En Garde
This is one of the reasons why people fence.
Coming on to the strip, you bring much imagination with you (including hundreds of movie images) in addition to a calculating, contact-chess like mind, and the instincts to survive (even with a blunt tip there is something, well… dangerous about the whole thing).
This is such a cool video. I found it on the New Orleans Fencer’s Club website homepage and it deserves to be seen. It is more hollywood than real foil but it is cool – especially the part where one fencer uses his weapon to slide down the side of a building – an image first used by Douglas Fairbanks in the 1926 movie, The Black Pirate only he slides down a billowing sail with his knife ripping the center as he holds on. This scene gets a mention in Open Wounds and is one of the main character’s (Cid Wymann’s) favorite movies.
What was I doing looking at the New Orleans Fencer’s Club website? Going to New Orleans in June for the ALA (American Library Association’s national conference). More on that later. 
Advice for Visiting Bookstores
I talked to my wonderful and excellent publicist, Julie Schoerke from JKScommunications, and she gave me the following advice about visiting bookstores. I thought others might benefit from her experience. Although it’s specific to my book, the six areas to talk about should be relevant to all.
First, remember 5 Things I learned from Denver. Use those lessons as a frame for these.
Onward.
- Introduce yourself and be nice.
- Start with a short (one or two sentence) synopsis of your book. Here’s mine: “Open Wounds is the story of Cid Wymann, a tough kid from Queens who fights to survives a harsh upbringing in 1930s/1940s New York City. Cid succeeds and comes of age through the help of two father figures, both cripples – one emotionally and one physically – who teach him about the discipline, art, and science of fighting with the sword.” Okay… it’s a work in progress. But it needs to be something you feel comfortable saying out loud and it’s probably best if you just memorize it. As they say in acting school, say it like you just thought of it at that moment.
- Give them an idea of how to market your book – especially if it appeals to a specific niche or target population. But remember… your book can appeal to everybody, just some folks might be more likely to pick it up than others. For Open Wounds I need to point out that it is a book for boys and young men in order to let YA booksellers and buyers know that it is not a girl targeted book. Boy books are out there but few and far between so that’s a way to get the attention of the bookseller and differentiate my book from the deluge of others coming through the door alongside it.
- Differentiate further if you have comparisons to other books from blurbs or reviews. For Open Wounds I have two. “It’s a cross between The Book Thief and Gangs of New York.” And… “It’s part Oliver Twist and part Captain Blood.” The first I’ll use for the younger generation of booksellers and the other for more “experienced” (read my age) booksellers who might actually have seen the movie Captain Blood or read the Sabatini book from which it came – which, by the way, if you haven’t you should. It a great story.
- Let them know you want to help them part 1: Say you’d love to do book fairs, books clubs, and school night special events. Remember you’re doing it for the exposure.
- Let them know you want to help them part 2: Say you’d love to sign any books they have on the shelf (remember a signed book is a sold book – or so they tell me) and that you’d be happy to put the stickers that say “author autographed” on the cover for them. Also let them know that you’d be happy to do any requests for signed books that will be mailed out – if they get them – it’s a great advertising point for gifts.
5 things I learned in Denver
- It’s hard to describe your book to someone without a physical copy of the book there for them to hold on to. Holding your book also gives them something to do (ie: look at it). Solution: bring a book everywhere with you – which means next book I need to order a lot more ARCs – live and learn.
- Booksellers are busy people and just because you make an appointment doesn’t mean they’ll be ready for you, or even remember that you’re coming. Solution: be prepared to make it a cold call and sell your stuff!
- Blurbs are important. One of the first things people looked at were the cover and the blurbs listed there. A blurb by Robert Lipsyte on the cover made at least one buyer stop what she was doing and really listen to me. “You got a blurb from Robert Lipsyte?” was my entre to ten minutes of talk rather than two minutes and the door. Solution: get good blurbs. Thankfully I worked my butt off, wrote a lot of emails/letters to writers and got eight good ones from very gifted and known writers. I did this because my brilliant publisher E. Fazio told me to. Thank you, E. Fazio.
- Some booksellers don’t know anything about the publisher. Solution: bring catalogs and know the other books on the list. Fortunately I’ve read three other novels by my publisher. (Scars, by Cheryl Rainfield, Orphans, by John R. Weber, and Something Terrible Happened on Kenmore, by Marci Stillerman)
- Booksellers like to have a hook by which they can place and sell your book on their shelves. Solution: practice your pitch/have a pitch. For example some people liked “it’s a cross between Book Thief and Gangs of New York,” and others liked “it’s part Oliver Twist and part Captain Blood.” By the way I hate this part. Which means I have to practice it even more in order to be good at it. Can you describe you book in two sentences or less?
Colfax store.Agent Lost
I have a question for you.
It goes like this.
I got my first agent over ten years ago.
I lost him because… he died. I’m not kidding. I had no idea he was ill when I signed on with him and his partner – who happened to be his ex-wife – but after two years he passed away and I was out on my own. I found out later I was the last author he’d signed. His colleague offered to represent me but only in a half-hearted way. “He (meaning her ex-husband) loved your book. I didn’t,” she said. I passed on her offer.
My second agent, after representing me for three years, left the business to open a gourmet deli. Some time during the beginning of the third year she also had a nervous breakdown. I found that out later also.
My third agent left the business to take a job in public relations. He didn’t tell me he had left his agency until three months after he was gone. I didn’t know because I was working on revisions of my manuscript. “I’m sorry,” he said when I called him with a finished product – asking for his opinion of it, “I’m no longer in the business.”
“Why didn’t you tell me,” I asked.
“I forgot to tell you,” he said.
My fourth agent, one month before my debut novel hits its publication date – which she sold for me last summer – called me yesterday to tell me she’s off to work for an investment company. She’d been taking courses to get her certificate so she could work as a financial advisor… or something like that. I had a hard time taking it all in after I heard her say she was leaving the business.
So here’s my question.
Are all agents like this or is it just me?
I called my wife and told her about my new agent lost and she said, “You’ve driven another one out of the business. You have a perfect record.”
Seriously. Did I?
The good thing is, my last agent sold my book. The bad thing is I’m without an agent again.
It’s hard to get one.
It’s hard to keep one.
So I’ve got three things to do. 1) Keep working on my next book. 2) Start looking for another agent because I still own the movie rights to Open Wounds. 3) Get back to work on my publicity campaign. Next month is going to be a busy one.
So it goes.
First Review!
My publicist (JKSCommunications) found this on the YALSA (Young Adult Library Services Association) list serve. Richie’s Picks is my first review and it’s a good one. Here’s his tag line:
“OPEN WOUNDS is a gem of a tale that is filled with guy relationships, flavored with a lost era of New York City, and features the intricacies and athleticism of a sport that is rarely part of young adult literature.”
Beside being from Long Island (though he doesn’t live here any more) and growing up not to far from where I did, he fenced in High School and knows something about the sport. So It’s pretty cool to get the thumbs up from someone who knows a parry four from a parry six.
Thanks for the kind words about my book, Richie.
Lunievicz 