Having reviewed as much non-fiction as I have, you are bound to come across those who have “borrowed” other people’s work and not given them credit for it. It doesn’t happen often in traditionally-published works, but it does happen. As a green reviewer early on, I missed one that was a direct rip-off of another authors work. It was embarrassing, to say the least.

Plagiarism happens in many genres of non-fiction. Older material is out of print or in limited issue and someone thinks no one will notice. These titles can be run through software that checks for plagiarism and have been found to not be “properly attributed.” Publishers are spending money on software that specializes in tracing work to identify plagiarized material, because it will cost the publisher heavily in dollars and in reputation if it is discovered they missed a plagiarized work and allowed it to get out on the open market.

My own recent experience with some plagiarized material turned up an author who, when discovered and rejected by a mainstream publishing house, turned to self-publishing their work to circumvent the process. They skimmed off the Internet and produce e-books of gleaned material, and are selling it to the unsuspecting public. And while we can point it out, there isn’t much else we can do.

When the self-publishing firm was made aware that the material was indeed plagiarized, it was removed. But the works reappeared at the same publisher. It probably would continue even if it was mentioned to the publisher again. And, of course, with all the various self-publishers out there, this material could continue in publication regardless of how often it is identified and removed. All the plagiarist does is move on to another self-publisher.

This also happens with fiction. While we can allow that, say, works on vampires will include similar treatment of the vampire to have it fit the description, how about the love scene that is just about word for word from an older work, or from a different work of fiction all together, slapped into the vampire book. Love scenes, plots; oh there is so much that can be gleaned from other well-known authors and then plugged into a fiction e-book and sold on the Internet with no one really checking.

There are some real questions that are going to rise in the self-publishing industry. As these incidents are brought to the surface, and eventually make the front page of the New York Times book section, how is self-publishing going to stand up to accusations of fraud and/or plagiarism? We want this field to open doors for authors who would never have been given a chance to present their work to the public because the publishing houses don’t see enough money in sales or do not have enough funding to publish all the really great books out there. And we have the ultimate question of how is the public going to know if the work is just a rip off of another person’s work?

Reviewers on the Front Lines

The person who is going to be in a position to even get a hint of this is the reviewer. An experienced reviewer in a particular genre will notice a change in writing style within a particular novel. They may be familiar with the various authors within that genre and know their styles and the content of some of the better known authors. It very well may be the reviewer who recognizes a style or a scene or something familiar that will put them onto a possible case of plagiarism.

Having discovered plagiarized work and exposed it in the past, I also know what dishonorable authors (read: con-artists) will do when they have their backs against the wall. Some of them lash out and attack viciously. Others just take the money and run. Someone has to say something, and there is never a “polite” way of saying “the material in this book is copied from other copyrighted sources [insert sources here] and therefore is plagiarized.”

But who do you complain to? What agency will even care? And will it be worth it to the author who has been plagiarized to pursue this? And as a reviewer, do we also become the plagiarism police? It is not something I really want as part of my job description.

What is needed is a service that will check all books issued (notice I said ALL books) and report these plagiarized works. What we also need are self-publishers that will use this service and remove titles that have been so indicated. Where would the funding come from? Well, I would suggest all the publishers involved, including big houses, would also benefit from this. It would probably boil down to pennies per book, but in the long run, it would protect the copyrights of legitimate authors, it would protect both publishers, self-publishers and vendors from issues with plagiarized work, and it would discourage plagiarism and copyright theft. And in the long run, give the public honest work.

I am sure a few services would be able to work in this field, specializing in particular genre, offering services to the industry. A standard could be set as to the percentage of the book that would be allowable to contain similar content. It is possible for us to quote popular ism’s and that will probably show up in many books at a particular time. But the industry could come with some guidelines. While we may not like the concept of regulation, it is always better that we regulate our own than have someone else mandate it for us.

The self-publishing field will suffer if we find it being used as a haven for pushing rehashed and in some instances identical copies of other people’s works. And self-publishing will be treated as “vanity” presses are treated; as a frowned-upon method of fleecing the public with hackneyed authors turning out junk. The legitimate self-published authors will suffer.

Update: Fast Company takes on the problem with plagiarism in erotica self-publishing:

This penchant for plagiarism shouldn’t surprise us. Self-publishing has become the latest vehicle for spammers and content farms, with the sheer volume of self-published books making it difficult, if not impossible, for e-stores like Amazon to vet works before they go on sale. In 2006, 51,000 self-published titles were released; last year there were 133,036 self-published books, and that number is destined to climb. 

Writing a book is hard. All those torturous hours an author has to spend creating, crafting, culling until nonsensical words are transformed into engaging prose. It’s a whole lot easier to copy and paste someone else’s work, slap your name on top, and wait for the money to roll in. This creates a strong economic incentive, with fake authors–Sharazade thinks it’s possible they are organized gangs based in Asia–earning 70% royalty rates on every sale, earning far more than a spammer could with click fraud. The new self-publishing platforms are easy to use and make it possible to publish a title in as little as 24 hours. There’s no vetting, editing, or oversight, and if your work is taken down you can always throw up more titles or simply concoct a new pen name and start over. There’s even a viral ebook generator that comes packed with 149,000 articles that makes it possible to create an ebook in minutes.

Legislation has been proposed that would give content holders more leverage in dealing with etailers: the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). It would award copyright holders wide-ranging powers to run websites that host infringing material off the Internet without needing to acquire a court order. If it becomes law credit card companies could be forced to suspend financial transactions, search engines required to de-link ecommerce sites, and DNS providers made to hobble access. It’s the kind of law, well-intentioned as it might be, that could have serious negative repercussions, opponents say. No wonder Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Google, and Yahoo! have reportedly been considering a coordinated protest against it in the form of a blackout day.

There is, I believe, a simpler solution. Why not require an author to submit a valid credit card before she can self-publish her works on the Kindle? If an author, who could still publish under a pen name, were found to have violated someone else’s copyright Amazon could charge that card $2,000 and ban her from selling again. Amazon could also run content through one of the many plagiarism detectors that are available–such as Turnitin or iThenticate–before an ebook is put on sale.

Perhaps, though, Amazon doesn’t care if it sells plagiarized works; it benefits from the sale whether it holds back an author’s royalties or not.

Compared with online retailers, bookstores present a frustrating consumer experience. A physical store—whether it’s your favorite indie or the humongous Barnes & Noble at the mall—offers a relatively paltry selection, no customer reviews, no reliable way to find what you’re looking for, and a dubious recommendations engine. Amazon suggests books based on others you’ve read; your local store recommends what the employees like. If you don’t choose your movies based on what the guy at the box office recommends, why would you choose your books that way?

Perhaps I should add a disclaimer here: I’ve done most of my Christmas shopping at Amazon, including books. It’s plainly easier, and frankly more enjoyable – certainly more enjoyable than going to Barnes & Noble during the Christmas rush. Some of the books I bought might be available at a small indie. But taking the trip through L.A. traffic to buy one book here/one book there is not something I look forward to. Advantage: Amazon.

Author Richard Russo came back with this rebuttal (his piece inspired the original Slate article which started this whole thing).  He begins by mentioning sales tax:

If you buy the book locally, the sales tax you pay will fund local schools and fill local potholes.

Yeah, that’s something, but I just got hit with a $1200 city tax bill for doing freelance writing out of my apartment.  When it comes to taxes: where there’s a will, there’s a way. There is an argument that it’s important to have a thriving book culture in different communities, and not just have everyone’s heads in cyberspace.  This is important, but if people are reading more, they’re reading more. Cyberspace is also a culture. It’s not a deal-breaker.

This is the heart of his argument:

How do we explain why so many of today’s movies suck? I think that’s an interesting question in its own right, but it’s even more interesting when posed in conjunction with another. Why is current television so terrific? (Honestly, I don’t know what to say to anyone who thinks the reverse.) I think the reason is pretty simple. Television is great right now because there are so many outlets and so much competition: pay tv, cable, network. Hundreds of channels, all hungry for content. As a result, you find wonderfully well-written, acted, and directed shows everywhere (along with, obviously, all manner of crap). On the other hand, movies suck because the studios that make them have been subsumed by entities that care first about selling things.

Here’s where it gets trickier.  It’s a cliche now to say Amazon is the new Wal-Mart. They both have the same effect: shutting down mom and pop businesses. EXCEPT – and this is huge – Amazon also has the KDP store, which means they’ve opened up the amount of creative work that can be produced and consumed.  Even a gigantic superstore like Wal-Mart has a limited shelf space.  Amazon doesn’t.

Amazon Doesn’t Rule

This may lead you to think: Amazon rules! But Amazon’s driving profit motive could mess with self-publishers as well. People are flocking to KDP Select.  David Gaughran puts the numbers at 30,000 in the first week.  This is 1/3 of Smashwords’ total library.  What happens if those people all have good sales/good lending during their initial 3 month trial?  They’ll never go back to Pubit, Kobo, or Smashwords again.  It is very much in self-publishers’ long-term interest for there to be a thriving ebook market across many devices.  Some are saying – well, that means those other outlets will have to offer better terms in order to compete.  Given the massive head start Amazon has, even if B&N offered a 90% royalty it might not be able to make up for the sales volume offered by Amazon.  The Kindle Fire – though it’s had a lot of complaints – is the one that gets all the publicity. The Nook doesn’t.

But so what?  If there’s no Nook, Kobo reader, or anything else, and people are still selling books on Amazon in the same numbers, then what’s the difference?  The competition between ereaders isn’t necessary.  This is up in the air – we’re at the very beginning of the ebook, so it’s unclear how many Hockings there will be in the future.  It will certainly become more difficult as more books are added to the ebook store.

And another wildcard is that the ability of KDP Select authors to offer their books for free means that Kindle owners basically never need to buy a book again.  Right now there are more free books than you could ever read in a lifetime.  Already, my Kindle sales have gone way down since KDP Select, and I’m not the only one who’s faced this problem.  This may be a statistical blip – after Christmas, this may change again. It’s not entirely in Amazon’s interest to not sell titles, but they’re at the stage where they want people to become ebook addicts to help sell more Kindles. Could it be that Amazon is weighting visibility for those authors who are in Select? Even if this is pure paranoia – giving Amazon so much power means they are free to do things just like that.

One thing is pretty certain: more titles in the Kindle store means it’ll be harder to get recognized. And if Amazon has totally corned the market on ebooks, they’ll be free to change their 35% or 70% royalty rate because authors won’t have a choice: everyone who buys ebooks owns a Kindle, so there’s no reason to shop anywhere else. This is the worst-case implication of Select.  If people are making a lot of money via Select it’s hard to argue that they should stop, but it may not be in the long term interest of writers overall.

What seems to be missing in the indie bookstore argument is ebooks.  Plainly, there’s no need to browse ebooks in-store. They’re built for the web, and after this Christmas there’s going to be a major ebook boom.  So it’s terrible, but it’s pretty much old news: indie bookstores are becoming obsolete, and this is not entirely Amazon’s fault. It’s the “fault” of technology.  Ebooks are fun and convenient – Amazon didn’t invent this idea, they just perfected the tech.  iTunes didn’t “destroy” record stores as some act of malicious capitalism: Apple invented something incredibly useful.

