Read This Book

This week, the Red Room has challenged its members to write about our favorite book for sale on the new Red Room bookstore.

A-ha! I thinks to myself. I could praise Red Room member David Corbett’s novel Do They Know I’m Running? or, recommend any number from member Peter Straub’s distinguished oeuvre.

But, at the end of this short paragraph, lie ten words stretching seductively on a thin mattress of clear digital air: 

“Yes, you're welcome to recommend one of your own books.”

You mean, praise my own book? Dragon's Ark? Really? Just like that? As my heart wings skyward, I look for an oxygen mask to fall from the ceiling. The sun hangs just out of reach, my fingertips brushing its soft molten surface. I shall melt into its liquid hot sea as my light spreads throughout the universe! Even Stephen Colbert will embrace a studied diffidence that will lead him into the priesthood!

Let’s see . . . “Dragon’s Ark is the one Dracula novel that towers above all other books ever written. Not since Leopold Bloom thought about God while seated on the . . . .”

Nah, that’s a bit much. Maybe. Let’s go for a more lolling modesty.

“If Dragon’s Ark had thundered onto the literary scene 60 years ago, Saul Bellow would have packed up his pencil box and retired to Peoria. Take that, Edmund Wilson!”

As you can tell, I’m finding this difficult.

To permit me to say nice things about something I’ve done, for me to ladle the same praise on my novel Dragon’s Ark that Michiko Kakutani slathers on Michael Ondaatje like warm honey, would daunt few of the other authors I’ve known in my life. Many are the writers who secretly believe their books are better than everyone else’s. I’ll bet my next five dollars in royalty payments that, once in awhile, Dan Brown sits staring into a corner, muttering to himself “Robert Ludlum is unfit to vacuum and shake the crumbs from my keyboard.” Even Harold Robbins supposedly crowed—yes, crowed--that he was a greater writer than Joyce and Hemingway.

I was raised by a mid-Westerner, who, was, in turn, raised by an iron-clad Upper Michigan Presbyterian. I lived fifteen years in the Midwest. Some of you may know what means. Some of you may not. What that means is that not only are you not allowed to blow your own tuba, it’s only polite to claim the tuba belongs to someone else.

Praise my own book? In public? Are you kidding? . . . would you like me to strut boldly naked through Union Square for an encore? We do all this doggish groveling to reviewers and authors, wheedling like Oliver Twist for blurbs and reviews and now you tell us we can personally recommend our own book?

“Dragon’s Ark! The vampire novel that fans of Ordinary People have been waiting for!”

Mmmmmm . . . try again.

As I’ve said elsewhere, the Dracula myth has been dozing upside down in my brain cave since I was knob-high to the TV set, mostly in mute secrecy. “Mostly” because whenever I did dare loose it from its cage, out through my mouth, the response would be funny looks, not the ‘ho-ha, that’ll be scary and clever” kind.

Adults, teens, and children alike murped in ever-shifting shades of disapproval, disdain, and outright pallid fear. Fire-purple sneers from parents and teachers and parents of teachers, the word “junk” usually flashing by from somewhere in the word train; curled lips, raised eyebrows while they repeatedly banged me in the nose with a copy of Moby Dick. “You have to be the next Steinbeck and Fitzgerald!” can hang like a horse collar on a guy.

“Hisssssss! Boooooooo!” said a warm, soft, buxom, farm-bred, homespun, Catholic, leftist feminist for whom I carried a soggy sputtering torch for far too long. Oh well, horror fans and writers are a tad on the conservative side anyway.

And then there was the woman, a supervisor at a psychiatric institution near Oshkosh, Wisconsin, who spluttered with genuine moral disdain: “What? You’re a writer? You mean you’re one of those people who live in their own little worlds and don’t care about anyone else?”

You didn’t know such individuals existed? Oh, dear dear reader they have and they do. You may be sitting next to one right now. Pity these people. Pity them because now, with writers everywhere thanks to digitalization, they must feel surrounded by the Zombie Horde. (We, of course, will eat their brains, because, well, where else are we going to get our ideas?)

No, it wasn’t until long after the blessed rise of Stephen King and when people started realizing that John le Carré was a serious writer, that I dare let Dracula’s wing untangle so he could flip open my skull cap and lead other of my many dreams up into the starry night.

I think I experienced the same revelation Stephen King experienced during his brief sojourn in a traditional literary workshop of the Iowa type: No matter how earnestly realistic and “relevant” I tried to be, tale of vampires and cowboys, spies and plunderers, spoke to me more as a writer. I never consulted Richard Stark’s sales figures. I just knew I wanted to explore that fictional realm more than any other—where people do things in the world and often suffer surprising and terrible consequences.

Nowadays, a certain confidence and pride occupy genre writers, both justified and, more often, not. And thanks to that digital technology, thanks to this teeming marketplace where millions of books jostle like fleas, there is no other choice but to be your own salesman somehow, a cruel development for those of shy and modest temperament and whose books may be far far better than anyone else’s, especially those who shout most loudly and cleverly.

So: It’s time to be arrogant, plain and simple.

