A day in the life...

It totally slipped my mind that I needed to write a blog tonight (to post at MN my time). I often write several ahead just so this doesn't happen. Now I'm trying to be creative on a deadline, self-imposed, but still a deadline.

Forget all the glam and bling of being a writer. I spent the day on four publishing projects, not on writing. One took me to Phoenix to visit the printer guy. I left with a proof book and was delighted not to hit rush hour traffic for the 52 mile trek back to north Glendale. There is nothing in this industry like seeing the first proof book to come off the press.

Since I'm working on four projects in different stages of publishing, it made me think (as I talked with the printer, another publisher, and drove home) just how much there is to know about this business and how it works.

The other day a kid (who does not belong to me) and his girlfriend came over to see one of my kids.

She, being an avid reader, excitedly said, "When are you going to be on Oprah?"
Me: "Um, never?"

Before all you seasoned writers bust a gut, think about how many times you've been asked that. I've heard it quite a few times from 'civilians'.

In practical terms, there isn't enough time in a day to have every writer on her show. Personally, I think it would be pretty boring to run show after show of writers, 24 hours a day. Besides even if she had the stamina to tape that many shows a day, the woman has a life too.

Let's say she doesn't interview every author. What is the likelihood that I would be one of them she does do? Zero. First of all, I don't write the kinds of books that get sensationalized. Second, as far as I know, and I think I would have heard about it, there are NO plans for a movie deal. And most importantly, being on television just isn't me, no offense to Ms. Winfrey.

Another hidden truth about this business that every starry-eyed beginning writer doesn't know about is that royalties only get paid on the first sale of a book. That is after the advance has been recouped, if there is an advance. So, nope, no royalties on used books, shared books, library books. The trick is to sell lots of books because the pittance made on each book does add up.

Here's another little dirty secret to this business, the first draft is not ready for publishing - not in a long shot. It feels so nice to get the thing written that it seems done, but it is not finished. There are a couple of rewrites, beta readers, editor's notes, proof reading, designing cover art, assigning ISBN, pre-publishing marketing -- then the proof book, which must be read in detail as well as viewed for formatting issues. Oh and did I mention [in the US] that Library of Congress catalog number thingy and registering the copyright. Just think, I've got four of these projects going and I didn't have time to write today.

Whew, I just made myself tired.

There is a glimpse of a writer's life, an Indie writer at least. I think I'll take a nap!

It's a boat!

The topic of judging a book by its cover has come up several unrelated times lately. I won't go into the theory that the first line of marketing a book is to have a good cover. That is pretty obvious. That's not where I'm going with this.

As our world view expands - thanks to the internet - we try to be open minded, but we still slip and judge people by appearance. Biases learned from our parents are challenged or affirmed. It is easy to be dismissive. I'm always teasing that I'm smarter than I look. (There is no good way to respond to that without getting into trouble.)

There is a joke about a guy who hears a report that the river is rising. His neighbors evacuate and urge him to come. He says he is a Christian and God will take care of him. Later, as the waters rise, a rescue team comes through his neighborhood in a boat - looking for people who did not leave. He sends them off ... Christian ... God ... Later, the waters rise so much he is forced onto the roof of his house. A rescue helicopter comes. He sends them away...

The guy drowns, goes to heaven, and God says, "What are you doing here!?"
The man complains, I have been a good Christian, I thought you would take care of me."
God says, "I sent a warning, I sent your neighbors, I sent a boat...."

Lately, I have tried to pay more attention to the people who come my way and ask, "Is this person a boat?"

And the best question, "Am I their boat?"

A book cover is just a book cover. Be a boat.

Another Blog Award!

My new friend, Ivy, from Croatia gave me a blogger award, Kreativ Blogger. Now I must list seven of my favorite things before I pass this award on. See the beautiful new award on the left side.

1) My Boys, yes even the big one. They have changed my life in ways I could not have imagined. I'm very proud of you guys.

2) My family, the ones I gave to Kathryn in Kathryn's Beach, but they are even more awesome than I made them sound in the book. This includes my sister-in-law Jan who is wonderful.