Ironically, self-publishers and traditional publishers may soon be in the same boat. Just as traditional publishers are complaining about the terms demanded by Amazon, it’s quite possible self-publishers might also face the same problem. Amazon has been amazing for self-publishers – but to think that authors are truly “indie” is not really the case: they’re dependent on the whims of a corporate monolith.  Amazon could end the ebook gold rush because they own the gold. In the meantime, enjoy the rush, but be wary of giving one company too much control over the industry.

In September 2011, he published his latest novel with Book Republic, The Memory of Trees, available in hardback and Kindle ebook. When he completed writing the novel, he launched a spiritual site, Strength Through Joy, featuring the serial pieces, Things That Happen, chronicling his own spiritual journey.

Self-Publishing Review: What’s The Memory of Trees and what prompted you to write this work?

Mick Rooney: One of the central themes in The Memory of Trees is the idea that our most precious memories can be ‘remembered’ or ‘entrusted’ to the trees for safe-keeping. Initially, I thought this was a belief exclusive to the Druids, but as I researched the idea more, I began to find similar beliefs were held by the Native American Indians, tribes of ancient South American, and even with cultures and religions in the Middle East and Far East. So, the tree as a very powerful symbol of growth, strength, knowledge and spiritual protection and preservation, permeates throughout the book. For Carlos, a shepherd boy from Cyprus, the forest becomes his ‘leafy cathedral’. The same idea can be developed in so many different ways; after all, the book itself, as a tool of learning and recording our experiences in life, is made from the pulp of the tree. The forests of the world are fundamental to the very air we breathe, and, I also think, an infinite source of ideas in literature, science and spiritualism.

It is strange sometimes what crops ups when you undertake writing a novel. It’s a journey, and I do a great deal of research for every book I write. That can present a lot of tangents and forks in the road ahead for a writer, and the trick is knowing what is the right path to follow that doesn’t distract you from the work, but rather adds to the folklore and strength of the final work. It’s like your own research, Henry, into the myth of 2012, and what the Mayans believed. You, as a writer, have to decide if the research process is more about your own development, or about the development of the book itself. It’s a fine line and compromise. I’m not a writer who writes a book over a few months. A book is a project for me, and it often spans several years. This one began back in the mid 1990’s.

I think a lot of authors begin their writing journey with stories containing or based heavily on very personal experiences. For me, that didn’t really start until I’d written several books. So, after about a year of research, The Memory of Trees took hold of my life as a novel. I’d been working on my own spiritual development at the time – and the two processes just worked beautifully together. Up until then, I did feel my previous work may have been perceived as very much literary fiction, and at times, a little inaccessible. The Memory of Trees is the one book I felt would have a much more general readership.

The Memory of Trees is the story of Carlos who travels from his simple village in Cyprus, following in the footsteps of Saint Paul and his uncle, into the Middle East and along the road to Damascus. Carlos is a teenage island boy, bright, thoughtful and passionate, brought up on the traditions of his village elders. After experiencing personal loss in his life and exile from his village, he sets out on a journey of knowledge and adventure, embracing the spiritual wisdom of the trees and a quest to explore the path his mysterious uncle once took into the Middle East.

SPR: People who visit TIPM may not realize that you’re a fairly spiritual person, with a leaning towards the esoteric. You also run the site Strength Through Joy. Is the Memory of Trees a reflection of that outlook? Would you consider this religious fiction?

MR: You know, I struggle with definitions – definitions of what an author is and how best their books should be defined.

When I published Academy a few years ago, the first reviews started describing it as an historical fiction. At first, that bemused me. For me, it was like cooking a beef dish and someone saying to you; oh, that looks like a nice dessert. I get close to my work at a very deep level, and I had to accept that in essence the reviewers were right, but I never set out to write a genre specific book. It is what it is – however reviewers or readers tend to want to classify or define books so they can pass on their reading experience to others. I’d prefer to define The Memory of Trees as a spiritual book, rather than a religious book. No religion by creed is directly mentioned in the book, and ‘god’ is perhaps mentioned two or three times in the book.

I did consider publishers of religious and spiritual fiction when I sent the book out on submission in 2009. That’s the problem when you try the genre specific route – oh, it’s not GOD enough for us; oh, it’s not really SPIRITUAL enough!! One US publishing house passed it to their children’s fiction editor because they thought it might best fit with that imprint. Another publisher in the US wanted me to rewrite the book more as a sort of travel world adventure novel. My next work is about alchemy and a serial killer. How would that square with a children’s imprint or an author of a religious novel?! I’ve never had an agent because I’d rather negotiate every book I write on its own strength and terms. I am probably esoteric, and with an agent, after every book, I’d probably have the agent reaching for the bottle of gin, revolver and medicine cabinet!!

I’ve tried to keep my own spiritual journey separate from the work I do on The Independent Publishing Magazine. That’s why I have a separate author site, as well as the personal spiritual site, Strength Through Joy. Originally, TIPM started out in very late 2007 as a place to record my own experience with self-publishing and the research I was doing into many author solutions services. The site address still holds the mickrooney.blogspot.com address. Since then, I’ve gone through two reincarnations with TIPM – POD, Self-Publishing & Independent Publishing, as it once was, and now, The Independent Publishing Magazine.  I reached a stage where the term ‘self-publishing’ was devoid of its real meaning, and I was researching and reporting on all that was happening in publishing – print and digital – for everyone, rather than just self-published authors.

SPR: How does this novel fit into your oeuvre of self-published work?

MR: I’ve never ever considered any of my books by the method or path the books reached publication. For me, it’s about connecting with the reader, and when you make that connection, the reader is not consumed by how the book is published, just so long as they can lay their hands on it. As a book, The Memory of Trees is certainly a more accessible book for general readers, in a way that some of my previous work would have been difficult to market. I was convinced after I wrote the book that it would eventually, with perseverance, find a publishing house, and thankfully it did with Book Republic.

SPR: What was your decision-making process about going traditional or sticking with self-publishing?

MR: In 1990, I set up my own publishing imprint and self-published several books at a time when we didn’t have POD (print on demand).  I’d spent a couple of years doing the submission rounds with publishers. But really, that’s when it started to get really difficult to interest editors. Publishing was starting to change, and the big fish were quickly gobbling up the smaller fish.  It became increasingly harder to find true independent publishers. The publishers were you really stood a chance – beyond the new gatekeeping control – were hard to find. Back then, the Internet was a limited resource and many independent publishing presses and houses hadn’t discovered it. Author handbooks and guides stuck to the rigid line of commercial houses and the defined path of find an agent and let them find you a publisher.  Self-publishing was still frowned upon and only a few mavericks like Peter Finch and Michael Legat were even suggesting self-publishing as a viable path.

I began with desktop publishing, learned bookbinding, bought equipment, got my own ISBN’s from Whittacker’s in the UK, at a time when you didn’t have to pay for them, and sold my books directly to bookstores. I learned so much back then. POD came along, and I switched to using Lulu in 2007. For a reprint of an earlier book I self-publisher during the 1990’s, Thais, I tried Blurb. In fact, I’ll stand corrected, but I believe I was the first person to use Blurb as a printer in 2009, and use Amazon Advantage with my own publishing imprint for distribution. It cost me more money per book to sell, but it hasn’t stopped 100+ authors now listing Blurb as their publisher of origin on Amazon today! I made the point directly to Blurb CEO Eileen Gittens back then, that they needed to start offering ISBN’s and online distribution if they were going to be able to take on Lulu and CreateSpace. A lot has improved with Blurb, but the company still has a way to go on developing distribution for authors using the print services.

In 2010 I published To Self-Publish or Not to Self-Publish with Troubador in the UK. It meant a lot to me that a book about self-publishing was published by a ‘traditional’ publisher.  It seemed to be that every second self-published writer wanted to speak about their experience of publishing and write a book to go with it, and the whole area became incredibly diluted by authors publishing mundane books.  No one was reflecting the growth in author solutions services in the UK and Ireland and analysing those companies to the dept I was doing on TIPM. I felt that needed to be put right.

When Book Republic accepted The Memory of Trees, it was the second book in a row to be traditionally published. BR has an option on the next novel, so we will see what happens. I’ve closed no doors on any path to seeing my books published. Both paths, depending on your aspirations and the opportunities that present themselves, are entirely valid.

It’s interesting that you said earlier that visitors of TIPM don’t realise I’m a spiritual person. I’d add, often, few of them also realise I am first and foremost an author. But writing to me over the past few years has been a dual process. More of my working time is taken up with the analysis of the industry, and I have to battle and remind myself that I also need time to be me – as an author. If promoting The Memory of Trees over the past two months has taught me one thing – it is; I need to keep reminding myself that the core of my being and how it all started out is about me being a writer, and what I share with readers and other authors.

SPR: How has your knowledge of the self-publishing industry informed how you’ve marketed this novel?  What’s the release been like so far?

MR: Again, as I hinted at earlier, it’s not so much my knowledge of the self-publishing industry, but publishing itself. The approach should be no different – good editing and design and distribution are as much at the core of excellent self-published books as they are at wide commercially published books.  For me, the greater publishing industry still publishes many well-edited and produced books that don’t sell well, and many self-published books sell well, but could have done even better had they benefited from better editing, production and marketing. I’ve always believed the best editors in the world are readers, because – to them – a good book is a good book, and readers, once captivated by a book, can be both forgiving and equally scathing.

While I’m not privy to the though process or decision making at my publisher at Book Republic, my impression and experience of working with them is of an innovative and very open-policy publisher. BR allows direct submissions from authors, and the approach is to look for something new, fresh and original in fiction. I also think the strength of an author’s practical, viral network and profile also counts a great deal to the publisher. I was involved at the design level far more than I have experienced with other traditional publishers. What I liked best about BR was their openness to adopt their publishing philosophy to every book as a singular project, rather than try to apply a rigid template across the board for every book.

Most of the marketing for The Memory of Trees, following the launch at the Irish Writers’ Centre in Dublin, has been viral, concentrating on the blog tour and social networking. It’s been about using those tools to generate interest in the book (both print and ebook) and to get stores to stock the book. That’s the key for any author and publisher. Book Republic has distribution through Ireland’s largest book print distributor, Gill & MacMillan, but that doesn’t guarantee your book will be on bookstore shelves. We lost Borders in Ireland more than two years ago, and this year, Waterstones pulled out. But some of the smaller independent booksellers like Dubray Books and Hughes & Hughes are showing strong signs of mopping up that part of the market.  Book Republic is a very progressive and innovative publisher, releasing titles through print production runs (hardback & paperbacks), POD paperback, as well as Kindle editions. The book only reached the physical distribution channels earlier this month, so we are still at an early stage. I think that is the other thing different with independent presses and smaller innovative publishers. They look at the long tail for promotion and sales of a book, rather than the sudden immediacy larger publishers seem to adopt.

SPR: How did you juggle all of your daily writing for TIPM with writing a new novel?  Do you think blogging – about any subject – can actually strip some of the writing urge for fiction?

MR: To be honest, Henry, it can be a real struggle to wear both hats at the same time. When I signed the publishing deal with my publisher, I knew I was going to have to cut back on the amount of time I was devoting to being a publishing consultant and running TIPM. I felt I had to break a perception among my own network that saw me solely as a journalist, researcher and writer. I spent three solid years building TIPM and many of the authors and publishers I met and spoke to were entirely unaware that I started out many years ago as a novelist. There are times when I feel pangs of guilt that I almost abandoned a small but dedicated readership when I last published a book of fiction in 2008. For them, The Memory of Trees has been a long wait.