Dragon’s Ark is a darn good read. There are several 4- and 5-star reviews on Goodreads and Amazon to prove it, plus praise from David Corbett and others on its cover. It’s a scary, colorful, exciting, and dramatic novel. It has all the familiar, but fundamental pleasures of genre fiction, good and great alike: narrative drive, bracing energy, and vivid background and characters. It’s also written in a fresh interesting, entertaining style with wit, humor, and a fresh subtext. Dragon’s Ark imaginatively weaves together themes not often seen in horror fiction of its type in bloody good diverting fashion.

I hope you read it. I hope you’re entertained. I hope you’ll like it.

As Gene Autry said, “It ain’t braggin’ if you done it.”

Copyright 2011 by Thomas Burchfield

(Photo by author)

Thomas Burchfield's contemporary Dracula novel Dragon's Ark is available right NOW, published by Ambler House Publishing. It can be ordered in both paperback and e-book editions through your local independent bookstore, through Amazon, Barnes and Noble,  Powell's Books, Smashwords, Scrib'd and now at the Red Room. His original comic screenplay Whackers  is now available in Kindle, Nook, iPad and on Scrib'd, also from Ambler House. Other material can also be read at The Red Room website for writers. Not enough for ya? He can also be friended on Facebook, tweeted at on Twitter and e-mailed at tbdeluxe [at] sbcglobal [dot] net.

Unfinished Business # 11: One-handed, One-man Band

[This first appeared as a guest blog on Joel Friedlander’s The Book Designer. It has been edited some. Many thanks to Joel for permission to repost this.]

Getting It Published

For those of you visiting for the first time, it happened like this: in December 2005, I began writing my debut novel Dragon’s Ark. In June 2009, I finally typed “THE END.” I then spent a year in grim pursuit of literary agents, knowing that, even if successful, my novel would likely not come out until 2012, or even later.

By April 2010, I’d nearly drained the well of available literary agents. During that month, I showed up at an independent publishing workshop, held at the Commonwealth Club of California, where Joel Friedlander, host of The BookDesigner, spoke. Nearly a year later, Dragon’s Ark is available to one and all, in paperback and e-book.

The path has been challenging but reasonably, even remarkably, smooth. The end result, the book itself, a POD edition printed through Lightning Source, is a lovely production, especially for an independent paperback from a shoestring company. The most stunning surprise was the cover by Cathi Stevenson of Book Cover Express, who fully grasped my intentions and delivered.

I encountered further success and encouragement with Joel’s excellent interior design, plus his kindness and insight (and, most significantly, patience), all based on his years in the publishing business. Long before any of us, Joel saw the new world coming and entered it fully, then turned and opened its door wide. If you’re starting there, you’re starting well.

Add to that some excellent blurbs from important writers such as David Corbett, Don Herron, and John-Ivan Palmer, and I wound up with a book with excellent literary and commercial potential.

The only major stumble was in the final editing, but even so, amazingly few embarrassments remain (though each one burns like a hot needle in my heart). For a rank beginner, I dropped surprisingly few stitches.

I named my imprint Ambler House Publishing, both after the pioneering genre writer Eric Ambler, and because the name evokes the era of publishing before conglomeration, when Alfred E. Knopf was an actual person who loved books more than he did a 15-percent profit margin. (That era may be returning in new form, but that’s a discussion for later).

Now I had the book. Next, I had to get it out into the world: market it, distribute it, sell it. That train rolls on, and miles and miles of track lies ahead.

Getting It Out There

One of my first marketing/distribution fantasies had me driving all over the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond, persuading bookstores to stock Dragon’s Ark. However, just getting to the stores in my own neighborhood was daunting enough. Here, I’ve been reasonably successful. Not every store said yes, but the ones who placed it on their shelves sold all of them . . . mostly likely because I snacked on the ear of everyone I met at my local watering holes, waving my postcards and copies of the book in their faces. (One customer was a hollering drunk whom, I swear, forgot he ever bought it.) I’ve actually sold 10 copies out of my own bag so far.

As for the hundred or so bookstores to whom I sent marketing e-mails—mostly silence. One bookstore invited me to do a “meet and greet” but seems to have forgotten all about me, despite repeated e-mail follow-ups. One lucky break: Powell’s Books in Portland, Oregon, now offers Dragon’s Ark online, though I’m not sure who to credit for that. After a few scolding e-mail responses from others, I’ve pulled my lowered my cannon a little on that front of my campaign.

Add to that a couple of mixed reviews. I worked hard pursuing these, but they turned out not be enthused about my eccentric approach to the Dracula myth. Lesson learned here: there’s a howling black chasm between fans of Stephanie Wright and fans of, say, Peter Straub. Search for and pick your audience carefully, especially if your book is a little more offbeat than what some folks are used to and expect.

Sales so far have been few, for both paperback and e-book. But instead of folding in despair, I drive on. Like it or not, this will take some time. When Joel announced that he was taking the “soft release” approach to the release of his own new book A Self-Publisher’s Companion, I took the cue: play to my strengths—the audience I already have on my three websites--and build from there.

The Inkspot Approach

I’ve been online for years and have built a small but loyal following. So, instead of trying to fly to the moon on my handsome, but tinny, jalopy, I’ve decided to keep working on the 400 to 500 or so weekly readers here on Earth and grow out from there, one or two readers at a time. (In counterinsurgency work, this is called the “Inkspot Approach.”)

