Small press publishing highlights

I’ve been fixated this summer–no surprise–on publishing, the small press world, and community building, and here are a few links and highlights.

The Atlantic

Everyone interested in small presses should read “American Literature Needs Indie Presses,” an exciting piece by Nathan Scott McNamara in The Atlantic. He quotes some of the hot independent presses in New York and other cities and focuses on the importance of putting out books that can be part of the conversation, earn national awards, and receive other recognition.

I was particularly interested in his comments on length, citing several noted 160-page novels. I’ve found my own taste as a publisher has been running closer to the 60,000-word mark lately–not 160 pages but perhaps 250, and still a far cry from the “norm” of 80,000 for literary fiction.

Froelich’s Ladder

We have our next book coming out on Aug. 9, and it’s shipping to bookstores around the country right this very minute thanks to our distributor, Legato Publishers Group!

When Froelich disappears from the fourth-tallest ladder in the world, his nephew’s quest to find him interlaces with the journeys of two spunky young women who outwit their guardians. In a Wild West populated with immigrants, skittish Civil War veterans, hungry clouds, a circus menagerie, and a few murderers, this fairy-tale twist on the American dream explores the conflict between loyalty and ambition, and the need for connection, even at the highest rungs.

You can read about the cover design process from the author’s perspective over on The Quivering Pen, David Abrams’s blog.

And Jamie will be touring nationally, so check out his schedule!

If you’re looking for a quick, fun read, and to support a small press trying to change the world one story at a time, stop by your neighborhood store and see if they have Froelich’s Ladder. The stores took the time to support an indie press, and now it’s up to Forest Avenue and our publicity efforts to get readers into those stores.

Entropy Magazine

A recent find–thanks to being asked to do an interview–is the amazing small press database created by Entropy Magazine. The questions about the indie press world, and how each press answers them, will help writers find good matches for their work while offering a reality check about the ins and outs of the business and today’s content, content, content climate.

I’m #102–Forest Avenue Press.

 

Post-BEA Post

My friend Kevin Smokler, whose Brat Pack America is forthcoming from Rare Bird Books in October, said to reserve Monday for catching up with people and sending follow-ups.

That’s the kind of important advice that I picked up as a first-timer at Book Expo America, in Chicago this year for the first time in twelve years. I walked the floors as a  publisher, collected business cards, and chatted about the industry with booksellers, publishers, media, bloggers, and sales reps. Some of us were talking about how the non-booth conversations can be among the most valuable, and that was true to my experience. As a result many of the most important connections I made happened without documentation, but here are a few pictures to give you an idea of the scope and size.

Gina Frangello with her new book from Counterpoint.

The founders of Litsy, a new book-loving app.

The line at Sourcebooks.

Tracy Manaster greets booksellers and librarians; her second novel, THE DONE THING, is forthcoming from Tyrus Books in November.

Me (center) with my friends from Rare Bird and Ulysses.

Kent Watson of PubWest, Tegan Tigani of Queen Anne Books, and Brian Juenemann of PNBA.

Toni Nealie, author of THE MILES BETWEEN ME (Curbside Splendor), and author Avia Kushner, who is yet another one of Kevin Smokler’s wonderful friends.

Ingram recently purchased the Perseus distribution companies; the banners reflect the changing times.

Richard Russo signing EVERYBODY’S FOOL.

 

BEA bound!

I have my hotel and plane tickets arranged for Book Expo America next month in Chicago. It’s been on my to-do list to walk the floor and meet people and get that wider sense of the industry, but until now, going hasn’t made sense.

And it didn’t make sense until a few days ago. My friend Elissa reached out about her upcoming wedding, in Chicago, which coincidentally is the weekend after BEA. I connected the dots, figured out a hotel with a BEA shuttle that’s six minutes walking distance from the wedding hotel, and decided to go.

