Going Viral Versus Having Legs In Self-Publishing1 comment

February 6th, 2013

In September, I published Rust Belt Chic: The Cleveland Anthology. You can read about my reasons behind the book, the mechanics of editing it, and the economics of self-publishing here, here and here.

I told my co-editor, Richey Piiparinen, that most book sales are made in the first six weeks after pub date, and we needed to be vigilant about promoting during that period. It turned out to be easy: during the fall, people kept inviting us to do Luckily, Then sales were very brisk in November and December with people buying copies for holiday presents.

But here’s the thing: ours was not a viral sensation. The viral narrative is so popular right now–too much so. The  upstart little kickstartery start-uppy grassrootsy copy that makes tech and book bloggers happy. There’s linkbait in that line. But is there sustainability in the model? Sustainability is another keyword of our day, and it’s one we might use when talking books. Publishers have long known the advantages of a strong backlist after all.

Rust Belt Chic has been a slow burn: word spreads by mouth, a friend telling another over a beer, a bookstore employer handselling a copy, a local store deciding to stock a few copies, a mulitply-liked facebook post.

It’s is a steady little thing, our book, the hard worker who shows up every day. It’s the small family business that customers appreciate. It’s  It is, well, kinda rust belty in that sense. Or, if you figure in the self-publishing angle, maybe it’s quaint 20th century success story or an archaic 19th century one,  (Walt Whitman, Jane Austen, Edgar Allen Poe–self-publishers all). Our book doesn’t want to have lots of RTs or become a kindle bestseller. It wants to make an impression, one deep enough to possibly effect the city of which it writes. It wants to have legs.

Our latest  news is perhaps the most satisfying. Cleveland Partnership for Arts and Culture has chosen Rust Belt Chic for their first citywide book group discussion. To have our book–to have the stories our contributors wrote– be part of the larger conversation about the role of culture in Cleveland’s economic development? Well that’s what this whole thing was about, all along.


New Course! Op-Eds & Personal Essays, March 8-223 comments

January 31st, 2013

Sign up: March 8-22. Basic: $100/With Individual Feedback: $250

I do love helping others with their writing. That explains those 15 years teaching writing at Oberlin College, I suppose. I’ve been posting a lot about the VIDA stats and  my post on how to pitch VIDA publications has been extremely popular.  Now I’m offering online courses to help writers pitch publications and draw back the veil on freelancing.

So here’s the deal:

The course is two weeks long. It runs via a private blog from March 8-March 22. The cost is $100–for access to materials and discussions and $250 for the same plus one-on-one feedback. During this time I will:

–post on the basics of op-ed and essay writing, such as developing  ideas, submitting to editors, research, etc.

–share the stories behind the pieces I’ve sold as well

–give you access to a  a database of  publications with updated editor and pay information. There are over 60 markets on it.

–answer your questions.

–(one-on-one option) offer feedback on your work in progress.  I’ll provide you with comments as often as you like during this two week period (I promise a two-day turnaround). You can do multiple drafts of a piece and I’ll keep responding with suggestions, edits, and comments.

If all goes well, we’ll form a community, get to know each other and take our writing and freelancing one step further.

The course works for rookies  and experienced freelancers.

Here is what some former participants said:

I am a middle-aged, career-switching, baby-journalist pursuing a Master’s Degree at Boston University. I have spent a TON of money writing courses as well as attended some for free. Anne’s is by far the best value I’ve come across and I think she could increase her tuition rates by a factor of three and still be giving people a great value. Good writers are a dime a dozen. To be successful, you need to learn what Anne teaches. How to Get Published. Take Anne’s class or compete against someone like me who did.

I really can’t say enough good things about this course. Anne offers professional, helpful advice based on her own experiences, those of other successful freelancers she knows, and tips from editors. My “classmates,” though all at different stages of their careers, were insightful and freely offered plenty of their own experiences to the group; not to mention they’re all great writers themselves, from what I saw. Best of all, though, was the motivation. Anne encouraged us to submit consistently throughout the two weeks we all worked together, and with everyone sharing stories, the mood was infectious. I submitted more pitches during this class than I had in the preceding month.If you’re serious about being a successful published writer in any field, take this class.

March 2012: Took Anne’s course, with the one-on-one feedback aspect. May 2012: Got my piece published in the biggest newspaper in SF. Thank you Anne for making getting published seem not only do-able, but just a series of small steps (and emails) away. You are a treasure trove of a resource!