The best way for Ambler House to sell more books is to publish more of them. Just last month, the company published the first in a backlog of Burchfieldiana—the comic screenplay Whackers. Over the next year, more will appear: three other screenplays, plus short, low-priced collections of humor pieces, critical, personal, and travel essays, and a smattering of short stories.

These will be available exclusively as e-books and all will be available at the low price of $1.99. Judging from this article by Laura Miller on Salon,  the 99-cent price recommended for most independent books may not work anymore, thanks to the spamsters who have been hijacking the KindlePad platforms with 99-cent ripoffs and knockoffs of other people’s books, including yours, mine, and the classics. “99 cents” seems to becoming shorthand for “spam.”

But that’s just another kink in the always-evolving world of independent publishing. Here, only the persistent, the patient, and the flexible survive; only they can hope to prosper.

Copyright 2011 by Thomas Burchfield

Photo by Author

Thomas Burchfield's contemporary Dracula novel Dragon's Ark is available right NOW, published by Ambler House Publishing. It can be ordered in both paperback and e-book editions through your local independent bookstore, through Amazon, Barnes and Noble,  Powell's Books, Smashwords, and Scrib'd. His original comic screenplay Whackers  is now available in a Kindle editon, also from Ambler House. Other material can also be read at The Red Room website for writers. And if you're still not tired of him, he can also be friended on Facebook, tweeted at on Twitter and e-mailed at tbdeluxe [at] sbcglobal [dot] net.

Guest Posting This Week at the Book Designer: The Power of Persistence

Welcome: This week I'm guest posting about my experiences as an indie publisher at the Web page of Joel Friedlander, the Book Designer and the interior designer of my novel Dragon's Ark. Joel's a great guy, a pioneer in this field and the place the start for those of you considering trekking this long, lonesome, but rewarding trail.

Thanks for coming by!

Thomas Burchfield

Unfinished Business #6: Reassurance

 Dragon's Ark: The Music of Hunger at Sunset

In Hollywood and Big Publishing, it often happens like this. The announcement goes out that the release of Young and Hirsute: The Profound and Epic Life of Justin Bieber (or whatever that movie’s called) has been delayed. Sometimes the flack offers an excuse, usually scheduling conflicts with other releases; perhaps outside, real-life events make the release of Justin inappropriate or ill-timed—a sudden epidemic of juvenile alopecia, for example.

Even before the last echo fades into the deep shadows of news cave, mouths flatten and lips curl at either end as snickers pepper the mediascape like buckshot, all bearing the severe message, in that I-might’ve-known tone of voice:

“That means it sucks.” Back to the editing room, back to the soundstage, back to the keyboard to save the unsavable, the child already drowned and lost.

So, to muffle any carping from the peanut gallery, let me reassure everyone that the publication date of Dragon’s Ark is being pushed back from March 15 to April 26, 2011, not because it sucks (which it does not, because David Corbett told me so), but, really, for very banal--and unsurprising--technological reasons, which I’ll explain right now:

With all my emphasis on publishing and distributing Dragon’s Ark as a trade paperback POD, available in local bookstores, I’ve also been determined to see it properly distributed as an e-book. When I decided to start this venture long, long ago--last May--there was really only one e-reader—the
Kindle—standing astride the market and two main online publishing platforms: Scrib’d and Smashwords.

Back in that ancient time, it was simply a matter of an author uploading his book to Smashwords and Scrib’d and then strolling away, swiping his palms, his work done.

No more. As outlaw Pike Bishop might say, “Those days are closin’ fast.” An eternal year has passed and now dozens and dozens of e-readers clatter across the market table like spilled dominoes and, along with them, dozens and dozens of file formats. The digi-scape has churned into such complexity,
the independent publisher-author can no longer distribute his book from his own humble keyboard. Smashwords and Scrib’d are no longer the only dogs in the junkyard and could even—as I mentioned in an earlier essay—fall quickly from sight.

And so, as he has already done with editing and layout and cover design, the independent author-publisher—or at least the ones with ambition--must hire others for help in getting his book to the world, in this case employ the service known as an e-book distributor.

Of course, I’m hardly the first in cyberspace to note this. As evidence, I point out that my first selection for this service—E-book Architects from Austin, Texas, known as the first company to offer this service and still regarded as the main player—has a huge line of customers ahead of me, and all of
them are sure our books are great. As of now, there’s a delay of about 11-12 weeks. No way can I meet my original publishing dateline.

And that's all. Technical issues, pure and simple. You may sigh with relief and needn’t shake your head in pity, for I’ve not earned it. If anything, I hope the wait, the quivering anticipation,
makes readers even more eager, to open that lonely creaking door.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: My layout designer, Joel Friedlander of Marin Bookworks, has done the hard work--and it was hard, as you will read--of cobbling a directory of current e-book conversion companies. My first choice, discussed above, is so backed up with customers now, I may have to go elsewhere! Thanks Joel for this tremendous aid and good luck to everyone!


(Edited 2/10/11)

Copyright 2011 by Thomas Burchfield

Photo by Author

Thomas Burchfield's contemporary Dracula novel Dragon's Ark will be published this Spring by Ambler House Publishing. Other essays and postings can also be read at The Red Room website for writers. He can also be friended on Facebook, tweeted at on Twitter and e-mailed at tbdeluxe [at] sbcglobal [dot] net.