There are a lot of expensive and time-consuming things in my publishing life right now. All I do is work, and to work–to make books–I have to spend a lot of money and hours, usually two or more years before pub date. Printing advance copies and shipping them are among my highest costs. Computer tasks–such as editing, reading submissions, answering emails from hopeful writers, factoring royalties, and compiling news about all our titles weekly for our distributor–are among the most time consuming. None of these gives anything back to me in joy. Ultimately selecting and then launching a book is one of the most exciting, empowering things I personally can do for another person, given my native skill set and what I’ve learned in the last four years. But to do that, I go through a lot of drudgery and take a lot of risks and make a lot of small decisions.

Just this week we’ve been finalizing the cover for The Hour of Daydreams, Renee Macalino Rutledge’s debut novel, due out in spring 2017, and we had a huge multi-voice conversation about how the front-cover endorsement should (or should not) be aligned. We have a decision now–and will be ready to share the image sometime soon!–and I’m glad we had the chance to perfect this cover together. And yet… it’s a lot of tiny detail work. More computer hours. Less time with my kiddos, or out walking around in the world.

I’m not sure what I’ll learn at BEA, or who I’ll meet, but I’ll be out from behind the computer, wandering around in the world as a publisher, and it’s those moments that make the laborious spreadsheets and difficult decisions and detail work worthwhile.

See you there?

 

Query Tips: When to Respond

Submittable allows us to customize a message thanking writers for sharing their work when they first submit. Do not respond to this message! Asking a question before we have a chance to read any pages definitely shoots up a small warning flag about author expectations. Even thank you notes at this stage make us wonder if the author will be high maintenance. Let us read your work. Be patient.

When we do respond, if it’s a rejection, it’s okay to write back and thank us if you wish, or to take the rejection and move on without responding. Either is appropriate. If we offer personal feedback, and you feel compelled to address it specifically, do it carefully and not defensively, because the editors on the other side of the process put their own free time into giving you something other than a form rejection.

Feedback means we liked your pages. We decided the time it would take to articulate our reactions and then share them with you might help your novel reach the place it needs to be.

It’s not okay to outright argue back that something that bumped us means something else, or becomes something else, and if we only read a little farther…

It’s also not okay to respond with synopses of five more of your manuscripts. If you want another chance with our committee, since there’s nothing in the rules (this year) about multiple submissions, upload another manuscript and wait for us to take a look and get back to you. I’m not going to read anything off the platform when our committee is actively reading on the platform.

Some agents, editors, and publishers may prefer no response from authors who receive rejections, but for me personally, if my readers and I have taken the time to really dig into what didn’t work for us–whether it’s a taste thing or a specific problem that’s holding the work back–it’s never a bad thing to say thank you. It doesn’t have to be long or fancy, it doesn’t have to address what we said specifically, and how you might fix it, but it could, if it comes from a place of gratitude, not one of frustration.

Sometimes we get responses about our rejections being the best rejections ever, or how the specific issues we mentioned have helped the writer jumpstart a revision. And that is why, if we are able to identify a specific issue about why a novel isn’t working for us, we try to find the words and the time to say it.

Too many times writers get the no-rejection rejection–no response = so sorry not for us, or possibly the email never arrived. We’ve been on the outside as writers, knocking and hearing nothing in return, so when we can, we open the door and say, “Here’s why it didn’t work for us, and I hope this helps.”

 

On Books, Fathers, and Travel

I’m in Santa Fe for PubWest’s annual conference, with the theme “A Passion for Books.” My traveling companion is H Is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald, a tightly written, stunning, visceral memoir about training a goshawk in the wake of her father’s death.

This book has been on many best-of lists and bestseller lists, but I’m glad I waited for a trip to savor it. I started it on the plane yesterday, soaring away from my usual root system and home life, and then at a solo dinner last night, tucking an edge under the heavy plate when I had to pick up both knife and fork. I never mind dining alone when I have a book.