***See more recommendations in the “comments” section of this post.***

Sign up: March 8-22. Basic: $100/With Individual Feedback: $250

Interested and have questions? Email me at anne.trubek@gmail.com


The Technology of Writing Habits8 comments

January 15th, 2013

 

When I was in college, my method for writing essays went like this: I would read a book, and as I did I would underline or make check marks in the margins of books as I went along. I always read pen in hand, except if it was a library book. Then I would put little arrows on post-it notes, and stick them in the margin, half on and half off the page, so that I could find them later. Some pages would have several post-its on them if there were numerous passages I would want to remember.

Then I would get a notebook and go back through the book, cover to cover, and wherever I found a check mark or underline. I would rewrite the entire sentence, or paragraph, that I had deemed important when I first wrote it. On the left hand side of the page, I would put the page number. Then I would simply recopy. I did not write down my thoughts about these passages. I would just copy them down. Then, underneath, slightly to the right to indicate a tab or change, I would write thoughts about the passage.

Why did I go through this process? Why not just write my thoughts about a book down in my notebook, and then flip back through the source text, whatever I had been reading, to augment and add quotes and evidence to whatever I was writing? My system most certainly vaunted the author’s words above my own thoughts, however fledgling, something I often wondered about.

I did it because through the act of writing out the passages I better remembered what I read. I did it because writing aids memory. I did to more fully engrain the book into my brain.

I could have chosen other methods: I could have read the paragraphs out loud, once or twice or ten times. I could have read more slowly the first time, perhaps, slowing down my processing of the ideas, re-reading at a slower speed, just as a slow motion reply of a football play helps one remember it better than watching it live. But for me, the act of copying was the best way to remember.

In graduate school, I kept this same system, but I gave up on the notebooks, and armed with faster and better computers, I typed up my notes. I sat at my computer, a book to my right, propped up on other books (I’ve never been one for office supplies, but one of those metal stands would have been a good idea.) I remember studying for my preliminary exams: I had a list of 100 American novels written between 1865-1945 on which I would be tested. I sat and copied out huge swaths of Henry James, Theodore Dreiser, Nathaniel West on my computer. I printed out reams of quotes. I rarely referred to them later. The products were forgotten. But the act of reytping was all about remembering. And through the act of retyping I spent time thinking about and better understanding those novels.

From there, I would write my own compositions, put my ideas onto the page, whether long-hand or typed. I was freed to think my own thoughts, undergirded by my previous stage of “studying,” as it were. I would then go on to  opine or analyze or whatever it was I was doing when I wrote my History 303 papers,  my dissertation, my subsequent articles, my last book.

When I started my current project, a book on the history of handwriting, I spent some time thinking about how I would go about my research. So many more tools are at my disposal now—so many more than had been just a few years earlier—ones I hear about on twitter when my fellow academics praise the latest note-taking program or research aid. I looked into a few of those and got very sleepy while going through the manuals.

I did decide on one new gadget, and one change in my process: I bought a Kindle. Many of the books I needed to research this book are available on Kindle, and I was enchanted by the idea that with it. I could skip one laborious step in my research: the typing up of the notes. Whoa, I thought: how quickly I will write this book! Instead of using check marks and underlining as I read, I can just “highlight” key passages. With my finger! I wouldn’t have to read with a pen in hand! And instead of retyping my notes, I could cut and copy them into my files.

And thus I started, delightedly. I lay on the couch and put my lunch-greasy fingers on the screen. And yet I was not being lazy; I was doing important book research!  All of it, two steps smushed into one. And then,  having downloaded Kindle for Mac (it was all so easy), I could see my highlights on the page, and with a quick cut and copy, paste them into the file on my computer that contained my notes. I wouldn’t even have to sit up. I could just swap Kindle for laptop and stay on the couch all day, and voila: my notes—all those key sentences and paragraphs— would be tidily delivered to my “Medieval” or “Cuneiform” files. Goodbye, middleman, back strain, eye fatigue.

Until I started writing. Until I moved to the drafting stage of things. I had all the same materials I always have had at my disposal, I had done the same work—read books and noted key parts. But I could not write a word. I felt as if I had not read anything, really, at all. I could not remember a thing about cuneiform.  I couldn’t remember those books I had  read on the Kindle, highlighted and copied into files.

When I  read the quotes in the files,  they didn’t really make sense to me. I couldn’t conceptualize how those particular words worked in the context of the section of the book in which they occurred, or why I thought that passage was important for my chapter.

I realized that for me, the action of retyping notes—once something I did by hand, and later by typing—was essential to my thinking process. With a heavy heart—oh crap, all those hours and all that back strain— and lightened wallet, I went back and re-bought the books— hard copies this time. And I started over.  I re-read the books, putting underlines and checkmarks by the important bits, pen in hand. Then I sat upright, at the computer, and I propped the books up on my desk, next to my computer, and retyped key passages.