Unfinished Business #5: You Get What You Pay For

 A View from Dragon's Ark

(Continued from previous posting)

Maybe you’ve heard of Sturgeon’s Law. If not, it goes like this--ninety percent of all books are crap. Theodore Sturgeon, its originator, was  specifically referring to science fiction when he said it, but later expanded the remark to all art and culture. I think it a decent rule of thumb.

I believe Dragon’s Ark is well in the 10% of novels that are not crap. Now I have to ask: if the traditional gatekeepers—like the critics at the New York Times et al--are slain with that righteous spirit that idealists and revolutionaries are known for, leaving only the unpaid reviewers on Smashwords (mentioned previously) and Amazon, how will discriminating readers—those hardy few who are looking for a little more than The Vampire’s Righteous Organ--ever be able to find that 10%? How will they ever find Dragon’s Ark?

It is beyond doubt a cruel, insensitive and elitist thing to say, but I can’t really depend on either Smashword and Amazon reviewers, nor Aunt Thelma’s blog, to give Dragon’s Ark the boost that it needs, even if they do love it (and they may well not, for reasons I’ll discuss next time). Nor will killing off all New York Times book critics improve my chances. We need the Times and the other traditional outlets—to match the best of the right books to the best of the right readers.

Someone has to say what’s good and be able to make it stick. Readers need some organizing principle to make sense of it all, or we’ll all have to quit reading. Wading all alone through fifty books to find one good one is too tiring. We have to learn to rely on each other—and be reliable—once again.

And so, I want Terrence Rafferty—a noted and favorable critic with a positive outlook on horror fiction--of the Times to
read my book, even though he may not like it. I don’t expect him to. I simply hope he does. I want those gatekeepers: conscientious, eloquent, experienced, discriminating writers of taste and vision, who are as ambitious as the books they tell us about.

Writers, who by the way, are paid for what they do. Because no matter how the pseudo-egalitarians rage, there are distinct definable differences between War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy and Shopping and Fucking by Buffy Barnard. We need the gatekeepers—snobby, arrogant, tyrannical and any other adjective-of-evil you want to apply—to help the rest of us tease out and maintain those differences, to see that the best of human creativity, high artists and sturdy, dedicated craftspeople alike, remains at the center of both the divine and human spirit.

I’ve read Times Book Review online—for free--for some years now and no matter how often they’re wrong or neglectful towards writers I care for, I, at least, still think they’re still the among best at what they do (They got me interested in Barry Hannah—not bad for a day’s work.)

Our days of mooching off the Times are, I gather, ending soon as they try, once again, to move to an online subscription model. I don’t blame them. In fact, good luck to ‘em. I hope it works. I’m not at all sad, even though, right now, I can’t afford a subscription. Being even a halfway decent book critic is hard work, takes years of grinding experience reading terrible books because the guys who cut their checks say they have to!  Reading bad books for the rest of us. They should be paid.

Everyone who visits this page is reading it for free, mistakes and all. Because no one's paying me now, I cannot pay an editor to pare down and clean up my prose (and brother, it needs it). 

What’s more, you’ll never read a review of Zombie Nights or any number of potboilers here, because life is too damn short and close to over to read bad boring books without a paycheck for my misery. Those who whine about the poor writing or copyediting on Slate or Salon better think again. Pay nothing, you may get nothing.

Once readers face it that Aunt Thelma will never learn that there is no “k” in “cat,” and Stephanie Wright is not the voice of anyone’s generation, the gatekeepers will become as influential, as looked to, as before (I hope). The Internet will become the giant book, newspaper and magazine stand
it was meant to be and—as in sweet days of golden yore—you’ll have to slap your quarter on the counter for your copy on the way out.

But for independent writers/publishers with more on their minds than downloads and sales figures, the challenges will continue to mount.

Next in this series: the Time problem. Or: The “Literary” Agent Rises from the Grave.

(re-edited 1/11/10)

Copyright 2010 by Thomas Burchfield

Photo by Author

Thomas Burchfield's contemporary Dracula novel Dragon's Ark will be published this Spring by Ambler House Publishing. Other essays and postings can also be read at The Red Room website for writers. He can also be friended on Facebook, tweeted at on Twitter and e-mailed at tbdeluxe [at] sbcglobal [dot] net.

Unfinished Business #4: Rough Dark Seas Ahead

 Dragon's Ark: It only looks hungry when you're alone, at night, walking by the side of the road.

Lately, I’ve been writing about the challenges awaiting writers in the new world of independent publishing. An enormous number of avenues have opened up for writers otherwise frustrated with traditional publishers, who seem to be undergoing massive reductions as they rely more and more on a few guaranteed best-selling writers and take fewer risks with new, untested ones (such as me, and, maybe, you).

New writers are not the only ones having to sail this rough, strange sea. These stormy waters also threaten to drown or shipwreck established mid-list writers too, those great veterans, both high-lit and genre, who rarely break the top ten—or even the top fifty— but who are oftentimes the best writers around.

One of these mid-listers—no name—recently informed me he had been dropped by his major publisher, even though he’s one of the most respected, admired genre writers anywhere.