As much as I’d like to think my general readership is singular – the reality is that there are readers, and then there are writers.  I think – without disparaging any of my readers – that writers through their own work and study adjust their perspective and what they will read dependant on the relevance to their work, rather than their lives. Readers, on the other hand, want to be just as stimulated as much as writers, but are less cynical—if that’s not too strong a word—and readers are more open to surprise and the romance of discovery. I hope I’m explaining this well enough, but there is certainly a kinetic difference between a writer and a reader.  It goes far beyond the idea that one is a creator and the other an explorer. For me, my readership is split down the middle. Some know me only through TIPM, and others have no interest in the publishing and research stuff.

In 2012, my primary goal is to place more of a focus on my own writing. I’ve no idea what impact that will have on my day to day work for TIPM, but I know my readers deserve another book within the next year. On New Year’s Eve, it’s that wish I will be raising a glass to.  In 2012, I have also given the commitment to be the self-publishing columnist for one of the UK’s biggest writing magazines, Writers Forum, and I’m looking forward to that. Whatever happens, I know I will have to be more discerning in the work I take on.

SPR: What’s your take on self-publishing and where it’s going? When both SPR and TIPM started, print on demand was the way to go, and now it’s somewhat being fazed out.  POD outfits have to be panicking somewhat – or do you think there’s still a healthy market for POD? Maybe everything will be POD at some point.

MR: This is a tricky question. The Kindle, and ebooks in general, have been the game changer.  I think POD may become the method of normality for publishers in regard to printed books, but only because high street booksellers will find it hard to compete with online booksellers and ebooks will become the new ‘mass-market paperback’.  POD works only because it localises a global publishing world. Print is only viable if the masses demand it. By definition of world economics – print is going to increase in cost over the coming years, to a point, offset print runs by publishers will reduce, maybe even equalising with POD unit prices for smaller runs. Yes, for some small and moderate sized publishers, POD, or more accurately, short digital runs, will become the standard model.

I’ve always said that the printed book will become a gift in the future of publishing—both for reader and publisher. The game entertainment industry has already grasped this idea and Microsoft and Sony have long being developing live online platforms for gamers. Every major Q4 game this year has a special, limited, or collector’s edition, priced much more than the standard edition, but still dedicated gamers to a brand will pay that increased price – whether it’s Assassins’ Creed, Call of Duty, Need For Speed or whatever. Big book publishers need to raise their backsides from their lunchtime salads and evening steaks and see what the gaming industry is doing to promote product and create branding on the long tail. Sure, it’s easy to sit back knowing the brand name of a bestselling author will deliver that regardless in many cases, but that kind of publishing is for lazy smucks trapped in a model of publishing that has changed little since the 1950’s, and in 5 years time, publishers relying on this kind of model will be praying on Christmas arriving in late summer.

Self-publishing as a term of publishing is a complete oxymoron – it makes no sense to me anyone. It doesn’t define what authors are doing today with Kindle or any author solutions service.  Walt Whitman was a self-publisher – he studied print techniques of the time and published his work.  I laid out pages on a simple word processor and studied bookbinding for my first book, Arcadia, in 1990, registered my own imprint – does that make me a self-publisher? Does going to CreateSpace or Lulu with your own registered ISBN make you a self-publisher? Does using AuthorHouse, Xlibris or iUniverse mean you aren’t a self-publisher because you don’t have your own batch of ISBN’s?  Self-publishing seems to have become whatever authors want it to mean, and likewise, also means anything to an author solutions service or vanity press.

SPR: You’re based in Ireland, close to the UK, and you also spend some of your time in the Netherlands – what’s the attitude like now regarding self-publishing in the UK.  Is the sea change as rapid as it is in the U.S.?

MR: I think initially self-publishing was about three to four years behind the U.S. over the last decade. The gap has shrunk considerably.  What I have found since I wrote To Self-Publish or Not to Self-Publish is that UK companies are quicker to understand the importance of distribution and many started from much smaller bases in significantly smaller market. Too many U.S. author solutions services have made the mistake of overstretching themselves to a point where the quality and attention to author’s books has dramatically deteriorated. That stretch is the difference between companies offering a one-on-one dedicated value-for-money service to being simply an author mill. In the early 2000’s, there was no ebook and no distribution platforms like Kobo or Smashwords. They’ve been game changers as well, though not as much now since the Kindle Publishing has come to the UK. There are not as many author solutions services in the UK and Ireland, but significantly, the better companies have learned quicker because of the mistakes of their American cousins. You don’t see as many companies popping up over a year and quickly disappearing in the UK as much as you see in the U.S.

While many self-published authors want the kudos of holding a copy of their books, the signs are that the savvy authors are wisely foregoing the initial move to print and focusing on building their brand and readership in digital, before making the investment in print.

SPR: What’s next for you at TIPM and next for you with fiction?

MR: I’m always trying to push the envelope on TIPM, and though the reviews will continue, I’ll try and be a little more selective, focusing more on those services I feel are truly innovative, rather than just a rehash of a model of POD service to authors offered by many other established companies. Digital publishing and ebooks have taken a front seat with TIPM and I plan to focus the reviews more on those companies and services.

I plan to finish the novel I’m working on at the moment, “Shadow & Orchid,” and it is a very different kind of book than The Memory of Trees! I like to keep myself on my toes as well as my readers!

SPR: Thanks, Mick.  Good luck with the book release.

Links:

The Independent Publishing Magazine

To Self Publish or Not to Self-Publish

The Memory of Trees | @ Amazon

Mick Rooney @ Facebook.

David Gaughran is the author of two books of short stories – Transfection and If You Go Into The Woods – as well as the popular blog devoted to self-publishing, Let’s Get Digital.

Self-Publishing Review: How long have you been writing?

David Gaughran: I’ve always been scribbling something or other but I only got serious about six years ago, i.e. writing with the explicit aim of publication.

SPR: Are you a disaffected writer fleeing the traditional industry, or did you start with self-pubbing?

DG: I’ve never had a publishing deal. I had a couple of shorts published but could never snag an agent. Around March this year, I started seriously considering self-publishing for the first time. I had been following it for a while, reading Joe Konrath’s blog and Dean Wesley Smith’s blog, but I still wanted a traditional deal. On the other hand, the publishing business seemed to be way behind the curve on e-books and I was becoming more and more frustrated with querying. Then Barry Eisler walked away from half a million dollars. I decided to take a closer look. When I discovered Kindle Boards, I found this huge group of self-publishers who were selling thousands of books a month. That made my mind up.

SPR: Transfection is sci-fi, and If You Go Into the Woods is described as Lovecraftian?  What’s your greatest interest as a fiction writer?  What sort of stories are you trying to tell?

DG: I read a bit of everything: shorts, sci-fi, literary, historicals, thrillers now and then, mysteries too, so I tend to be drawn to all sorts of stories. I guess I like reading idea-driven stuff most of all, but there is no real common thread aside from good writing and good stories. As such, I like to write a bit of everything. Novels tend to be historical, but my shorter work can be anything really.

SPR: Who are your favorite writers?

DG: I like a lot of South American stuff: Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Jorge Amado. There’s a Cuban guy called Pedro Juan Gutierrez, and he wrote The Dirty Havana Trilogy which is filthy, desperate, and brilliant. Louis de Bernieres is great. I like a writer who is really in love with the language, but then uses it to create memorable characters and gripping plots. I like books with ideas: Kurt Vonnegut, Philip K. Dick, Michael Chabon. I like Murakami, and I used to read a ton of fantasy when I was a kid: Eddings, Jordan, Feist, Tolkein, and Donaldson. I imagine there will be a few self-publishers on that list once I finally get my hands on a Kindle.

SPR: Your site Let’s Get Digital has gotten very popular in a very short time.  Aside from providing great, useful content, how did that come to be?  Do spend as much time working on helping self-publishers as marketing your fiction?  Similar methods?

DG: It’s surprising to me. I only started blogging as a way of documenting the steps I was taking as an unknown, unpublished writer self-publishing for the first time. There was lots of great information out there, but it was scattered across a whole range of blogs and websites. There was a lot of misinformation too, myths about self-publishing. I thought it might be useful to filter all that and put it in one place so that the next person wouldn’t have to do too much searching. I also blogged about stuff I was trying: competitions, LibraryThing giveaways, setting up advance reviews, and told people what worked, what didn’t, and where I screwed up. The blog just exploded in July, which was really cool because I was just about to release Let’s Get Digital, which was based on the blog: kind of a why to self-publish, as well as the how.

I think I spend a lot more time helping other self-publishers than any kind of marketing. But it’s helping myself as well. Often it’s something I’m just learning about: translations, crowdfunding, whatever, and I share the information as I go along. Blogging about it just helps me get my own thoughts in order.

SPR: Given the popularity of your industry blog, how has this affected your Kindle book sales?  Would you recommend writers writing about industry stuff or writing about their niche?  The marketing stuff does seem to get the most viral traction.

DG: Writers should definitely write about their niche. While I have no doubt that it helped sales of Let’s Get Digital, I don’t think a blog about the publishing industry or self-publishing (or the craft of writing, or how to query for that matter), will ever help sell fiction. You might get some people checking it out, but it’s not like you’re going to get a ton of readers dropping in to check out a post on Kobo’s expansion into France. I only write about this stuff because I like talking about it. If someone wants to sell fiction, they should write about stuff that readers care about. If you write thrillers, then you could blog about famous serial killers. If you write courtroom dramas, then maybe you could host a discussion on famous cases. That’s what your readers will care about.

SPR: I asked this of Mick Rooney in a recent interview, and it is something I wonder (worry) about: do you think spending so much time on a blog can perhaps detract from the energy to work on fiction?

DG: Yeah, sure. You have to be disciplined. Blogging, Twitter, Facebook, forums – all that stuff takes time away from writing. But the focus always must be on new work. I actually spend zero time promoting, aside from around the time of a release. I think it’s better spent making connections and writing more, with the emphasis, hopefully, on the second. But the writing time gets eaten into, if you aren’t careful.

SPR: I get sort of annoyed when I’m called a “self-publishing guru” because, for one thing, it’s not true b/c I don’t have the sales of many self-publishers. I just find the industry really interesting and important.  Do you think there’s any problem with being associated with the medium as much as the message?

DG: No. If you are passionate about, if it interests you, then you should explore it. If I hear that Amazon have launched a new imprint, or that Telefonica are opening an e-bookstore in Latin America, I get excited just thinking about the implications. But there’s probably something wrong with us. That’s okay, everyone has their thing. Having said that, if I ever find that I’m spending less time working on how to be a better writer or producing new work, then I have to give myself a talking to.

SPR: You’re based in Sweden.  Is there any Swedish self-publishing scene?  How about the rest of Europe compared to the States? I lived in Europe for a year and it was refreshing compared to the U.S. When I said, “I’m a writer,” the response wasn’t “Yeah, but what do you do for money?” It was, “Cool.”  I imagine the attitude towards self-publishing is similar, though even in the States this has improved dramatically in just the last six months.  Is the European market seeing the same sea change?

DG: I have no idea. If there is a scene here in Sweden, I’m not connected to it at all. I know some self-publishers around Europe, but none here. And they don’t look down on writers, no. I’m Irish and we view writers in quite a positive light. Most of Europe is the same.

