by anesamiller_wuhi6k | Mar 13, 2014 | Blog, Series: Drawer no more!
My first adventure in self-publishing dates back to the mid-1990s. Under heartrending circumstances (more on that later), my fiancé at the time offered to pay for printing a small book of my poems. I had written several poems for him, addressing his sorrowful circumstances, which partly motivated his offer.
Even so, his generosity blew me away.
In a whirlwind of action, I reconsidered all the verses I’d ever penned that remotely fit the poetic topic of loss. I contacted a printer in the nearest town of sufficient size to have a printer. Prevailing on friendship, I recruited a local artist to create illustrations and advise me on stock, color, fonts, illuminated letters, and all such visual elements. Within weeks, I had selected a manuscript of 20 poems and made plans for a 64-page perfect-bound chapbook to showcase them.
With eager anticipation, I showed these plans to my fiancé, Jaak (pronounced Yahk, it’s a common name in Estonia, where he was born). He smiled and nodded until I whipped out the printer’s quote. This marked a shift in attitude, almost like a sudden drop in temperature. I had kept him up to date on every step of the planning process. But now, he seized a handful of paper from his inkjet printer and proceeded to demonstrate how efficiently one can fold several 8.5 x 11″ sheets and tape or staple them by hand. Voilà! A nice little booklet! Illustrations? How convenient they’re pen-and-inks—a cinch to photocopy! No, no, sweetheart—you didn’t waste time driving 50 miles to the printer to pore over expensive papers. It’s always worthwhile to see how professionals operate.
But let’s be reasonable, can’t we?
I’m afraid not. First, you urge a hungry writer to picture her name on the cover of a perfect-bound book, then you break the news that what you really meant was a home-assembled saddleback?
I’m afraid the scene wasn’t pretty. Language was used that I prefer not to remember as I accused Jaak of backing out after he—and he ALONE, with no wheedling on my part!—had raised my hopes to the lofty level of 64 pages and a card stock cover. That was an especially bitter pill: in order to keep the price down to (what I took as) a reasonable figure, I had foregone the fancy C1S (coated 1-side) cover, virtues of which my salesman refused to shut up about. AND NOW YOU’RE SNATCHING THOSE PRETTY DREAMS AWAY, LEAVING ME TO STAPLE LOOSE-LEAF COPIES FROM THE XEROX SHOP?!!
How could I claim that the book was really even “published” if it were a mere mock-up like I often made for my children, decorated with crayon drawings? How could I put an ISBN on that?
So my first self-publishing venture was marked by painful conflict.
This being a true confession, I must return to the fact that Jaak was deeply bereaved. At the time I’m harking back to, a couple of years had flowed under the bridge since the terrible night when his teenage daughter, Tiina, was killed on the highway south of town by a drunk driver. But the death of a child is a blow from which a parent never fully recovers, so that dreadful night was still fresh for my man, and my poems were meant to aid his healing. Instead, there I was putting vanity above compassion as I protested his stinginess after the fact.
(In my defense, I had sacrificed my eyesight, going from 20/20 vision to my first-ever pair of prescription glasses, helping Jaak put out his book, which I edited developmentally over a period of two years, then helped copyedit and proofread. Please bear this in mind before judging me harshly…)
Heaven sent down a few mercies, and as it turned out, a small grant materialized. I got my perfect-bound booklet of 64 pages with 2-color cover and professionally photographed illustrations. The end result was quite lovely, and Jaak declined to hold a grudge over my petulant outburst. In fact, as my husband, he remains willing to this day to support my further adventures.
Nonetheless, that early foray still provokes nightmares. I mentioned the difficult decision of turning down the C1S cover, despite the claim that it would lead to “reliably brisker sales.” How embarrassing to admit that I, a sane and relatively well-educated adult, believed my poetry book would sell! Everyone familiar with self-publishing in that pre-electronic era knows my next confession: I have nightmares of posthumous embarrassment, imagining how my descendants will find those cartons of books stacked in the garage. Oh—and here’s another pile in the attic! And, my gosh—even more in the hall closet!