Also among the endangered writers list, I’d put England’s Ramsey Campbell. Campbell, despite his reputation, hasn’t published a U.S. hardcover edition of his books in the United States since the early 2000s. You can only buy his work in mass-market paperback around here, unless you want to order overseas. 

Worse, one of my predictions is that, maybe sooner than we realize, the entire field of the traditional mass market paperback will be washed away into the buzzing ocean of e-books and some of literature's most distinct voices will sink beneath hissing waters.

As both a finicky reader and a new writer, how will I—and the writers noted above--deal with this new world? With the sheer volume of books flushing into the market place, how can I keep my own novel, Dragon’s Ark--which will also be available as an e-book—from falling into the same dumpster file as Hot-Pants Hannah and the Vampire?

Now, I know all the basic answers to that: “blog”: use social networks, etc. etc. But I can’t elude the coppery feeling that all this frenetic interneting will only get me—and others--so far. I may be scoring 500 to 600 visitors a week (and trending up), but that is still a low low number and I still feel like a tiny click in the deep electron sea.
 
For a specific example, take a look at the e-book publishing site Smashwords (where you can download an old, funny screenplay of mine, Whackers, for a mere $2.00, cheap laughs guaranteed). According to Smashwords, they’ve published over 2 billion words so far. While I have published on Smashwords—to no particular effect—I’ve not read any of the novels published there for the simple reason that I’m unable to tell which of them would be worth my time.

As you may guess, I’m a pretty flinty-eyed reader. Most of what I pick up, I put down, and I close the lid on quite a few books. On Smashwords, there's no real discrimination--every book is treated the same. (It appears marketing and publicity matters are entirely up to the writer). The only remote signposts regarding quality are starred reader reviews, which tell me less than little. 

One of the best-reviewed e-books on Smashwords right now is called Samson’s Lovely Mortal ($4.99), vampire erotica about a male bloodsucker with erection problems (I guess this is set in the B.V. era—Before Viagra). These strike me as reviews by readers who sink their teeth into any vampire erotica they can find, good or not—like the pulp novels of old, read once and delete.

Two of the most downloaded works are Zombie Nights (free) and A Letter to Justin Bieber’s Hair (also free). (These are the kinds of books that Dragon’s Ark will be competing with in a couple of months, but we’ll all have a good smirk at my expense about that later).

In short, there’s no way to for me, at least—and you, I'd  guess—to tell what’s really worth time and money and what is not.

If this is future of publishing, then is it a future worth having, and, if not, what might be done about it?

[To be continued]

Copyright 2010 by Thomas Burchfield

Photo by Author

Thomas Burchfield's contemporary Dracula novel Dragon's Ark will be published March 15, 2011 by Ambler House Publishing. Other essays and postings can also be read at The Red Room website for writers. He can also be friended on Facebook, tweeted at on Twitter and e-mailed at tbdeluxe [at] sbcglobal [dot] net.

 

Unfinished Business #3: Two Large Hats, One Very Small Head

Another glimpse of the setting for Dragon's Ark

(In my last two posts, I’ve written about some of the challenges I’ve faced wearing two hats as both an independent publisher and author of the contemporary Dracula novel Dragon’s Ark. I closed with a worried tremble in my voice, concerned with the fate of the publisher/author who’s unable to move on to the next book due to all the work, as publisher, s/he has to do get the current release a decent spot in the tumultuous market place.

I will now continue to finger my worry beads, first, by comparing the past with present.)

Back in the good old days (and I do believe they were truly good) Ernest Hemingway would send one of his many great novels off to the great editor Maxwell Perkins at Scribner’s—what, I’m getting too pretentious now?

Ohhh all right then, goddammit.

Harold Robbins would send his latest boring potboiler over to whoever was the editor at whatever was his publisher. Writer and editor might engage in back and forth over the manuscript (such as it was). There also might be money negotiations between Harold’s lawyers and their lawyers. Next, copyediting and proofreading by Whatever House’s staff or freelancers.

After in-house design did their work, the latest Harold Robbins epic of money-grubbing power grabs, shooting, and fucking would be shipped off to the printers. Before long, it would land in airport and drugstore book racks everywhere to be purchased or furtively thumbed by horny, shifty-eyed teenage boys. (I used to sneak my trembling looks at the copies in the Oshkosh Public Library while my mother worked the front desk, twenty feet away.)

In the time among all this shorthand, Harold Robbins would sprawl on the chaise lounge on the veranda of his 222-room mansion, cozy in his endangered-animal fur robe, boinking bosomy bikinied babes, smoking his cigars, drinking his mint juleps or whatever the hell it was he drank, bragging to everyone that he was the greatest writer who ever lived simply for selling more books than everyone including Hemingway, which in his day—the 1960s through the 1970s--was factually true.

Meanwhile, between the boinking and the boozing, Harold Robbins would be typing out his next book.

Whatever Publisher (Sorry, I can’t even be bothered to Google about this. If the Harold Robbins Literary Legacy Society wants to burn my books, I’ll send the matches.) would meanwhile handle all the marketing and all the distribution. They would make all the media contacts, arrange for all interviews: TV, radio, newspaper, magazine.