I’m not sure about the attitude towards self-publishing. Some automatically think it’s cool – without knowing much about the publishing business – others are just skeptical about e-books generally. It’s much more different in the UK – the market is a lot more advanced there, and Kindles are common. While there are a lot of tablets and smartphones here, the only dedicated e-reader I ever saw was in the hands of a Dutch ex-pat who brought it with him from the UK. E-readers are expensive. I’ve never seen one in a store, and with taxes and delivery charges, the cheapest Kindle comes to around $170.

On top of that, readers across Europe (apart from the UK, France, and Germany) are subject to a $2 surcharge on all e-books, levied by Amazon (and then local taxes add another 15% on top of that). This makes a 99c e-book $3.44 and a $2.99 e-book $5.74. That dampens the market too.

SPR: You also write the site SouthAmericana.com - where’s the fascination with South America come from?

DG: My fascination with South America began as a kid: all those stories of the Amazon, the Incas, and lost cities of gold. I finally got the opportunity to travel there in 2005. Well, I just quit my job and headed off, with half a notion of writing a book while I travelled around the world. I started in Brazil, with no real plan. I think was supposed to be there for two months, then move on to Australia. But after a couple of weeks, I knew I was going to stay there until my money ran out.

After traveling around a bit, I got a job teaching English in a shanty town in Peru, and I was able to stretch the trip out to nine months. While I was there, I was trying to write a comic novel about a failed hand model. It was awful. Towards the end of my time, I took a trip up to Guayaquil and found it was the town where the two liberators of South America met for the first and only time.

One of them, San Martín, inexplicably walked away – at the height of his career – leaving the other, Simón Bolívar, the chance to immortalize himself. I started researching it on the internet, just trying to figure out what happened, and, before I knew it, I was writing a book about it. It took me three years and I’ve rewritten numerous times since. It’s called A Storm Hits Valparaíso, and it’s coming out in December. At last!

I actually went back to South America for nine months in 2008 to finish the book, do a bit more research, and walk down those streets again. This time, being able to speak a bit of Spanish, I came across all sorts of stories. Some of those will make it into books. Others don’t fit and SouthAmericana.com is going to be a home of sorts for them. It’s something I love doing, and might even turn into a narrative non-fiction book of historical vignettes one day, but it’s fun just writing the posts. It also has the happy side effect of connecting me with readers who might be interested in checking out my fiction.

SPR: What’s your take on the “Publishing Death Spiral” of Konrath?  Do you see self-publishing taking over a majority of released work?  What do you see as the future of self-publishing?

DG: It’s hard to say. It depends what you define as “self-published” and “released work”. If we discount all the PLR stuff, the public domain books, and the content farm spam, I’ve still no idea of the size of self-publishing, but there has got to be more titles released than traditional publishing (again discounting all the above). In terms of revenue generated though, self-publishing must be a lot smaller. It’s hard to get hard numbers. We have them for the publishing business, but no-one is measuring self-publishing (that I know of) with any accuracy. All we have are crude barometers. I can look at the Top 500 e-books on Amazon and see that, for the last few months, around a third have been self-published, but that only tells me so much. That’s significant though.

As to the future, I think business conditions for self-publishers are perfect now, and can only deteriorate. I mean, large publishers will get to grips with this stuff eventually, won’t they? I’m sure they will get a lot more competitive in terms of pricing, releasing digital first, and connecting with readers. More writers (with audiences and backlists) will abandon traditional deals and go it alone, increasing competition amongst self-publishers. There are lots of smart, small publishers around too producing great books and posting astonishing numbers.

I think the larger publishers will downsize, I think they are weaker in a digital, online world, and I expect smaller players to grab a larger share of the market, but I don’t think the big guys will disappear. Some may go under, merge, or be bought out, but they are sitting on a lot of content, and are making money from e-books too. Their problem is they are trying to hold on to their writers without caving on their paltry royalty rates. At the same time they are gouging readers at higher price points to protect their print sales, which are collapsing anyway as the bookstores close and the existing ones restrict the amount of titles in each store to make room for scented candles. It’s an attack on their model from all sides and doesn’t leave them with much wiggle room while a horde of smaller, hungrier, and often savvier, competitors eat up as much of the market as they can.

SPR: What’s next for you with fiction?

DG: Aside from the December release (which I will be looking to translate), I have already started work on the next. It’s set in 1900s New Orleans and Honduras, following an American soldier of fortune. The first few chapters are written and the rest is outlined. I had to shelve it while I did the final edit on A Storm Hits Valparaíso, but I’m dying to get back at it. I’ve another two novels outlined for South America, one set in the Middle East, one in Tsarist Russia, a few shorts I need to finish, and an idea for a dystopian novella that has been bugging me for a while. There’s not enough hours in the day.

SPR: Thanks, David.  Good luck with everything.

DG: Thanks for the interview, Henry. This was fun.

Links:

DavidGaughran.com

Let’s Get Digital

A Storm Hits Valparaíso Fundit campaign

It’s encouraging news for the e-revolution, as people with an ereader read more books – and more people are getting an ereader, so do the math – but what the infographic doesn’t cover is how people’s reading habits might change once the majority of reading is being done via ebooks. Even intellectuals like Sam Harris say that his personal reading habits are changing:

I love physical books as much as anyone. And when I really want to get a book into my brain, I now purchase both the hardcover and electronic editions. From the point of view of the publishing industry, I am the perfect customer. This also makes me a very important canary in the coal mine—and I’m here to report that I’ve begun to feel woozy. For instance, I’ve started to think that most books are too long, and I now hesitate before buying the next big one. When shopping for books, I’ve suddenly become acutely sensitive to the opportunity costs of reading any one of them. If your book is 600 pages long, you are demanding more of my time than I feel free to give. And if I could accomplish the same change in my view of the world by reading a 60-page version of your argument, why didn’t you just publish a book this length instead?

If this is happening to Sam Harris, what is it doing to the casual reader?

People have been asking for a while now: Does the Internet Change the Way We Think?

The Daily Beast has a good summary of that (very long) discussion. The consensus:

The most striking thing about the 50-plus answers is that scholars who study the mind and the brain, and who therefore seem best equipped to figure out how the Internet alters thought, shoot down the very idea. “The Internet hasn’t changed the way we think,” argues neuroscientist Joshua Greene of Harvard. It “has provided us with unprecedented access to information, but it hasn’t changed what [our brains] do with it.” Cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker of Harvard is also skeptical. “Electronic media aren’t going to revamp the brain’s mechanisms of information processing.”

Not to take on a neuroscientist, but: I doubt it. Of course there’s a difference between totally rewiring of the brain, and just changing habits, but they’re two sides of the same coin. Given the huge amount of information available, some amount of information fatigue is going to set in. Also, it’s like the quip about weather in Florida – don’t like it, wait five minutes. Don’t like the book you’re reading, there are thousands others available. Frankly, I’ve never been one of those people who will read a book till the end if I’m hating it – though reading a book I don’t like is somewhat instructive about craft, I don’t really need to learn this lesson for 500 pages. I’ll be even more disinclined to stick with something if a hundred other downloaded books are all beckoning for my attention.

Browsing fosters a short attention span – it just does. Very often, I’ll scan a story, rather than reading it in full, only to click a link and do the same somewhere else. There’s nothing to suggest this type of reading won’t translate to ereaders as well – especially tablet readers, in which the interface is the same thing where you also browse the web. Tablets are set to become the norm, with dedicated readers potentially becoming what print books are set to become: a niche market.

This is beginning to sound like a manifesto against ereaders. It’s not: the e-revolution is amazing. Information is power, so more information can only improve the culture overall. But you can’t talk about this issue without also mentioning some of the downsides. This will potentially make it harder for self-publishers to make a mark. Unless you really grab people within the first 20 pages, readers may just move on, meaning it’ll be harder to generate buzz.

The Commercialization of Reading

There’s the question of why the e-revolution has primarily been driven by the success of mainstream fiction. On the one hand, this is totally unsurprising: more people read commercial fiction, or it wouldn’t be commercial. But there is the possibility that indie publishing, far from being “independent,” will have to be compromise in order to keep people’s attention. In other words: there will be very little separating self-publishing and traditional publishing, where marketing often trumps content.  This came up recently in a post on the Fall of Print. A writer changed the cover of her book from this:

to this:

Those represent two very different types of books.  I responded: “Though it’s good news that writers have the control to make these changes very quickly – mimicking the traditional publishing industry by commercializing everything isn’t necessarily the greatest step forward.” Her response:

Though I was really fond of the old cover (I loved the expression of the woman, from that long-ago portrait, created in the early 19th century), and it was the best I could do with my own resources, I did have concerns that it didn’t reflect the book accurately…

But yes, there is also the possibility that writers will distortively re-brand their work in the hopes of garnering more sales, even if that new “look” is not entirely reflective of the work they’re selling–which would be commercialization in the worst sense of the word, and possibly self-defeating as well, given that such an approach is likely to draw the wrong audience, who would be expecting something different, based on the visual cues provided by the cover and the marketing.

She’s right, and authors need to look out for the impulse of homogenizing a book to make it more marketable – even if the above suggests this is what writers need to start thinking about if they want to make a dent. But disappointing a reader who was expecting a different type of book will not generate any buzz, or possibly lead to bad reviews.  In a world of readers with shorter attention spans, and an overwhelming amount of available information, this issue may become more common, as writers will experiment with new ways to get people’s attention.

In general, the world of e-publishing is going to get a lot more competitive, as there will be more books and readers will be more selective. But, on the whole, the ereading revolution is likely going to create more readers than it alienates. Think of all the stories there are today: they’re all about how people are adopting the new technology, rather than another article about how nobody reads anymore. Ereaders add an extra level of excitement to reading. That excitement could level off as ereaders become ubiquitous, and it may become harder to reach those people with ereaders in hand, but still, one major thing is happening: people are reading.

A New Literary Culture

Will people’s relationship with books change because of the transient nature of ebooks?  For instance, could the e-revolution make the publishing industry even more commercialized than it is already?  That’s yet to be determined, and certainly there’s less of a “literary culture” in the mainstream than there used to be.  Clay Shirky writes:

Having lost its actual centrality some time ago, the literary world is now losing its normative hold on culture as well. The threat isn’t that people will stop reading War and Peace. That day is long since past. The threat is that people will stop genuflecting to the idea of reading War and Peace.

Though people’s reading habits may change, which will in turn change how some writers try to appeal to those readers, books matter again: Book Publishing Is Growing; E-Book Revs and Sales Up Over 1000%.

You create readers, you potentially create people who will take a look at the canon.   Right now public domain books from the literary canon are freely available to anyone with an internet connection – it’s hard to see how this will decrease the amount that people read these works.  Maybe it means readers will be more willing to try The Death of Ivan Illyich before War & Peace.  That’s fine.  As Shirky writes: “No one reads War and Peace. It’s too long, and not so interesting.”

And just because it’s going to get harder to sell books given more competition, there will also be more stories of people finding success without any huge promotional muscle. From the Fall of Print:

The major bottleneck for starting and lesser known writers is gone. It will always be hard to find readers, but at least nothing now stands in the way of your access to them. It may take time, but while you wait, you can be selling, perfecting your craft, building your skills as a writer/publisher/marketer. Before, there was little to do but wait.