 

H Is for Hawk has a timeless quality, in part due to the author looking back at falconers from the past, and also her grief-edged newness in the world, how familiar things suddenly seem startling, because of the grief and also because of how closely she’s bonding with her goshawk. There’s a seamless blend between the now–her and her hawk–and the then, her father, when he was alive, and also a few scenes right after he died, capturing the disorientation, the anger, the confusion. That seamlessness of blending things that have already happened into the current stream of story-this-way is missing in a lot of the manuscripts I’ve been reading, and often in a lot of published books. So often back story shouts BACK STORY! HELLO! BACK STORY HERE! and while I’m not particularly against learning about story-past, sometimes it pushes things out of focus, or feels less essential, or stretches me too far away from the plot itself.

I thought about such things, and also about novel beginnings, and whether my new novel begins where it should, on the hour-long shuttle ride from the airport to my hotel last night. There were six women, most of us going to one conference or another, sitting in the dark, solo, staring out the window. Only one had her phone out. Something about traveling in the dark, feeling the temperature drop outside the pane of my window, also led me to think about fathers–how H Is for Hawk works to tell the story of grief, and how I had been reading manuscripts previously downloaded to my laptop that all had to do with father-absence, or father-mourning, or bad fathers. My own father is quite well, and has a birthday tomorrow. I thought of him, the planned celebration with my family, while traveling farther away from all of them. Becoming more attuned to the quiet, the squeak of what I suspect was old shock absorbers on the shuttle, the colder and colder temperatures.

This morning, H Is for Hawk accompanied me to breakfast at a French cafe. A woman approached, confessing she had seen my book first–she had read it and loved it–and then after processing the book, she noted the person holding it: me. It turns out we met each other at PNBA through a friend of hers, who is part of the excellent sales team at Legato Publishers Group. She might not have noticed me–at least not before the conference started and we were all officially in the same room–if it weren’t for the book. She’s been there, in those pages, in this woman’s story I’m traveling through right now. And somehow, with traveling to Santa Fe, and thinking about fathers, and novel beginnings, and back story, and how we choose to tell ourselves the story of our own lives, and our parents’  lives, this felt exactly right.

Query Tips: Give Us a Road Map

Our editors at Forest Avenue Press are continuing to receive submissions that don’t include a paragraph about the manuscript in the query letter.

In these cases, there’s usually no introduction either. No introduction means the author couldn’t be bothered to personalize a letter, but wants our committee to spend our free time with his or her work, possibly years if we love it. Usually no introduction means the writer is submitting because we are listed in a database someplace, not because we might be a good fit.

No description of the manuscript, though, is far worse. We need that road map. It tells us where we’re going and gives us a marker by which to evaluate the first pages. Is the theme strong? Is the sense of place working? Are the stakes immediately apparent, and if so, are they the stakes the author intends?

Often, our readers give an author an allowance of extra pages, if the first ones aren’t working, and if we like the one-paragraph synopsis of the plot. We’ll leave notes like, “Start at chapter two” for each other in the comments. All we need to give the writer the benefit of the doubt is one paragraph about the manuscript, not a page, not a thesis.

Without those sentences, without that road map, my readers are leaving internal messages for each other like this:

“Hard to know much–no real cover letter. Well written, but . . . doesn’t feel fresh. I’d be okay with a form letter rejection unless someone else speaks up.”

Or this: “I’m not sure where it’s going (the author was so busy telling us how amazing he is that he forgot to tell us the plot).”

The writing might be amazing, and the bio might be impressive, but without any sense of how the opening matches the author’s conception of the plot, it’s hard to understand where we’re going and why we should go there.

Sometimes we write back and ask for a description; sometimes we find the author’s website and share the information ourselves. But a month into this national open submission period, it’s easier to say a non-letter introduction is a reason to pass. We want to spend our time on authors who give us the tools to evaluate their manuscripts, not the ones who know how to copy and paste.

As a reader, once I decide on a book, I push past the back cover marketing language and dive in, entering the dark wood of someone else’s mind without a map. As an editor, I need that map, I want a well-written invitation, the author’s hand reaching out with a friendly, “Here, we’re going this way, come along.”