3) My friends, old and new. The adventures of friendship have brought a richness to my life, and hopefully to them too.

4) California, my home. The beaches, memories, and desert.

5) Arizona, my second home. Big city life and Native American culture.

6) Midnight swims in the summer and lots of blankets (on my side of the bed) in winter. Things that flower, hummingbirds, and garden herbs.

7) Hopes and dreams, not yet realized. Leaves something to strive for.

There are so many creative people in my life, but not all of them have blogs.

Jen Garsee: My oldest writer friend, very successful YA writer ~ we go way back to the days we only had a rough draft of our mss. Please say I am one of your trusted betas! http://onegrapeshy.livejournal.com/

Ivy and Ella: Two young writers just starting out, you are our future, the pen bearer to convey writing to yet another generation when we are gone.

Ella in Argentina: http://theclockmonkey2.blogspot.com/
Ivy in Croatia: http://willingtoseeless.blogspot.com/2009/07/my-first-award.html

Carrie, June, Joy, Anita, Susan, Irene, Carol Anne, Carolyn, and Barbara: The women who inspire and stretch me.

Carrie in England: http://ukfolkie.blogspot.com/
June in England: http://juneaustin.blogspot.com/
Joy in USA: http://joycollins.blogspot.com/
Anita in England: http://thedisorganisedauthor.blogspot.com/
Susan in USA: http://www.susangabriel.com/blog/
Irene in USA: http://irenewatson.typepad.com/irenes_weblog
Carol Anne in England: http://strangewriter.blogspot.com/ (ck out her crop circle post - amazing)
Carolyn in USA: http://thefrugaleditor.blogspot.com/
Barbara in USA: http://myvictorianbooks.blogspot.com/

Wow! All women? Sorry guys, since Michael Allen quit the Grumpy Old Bookman, no other guy has stolen my heart quite the same. I hope I haven't forgotten anyone, but I probably have. Seems everyone I know is special in so many ways.

Congratulations. Post your award.

The Winds of Change

Yesterday, I announced the price change on my books. Like it or not, I have to do that to take my business to the next level.

What is the next level? Distribution.

There are loads of claims of distribution, but they are often illusions. What happens is the books are made available for order. That doesn't mean that anyone will order them.

Real distribution is handled by a distributor who has sales reps who go out and make sales and take orders for the books. They have a seasonal catalog carrying all the publishers they distribute for, listing every book each publisher has coming out AND their back list.

This distribution talk is like the difference between potential energy and kinetic energy.

I have had my eye on an US distributor for several years now. They do NOT distribute POD books - thus the move to the black hole and eventually to where I am today. I am one step closer to being eligible to contract with them by doing my Totally Indie thing. I just need to build up my back list. So I'm hoping to produce two more books this year.

The really, really, really BIG news is that I'm in talks with a Middle East Distributor. I have no idea where this is going, but I certainly like the idea of my books being distributed to the countries who have made them popular.

There is talk of both an American English edition and a Formal Arabic translated edition of each book. I am so honored and humbled by this, I can't express it adequately.

After that, I'm considering a Spanish translation. And later an American English version distribution in the UK. But I'm open to other avenues.

Some of these things are down the road. All I know is once I said, "Yes" to being Totally Indie, the Universe has taken me seriously.

So maybe, my dear Ivy, you will get my books distributed in Croatia one day.


(Update: Kathryn's Beach is in the process of being published in UAE with extended distribution into the region, including Egypt.)

Tempus Fugit

Business is a learning curve. The one regret I have in all of this is listening to advice to lower my book price to be competitive with NY publisher's books. I've never given a flip what everyone was doing, so I have no idea why I thought that was a good idea. I don't have the budget they do to print thousands of books, nor the distribution or marketing departments they have. If they are so smart, why are they in financial troublet? What WAS I thinking? The lower price made no difference in sales from before. If people want a book they buy it, if they don't -- you can't give it away.

What it did do was exclude distribution. There wasn't enough profit margin to tolerate a split with a distributor and the wholesale price required by retailers.