Whatever negativity you might want to drum up about the e-revolution – “These things mean something murderous for the future of literature.” – the fact that more people are reading is good long-term news for writers, and book culture. That link (by the editor of Harper’s) says that web book culture is “solipsistic.” It would seem to be the opposite: readers are connected to books and to each other like never before. It’s not a perfect system – ebooks are getting dirt cheap, for one, so it’s harder to make a living – and there will be other problems along the way (maybe a Napster for ebooks) but more people are reading and publishing. Maybe we should take a step back and realize how completely amazing that is. A whole new book culture is forming – it may not look like what came before it, but that’s usually the case with revolutions.

After I wrote about the challenges of marketing literary novels (see my previous post here),  I asked if anyone knew of an author writing a literary book that’s done what Amanda Hocking, J.A. Konrath, and other eBook superstars have done. A reader on Kindleboards told me about Darcie Chan and her novel, The Mill River Recluse, which, today as I post this, is #2 in Kindle sales and ranks as the #1 book on Amazon’s contemporary fiction list.

The story focuses on widow Mary McAllister. Disfigured by the blow of an abusive husband, and suffering her entire life with severe social anxiety disorder, McAllister spends almost sixty years secluded in a white marble mansion overlooking the town of Mill River, Vermont. As I’m discovering this gripping tale, it’s not a thriller, a paranormal romance, or a detective novel, yet people are loving it and posting reviews.

Who is Darcie Chan and how did she do this? She kindly agreed to an interview, below. This is Ms. Chan’s first novel, but before she released this book, she landed a top New York City agent, Laurie Liss, who, despite believing in the book, was unable to get a publisher. Two years later, with her manuscript still sitting in a drawer, Ms. Chan decided to try self-publishing the book as an eBook. It took off.

Christopher Meeks: You’re an attorney, a wife, a mother, and a gardener. When do you have time to write?

Darcie Chan: Well, I will tell you that, this summer, my modest vegetable garden has been completely overtaken by weeds!

In all honesty, it takes a lot of juggling.  I obviously have to give priority to my family and my job, so my writing generally happens later in the evening, after my son is asleep, and I’ve finished work for the day.

Where did you get the idea for The Mill River Recluse, and what drove you to write this book when you did?

The Mill River Recluse is the story of a woman with severe social anxiety disorder and agoraphobia who manages, despite a lifetime of physical isolation, to secretly change the lives of everyone who lives in her small Vermont town.

The basic concept for The Mill River Recluse was inspired by a certain gentleman named Sol Strauss who lived in Paoli, Indiana, the small town in which I lived during high school and my mother was born and raised.  Mr. Strauss, a Jewish man who fled Nazi Germany, operated a dry goods store in Paoli in the 1940s.  Even though Mr. Strauss lived quietly alone above his shop and never seemed to be fully embraced by the town’s predominantly Christian population, he considered Paoli to be his adopted community and is still remembered today for his extreme generosity.

I thought it would be very interesting to build a story around someone who is misunderstood or different in some way, and to show that even someone who is seemingly far-removed from his or her community may in fact be more special and integral than anyone could imagine.

In terms of timing, I wrote Recluse several years ago, before my son was born.  I had always wanted to try my hand at writing a novel, and I’d reached a point where I was finished with my education and had been in my job for a few years – long enough that I had been promoted and felt comfortable in my position.  My husband was still in his residency, so he was working long hours and was often gone overnight or at least until very late in the evening.  I thought that it might be a good time to attempt a first novel.

Did you start writing your book with Mary McAllister’s last night on earth, or did that come later? You love Alice Sebold’s opening to The Lovely Bones as much as I do, and your opening grabs boldly, too, hinting at parts of Mary’s life, which we immediately want to discover.

If I remember correctly, I had just begun writing when I realized that that should be the scene that opens the book.   It is an arresting scene, and I worried that, like the opening to The Lovely Bones, it might be a turn-off for some readers.  But, Mary’s last night is the point in time that separates the events of the past and the events of the present – the point joining the two timelines in the story.  It also provided an opportunity to work in hints of things that occurred during both timelines.  For those reasons, I felt deep down that it was the best way to begin the book.

I noticed in other interviews what an avid reader you are and how you learn from other writers. What two or three writers in particular have inspired you and what have you learned from their writing?

I actually read far less these days than I would like, but I do believe that it is so important to read a wide variety of books to continue to grow and learn as a writer.  We had three days with no power as a result of Hurricane Irene, and I was tickled to be able to devour a book over the course of two evenings while reading with a flashlight!  The book was The Eighty Dollar Champion by Elizabeth Letts, and it was fabulous!

It is hard for me to choose only a few writers who have inspired me because so many writers and books inspire me for various reasons.  But, with respect to books that have taught me something that I found relevant in writing Recluse…I suppose I would point to The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold, because it shows that a shocking, tragic opening can give way to a story of remarkable beauty and peace.

Jodi Picoult’s My Sister’s Keeper is a heart-wrenching story that serves as an example of absolute mastery of storytelling through points of view of multiple characters.  Finally, I would have to include A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith, which is my favorite book.  It is a story told with exceptional voice, honesty, and imagery.  I also love that Francie, the main character through whose point of view the book is written, is, against all odds, a real survivor who triumphs in the end.

Did you take creative writing classes in college or how did you come to write fiction?

I actually started college (at Indiana University, Bloomington) as a pre-med biology major, and it wasn’t until midway through my junior year that I was finally honest with myself about what I should be studying. I loved reading, writing, journalism, and other humanities classes;  I hated much of the pre-med curriculum, and I couldn’t imagine myself going through years of school and training to end up in a career that was not centered on reading and writing something other than medical textbooks and patient charts.  So, with three semesters until graduation, I changed my major from biology to English.

It was such a relief!  I was finally in classes that I loved.  Unfortunately, to graduate on time, I had to cram a major’s worth of required English classes into the three semesters I had remaining.  I was able to take only two creative writing classes – one was a poetry workshop and the other focused on short stories.  I enjoyed both of them very much, although writing fiction seemed a better fit for me.  I knew by that time that, someday, I wanted to try to write a novel.

I put my writing aspirations on hold for a long time. Through high school, college, and law school, I really didn’t have time for anything but my classes and my part-time jobs. After law school, I began working as an attorney, which is also a position with demanding hours. But, after a few years, I got used to the schedule and started writing late in the evenings as a creative outlet. I decided to attempt a novel-length piece of fiction, which wasn’t as intimidating as it once was. I figured that if I could draft or edit hundreds of pages of legal text within a few weeks, I could certainly complete a novel during my own time, writing at a far more leisurely pace.

I’d love to know everything about how you produced your book. How long did it take you to write it? How did you know it was done? Did you try publishing it the traditional way with an agent or did you decide it would be an eBook and just self-publish it? I see you have an agent at Sterling Lord, a great agency, best known for representing such authors as William Trevor, Ruth Rendell, and Ken Kesey. Did you get an agent after the book did well or before?

It took me about two and half years to write The Mill River Recluse, and several months more to edit it.  I was very lucky to have several family members, friends, and acquaintances volunteer to be “test readers.” I sought from them as much honest feedback on the manuscript as they would give and used it to refine the manuscript as best I could.

It has always been a dream of mine to have a novel traditionally published, so when I felt the manuscript was as good as I could make it, I began the usual process of trying to find a literary agent to represent it. That is, I researched agents, sending out query letters, sending off requested partial or full manuscripts, etc.  I accumulated many, many rejections…so many that I stopped counting.  After I had been at it for several months, I had the full manuscript out with three agents, which was a good sign.  I worked up the courage to send a query to another agent on my “dream agent” list – Laurie Liss, at Sterling Lord Literistic.  Honestly, I expected a quick rejection.  I was so surprised when I got an immediate request for the full manuscript…and then a very happy phone call a few days later.

Laurie’s fabulous reputation is well-deserved, and I hold her in such high regard.  She is extremely knowledgeable, supportive, and patient, and a passionate advocate for new authors.  She also keeps it real.  Laurie told me during our first conversation that Recluse would be difficult to sell because it was a quiet, literary novel and I was a completely unknown writer.  Nevertheless, she was willing to try because she loved the story and thought that readers would, too.  Despite her valiant effort to place Recluse, none of the many publishers she approached were willing to take a chance on it.  I saved the manuscript in a folder on my hard drive, and life went on.

I actually took a few years off from writing.  I had a very busy period with my job that required substantial overtime.  Also, my husband finished his medical training and accepted a faculty position at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, which required us to relocate to New York from Maryland.  Not long after that, we had our first child.  I am still trying to catch up on sleep lost from all of these things!

During the past few years, though, it was impossible not to notice the explosion of eBooks.  I started reading articles about writers who were so successful with their eBook sales that they established readerships and attracted the attention of trade publishers.  Even after all the rejections, I still believed that a few people out there might enjoy Recluse.

I wondered whether, by releasing it as an eBook, I might be able to get some valuable feedback from readers and gradually (over several months or years) sell enough copies that I would no longer be a complete unknown when I had a second novel ready for submission.  It seemed a better plan than continuing to let it languish on my hard drive. Laurie didn’t think it would hurt anything to try it, either, so I uploaded Recluse to the Kindle Store on May 18 and to the Nook Store in early June.

This takes me to how you overcame the challenges that bring many self-published writers down: quality control. Did you hire an editor, proofreader, or cover designer? How did you know your book was ready for the greater public? Everything about your book is well-done, including the cover, which is simple yet powerful. How did you do these things?

The Mill River Recluse has not been professionally edited…I did the editing of the manuscript myself, although the feedback I received from my test readers and from Laurie was invaluable in shaping what turned out to be the final draft.  My test readers were also fabulous from a copyediting standpoint – I try to be meticulous when it comes to grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure, but every one of my test readers found something that I had overlooked and that no one else had caught.  And, I’m sure that a professional fiction editor could further improve the manuscript.

I also designed the cover myself, with some help from my husband and one of my sisters.  The cover is actually a photo taken by my youngest sister, Molly, of a large white mansion on a hill that overlooks my hometown of Paoli, Indiana.  I grew up looking at that house, and when I was developing the storylines for Recluse, that image kept popping into my mind.

My husband helped me darken it and make some other modifications until I felt it captured the central image from my story – i.e., Mary McAllister’s mysterious isolation in her marble mansion.  I also tried to make the cover eye-catching and as much like a traditionally-published book cover as I could.

Finally, in terms of knowing that Recluse was ready for the greater public…I didn’t actually know.  I felt that the manuscript was as good as I could make it, and I viewed releasing Recluse in ebook form as an experiment.  I think every writer takes a risk in making work public, but it is something that must be done if you hope to have others read your work.

I had no idea how Recluse would be received, but I felt that I had done my best and hoped that at least some people would enjoy it.  I have been flabbergasted and humbled by readers’ response to my novel. Recluse’s popularity has truly come as a complete shock to me.

About how many books are you selling a day, and how long did it take from first publishing the book to getting what you thought were good sales?

I never really settled on a particular number to represent what “good sales” would be for Recluse.  I certainly had no big expectations.  Early on, I was selling one or two copies every day or two, and I was thrilled with that. I think it was in the third week of June that the 100th copy sold, and my husband and I grabbed up our son and did a happy dance right in the middle of the kitchen!  To think – 100 people actually had my book!  That was much faster than I expected to be able to sell 100 copies, and again, I hoped that over a long period of time, I’d sell several hundred more.