For writers who are avoiding writing full-fledged query letters because they are afraid of doing it wrong, or because they want the work to speak for itself, read this recent piece by Diane Glazman, a slush pile reader for an agent. It takes the pressure off while offering some useful tips and reassurances.

Query Tips: How Volume Has Changed How I Read

We had more than a 300 percent increase in manuscripts in the first seven days of this year’s open submission period for Forest Avenue Press.

That’s certainly due to the national exposure the press has received this year, all the media coverage of Landfall by Ellen Urbani (in large part thanks to our publicist, Mary Bisbee-Beek), and also to being featured in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers. 

Our open submission period runs through March 1.

In past years, when we’ve opened for acquisitions, I’ve really spent lots of time with the pages themselves, but this time, out of necessity caused by sheer volume, query letters count the most as I’m moving through the Submittable files. Some of our committee members prefer pages to queries, and that’s great, because it balances out my approach, but I’ve personally had to get faster at making decisions to not drown in the firehose stream of words heading into my inbox daily. After all, I have two ARCs in production for fall 2016, a book launching in March with a tour that’s getting organized, and assorted other obligations that erode my submission reading time. And I haven’t wanted to charge for submissions; that would, perhaps, be more practical, but I prefer keeping our door wide open to everyone.

Queries tell me about a writer; at this independent press level, we all have to work together quite closely for many years to come, and someone who comes off too demanding makes me wonder what that publisher-author relationship would be like. There’s an interesting line between sharing accomplishments as part of the bio and bragging about what you think your book might do in the marketplace. I’m all for market data and comp titles and endorsements, but I’m talking about the queries that talk about how incredible their own words are and how privileged the press would be to have this opportunity.

Personally I don’t care for queries that tell me how to feel about a story, or go too pointedly into the themes to the detriment of sharing the plot. The ones I like least? Letters that don’t say anything about the manuscript. Some of these are flippant–usually an immediate rejection–and some have lovely bios but don’t say enough about the story itself to give our committee a sense of where the book is going. Also, if the author can’t describe the book accurately, maybe it’s ill-formed, or never read by someone other than the author, or just not quite ready. Or maybe it’s a bear to try to describe, which means it’d be hard to sell to the sales reps, let alone booksellers and readers. Writers don’t want editors or agents to wonder any of these things, so do the work, write a solid description of your novel without being too coy, so we actually get a sense of where the story is going.

We’ve had a surprising number of query letters referring to the character’s quixotic journey. That phrase excited me at first–made me want to read more, made me feel like something fresh was coming–but now that I’m seeing it with frequency, it’s working against the submission. If you have a quixotic journey in your query letter, assuming agents and other publishers are getting a number of these too, you might want to edit your approach. It’s not counting against those submitters by any means, but it’s not gripping me, either.

First pages are so important, of course. I read in search of voice, and sometimes the best query leads to a flat narrative voice, or language that’s fine but not spicy enough for literary fiction. Some of my readers have characterized those as sounding more like commercial lit, or not taking enough risks.

Nature writing, done well, can be amazing. I’ve been seeing a lot of beautiful nature scenes in the first pages of manuscripts lately, but in order to earn my attention in this high volume period, there needs to be some sense of stakes and movement, whether emotional or physical. I want to feel that urgency. As much as I love language, I want to be holding my breath because something is actually happening. My readers and I have been much more likely to let these go this year than to give them the benefit of the doubt that something, surely, will happen soon.

Guidelines. We are specifically looking for novels set in present times–contemporary domestic fiction. Not magical, not historical. Contemporary. Realistic. And yet one out of every four manuscripts so far, or thereabouts, is set in the past, and often in the recent past, which I most want to avoid–and yes, I have said as much in our extensive submission guidelines. This has less to do with taste than practicality. We published Carry the Sky, set in the 1980s, in 2014, and Landfall, set in 2005, in 2015. Later this year we have Jamie Duclos-Yourdon’s Froelich’s Ladder, set in the 1800s. We have contemporary works forthcoming in 2016 and 2017, but I still want to add more to balance out the present lineup of set-in-the-past novels. Same with seeking non-magical stories; we have some coming, and I want to balance them.