My books still aren't on Amazon. Nothing wrong with Amazon, I just haven't bothered to read the instructions for how to do it. Besides, I'm well convinced that all my sales from third party and online retailers in the past, I drove there.

To correct that lapse in judgement, the prices of my books are on the rise. New covers have been submitted to my printer. The suggested retail price change has been submitted to the powers that be. Frankly, I don't care what their opinion is, books get discounted all the time. So this is nothing all that different, other than I'm not placing stickers over the old price and bar scan. I think that would just look way too hinky.

So you've been warned. If you have put off buying my books for whatever reason, once the lower price books are gone, they are gone. Until then, I will give the low price on all three books even though some of them will have the higher price on the cover. If that doesn't make sense, let me say, I have ordered another run of Storm Surge, with the new price. But until all the KB and HT with the low price are gone, the price will not change.

You might have noticed the free stuff icon on the left side of my blog. Follow that link to see the special on the trilogy. For a limited time, you get a free journal when you buy the whole trilogy at once. If you know anything about Kathryn's story, you know why you get a journal. I designed it to match the books.

The final change in operation is likely to be shipping. As it stands now, out of country shipping has been charged at the lower US shipping rate. We noticed that right off, but ignored it. Most of my fans are outside the US and I have a fondness for you for giving me my start in all of this, but the rates will have to adjust.

Tempus Fugit.

Look! http://nadinelamanbooks.com/books.html

The final big piece of news comes tomorrow.

Totally Indie

Continued from yesterday.

I worked on Storm Surge, which is its new title. The working title had to be abandoned. Changing the title was one of the hardest things I've done so far. Several of my cherished readers and I bounced around idea after idea. Nothing fit. Finally we came upon Storm Surge and the story lent itself to rewrites. When I look back at early drafts of this book, I realize how far off the plan it went ... in a good way.

During the last nine years I have read every book, internet site, and industry news item I could find about this business. I joined a couple writing forums and ended up being a moderator on one of them.

When the black hole occurred, I took the bull by the horns and decided to self-publish totally on my own. I must have coined the phrase "Totally Indie" because it doesn't seem to be out there anywhere. Four years ago, I switched from the high brow Scottsdale web company to Joyce who was and is, the perfect web designer. I already had my LLC (limited liability company) for 4 years.

I bought software to design my own book covers. Registered with the state and city as a retailer. Joyce redesigned my website. I bought a lot of 10 ISBNs and opened shop. My books came off of amazon during the black hole and were out of print. I didn't have time to waste to get all three books out or the people who had waited for Storm Surge would have killed me - they said so.

I have a real printer. They don't take a cut of my books, I pay them to print and they give me books. I use WordPerfect to do the interior of my books. It is far superior to using Word, IMO, because it does not anticipate (wrongly) but can do amazing things. It used to be the choice of most American lawyers - that's how I started using it.

I'm not hiding that I'm self-published. I've used my name as the publisher, so it is totally clear. As the saying goes, "The Buck Stops Here!" (Translation: Buck means American dollar.)

'Black hole' reference from yesterday. More tomorrow.

The road to publication

Back to writing a continuation of what Ivy's question started. I got side tracked with mushy stuff, kid stuff, and goodness-knows-what stuff.

I'm not sure why anyone seems interested in what I've done. Lots of detours along the way, that's for sure. But I'm always asked about this and am going to lunch with a writer and his wife to discuss publishing, specifically Indie publishing.

Soooo anyway, High Tide followed Kathryn's Beach. I really had no clue why Terrie cared one flip whether Joseph came back from Ireland. He is/was a minor character who never really developed and as far as I was (and still am) concerned, he was little more than a stage prop.

From there, Storm Surge came about as a peace offering for what I had done in High Tide. I had most of the draft done when the agent query took over.

I was researching agents while I wrote SS. But the querying process was a full time job. It really is true that you must send exactly what the submissions require. So every letter and sometimes sample had to be tailored to the target.

I should add though, their replies were anything but real. Some had made up generic rejection post cards. Some printed four rejection slips per page and cut them apart. A couple of people wrote on my query letter, "Not for me" and sent it back. The agent I really wanted wrote back a nice letter that she wished she had seen this a couple of years ago. Her health was forcing her to retire. She gave me useful feedback and I will love her forever.