At that point, I had read about some of the better-known self-published authors cracking the top 100 in the Kindle Store, and it never occurred to me that that was even a remote possibility for Recluse.

Toward the end of June, Recluse was mentioned as a bargain eBook on EReader News Today, which is one of the larger eBook-related blogs.  That resulted in a spike of several hundred sales, which was really incredible.  I fully expected the sales numbers to drop off again after a few days, though, and they did….but not all the way back to where they’d been before the mention.

Then, a few weeks after that, the sales numbers started climbing again and Recluse started receiving a good number of positive reviews from readers.  Things increased steadily from there, boosted periodically by a few features on other big ebook blogs (Kindle Nation and Pixel of Ink) and a few smaller advertisements on various websites.

Recluse entered the top 10 in the Kindle Store around the second week of August, and I feel like I have been living in a bubble of surreality since then.  The number of copies sold each day varies, but for the past six weeks or so, Recluse has been averaging several thousand copies per day.

The so-called superstars of self-publishing, people such as Amanda Hocking, John Locke, and J.A. Konrath, have written brilliant genre books, such things as paranormal romances, thrillers, and mysteries. You’ve written a literary book, which is typically a difficult sell. Books such as Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants and Garth Stein’s The Art of Racing in the Rain take big publishers and marketing geniuses to find their audience. However, I see you call your book “mainstream women’s fiction.” Does this mean you aimed your marketing at women or did you go for a literary audience—or both? In short, how did you find your audience?

I was never quite sure whether to pitch Recluse as commercial or literary fiction.  To me, it seemed to have elements of both.   I also found that, among those who read drafts of Recluse, it seemed to really resonate with women, so I suppose I assumed that, were my novel ever to find an enthusiastic audience, the majority of those in that audience would be women – hence the label “mainstream women’s fiction.”

My marketing efforts were both late and modest.  I uploaded Recluse and then realized that I had to do SOMETHING to introduce the book to readers.  (Ideally, I should have set up social media accounts and advertising promotions BEFORE uploading the novel.)  However, my budget for book promotion was very limited.  I didn’t try to target my marketing efforts at women so much as users of eReaders (Kindles, Nooks, iPads, etc.) in general.  I just hoped that, once a feature of Recluse went live on an eBook site, the cover and description would attract readers who would enjoy that kind of novel.

Since Recluse was available only in ebook form, I wrote to several administrators of ebook-related blogs and requested features of my novel.  Some of these were free listings and others were features that required a very small fee.  I arranged for some small web-based ads to run on Goodreads.com and some eBook-related sites.

A few weeks after I uploaded the manuscript, I set up a website, Twitter account, and Facebook author page.   I also scheduled some features of Recluse to appear a few times on the large Kindle and eBook blogs (EReader News Today, Kindle Nation, and Pixel of Ink).   Almost all of these are paid sponsorships, but each one results in thousands of eReader users seeing a book, and I think they were very helpful in launching Recluse out into cyberspace.

I see reviews are a big part of your Amazon page, including a review from Kirkus. Did you send your book out for review? If so, did you send it out as an eBook or did you have physical copies you sent? How did you find people to review it?

As you probably know, it is very difficult to get a self-published book reviewed by a mainstream reviewer (such as Booklist or Library Journal) or newspaper.  I did hope to find some way to have Recluse reviewed by such an entity, though, because I was curious about what kind of industry feedback the story would receive.  A negative review could at least provide some guidance as to how I could further improve the manuscript.  I also thought that a positive review might lend credibility to my novel and encourage more readers to give it a shot.

I learned that Kirkus Reviews does review self-published books using the same standards applicable to traditionally published titles.  The only differences are that the author has to pay to have a self-published title reviewed, and the author can then choose whether to make the review public (since Kirkus clearly states that there is no guarantee that the review you receive will be positive).   I decided to take a chance on a Kirkus Review and sent in two copies of the manuscript.

I also learned of a website called IndieReader.com that highlights self-published and independently-published books.  It, too, offered professional reviews for a fee, and I submitted a copy of Recluse electronically to receive a review from there as well.

As for the reviews from readers that have been posted to the novel’s pages in the Kindle Store and Nook Store – at last count, the Amazon site has 137 reviews and the Nook Store has 61 ratings.  I know exactly five of those reviewers.  The rest have been left by complete strangers, and I feel so grateful to have received every one of them.

Did you price your book at 99 cents right away and have you tried other prices? Has Amazon helped in promoting the book?

When I originally released Recluse, it was priced at $2.99.  However, the goal of my “ebook experiment” has never been to make money. I only wanted to get my work out there over time and gauge people’s responses to it.  For that reason, I quickly lowered the price to $0.99.  I think it is true that readers are more willing to take a chance on a completely unknown author at that price point, and I definitely wanted to encourage people to take a chance on me.

I’ve read in some reader reviews that Recluse has started popping up in Amazon’s recommendations to customers (which are based on an individual’s purchase history and reading preferences).  I think Amazon’s recommendations certainly confer a promotional advantage.

How well does your book sell in other channels, such as for the Nook? I notice your Barnes and Noble page isn’t as populated as the Kindle page, yet I’m finding Nook sales are starting to catch up to my Kindle sales. (I’m stumped on how to promote for the Nook, however.)

Although Recluse is available in the Nook Store as well, I agree with you that there don’t seem to be as many ways to promote eBooks to Nook users.  In the past few weeks, the Nook sales of Recluse have increased dramatically.  I attribute that to the fact that the Nook Store prominently lists those eBooks that are on the New York Times eBook bestseller list. Recluse first appeared on that list three weeks ago and so now has much more visibility on the Nook website.   It may be that word-of-mouth recommendations are also factoring into Nook sales as well.

What about Smashwords, where, if it’s accepted for the premium catalog, one’s book goes onto Apple’s iBooks website? I’ve found the formatting so strict that I have to hire someone for $70 to get it on there, and I haven’t had enough sales to pay for it. Have you been luckier?

Recluse is available through Smashwords as well. Yes, the formatting there is very strict.  I actually made it into the premium catalog only to discover (based on feedback from a reader) that there was STILL a margin issue that made reading the story unpleasant/impossible.  I contacted them for technical support, and they were able to give me instructions about how to fix the formatting problem, which I did.

I then re-uploaded it and it passed for premium distribution again.  Definitely not a fun process!  Honestly, I’ve sold only a few copies through Smashwords, and I’m not sure whether that reflects sales from the iBookstore or only direct downloads from Smashwords.  Regardless, the sales from there are miniscule compared with those from the Kindle and Nook Stores.

I read that the Apple sales show up at separate times on Smashwords, so you may be yet surprised. Will your next book be published traditionally? Will the Mill River Recluse have a print edition?

The answer to both of these questions is “I don’t know, but I hope so.”  I would still love to have a book traditionally published, be it Recluse, my second novel (currently in progress), or a future work.

That being said I would like to promote what I am doing. Not necessarily to sell my book, though clearly that is my end goal, but instead to spread the word to fellow authors that there is another new and interesting way to self-publish YOUR book.

I’m releasing the first edition of my novel on USB. I’m doing this for a number of reasons. Financially this is much cheaper then printing traditional books because USB can be purchased in bulk for cheap with logos printed on them. Companies have been doing this for years to promote their wares at conferences. This has driven down the prices of custom USBs to the point where the idea of a small-run print of multimedia USB book is well within most author’s price range.

The possibilities are almost endless. You can have your book printed in wood; you can have your book in lego; or, if you are like me, you can have your book printed on a classic looking USB stick, but with some decorations (see below). I have been searching long and hard through the wilderness of Google for the perfect printing company price-wise and aesthetically. While a place like www.customusb.com can make any USB you could ever imagine, you are going to have to pay. Somewhere like flashdrivecanada.ca will sell you your stick dirt cheap, but you have to work within their pre-existing stock. This is one of the many challenges of this new medium, and the answer will have to depend on each author’s personal situation. I value aesthetics, and want to create a visually desirable product. I’m most likely going to paint 500 caps myself because I need my USB body to be white.

This new medium also gives your book a huge advantage over every other ebook because you are putting out a real tangible, desirable, item. In the case of my book, comrade calculator Quits Smoking, I am having my USBs look like cigarettes.

mock-up of my USB book

The last, huge advantage of the USB Book (still working on a cleaner name… Bookdrive perhaps?) is the multimedia aspect. My book is going to have a soundtrack. My book will come pre-loaded with artwork and videos. You, as author/curator, can order any files you want to enhance content pre-loaded on your USB book. Through this one innovative medium self-published books can suddenly have more to offer than professionally published ones!

Now be warned this all does add extra work for the author (on top of the endless self promotion). You need to be willing to contact and work with a large group of other artists to make your book happen. But on the flip side this automatically creates a small devoted team who are personally invested in making the project successful.

Lastly, you are going to need to sell and distribute these little wonders. To sell my first batch I am working on a crowdsourcing campaign in order to get some pre-sales to raise capital but also to build some buzz.

my campaign

And here is what I consider one of the best parts of this new medium: shipping. Depending on the shape and size of the USB they can be mailed out in a regular envelope (they are pretty durable). Compare the shipping costs of a regular letter to mailing a bulky book. This delivers all of the thrill and nostalgia of receiving something in the mail, without adding really any cost to you or the customer!

Before I go, I’ll leave you with a little taste of my book:

comrade calculator is a humanoid female built to live indefinitely. The idea at the time was if she could live forever, getting replacement organs as needed, she could one day calculate infinity. Over a hundred years (and one answer) later she is living and working in the museum of the Twentieth Century. After starting her job as part of the Calculation Exhibit, she begins to moonlight in the Smoking Exhibit. My book tells the story of her various attempts to quit smoking.

If you want more the first two chapters (and a little bit more) are available here (here for mobile readers).

Good luck to you all and I hope you like my idea.

As new ebook authors and self-publishers continue to try to get exposure in the digital world, several new events could present an expanded opportunity to reach the ebook reader.

1. Amazon’s new generation of Kindles plus the IPad rival ‘Kindle Fire’ will definitely expand the reading audience.
2. Amazon allowing Kindle ebooks to be included in the public library lending process will also expand the audience.

The problem is the same old players and the same old obstacles seem to be in the way.

Process Controlled by the Usual Suspects +

With the first review, it appears that the library lending process is being controlled by the usual players, plus the addition of the facilitator, Overdrive, and public library systems across the country.

1. Publishers Control

The traditional publishers are the first line of control. If they don’t want readers to be able to checkout an ebook, it doesn’t happen. Period. For example as of this post, MacMillan and Simon & Schuster have opted out of the lending program. That is two of the top six.

Another, HarperCollins, has set a limit of 26 checkouts before the library has to buy more access.

2. Amazon doesn’t miss a beat

You can’t checkout a Kindle ebook unless it is for sale on the Amazon website. Of course, Amazon doesn’t miss a beat in capturing your information as you checkout their ebooks from the library.

On a Kindle buy page, the section ‘More Items to Consider’(to buy) now lists library ebooks checked out and the section ‘Related to Items You’ve viewed’ now lists related ebooks to the library ebooks checked out.

The whole process is guided and controlled by Amazon, pointing you to their buy page as often as they can. For example, when you view your ebook library on your Kindle, (includes library and purchased ebooks) the borrowed library ebooks still appear after expiration. When you click on the cover, you are directed to the buy page for that title on Amazon.

