readers captivated all the way through.

Well, la-dee-frickin'-da. Why don't we throw ten healthy book advances at that one, huh? Better yet, let's drown thirty beautifully written midlist novels in the slush pile so we can grab us some o'that! Feh!

I'm sad to say that my incinerating envy of this book deal will make it impossible for me to read this book that I would have probably enjoyed had I never heard the backstory on it. I do not enjoy seeing this side of myself. It's small and selfish. It shows a lack of gratitude for the great gifts and terrific luck I've enjoyed in my career. It's not about anything I don't have, it's purely about something someone else has. And it's one thing. Okay, two things. Okay 2.4 million things. The point is, do I want to trade lives with Brunonia Barry? Of course not. I love my life. My husband is the Rock of Gibraltar. My publishing luck has been stellar. My life is ridiculously well-blessed with love, books, good dogs, excellent friends. It's just that...dang.

There's no point trying to emulate the coup Brunonia and her husband accomplished. The universe pulled her name out of a hat today. Harper Collins will make that book a massive bestseller because they can't afford to have it be anything less. Does that mean the universe could pull my name out of a hat? Technically, sure it does. But in the blackened depths of my jealous heart, I know that's not going to happen.

So what do I do with this ugly little ogre of feeling living under a bridge in my soul? I suppose I could pretend to be happy for her, but I've gotten to a place in my life where I just don't budget energy for pretending. I could suppress the ulcerous emotion somewhere in my stomach and stew on it privately, but what fun would that be? Or I can allow myself to embrace the demon for a moment. If I hold onto it too long, it'll turn to acid, but just for a moment...

It's easy to let myself off the hook with "that never happens" or "that's not the way it's done" in this industry, but the truth is, any freaking thing can and does happen in the publishing game, and anything can be "done" if somebody does it. So maybe an occasional boot to the head is healthy. Hopefully, I'll draw a little energy from my jealousy today. Work harder. Dig deeper. Maybe I'll take a look at what I'm doing and undoing in my career -- not with the blind ambition of doing better than Brunonia, but with the eyes-wide-open reality check that is the first step to improving my game plan.

Or I could spend the evening with a carrot cake and a bottle of wine, then get up tomorrow, take some Advil, and get back to work.

(Photos above: Sophia Loren gives Jayne Mansfield the bitch-eye. Gotta love it.)