In the meantime, Harold Robbins--I'm guessing--drank and boinked, wrote and waited. After the phone call came, maybe from his personal publicist, off he’d fly around the globe to all the media interviews. Perhaps he would haul his typewriter along on his private jet (yes, he owned at least one jet; maybe more) so he could continue typing up The Betsy II or whatever. Maybe he’d stop by Whatz-it House and the entire staff would lick the carpet as he passed because Harold Robbins’s novels were making them soooo much money.

Then back he’d wheel in his rented 30-foot limo to his 6-star hotel, or jet back to the manse, and his typewriter, banging away, martinis lined up like martinets that coolly glistened at his elbow.

He did this for many books over many years. Sweet life, eh?

And so: Welcome to the 21st century and the world of independent publishing. As the new publishing system is now working, if you’re expecting to live the life of Harold Robbins, you’re in trouble, and not just ‘cause people aren’t reading as much anymore.

I know, because I’m in trouble. The first article in this series described all the work I’ve been doing as an independent publisher to get my novel into your kind and waiting hands. In the old, ideal—and increasingly misty sepia—world of long ago, I might write a brief article promoting my next book, a Prohibition saga I’m calling Butchertown, upon which I would be working away, with yummy glasses of mango yogurt drink lined up on my desk (I’m at that age). Meanwhile my publisher
would be doing all the work described above for Dragon’s Ark. And then I'd go out and perform by song-and-dance for maybe six weeks, my Royal (a brand of typewriter) not far away.

That’s not happening. As burning as I am to rat-a-tat my way into Butchertown, I have done little except key up a draft of Chapter 1 and a scrawl a few notes. My obsession with it is growing to Dragon’s-Ark proportions, but I’m stalled, not because I’m “blocked” or lazy from counting up eggs that haven’t hatched yet, but because ... I’m sure you see it now.



Understand, I’ve not made a penny yet out of Dragon’s Ark, and there are no guarantees I will. All the pennies—and there aren’t many--are coming from my day job. Harold Robbins didn't have a day job.

And so, I don’t believe this model of independent publishing can quite sustain in its current form, at least for writers with more than book—maybe many more—to write, especially if they're just trying to break in, or maybe not selling enough to call it a living.

If anything, the time between one book and the next could grow quite a bit longer. Unless I’m a well-paid professional blogger, it seems to me, my postings--no matter how jolly and clever--won’t be enough to keep whatever fans I may have happy. They’ll want my next book. And I’ll want to get it them.

So, what’s to be done? How might—or should—the evolution of this new field proceed? I’ll propose some ideas of where things might go in the next—and maybe final--chapter of this saga.

(Edited 12/21/10)



Copyright 2010 by Thomas Burchfield

Photo by Author 

Thomas Burchfield's contemporary Dracula novel Dragon's Ark will be published March 15, 2011 by Ambler House Publishing. Other essays and postings can also be read at The Red Room website for writers. He can also be friended on Facebook, tweeted at on Twitter and e-mailed at tbdeluxe [at] sbcglobal [dot] net.

Unfinished Business #2

 A peek at the world of Dragon's Ark

(Second in a series)

As I wrote here a few days ago, I’m busy.

My proofread of Dragon’s Ark speeds along now, without crashes. After I print out the Adobe file for hardcopy proofreading, I close the file until it’s time to enter the corrections. Then I print out the next chapter and close the file again. Save constantly. Keep all other programs closed, except for music. Finally, at the end of every session, I send the file to my thumb drive. My Adobe program has behaved with exemplary calm and good sense.

BTW: I recommend all writers do a hard-copy, mechanical proofread (NOT a copyedit!) before you send your manuscript over to your interior designer; you can pay to have it done (by me, for example); or, you can take some proofreading courses and do it yourself, so long as you be sure to close off the creative part of your mind—lead curtains recommended--and focus strictly on the mechanics: formatting, punctuation, dropped or wrong words, essential grammar errors, misspellings and minor mistakes only.

Getting your mind in that space is hard and not everyone can do it, but it is possible. I pretend I’m Mr. Computer Voice, flatly droning along aloud, enunciating each syllable and punctuation (“Dot ... com ... Bang!). If you dropped by my office to eavesdrop, you’d think I’d gone mad.

All in all, it means less work for both you and your designer and lower costs for you! Another lesson learned by me.

Now, I’ve been closely following the self-evolution of the independent publishing field, this new model of ultra-accessible literary expression, as it unfolds into the future. Last time, I summarized the great deal of work that this independent author/publisher is doing to get his book to the world in the remote hope that it becomes a success.

As this model emerges in its jury-rigged fashion, I detect weaknesses in the structure, possibly significant ones. This piece intends to further the discussion.

First, I’ll propose that a majority of writers only have one book in them, a good book to be sure, a very useful, well-written, non-fiction work like a how-to book, a memoir of a singular experience, a modest history of one of life's obscure corners. Then it’s back to teaching, doctoring, nursing, building, governing, plumbing, chefing, etc. and all the other Work of the World, all of it more important than anything I could write.

This is one definition of Good. There may even the profoundly self-aware novelist who writes one excellent novel and says, “That’s it! I’ve said my say! See ya at the fishin' hole!” (Harper Lee comes to mind.) These individuals are to be admired, respected and maybe even followed.