You mean they didn’t fly off the shelves, after all?
Self-publishers used to hock hard copies of books from the trunks of their cars. Now there’s been a revolution with the advent of e-readers and online retail bringing costs down and boosting accessibility. Has this solved the problems of sales and distribution? Tell me what you think—please feel free to comment on these or related matters.
by anesamiller_wuhi6k | Mar 5, 2014 | Blog, Series: Drawer no more!
As you can easily figure, through all the years of submissions and rejections, publishing a book was my ultimate goal. Or my pipe dream, as it seemed. I produced two full-length manuscripts of poetry, one of short stories and one of essays. I attended writers’ groups and book clubs. I wrote three novels, appealed to agents and editors, researched small presses (which always seemed to cut off submissions the week before I discovered them), and I paid tidy sums for critiques of my work and my query letters.
All to no avail.
One bright morning, sometime after my collection of rej slips topped 2000, I opened the manuscript drawer and started shoveling. All those pulped trees and heartfelt phrases that no one cared about (except me, who didn’t seem to count) weighed like an albatross around my neck. A ton of stuff that didn’t deserve to see the light of day went straight to recycling.
But as I wheeled the last bits—the best of my rejected work—down to the curb, a fresh thought dawned in my sorrowful brain.
Why not publish some of it myself?
Please bear in mind: self-publishing is not what I had ever wanted. Well, okay, here’s a true confession: for one minute, almost 20 years earlier, I did want to self-publish a book. My fervent desire to NEVER do so again is a direct result of that ill-fated experiment. I have spent nearly every day of the subsequent decades yearning for the other kind of publication: the knight-in-shining-armor kind, where my work, on its own stellar merits, attracts a caring agent who finds an intelligent editor at a major publishing house just dying to produce my work and promote it to all the world, which of course comes flocking to buy and read!
Oh, God—Farrar, Strauss & Giroux! Yes, yes—W. W. Norton! Don’t stop—Knopf, Penguin, Random House! Such was my fantasy life, year after year after year. (Dare I imply that these Great Houses f*ck their writers? Do writers delude themselves into believing traditional publishers offer the best arrangement since wine started coming in bottles?)
In short, after all that unrequited lust, you can imagine how hard it was to accept the new idea dawning upon me. I resisted furiously, drummed up excuses why self-publishing was wrong for me—even if other writers were embracing the process left and right. For example—
I hate e-books.
I don’t speak mobi and don’t intend to learn.
Arcane formatting makes me break out in a rash.
Don’t trust the term “creative team.” Don’t work well with others after years in that lonely garret.
Can’t find a competent copyeditor, proofreader, designer, illustrator, or other members of that team I don’t trust.
Can’t tell a shyster from a legit author’s services company.
POD what?
And on and on.
But more compelling than any excuses, all the while I wallowed in my stalling tactics, the characters in my latest novel kept speaking in my ears. Their babble of voices told me, “You owe it to us to try! We want out to see the sunlight! You know people will love us if they only get the chance. We don’t care if it’s not Knopf—just publish us. We’ll do the rest.”
What could I possibly say to that?
Tell me what you think: Does corporate publishing make off with too much of the pie while writers starve in their garrets? Is it fair for the house to take the major cut even on low-overhead e-books? Please feel free to comment on these and related matters.
by anesamiller_wuhi6k | Jan 27, 2014 | Blog, Series: Drawer no more!
What does the image of a drawer bring to mind?
A disarray of socks and underwear with no connection to literature or new technologies? True, but before computers became the storage unit of choice for years’ worth of old text files, a drawer jammed with manuscripts represented a serious backlog of unpublished material.
In Russian (one of my former professions), there was a saying in the days of universal censorship: “This one’s for the drawer.” Or, “He writes strictly for the drawer”—i.e., with no hope of publication. Even in the era of samizdat, a practice of illegal home-based publishing, writing for the drawer meant that an author was brave enough to put unflattering ideas about the Soviet system down on paper. Sadly, his or her readership remained limited to a circle of trusted friends.