Another time, I might specifically be looking for historical novels, or fabulist ones, because those are all totally in my wheelhouse, but now is not the time. Our committee is using the submission guidelines to winnow down the ever-increasing number of manuscripts, because that’s what the guidelines are for: communicating to the writers what the press wants to publish. My committee takes that list of wants very seriously. Writers who don’t read our guidelines or submit despite them have a very slim chance of getting through the first round. Not because of quality, or taste, but simply because we’re not looking for books set in the past and we are looking for realistic fiction. We are searching for one to three manuscripts out of this batch, and with the numbers we’ve seen already, there’s a very minuscule chance that something we aren’t looking for would catch our attention enough to make that final cut.

The lessons are the same as usual, but they bear repeating:

• Make sure your query letter is respectful and informative, and preferably that it gives a sense of the voice of your manuscript.
• Read the guidelines, and don’t expect to be the exception.
• Get really aggressive about editing your first page, even your first paragraph. Cut the clunkers, weed your darlings out, and make sure there’s an immediate sense of stakes, that something is happening, not that something maybe will happen on page ten.
• Have someone else read your work before you submit it.
• You’ll get the benefit of the doubt more often if you’ve actually read something published by (or agented by) the person you’re approaching. You’ll also get a better sense of whether or not your work is a fit for the person who will be considering it.

Holiday Reading, and Hurray for Indies

My husband says I have become harder to buy books for in the past decade; part of that is because I read so much and attend so many bookstore events, and I attend more events, and buy more books, than I used to. I’ve also honed my taste from reading submissions, and have a clearer, more confident voice when it comes to speaking up about what I like.

To find the perfect gifts for me, my husband has taken to shopping at local bookstores, where (as it happens) the staff often knows me and can recommend accordingly. And even if they don’t, he’s able to  explain my taste well enough that these amazing people can help him find just the right thing–something I haven’t yet read but (in most cases) is on my radar.

At Annie Bloom’s Books, he consulted with Michael–a friend!–to pick This Is Your Life, Harriet Chance, by Jonathan Evison, one I’ve been eyeing because of its buzz–it’s a Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award finalist for 2015–and its gorgeous cover. I’m so happy to own this one. Moreover, when Michael recommends a book with a shelf talker, I usually find it’s my taste, too.

Helen Macdonald’s much raved about H Is for Hawk came home from Broadway Books. I’ve admired this cover, and even picked the book up maybe a half-dozen times, but since I don’t usually read nonfiction, I never committed. I’m really excited to dive in and experience it for myself.

My Brilliant Friend, the first in Elena Ferrante’s four-part Neapolitan series, came home from Powell’s Books, after consultation with Naomi, a staffer in the blue room (fiction). Due to traveling logistics, I opened the package before Christmas, started reading on the airplane, and kept reading during my trip, whereupon I ran out of pages and took the family on a field trip to find indie bookstores in Florida, which were great, but one carried mostly home and garden selections, and the others had the first, third, and fourth books of the Neapolitan series–not the one I desperately needed. Our third stop, a Barnes & Noble, had The Story of a New Name, part two, in stock, and yes, it’s clear, I have succumbed to #ferrantefever.

This fascinating article about Elena Ferrante, her books’ popularity, and the mystery behind her identity appeared in the New York Daily News today.

Dream House by Catherine Armsden, published by Berkeley’s Yellow Pear Press, also came home from Powell’s, this one on my request. I really enjoy discovering new presses, and this relatively new one is distributed by PGW, a sister company to Legato, which distributes Forest Avenue Press titles.

It makes me ridiculously happy that booksellers do what they do, every day, and can pass their passion for books on to customers. As a publisher, I’m even more certain than ever that bookseller support still makes all the difference in terms of how a title does. And as a reader, I’m thrilled to have new worlds to explore as 2016 arrives, ones that were chosen with care for me.