One day three rejection letters came the same day. I had sent the usual SASE with each query as is proper manners. I let the envelops lay on my desk for a week, totally tired of rejection letters. When I finally opened them, there was one from an agent requesting the full manuscript and a six week exclusive. Of course, I didn't pull my other queries that were floating around. I figured I'd deal with that when I had a contract in my hands.

Long story shortened, I liked my agent. He was totally unorganized and eventually I decided it was best to end things between us.

Almost as spite, I POD'd Kathryn's Beach. I was going broke printing mss for everyone. I liked the company I went with, but in the end, there just isn't much money in that if you can figure out a better way to go.

I'm going to leave out the next part of the story because of an agreement not to mention it. We'll just call this part the "black hole."

Tomorrow I'll get into the Indie stuff.

On the clock

Two weeks ago the notice arrived that one of my favorite charities was going to be in our neighborhood collecting clothing. I notified the household of the date.

Since the boys are stair steps, they usually hand down to each other. This really works well with suits, dress shirts, and tuxedoes. Most of their jeans, shorts, Tees, and shoes are used up by the original owner. So really all we have to donate of their things are outgrown toys, games, and clothing the younger brother(s) don't like, but are still in good shape.

I usually spend a few hours in my closet and try on things I haven't worn in a while. It was an easy task the first year we were back in Arizona. All the cold weather stuff, snow boots, heavy coats and gloves went in the boxes along with big bulky sweaters (jumpers in the UK). I did hate to see the sweaters go because the boys look so nice in them, but they aren't practical in Phoenix and this charity has a sister operation in Flagstaff where all of those things could be useful.

Last night I didn't remember this little ritual until after hubby was asleep. So I set my alarm early to get the deed done. Me and the voice of reason went through my closet in record time. I kept hearing, "Don't even try that on. Your big toe hasn't fit into those slacks (trousers in the UK) for two years. It ain't going to happen in the next two years either -- out they go."

True enough, there was no time to be sentimental about when I wore something last. In 45 minutes I had laid everything on the bed, hung back the clothes I actually do wear, and neatly folded the ones off to find a new home. My side of the closet looks great and I feel amazing having less stuff. So from now on, I'm going to procrastinate - it is much more efficient.

I believe...

I had a boss who used to say, "You just couldn't make this stuff up," as he marveled at the stupidity of the directives from his boss. (None of us disagreed with his assessment.) Twice this week something happened that was so odd that it was followed by, "If you wrote that, no one would believe it."

What is it that writers do to make fiction seem real? Is it the characters, the setting, the story, or all of those combined? Or do different things convince different readers to dispense with reality and enter the reality of the story?

Do readers watch for that one piece of them or someone they know in a character before the character takes on life-like qualities? Is it the little detail in the setting that makes it come to life, like the mist that blows inland from the waves at the beach?

When I read a story, I try to watch for that point when I become committed to read on because I can't not read it. The trouble is, I realize I'm committed long after it has happened.

Think of your favorite book, the one you've read more times than other book. What is it that the author did that connected with you to make you read it again?

Sappy stuff

I started a blog piece on writing. But what I'm really thinking about is mushy stuff. Going public with my writing has had an added benefit beyond putting words to paper and gluing them into a cover.

I'm missing my friend Ursula and don't know where she has gone. She is the reason I chose Saint Ursula in High Tide.

Then I started thinking about the other people's names I used in the stories, not necessarily to represent them, but as an homage to our friendship.

That led to thinking about the people I've met because of these little books, and how much knowing them has made my life richer. As odd as that sounds, it is true, though I haven't met some of them in person. It's funny how over years quite a closeness can develop through emails ... and sometimes by reading each other's books or manuscripts. As my friend Asmaa once said, you can see into each other's soul.

Even the friendships with people I have known most of my life has added a new dimension because of the books. In discussing Kathryn and her misadventures we have learned new things about each other that never came up before.

All I can say is that being a writer is a great honor. And your friendship is the greatest honor.