Now, here’s the thing: there is nothing wrong with the kindle for taking notes on books. There is nothing about that process that is inherenly inferior to my process.  Reading with a pen in hand does not make you a better reader.  These things matter to me, because I have associations with them. They are my method, my way of thinking, something I developed when I first starting to think seriously about ideas, and writing. My method has been, to use the wrong and an unfortunate metaphor, hard-wired into my brain. I need to retain it because when I am doing it,  I am touching base with my earlier, serious self, the writer person, the Anne who has written other things that did not turn out badly doing things that way and so she can do it again if she does it the same way, again. Maybe I have trained my brain to think using this method: maybe I have developed some circuits up there that I cannot shortcut if I want to write well. When I sit and type up those notes I access memories of other notes, ideas, thoughts, up there somewhere above my eyes, perhaps.

So this is a story about me. It is not a story not about technology, or reading, or writing. It is about a connection, perhaps a nostalgia. (Now when it comes to form—the form of what we write—technology does play a central role—but that’s a topic for later one).

I hear similar stories about the importance of handwriting first drafts all the time. I hear them from authors who insist on drafting novels long-hand, rather than typing them. They will insist, fists banging on bar tables, that pen and paper is an empirically superior form of composition to tapping keys to create a first draft. They have evidence; they have theories.

I say: bunk. I say you wrote your first short stories in college long-hand, and got good comments on them from your professor, and now you need to continue this method so to touch base with the earlier self, the budding writer-self, to feel authentic, to feel comfortable, to feel at home with writing. You need to hand-write to write good novels—sure, I believe that. But not because the technology is superior, or causes people to think differently. It is because you have built associations—and maybe some individually pressed neural pathways—by so doing.

For me, the transition from handwriting my notes to typing them was not a conceptual leap: it was just the same thing using different tools. The same is true for my composition process: writing a draft long-hand or typing it  does not change the experience of thinking or writing for me. I can write better when I type because it’s quicker and I think quickly. Also my handwriting sucks and I am less careful with word choice when I handwrite.

But when it comes to research: well then I’m a conservative.  I have some pretty silly, archaic and tightly-held habits that I insist make my work better, and I am going to stick with them.

So I get the handwriting-first-drafts-creates-better-writing proponents. But I don’t think it says anything about the nature of technology, or writing. I think it says something about habits and associations. It says something about mnemonics. It is all about memory in the end.


Update: Economics of Self-Publishing & A Second Printing?18 comments

December 5th, 2012

—I initially posted some of this story in August and updated it in September after we launched. I’ve updated it a third time as we begin to contemplate a second printing.–

I spent a good part of the summer of 2012 on  Rust Belt Chic: The Cleveland Anthology , a collection of over 50 essays and images edited by Richey Piiparinen and myself. We conceived of the project as pop-up civic action of sorts–a way for a community to come together and put out a book, lickety-split. For me, it was also a way to learn more about publishing, specifcally, self-publishing, from the inside out. (In The Atlantic, Alan Jacobs mentioned this as part of my status as a “DCE”–a Digital Cultural Entrepreneur”–I can’t say that without laughing myself)

 I have pulled together the receipts, the spreadsheet, distribution and sales numbers to share with those interested in the back-end of this project. Here’s how it rolled:

Costs To Produce and Publish Book: 

–Domain name for website–$30

–Website help (some mishegas we needed sorted out) –$60

–LLC–we decided we should become a business to handle money.  This was a pretty simple  affair involving  the Ohio Secretary of State–$125

–ISBN–turns out there’s this weird monopoly on ISBNs, and you have to buy them in bulk. So now we own 10 ISBNs (give a shout if you want one). $250

–Barcode–don’t forget those lines and numbers; add another $25

–Designer–ah, perhaps the best stroke of luck we had in this whole endeavor was the incredible designer we hired. You needs a good one, folks, to do this right, and a good one must know InDesign and also be really cool. I’m not telling you what we paid the designer, but if you are trying this at home, estimate $2000.

–Cover designer–oh we have the most prettiest cover in the whole wide world.. Maybe you’ll get lucky like us. No real estimate for this–anwhere from your computer’s free clip art to thousands.

–Printing–How many to print? This was a big decision. I wanted to print 1000 initially; Richey said 2000. The economies of scale favored 2000, as it costs far less than twice as much to print 2000 as it would have to print 1000.   We thought we would either: 1.) have the proverbial garages full of unsold copies; or, if we were luckier, 2.) sell the 2000 over the course of 12 months. We decided we wanted to have the books printed off-set and found a good one.  We paid the printer $4150.

–Proofreading: I forgot to add this in my initial post. We had a team of volunteer proofreaders, and then we hired a friend who gave it another read for a “friends and family” discounted rate.