Poets & Writers

I have always, always wanted to pick up a copy of Poets & Writers with my name in it.

Of course I’ve had several dreams like this that seem to be coming true in ways I never expected lately.

One was the esteemed author-publisher lunch. I figured I’d fly to New York, take great care in my outfit, and trumpets would sound over appetizers.

This vision came true for me last month, except I was the publisher, fresh off a flight, with my author Renee Macalino Rutledge taking me to La Note in Berkeley for creme fraiche pancakes. I drank too much coffee, caught up in the epic feeling of the lunch. We talked publicity, we talked editing, and comp titles, and visited with each other about what the next year will bring.

Afterwards, giddy with spending time with my author, I realized: this is my dream come true, just in reverse. Renee’s debut novel, The Hour of Daydreams, is an evocative reimagining of a Filipino folktale about a young woman with wings. It’s a portrait of a marriage told through the eyes of the woman herself, her new husband, her in-laws, her siblings, and the housekeeper. It’s forthcoming in March 2017, but we’re already getting buzz and blurbs.

And now, in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers, Forest Avenue Press–my press! with quotes by me!–is being profiled in the Small Press Points column. I have a subscription but am considering going to an indie bookstore to pick a copy up, off the shelf, just because, in my long-ago dream of being in this magazine, that’s always how it happened.

If you want a sneak peek, the online version is out now!

I should add that Renee found Forest Avenue Press by searching the Poets & Writers database of small presses, so that’s excellent proof that writers and publishers can find each other through online resources if they’re really clear about what they’re hoping to find.

The One-Title Year

This has been a wild year, and also a quiet one.

I finished my eight-years-in-progress novel, The Serinette, after reading Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven and seeing how her short chapters worked so successfully. With a big-voiced, many POV novel, and my own sort of nineteenth century language, I decided my big chapters were slowing my novel down. I reworked it, and found a lot of connective tissue that could be cut back. I worked with freelance editor Suzy Vitello on this final draft. Suzy is a fabulous YA novelist and keeps her eye on plot and pacing, which helped me fortify my final short-chapter structure and feel confident in the results.

What’s next? Another novel, of course. I know the who, the when, the where, and the why, and the voice opened inside me the first day I sat down to write. I have a long way to go, but I’m feeling exhilarated to be in a new world, not the France of my imaginings as in The Serinette. 

My business, Forest Avenue Press, had all its eggs in one basket this year: Landfall by Ellen Urbani, endorsed by Pat Conroy, Fannie Flagg, and Garth Stein, among others. Ellen went on a twenty-city national book tour, which I facilitated from the ground here in Oregon, and promoted with the help of our publicist.

Do book tours sell books? That’s the question a lot of people ask, but as Ellen and I talked about over and over again when she reiterated her intention, and I went ahead with the booking, a tour is more than just the event itself, the sales at that moment. Ellen leveraged her personal crowds, including sorority connections and Peace Corps folks, to fill many rooms along the way, and lots of books sold–and they keep selling, perhaps in part because those bookstore employees and those attendees spread the word to others, and so on. Ellen went above and beyond on so many levels, sending batches of postcards tied with Landfall ribbon and dragonfly charms to booksellers, bringing host gifts of books by some of her favorite authors to community members who housed her and rallied their friend to attend, and so on.

Landfall was named a 2015 Great Group Reads by the Women’s National Book Association. We created a “50 in 15 Challenge” for this book too–sign up here by Dec. 31 at 11:59 p.m. to read Landfall in your book club, and you’ll get fun extras!

Next year Forest Ave will publish three titles–The Remnants by Robert Hill (March), Froelich’s Ladder by Jamie Duclos-Yourdon (August), and City of Weird: 30 Otherworldly Portland Stories (October). It was great fun to spend the year on one title, and adjusting to having distribution through the amazing Legato Publishers Group (a division of Perseus), but I’m excited to see what 2016 will bring.