3. Public Libraries, between a rock and a hard place

They all are faced with rising costs, space restrictions, changing customer needs and now the additional costs of maintaining a growing ebook collection. This has prompted library consortiums to try to train staff, control costs and handle the on-line nature of the ebook business.

Libraries have always been democratic in nature, developing a local collection to match their reader’s demands. These collections have always been controlled by the individual libraries. If it is written and they can buy it or get their hands on it, they will make it available to the public.

They are fighting a learning curve but the staff knowledge is light years ahead of where it was just two years ago. Back then they had to deal with old policies and traditions. They needed a change in their mindset and they have done that quite well.

Their responsibility has always been to provide a reading and learning experience to the community. With the introduction of the digital world, their mission has greatly expanded.

4. Overdrive is the new player on the block

They are the 800 pound gorilla in the room. With all the other players listed above and their control, nothing happens in the library lending catalog unless they say so. They control and manage the process.

You must remember this is a profit making venture. If they don’t make money on a title, it is not available. If they don’t control the publisher, it will not be available for your catalog. Libraries will continue to hear the pitch: reduce waiting lists, add more copies. It is all about sales and not giving the farm away.

I would be willing to bet that there is a very low percentage of ebook titles priced at less than two dollars in their book depository. Yet the dominate ebook price point is below $2.00.

Self-Publishing Opportunity

Of course if you are a self-publisher, good luck even showing on the radar. Library access for ebook authors should be a great opportunity for the authors to get exposure and build their brand. They rely so much on using word of mouth to get established, the library could be the perfect vehicle to get heard.

We know something is up when the top ebook authors are missing from the library catalogs: Amanda Hocking, John Locke, and Louise Voss, all top ebook authors. My library does offer some of J. A. Konrath’s titles. Probable because it is good stuff and they are available in hardcover.

The Checkout Process

Checkout is a simple process; Your Library to the Amazon site via Overdrive software. I thought I would give you a brief check list.

What is required:

1. Valid Library Card and a PIN number
2. Instructions on how to access your library site and it’s ebook lending program
3. An Amazon Account (It is Free to sign up. If you already purchase through Amazon you have one.)
4. A Kindle device and/or a Kindle software app registered at Amazon

The Process

1. Sign In to Your Account.
2. Search your library catalog for an ebook of your choose that is available in the Kindle format.
3. Select an ebook and click on ‘Add to Book Bag’ link.
4. Click on the ‘Proceed to Checkout’ link when you’re done.
5. Select the lending period and click the ‘Confirm Check Out’ link.
6. Click the ‘Get for Kindle’ button. you are transferred to Amazon website.
7. Click ‘Get library book’ button
8. Amazon will present a ‘Thanks’ page with instructions to proceed

At this point you have two options:

Delivering the ebook to a WIFI device or your computer
OR download and transfer the ebook via USB (3G devices)

9. WIFI delivery

a. Click on the ‘Manage Your Kindle’ link on the ‘Thanks’ page.
b. Find the ebook you are downloading and click on the ‘Action’ button.
c. Click on the ‘Deliver to my…’ option – the ebook title page will appear.
d. Before delivering, make sure the ‘Deliver to:’ device in the dropdown is correct.
e. Click on the ‘Deliver’ button – your ebook should now appear in the device or software library

10. 3G devices – Download and Transfer

a. The ‘Thanks’ message will inform you the device selected is not WIFI compatible and you must transfer the file via USB cable (Kindle power cable without wall plug.)
b. Click on the ‘Download now’ button on the ‘Thanks’ page.
c. You will be prompted to ‘Open’ or ‘Save’.
d. Click on ‘Save’. (Use ‘Save As’ if you want to put the ebook in a different folder)
e. Find the ebook you are transferring via USB in its folder and depress CTRL-C to copy the file to clipboard
f. Locate the Kindle device folder in the computer file directory and its sub folder ‘Documents’
g. Paste (CTRL-P) the ebook into the sub folder and you should be good to go.

This process can also be accomplished my using the Action ‘download & transfer via USB’ in the Manage your Kindle section on Amazon.

Click here to view the KINDLE LIBRARY CHECKOUT AND RETURN PROCESS, a COMPLETE list of steps (with tips and examples) for delivering a borrowed Kindle ebook to your Kindle device or ebook reading app and returning the ebook.

Also you can email us: checkoutprocess@hbspub.com and we will send you a MS-Word copy (DOC) OR a PDF copy of the instructions. Please instruct us on which version you want.

Where is Amazon going with this?

They are driving potential customers to their website to check out an ebook. And they don’t miss a beat on offering the reader the opportunity to buy that title and others. But usually there are other reasons for Amazon to give something away.

Currently you search for a title on your library site, pick one and then the system transfers you to Amazon to download it to your Kindle. Unfortunately most of the information you need to make the decision is seen after you check the ebook out.

Actually the best practice is to browse the Amazon site and review the information on a title and then return to your library site and check out the ebook of the library.

I feel Amazon could actually provide the public libraries with better services and a much larger ebook selection than Overdrive because of the wealth of information and reviews it has on each title. All the library would have to do is add a link to the ‘new Amazon library’ site rather than going through Overdrive.

More questions than answers

Right now the Library Lending Process is a one way street. I have so many questions that I didn’t have enough space in this blog to ask them all.

The future can be quite hard to predict. When I started compiling this list of questions, I felt like a weatherman in the mid-west.

Will self-publishers and individual ebook authors be able to take advantage if this new exposure opportunity?

Is there a way for the independents to get involved in the lending process?

Will ebook-only authors (no hardcover) have a chance to get into a library collection?

How about self-publishers? Will they be shutout of this opportunity?

Can libraries use the Overdrive advertised option of ‘Library Individual Collection’ to add local talent to their collection?

Could Amazon break the hold on Overdrive?

Will a competitor enter the library lending arena and steal the show?

Credit where credit is due

I want to take this opportunity to thank Dorothy Stewart, a librarian at the Tempe Az. Public Library for her help. Her insight was invaluable.

Please comment and add to the list of questions. I could go on and on with this one.

Related Blogs and Information
‘Overdrive Tour of the Lending Process’

‘Kindle Books Now in Libraries via Overdrive’
by Henry Baum 9/21/2011

‘Kindle Library Lending: Good Deal for Everyone?’
by Brier Dudley’s Blog 9/26/2011

‘Video Tutorial – How to borrow books from the Library with the Amazon Kindle’
by Markus Reily 10/05/2011

View my website: HBSystems Publications
Or EMAIL at: jrm@hbspub.com
Or go to my blog: The eBook Author’s Corner

LinkedIn Profile: James Moushon
Author: Call Off The Dogs, a rendered eBook

CIA Agent Jonathon Stone
discovers another shooter in
the Kennedy Assassination

I’ve grown acquainted with Craig over the course of this year, but I’d heard of him prior to connecting via the usual social networks. If you keep your ear to the ground of the indie and self-publishing “scene,” you’ve probably heard his name pop up more than a few times. His first novel, 600 HOURS OF EDWARD, was a Montana Honor Book in 2009 and a High Plains Book Award winner in 2010. His second novel, THE SUMMER SON, was published by AmazonEncore earlier this year. I can’t speak for the former, but I read his second novel earlier this year, and it’s fantastic.

But hey, this isn’t about that book. This is about his new book, a short story collection titled QUANTUM PHYSICS AND THE ART OF DEPARTURE. Craig sent an advance copy to me as payment for my humble voice work.

From the book jacket:

A championship basketball coach caught between his team, his family and the rabid partisans in his town. A traveling salesman consigned to a late-night bus ride. A prison inmate stripped of everything but his pride. A teenage runaway. Mismatched lovers. In his debut collection of short fiction, award-winning novelist Craig Lancaster (600 Hours of Edward, The Summer Son) returns to the terrain of his Montana home and takes on the notion of separation in its many forms – from comfort zones, from ideas, from people, from security, from fears. These ten stories delve into small towns and big cities, into love and despair, into what drives us and what scares us, peeling back the layers of our humanity with every page.

I look at short story collections like albums. The good ones have 12 or 13 entries that can stand on their own, because the musicians played from their hearts. And sometimes, well, other collections have one or three good hits, strategically placed to keep you interested enough to deal with the filler in between.

I’m happy to say Craig’s collection is not one of the latter. It’s definitely one of the better collections I’ve read in the last several years. And, really, even saying it’s great as a whole book isn’t doing it justice. There are some real gems in this collection, folks. When I read a collection, I can usually pinpoint a couple of favorites out of the mix. “The Hits,” in other words. With this book, I can’t do that, because they’re all that good.

I can’t choose between stories like “This is Butte. You Have Ten Minutes” and “Alyssa Alights,” or “She’s Gone” and “Comfort and Joy.” They’re all written from the heart, with characters that breathe on the page. They’re filled with people dealing with situations that we’ve all probably dealt with at one point or another. They never get tedious. They’re all evenly paced. Hell, the first story revolves around basketball, and I still enjoyed it. That’s saying something, because I am not a sports fan. At all.

I want to go into detail with you about these stories, but I can’t. The book jacket tells you about as much as it can without telling you too much. And, really, anything I could say here about these stories would not do them justice.

To sum up everything, Craig Lancaster’s put together a collection of stories that will break your heart, make you laugh, and lift you up again. These are the sort of stories I hope to write one day.

The book is QUANTUM PHYSICS AND THE ART OF DEPARTURE. It will be released in print on December 6th, 2011. The Kindle edition is available now.

As an addendum to this little feature, I managed to corner Craig and subject him to a series of questions:

SPR: Who is Craig Lancaster?

CL: Just another overweight, middle-aged American with a dream. Although of this writing (11:45 p.m., Sunday, September 11) I’m mostly a depressed Dallas Cowboys fan.

SPR: How did you get into this business?

CL: I knew when I was sixteen years old, reading Hemingway for the first time, that I wanted to write novels. Then other things got in the way: college, building a career, the futile pursuit of women. I ended up in more or less the publishing ballpark: I became a journalist – mostly an editor at newspapers all over the country.

In 2008, I was in a really bad motorcycle wreck, 65 mph on Interstate 94 after a deer jumped into my path. In the aftermath of that, when I was plenty lucky to be alive, I decided I ought not waste any more time. So I didn’t (as long as you don’t count Facebook wankery).

My timing was pretty good, or pretty awful, if you’re the sort who looks at things pessimistically: About the time I got started, the so-called way it’s done started unraveling. As it turns out, self-publishing my first novel through CreateSpace and then seeing it picked up by a traditional publisher made mine a pretty common story.

SPR: Let’s talk about the origins of this collection. After two successful novels, what made you want to shift gears and work on short stories?

CL: It wasn’t really a deliberate choice. After the second novel, The Summer Son, short-story ideas came at me pretty regularly, and I was happy for the change of pace. In their own way, I find them just as challenging as I do novels, but the payoff comes a bit more quickly. Several of the stories in this collection were written in less than a week, with a bit more time after that spent revising and polishing them.

Now, I’m finding that longer-form ideas are flourishing. It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if I ping-ponged between the two forms henceforth. They’re both really enjoyable.

SPR: Some of the stories in Quantum deal with similar themes. Namely, that of strained (or even failing) marriages. Was this intentional?