In an American context, where being ignored is far more likely than being censored, writing “for the drawer” suggests the author has lost the will to keep seeking the golden fleece of publication. Given up on sharing his or her work with anyone, anywhere. In my case, some 2000 rejection slips from magazines and agents all over America (plus a few in other countries) accumulated in my desk drawers before I called it quits.
My skin was thick as a rhino’s. Several times I did savor the thrill of seeing my stories and poems in print. But there was little satisfaction to be had. No one ever said, “I saw your piece in the Texas Review—that’s great!” Never a “Like” or a +1 in those days. Even the editors who accepted my work rarely doled out compliments; with one or two exceptions, it was all form letters. And the lag time between acceptance, publication, and anyone actually reading the magazine was measured in light years. Not conducive to building a sense of connection, much less community.
(I can hear high-minded protesters defending the volunteer editors who devote themselves to literary publications. Certainly, they work hard and face many challenges. Now that I’ve sworn off submitting, I give sincere thanks and praise for the lovely journals they produce. But the disaffected writer finds it hard to keep the editor’s perspective in mind.)
Moreover, I was paying two-way postage for all those rejection slips, not to mention envelopes, cover letters, and manuscripts, at least a dozen of which got pulped for every acceptance. Sure, I bought supplies with recycled content, but even so, my non-profit writing career came to feel like a deforestation project with a steep price tag. No longer a sacred vocation, creativity devolved into my own private vanity press—and still no book to show for it! I reached a point where the thought of sending out one more submission made my stomach queasy.
Tell me what you think: Should artists overcome the desire for an audience and just be satisfied with the creative process? And if so, how? How can we do that?
Electronic magazines make publication simpler and speedier than in the old world of print. But is this a mixed blessing for literary journals? There are more submissions than ever, but it’s still a tough job choosing “the best.” And how about prestige—have online journals caught up?
Please feel free to comment on these and other matters.
by anesamiller_wuhi6k | Jan 13, 2014 | Blog, Series: Drawer no more!
How did an old-school scribbler—a garret-sitting recluse and hater of newfangled technology—make the leap to electronic publishing, social networking, and that bête-noire of all things authentic, self-promotion?
The leap is not complete. Right now, I’m skidding between safe harbors, grappling my way up the slopes of a “vertical learning curve.” Whether I manage to touch down lightly in the high-tech literary world remains to be seen. You’re invited to watch the virtual Reality Show of my struggle, right here on the Blog at the website I never thought would bear my name!
What forces a formalist poet and literary novelist like yours truly to attempt such a jump in the first place? Short version: I found myself at a crossroads where I had to make a drastic change. I needed to take my artistic future in my own hands, or else do something destructive—reject my identity as a writer: erase files, burn journals, rent out my office to a deserving graduate student.
As writers (or artists of any stripe) our own psychology is no doubt our greatest asset. It can also become a terrific stumbling block. Before I began inching forward with self-publishing plans, I had hit an all-time low. I fell into a depression and suffered from agoraphobia, refusing to leave the house for days on end.
One of my favorite cartoonists, Peter Vey (www.pcvey.com), brilliantly captures aspects of those feelings in an item I ran across in The Funny Times (www.funnytimes.com)—
Writing can be a lonely business. For almost two wasted years, I DID feel that writing had ruined my life: While others engaged with the world, teaching children to read, growing food, or building cars, I sat in my garret pondering a fuzzy navel. I had dedicated my “talents”—paltry as they seemed—to a cruel muse who offered fewer satisfactions with each passing year. Self-expression was my be all and end all, but if no one beyond the self takes the slightest interest, what’s the point in expressing anything?
What do you think: Is writing an isolating occupation, or does the exercise of imagination let you connect with all humanity? Are artists more prone to depression than people in other walks of life? Please feel free to comment on other relevant matters, as well.
Join me next time for further adventures in indie publishing!
