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.
Book Review: Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers
Walter Dean Myers has been writing YA, gritty, urban fiction for a long time and he is very, very good at it. He writes boy books for boys with African-American protagonists. I picked up a special anniversary edition of Fallen Angels last week while I was at the Tattered Cover Bookstore in Denver because I’d read Lockdown, his 2010 release, and loved it and the subject matter – the Vietnam War – interested me. I can still remember sitting around a table in the cafeteria in ninth grade talking to my friends about what we’d do if they started the draft again. In 1975 the Vietnam War ended but it seemed like a close call for me and my brother who was a year older. My father served in WWII – step-father and father-in-law in Korea. A great-uncle was one of the first soldiers to liberate a concentration camp. Anyone who saw combat rarely talked about it. Fallen Angels perfectly captures the reason why. Fallen Angels was originally published in 1988 and is a horrific account of the Vietnam War froma 17-year old African-American boy from Harlem’s perspective. Richie Perry’s first person, grunt’s eye view is highly compelling and perfectly describes the horror and chaos of both firefights and the psychological impact of the war on American soldiers.
Before I read this book I thought The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, was the best book I’d read on the Vietnam War but this one tops it. It in no way glorifies war and it’s parallel to today’s wars in Iran and Iraq is frightening. The erosion of the soldier’s nerves as the story builds and they see more and more action, is handled well as is the insight into why we were at war then and what each character wanted out of being there. The action is visceral. The ending is haunting.
This is not an easy read as the violence is realistic and explicit as is the language, but it is an important and cautionary one.
Check out this award winning author’s website and Goodreads for more reviews of his work.
More reviews at Goodreads.
Purchase at Amazon.
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.
Author There…
Open Wounds gift Package
Open Wounds Gift Mugs
I went to two Barnes and Nobles in Denver – back in the trenches. The two managers were really nice people but one had no idea I was coming and the other thought I was coming the following week. I had contacts at each so I knew they had been called. But I guess they either get a lot of calls like this or they don’t take them seriously, or the writers usually don’t show up so they don’t take them seriously.
Jana, at the Glendale store, was especially nice, did remember my name (yeah!) but thought I was coming next week. She found an empty table and let me give her my spiel. She sounded interested and promised to read the book – I gave her one of my precious few ARCs – and she said she’d pass it on to other staff at the store. She told me she would put it with the rest of the ARCs they have.
I smiled at that and pictured a cavernous room filled with overflowing ARCs, signed by the authors, gathering dust.
“The process,” Jana told me, “Is I can send a note to the buyer and say I liked the book, in the hopes of getting it into the store, but that’s it..” I told her that would be wonderful. Every voice in the wilderness of book-land shouting out my name is a good thing. Thanks, Jana. Five minutes in Glendale and I’m out the door. I’m realizing at this point that I should have tried to go to more stores. I’d somehow thought I’d be at each store at least 20 minutes. What was I thinking? Well, if I’d really been thinking I’d have known it would be me pitching and them nodding and then moving on. No one had read my book yet. What else could they do?
At the Down Town store I met Manny, who spoke to me for ten minutes – ten minutes. He seemed genuinely interested. When I gave him the gift he smiled and said, “Chuck Palahniuk (of Fight Club fame) brought us handmade jewelry as a gift. It was really cool so thanks for bringing this.”
“I brought a mug,” I said. “It has a quote from the book on it.”
“Yes,” he said. “I see.”
A book-seller at the checkout desk, Miguel, motioned me to come over. He asked me about the book. He was curious. I gave him a mini-pitch. He wrote down my name and website address and said, “Thanks! It looks good.”
So the evening ended on a high note.
Lunievicz 