CL: I’d call it more coincidental. Last year, when the bulk of these stories were written, was a very difficult one in my marriage, and so I’m sure that difficulty was informing my ideas and inspiration. That said, there’s not a single story in the collection that is a thinly veiled recitation of actual events. My wife is pretty good at finding the real-life elements I borrowed, but that’s because she’s a sharp one.

SPR: The story “Alyssa Alights” put me in mind of a comic book origin story. I know that’s weird given the story’s tone, but seriously, I could see a more in-depth tale between the lines. So, I’m curious: Is there any chance we’ll see a novel emerge from this short?

CL: Actually, “Alyssa Alights” is salvaged from a novel that never found its legs, and its companion story, “Sad Tomato: A Love Story,” actually predates it by a good number of months. “Alyssa” became a bit of a back construction.

Another story in the collection, “The Paper Weight,” also emerged from that sunken novel. And the lead-off story, “Somebody Has To Lose,” is another one that began life with bigger aspirations.

All that said, I hope no one considers them to be stories that didn’t make it. On the contrary, they found their destiny just fine. I was simply wrong in my initial assessment of them.

SPR: Out of all the stories in the collection, “This is Butte. You Have Ten Minutes” stayed with me the longest. You mentioned on your blog that you were on a bus at the time you had the idea for the story. Can you give readers a bit more insight into that initial spark? Did everything click into place?

CL: It really did. Last October, I was due in Missoula for the Montana Festival of the Book on the same weekend that my wife was moving out of our house, so I left our SUV with her and booked a ticket on Greyhound. I was in a bad, bad place emotionally. I figured, at the least, it would give my synapses some stimulation. And I was right. The forgotten people, the dictatorial driver, the hazy-dreamy feeling of nighttime travel (my bus left Billings at around 1:30 a.m.) – it all stayed with me. And I was lonely as all hell. That was probably the biggest piece of inspiration right there. It led me to imagine this guy who spends his life surrounded by people and yet has no intimacy at all.

I started writing it almost immediately after I got back from Missoula, in a house that was empty save for my writing table, a couch and my TV.

SPR: Leading off from the last question, I’d like to shift focus to your process. As a writer, I know how difficult short stories can be, especially when they all yearn to be novels in their own right. What can you tell us about your process?

CL: Most of the time, I know when something will be a short story, and I have a pretty good idea of where it’s going. Now, that said, there certainly are surprises. For instance, in the story “She’s Gone,” I had no idea that the violent father from “The Summer Son” would show up until he did. Turns out, he was a perfect fit for that story – and he was the same charismatic son of a bitch he was in the novel. As with the novels, I draft first – and generally pretty quickly. Luckily for me, I really love revisions. Which is good, because my first drafts certainly need them.

SPR: Let’s talk publishing. You’re an Amazon Encore author, with roots in self-publishing. What can you tell us about your journey from there to here?

CL: Oh, boy. Long story that’s getting longer all the time. Threw up a horrible first version of my first book, “600 Hours of Edward,” on CreateSpace, because I was impatient and didn’t know any better. It caught the attention of a publisher here in Montana, Riverbend, which re-released it in October 2009. All of that good stuff followed from that: Montana Honor Book, High Plains Book Award winner.

I hooked up with AmazonEncore because they had been sniffing around “600 Hours.” When I told Riverbend that I wanted to look for a more fiction-oriented publisher for “The Summer Son,” they were kind enough to give me the number of an editor at Encore who had been in touch with them. I cold-called him that day, and a couple of weeks later, we had a deal.

Because I came up on the newspaper side of things, as an editor, I’ve always had a fondness for and an interest in the physical product. I’ve spent most of my working life as a copy editor and a graphic designer, so between my first and second novels, I started a publishing company here in Montana, Missouri Breaks Press. I figured it would be a good way to publish overlooked work that I have an interest in, as well as a hedge for my own work as publishing goes through this massive wave of change it’s in. The first book I did was Carol Buchanan’s historical novel “Gold Under Ice,” which was just a Spur Award finalist. My second one, a collection of Montana yarns called “The Big Sky, By and By,” written by my newspaper colleague Ed Kemmick, was released in July and has been a big hit here. Those two books have given me the confidence to release my own stuff, which is what I’m doing with “Quantum Physics and the Art of Departure.”

SPR: What’s your experience been like working with Amazon Encore?

CL: Really, really good. I have no complaints. They put out a beautiful book, and did so quickly and with the utmost professionalism. I hope we get to work together again.

SPR: It’s no secret that most publishers don’t want collections because they don’t sell, and I know you published Quantum through your own imprint. This leads me to wonder, did you pitch the collection to Amazon?

CL: I did, but to be honest, I didn’t expect them to bite. The numbers are pretty sobering: short-story collections sell about as half as well as novels, and I certainly haven’t sold enough novels to expect anyone to bend the rules for me just because I’m a swell guy. While Encore was considering the collection, I was prepping it for print and e-book release on my own – I engaged the services of the best editor I know, Jim Thomsen – so I was ready to go on a moment’s notice.

In a way, it’s an odd little collection, with a variety of styles and points of view. Some of the characters overlap, but it’s not the novel-in-short-stories that seems to be so popular today. I wanted to write a diverse collection, the kind that I love to read. In the past few years, I’ve read more than my fill of dreary, Cormac McCarthy-wannabe short-story collections. It’s funny: I joked on Facebook a while back that I ought to title the collection “Fuck You” because it defies the current conventions. I’m totally cool with that. I prefer it.

Beyond all that, the simple fact is that I was looking for a good project of my own to release through my press, and this certainly fits the bill. In the past few years, I’ve built some really good relationships with booksellers and reading groups and libraries around my home region, and I have every expectation that this book will do well here where my first two have been so well-received. I’m content to let word of mouth do the rest, as it has with my first two books.

SPR: So what’s next?

CL: I’m juggling two novel projects, something I said I’d never do, so once again, I’m a liar. I’m not really ready to talk about them in any substantive way, but I will say this: One of them is rooted in the Texas of my childhood, and I’m digging the chance to revisit that era. It’s going to be a big, loud, fun story, and I have to tell you, I think we need more of those. I told Thomsen a few days ago that I want to write a novel as loud and fun and colorful as a Freddie Mercury song, and I hope this story can be that. This anecdote also feeds nicely into the next question …

SPR: Bonus: You can pick only one of the following: “Fat Bottomed Girls” or “One Vision.” Choose wisely. You are being judged.

CL: “Fat-Bottomed Girls,” every day and twice on Sunday.

Craig Lancaster’s short story collection, QUANTUM PHYSICS AND THE ART OF DEPARTURE, is available now for pre-order.

If you’d like to read more, visit his website. You can also follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

An interview with Eddie Wright, author of the novel Broken Bulbs, now being turned into a graphic novel called “Tyranny of the Muse,” backed by a Kickstarter campaign.

About:

Tyranny of the Muse by writer Eddie Wright and artist Jesse Balmer is a comic book series about a sad-sack, inspiration-addict, who is obsessed with the idea of nothingness.

When a mysterious, chain-smoking muse named Bonnie offers her unique assistance to Frank Fisher (our sad-sack hero), by injecting literal seeds of inspiration directly into his brain, the couple find themselves on a twisted, frantic, chaotic, fast-paced and surreal path littered with addiction, self-loathing, vindictive mailmen, infected wounds and angry hamsters. Through it all, they rely only on each other as they work through Frank’s strangely familiar screenplay in their search for the ever-elusive somethingness while avoiding the terrifying curse of nothingness. Tyranny of the Muse combines the storytelling of Philip K. Dick, David Lynch, William S. Burroughs and David Cronenberg with the alternative art style of Charles Burns, R. Crumb and Paul Pope. Tyranny of the Muse is based on Wright’s critically-acclaimed cult novella Broken Bulbs. This Kickstarter will fund the first volume in a multi-volume series.

Self-Publishing Review: So what’s the project?  It’s called “Tyranny of the Muse” but it’s based on your novel “Broken Bulbs” – are the two different thematically or plotwise?  Why not call it “Broken Bulbs”?

Eddie Wright: Tyranny of the Muse is a multi-volume adaptation/expansion of my novella Broken Bulbs. The story is about a failing artist who gets addicted to inspiration after meeting–and basically falling in love with–a chain-smoking muse. She helps him overcome his self-doubt and feelings of worthlessness while working through his quasi-auto-biographical screenplay. I decided to give the comic a different title because the story is expanded and I want to be able to continue it without being locked into anything. Broken Bulbs tells a very specific story about Frank Fisher, our artist and Bonnie, his muse. Tyranny will initially adapt the book, then expand. Vol. 1 will tell what is essentially act one of Broken Bulbs, then I plan to continue the story for as long as possible. So it’s growing beyond Broken Bulbs, particularly when it comes to Bonnie’s background.

SPR: What was the process for adapting your novel?  It’s already pretty cinematic (it’s part screenplay) but what was the process for storyboarding the book?

EW: Adapting the book was pretty easy. It started life as a screenplay, which is why Frank is a struggling screenwriter, so the story is very dialogue heavy. But the book is first person, the comic is not. There are a few moments of narration, but I eliminated most of it. I don’t want the comic to be loaded with captions so I had to reconfigure scenes and dialogue to make sure that the emotions and feelings came through. The trickiest part of the process has been communicating my intentions to Jesse, the artist on the book. But I’ve always felt the story was very visual and Jesse is certainly proving me right, he’s nailing it.

SPR: Were you approached by the artist, or was this an idea you had and then looked for an illustrator?  Did you then work together?

EW: I’ve wanted to adapt Broken Bulbs for a while and I put out many calls for an artist on Twitter, Facebook and my blog, but had no luck. Until one day a reader saw one of my tweets and put me in touch with Jesse Balmer, a great artist from San Francisco. I checked out his work, told him my plans and offered him the gig. He dug it and that was that.

The process started with a lot of discussions about character designs and the overall look and feel. I really wanted him to capture the characters. We went back and forth over and over again, I sent him pics of actors who I imagined as Frank and Bonnie so he could use something as an example. Something that proved to be important was actually meeting and sitting down in person and going through Jesse’s sketchbook and talking it all through. I have very specific images in my mind but it’s important for me to allow him to bring his own style to the project as well. The book is about creativity and inspiration, so how could I ever limit his?

SPR: I know very little about the world of self-published graphic novels.  Have you looked into the scene, ways of promoting it in comic circles?

EW: Something I’ve learned immediately about comics is self-publishing is not a dirty word. Creators self-publish as a way in and that is completely acceptable. Literature is snobby and closed off in certain circles. Thankfully that type of thinking is going away (thanks to sites like this) but comics is and has been very supportive in that regard. Perhaps the form is already so marginalized that the mainstream is less mainstream than mainstream lit. I don’t know. I’m not sure, but from what I’ve seen, in comics, good is good.

SPR: How’s the Kickstarter process going?  What are you doing to promote it – any tips for getting the word out?

EW: Kickstarter is nerve-wracking and exciting and I really hope it works. I’m tweeting and facebooking and tumbling and sending messages to other creators and reaching out to whomever I can for help. Thankfully I have Jesse to lighten the load a bit, but it’s a lot of begging. One tip I have is to swallow your pride and don’t be afraid to ask for help. A service like Kickstarter is all about support. Use it to create a support group. People want to help. Don’t be afraid to ask for it.