Further, these writers can go on marketing and publicizing their single contribution forever and never have to worry, because that’s their thing and their proud, and satisfied as are the readers who read it. It may even provide a steady, if minor, income stream—pay down the publishing debts; pay down the mortgage; occasional dinner at Chez Panisse.

But then there’s the rest of us. The writers who can’t shut up.

What about us?

(To be continued)

(re-edited 12/18/10)



Copyright 2010 by Thomas Burchfield

Photo by Author 

Thomas Burchfield's contemporary Dracula novel Dragon's Ark will be published March 15, 2011 by Ambler House Publishing. Other essays and postings can also be read at The Red Room website for writers. He can also be friended on Facebook, tweeted at on Twitter and e-mailed at tbdeluxe [at] sbcglobal [dot] net.

Unfinished Business #1

I’m busy these days.

Busy getting my novel Dragon’s Ark ready for its publication date of March 15, 2011. I’m proofing the final manuscript version in my Adobe program, which, I am only now learning, crashes a lot—crumbling like adobe buildings in old westerns in such a way that it corrupts the file. So I have to start proofreading all over again. A review of online documentation reveals few workable solutions, at least for someone who’s not a computer jockey, like I’m not.

This has happened twice.

Meanwhile, I struggle to get my marketing and distribution campaign up to speed. I’ve been e-mailing both bookstores and potential reviewers, sometimes up to four a day, sending an e-mail version of the Dragon’s Ark webpage as a press release, all the while collecting their names in addresses in
both a Word file and my Thunderbird address book. Twice a month, I will mass e-mail everyone on the list.

I also should be sending out more advance reading copies to stores and reviewers, but, as a freelance editor, I’ve hardly seen a paycheck since October, so I’ve had to freeze spending until that ship sailing somewhere out there in the fog finally lands . . . if it doesn’t sink in this hurricaning economy.

So, I keep doing the free things.

Once the ship docks, though, the orders for books go out again. With the check last week, I dashed to my local copy shop to whip up another batch of postcards and add a stack of business cards on top. Delays there, too. 

I’ve got a notion to make up a flier and post it around various neighborhoods, encouraging the curious to tap that bookstore a block away to order a copy of the novel, or—if they really have to—order it from Amazon, or download it to their e-reader.

I revived my Blogger page about a month ago, to, I think, very fine effect. (I really do like the new Blogger: increased flexibility, great stats.) I hang out on the two major social networks, trying to leave amusing or sensible comments.

I have my loyal readers from the Red Room, my e-mail list, and a couple posting sites I visit. Still, my Blogger page doesn’t seem to get too many visitors from TwitBook. I can only hope those fine few are ones that count (and I do love you, make no mistake). To the rest, I’m probably another
blurry signal in the blank white noise. A fair number of readers seem to wander in from somewhere out in Google. There are also readers trickling in from a site called "Blog Carnival" (to which I was steered by the estimable Joel Friedlander.)

Hello. Nice to see you all again. Please keep stopping by, Thank you.

Last Saturday, my wife and I attended  the holiday luncheon of the Berkeley Branch of the California Writers Club--the one Jack London started. We had a fine time. Former club President AL Levenson, a fan of this page, kindly suggested I make these articles shorter.

Maybe he's right. Maybe I'll try that.

The club has been very helpful; in fact, I’ve scheduled my first public reading from Dragon’s Ark for this March with them (Details will follow). But I barely fight the itch to get back to proofreading and marketing the book, plus working on editing projects to keep the money coming in.

Elizabeth and I have to move out of our house now, too.

But enough of urolagnic self-pity. I have a new novel to work on, right? After all, my first positive review blurb has arrived from this fine writer.

Oh that. Been thinking about that. I’ll write about that next time. Like tomorrow. Or the day after. I have this piece to post. My manuscript to proofread. Marketing to do. Books and other matter I have to edit to make to money to keep the roof over our heads. A house to clean. Best of all, there's a wife to love.

In short, I’m busy these days.

(Re-edited 12/15/10; 12/19/10)

Copyright 2010 by Thomas Burchfield

Photo by Elizabeth


Thomas Burchfield's contemporary Dracula novel Dragon's Ark will be published March 15, 2011 by Ambler House Publishing. Other essays and postings can also be read at The Red Room website for writers. He can also be friended on Facebook, tweeted at on Twitter and e-mailed at tbdeluxe [at] sbcglobal [dot] net.

The Thrill of the Hunt

“Come, Watson, come! The game is afoot!”

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
“The Adventure of the Abbey Grange”

My wife’s smoke-sweet voice sings through the door ahead of her one cold mid-November night: “I say, Thomas! You’ve got a package!”

The package--ten uncorrected, advance review copies (meaning mistakes remain) of that roof-breaking bestseller that I know you all will line up in twos around the block to buy when it bangs into bookstores on March 15, 2011—Dragon’s Ark.

(At the exact same moment, servers everywhere will melt down into gooey rivers of silicon as you e-readers download it by the hundreds of millions, enough for me to build my mansion on the highest hilltop on Mars).