–We’ve promised our contributors that we’ll pay it forward: if  we sell over a certain amount of copies, we will give one contributor a lump sum of $5000 towards their own self-publishing venture (this, we decided, was better than giving each person $100 for their contribution). So we did not have any initial honoraria cost.

–It goes without saying the co-editors did not charge or get paid. In face, we laid out:

Total: We sunk about $7000 into publishing the book. 

******

We pubbed on September 10. By September 24 we were in the black, having sold $7,000 worth of books (thanks to social media and contributor shout-outs, we sold most of those in pre-orders).

We distribute the book variously:

–We ship  orders through our bigcartel website. We put them into envelopes and take them to the post office ourselves.

–We drive around town and drop off orders (and re-orders) to the many local stores who we reached out to asking if they wanted to stock our book.  We charge stores $12 wholesale (we retail for $20).

–We also listed in Ingram, which allows us to be stocked by stores whom we are not in direct contact with and, for better or worse–be listed in Amazon and other online chains.

Our ebook is a cinch to distribute! But hard to figure out. We lowered the ebook to $2.99 for a three day sale last month and sold a bundle during that period. Then we raised the price back up to $7.99. We’re still experimenting with pricing of the ebook. And we still forget, too often, to promote it. Our decision to include 12 additional essays only in the ebook was probably the right one, but I don’t think we get the word out about the “expanded” features as well as we should.

Marketing

We were fortunate to have many requests for readings and events. We have held a launch party, done 4 readings and been part of an art show that holds a monthly event at which we sold books. We have been covered by all the local media markets, including the NPR station and major paper in town.

Although I set aside an hour or two a day to market the book, most of my efforts could be generously called “half-assed.” We had to put faith in the quality of our product. And then we relied on community word-of-mouth,and luck. We’ve had both.

So How’s It Going? 

By 12/6 we have sold about 1500 or our 2000 copy print run. This we never expected (see “Printing” above). We now need to decide whether or not we should do a second printing, and if so, how to go about it. (Do we still want to do our own distribution? Do we want to go to POD and sacrifice the quality and look of the physical book? Should we just fade out and say–well that’s that?)

We have now made a profit. Sometime soon Richey and I will take some of this profit out and pay ourselves for a soupçon of our time.

But here’s the thing:  moving away from the economics and into the mushy: lots of people like our book.  If the summer was a crazed mania of excited putting-together; the fall has been a slow, warm, soul-enlarging process of people in the community finding us, cheering us, coming to hear us, thanking us. Word has not spread virally: it has spread by word of mouth, bookseller to customer, reader to friend. We wanted to do something for the city and at this point we can say, Hey. We did that. Oh and here are a few pics: http://pinterest.com/rustbeltchic/rust-belt-chic/

 


Sheeshes and Mumblings: The Kindle New YorkerNo comments yet

December 3rd, 2012

Having read my inaugural issue of The New Yorker on my freshly charged Kindle somethingorother I am here to offer a crowdsourced (I contain multitudes) review of who will Like! and who will Unsubscribe from this New New Yorker:

Amongst the happy:

authors of the books in “briefly noted.” This single page, which is eminently skip-able, downright completely miss-able, as the weary reader heads into the 3/4 done mark of that week’s issue, gets BLOWN UP on the kindle. Each review gets its own page! Each books seems super-important! Cheers to the “crap we only got into Briefly Noted” publicists of the kindle future.

Amongst the unhappy: 

all of us aka comics readers:  They are all plopped into a nonsensical section at the end. And no,  you cannot flip the kindle over to read them first. You have to swipe your finger, over and over, watching the pipe of the “percentage left” of each article fill up and then start over as the next one starts, hum de dum man this is making me feel lame as I look only at the bar on the bottom growing blacker and never, not once, at the words of the article above, so I can get to those dogs talking.

all of us aka those who realize reading is material: the kindle font is not the New Yorker font. This raises a zen koan existential question or maybe even a Roz Chast thought bubble: Is it a New Yorker article if it the letters that comprise it are not New Yorker letters?

Amongst the happy: 

the people who write the restaurant reviews. No more hunting for the latest Ben Greenman. These get their own page too.

Amongst the unhappy:

Article readers who wonder if the articles were always so dull or is it just the kindle font that makes them seem so damned ponderous?

the poets. Because they are glumped together at the end. Or maybe no reason need be proferred.

letters to the editor writers. Because despite everything we’ve been trained to understand about the order of things in the world, these are at the end.

people who like to do the caption contest: Gone missing entirely.

people who love Shouts & Murmurs:  Funny things about the New Yorker aren’t as funny when they are on a blog kindle.