Cathi Stevenson’s cover--the snare that will grab your eye in the bookstore--is a sensation far beyond my original, clichéd expectations, an illustration so close to a scene in the novel—one she knew nothing of--that I tweaked the episode once more so cover and moment would entwine to shiver and twirl down your spine: His face, his eyes, hungry on you, a moon watching coldly as you scream, trapped, knowing it’s over, that it will be horrible and the only afterlife will be your screams. Joel Friedlander’s interior design is perfect for a story like this-elegant font, well-spaced, seems error free but for my own oversights. They both make me look so good, I almost want to write the whole damn thing one more time, but I can't.

I gasp and sprawl on my back upon the cold terra-cotta tile floor, struck down by the reality of my actions. Fear and Thrill roust about like monkeys around my heart, as though it were the highest tree in the forest.

Everything can go wrong. Nothing can go wrong. The book is great. The book is terrible. The book is everything in between, gray and forgettable. The book will sell a million copies and be despised. The book will sell zero copies and be loved. All possible movies reel through my mind, except Oprah, the Pulitzer and a visit from Homeland Security.

My wife’s fine pretty face shines upon me where I lay: “Come, Thomas, come! There is much left to do! The hunt must go on!”

The hunt for the reading world’s attention; the hunt for readers. I hunger for them. I'm looking at you. See my eyes glitter with hope?


And remember: even if I was with Random House, I'd still likely be doing this all myself.

That Saturday morn we tuck the box into the back seat of the RAV4. Elizabeth chauffeurs me to five bookstores scattered around Oakland-Berkeley, all indie stores, cozy enclaves where beloved antiquated objects still thrive.

A long line stretches along the street outside the first store. I ask someone in line the score. “Cookbook signing” and a name and title not Amanda Hesser, not The New York Times.

“Let’s go,” I growl like Parker. “They’ll look right through me, resent the interruption and forget me like flat beer. Come back later.”

But as we leave the line behind, I wish I had my postcards to pass along the row while I slap their surprised faces with the novel. Maybe it wouldn’t get me more than a shove on the beezer, but there’s no bad publicity. Not now. Not until I throw up and pass out at my first public reading (if I get a first reading; if every Bay Area bookstore doesn’t lock its doors and pull the shades against me: NO BOOKSTORE HERE!).

The next bookstore goes bingo. They’d just moved to a new spot, I haven’t shopped there in years and the place looks swell though still unpacked; the owners, friendly and interested; their duo of cats bow before me. My gut clenches when I hear I missed an event on vampire fiction the night before, the kind of happening I need to know if, to be at. I buy a John Dickson Carr novel as a token (tokens are all I have to pay in return).

On the way out, I say hopefully, “At least you’ll find me a competent writer.”

“Already looked inside.” Owner smiles. “Yeah, you are.”

Another solid drop at the next store, another famous genre shop and the most book-jammed of them all, so booked up, I tremble. What if my single effort drowns beneath the roiling paper-and-board sea of stock, like a small child in a big swamp? Oh well. I buy Joe Hill’s 20th Century Ghosts.

Store number four, late afternoon, rain low across the sky. I walk in, start my spiel: “ . . . and it’ll be out in March 2011 and it’s available through Ingram—”

“Ingram” is a black magic word. The store owner’s head balloons and explodes the second it’s spoken, a match to a short fuse  Bone, blood, and gray everywhere, windows shatter, shelves topple.

I stagger out the smoking door, my garments charred and shredded: “Mmm. Guess not everyone gets their books through Ingram.” Can’t know everything, can I? I say, my chin aloft, chipper with hope. Onward, Jeeves, onward!

By the time I cross the street to the next, last store, I’m miraculously cleaned up. It goes so smoothly, I now remember nothing of what I said, probably a good thing. By now I’m out of money, the only real book I want is Le Carre’s latest, but I must walk out one book less and pray I haven’t left a retailer’s resentment behind with my creation.

On Thanksgiving, I drop a copy at an excellent store in Burbank and later, back up here, leave one at my favorite independent local store, then another at a store in downtown Berkeley, which may not work because the store’s new fiction section is a small, discrete, huddled, facing away from the
waves and walls of used books rising behind it.

You try this, you try that. If something works, you try it again. If it doesn’t, try something else. It’s not the falling down, the slammed doors. It’s the not getting up, not knocking at the next
door. Sometimes they say yes. Nobody loses all the time.

Checks from my business haven’t arrived in for awhile, so spending is a frozen stream, but the hunt goes on, the free things I can do, whether by strung-together tin cans or Internet.  Bloggers and bookstore sites, each gets the news release, then is placed on two lists, one in Word, the other in the e-mail address book. I receive my first blurb, into the news release it goes. I sit at a bar, my book and cards displayed. Like the hunter, I watch for movement, my ears open and perking: “Say, pal, what’s that you got there?”

Maybe you’ll see me, my eyes fevered and focus, my hidden tale curling a grin my face, eager to be told. Maybe you should ask. Many have. Get in line. Maybe I’ll buy you a beer.

(re-edited 12/11/10)





Copyright 2010 by Thomas Burchfield

Photo by Author


Thomas Burchfield's contemporary Dracula novel Dragon's Ark will be published March 15, 2011 by Ambler House Publishing. Other essays and postings can also be read at The Red Room website for writers. He can also be friended on Facebook, tweeted at on Twitter and e-mailed at tbdeluxe [at] sbcglobal [dot] net.