Self-Publishing and Indie Bookstores – Not a Good Match, Really

I’ve been trying to work with a local bookstore, to get them to carry a book by a local author. (It happens to be by an indie-press, my own Crickhollow Books, not self-published, but that’s sort of the same thing in the bookstore’s eye.)

The irony: the author is a member of a writing group that has met at that very bookstore for years. Still, the bookstore owner was resistant.

Why? Because the bookstore owner didn’t really know the title, was afraid it might be self-published, and didn’t think she could get the book through Ingram (which she can, in fact, as the book’s catalog sheet indicates.)

The point: if a good indie micro-press has this much trouble, what chance does a self-published author have with local bookstores? Not much. Is there a thorough review and consideration? Probably not.

It’s less a matter of the quality of the book, clearly. It’s more a practical issue: one of the time and trouble it takes to make the decision, vs. the potential reward. Let’s face it. Bookstores, large and small, survive on the sales of the most popular books by very popular authors: Dan Brown, J.K. Rowling, Stephen King, Sue Grafton, etc.

Then, they sell a good number of new books by major presses, mostly when the titles are new (and so haven’t tapped their audiences). After a few months, those are replaced by other new books by major publishing houses, with entirely fresh sales potential. (By the way, those publishers also often pay for shelf space and premium display, real money that the bookstore gets to keep regardless of how well the book sells.)

In contrast, self-publishing or indie micro-press strategies – going for niche audiences, which are better reached over the Internet, and longer-term involvement in fewer titles – just don’t match up well with bookstore sales goals and the need to be efficient about it, given the stores’ meager margins. (Trust me, bookstore owners are not getting rich.)

I doubt most bookstore owners would disagree. Although they keep a theoretical interest in local authors and regional indie publishing . . . in practice, they have a greater need to set up strong defensive mechanisms to ward off the truly wretched or poorly conceived self-published books, with weak covers, no marketing, priced too high, similar to other better things on the market, etc.

Given the easy access to publishing technology, there’s a glut of poor or mediocre low-budget POD titles. And stores need to fend them off.

Here’s an example of one such policy (note the concern about books priced too high, a real competitive weakness of most self-published POD books):

The policy is from the website of a Missouri indie-bookstore with the charming Twain-ian name, Pudd’nhead Books. (By the way, Mark Twain/Samuel Clemens was a gifted pitchman who knew how to promote his books in advance to potential buyers.)

INFO FOR AUTHORS
Thank you for considering Pudd’nhead Books for placement of your book. Because we are approached several times each week by authors hoping we will sell their books . . . before you leave a copy for review please consider the following:

Technology has made publishing easier, often without traditional professional editing, proofreading, and evaluation of marketing and distribution. Consequently, the number of books we are asked to review continues to rise dramatically.  (. . .) Of principle importance is whether the book will sell in this outlet, with the audience of our customers. We consider the subject, production quality, retail price, and terms, as well as our judgment of the writing and editing.

We regret the need to be so blunt, but we simply don’t have the time to evaluate so many books. We decline many books, including those by well-known and award-winning writers, if they are not a good match for our store. It is never a pleasant task to decline when dealing directly with an author rather than simply reviewing a catalog, but . . . we only accept well less than 1 in 100.

While we are not saying this is the case with your book, many of the books we are asked to try to sell are overpriced compared to similar books, the content is of very limited interest to anyone other than the writer’s friends and family, and/or a lack of editing or even proofreading is obvious. A surprising number of writers acknowledge that they have never paid a similar price for a similar book from an unknown writer and an unknown publisher with no objective reviews, yet expect us to try to sell theirs…

We would love for your book to be the exception. . . . If you want to leave your book for review after considering the above, please carefully read the policies stated on the attached form. . . . If your book is available from Ingram, we will bring it in from them if we decide to carry it. If we decide to carry your book on consignment, we will contact you with the appropriate form.

Thanks for your interest in Pudd’nhead Books, and good luck with your book.

Nikki Furrer, Owner

The ABA (American Booksellers Association.) has been encouraging indie bookstores to set up such policies. They are primarily defensive. Yes, it would be nice if the occasional good micro-title got through. But honestly, if not, it’s not a big problem for the bookstore if they don’t.

Some of these policies are a bit one-sided. One I saw gave the bookstore the right to unilaterally mark-down the price. In theory, that could be to $1, in which case the author would get $.60. In my view, that’s a little extreme to include in a consignment agreement, asking an author to sign it to get their book into the store.

On the other side, indie bookstores aren’t really a great sales venue for the author or micro-publisher, either. There are too many hidden costs for slim possible revenues. Most micro-press sales happen through specialty shops (museum stores, gift shops, etc.) where books are narrowly chosen and displayed face-out. Or through “long tail” avenues like Amazon, where niche books can do quite well, and survive in print for a long, long time.

I love indie bookstores, and spend a lot of time and money in them. I just expect to find mostly a good, smart selection of titles by major publishing houses. That’s their bread-and-butter.

So if you are a self-published author, look at where books like yours are really sold. Through personal networks. Or events, where people get to meet you. A holiday gift fair at your church is as good as a bookstore. And probably, that non-bookstore site will be far more happy to see you!

In the case of that book I mentioned at the beginning (Patton’s Lucky Scout, a World War II memoir of amazing adventures by a scout for General Patton, working mostly behind enemy lines), great local venues are available through VFW posts, military history clubs, extended families of other members of the retirement home where the veteran now lives, etc.

Getting Published with a Small Indie Press – Finding the Right One

[This is Part 4 in a 4-part series, based on an article of mine in The New Writer's Handbook 2007.]

To this point, I’ve discussed pros and cons in getting published with a small press. Now . . . how to find the right match.

GENERAL ADVICE

Set realistic goals.
Know why you want to be published. To see your work in print? To have control over your work? To become rich or famous? To make a living as a writer? To break in? To make a difference in the world?

Realistic goals will help you decide if you want to work with a particular small press. Make this part of your discussions with a potential publisher.

Be prepared to be a partner in marketing your title.
Can you deliver specific ideas or contacts with specialty magazines, newsletters, conferences, bookstores, interest groups, professional associations? Can you contact some yourself with review copies or PR info? Get on a local radio show or arrange signings near your home or in places you travel to on vacation?

Be prepared to help out with grassroots marketing, from joining key associations to developing a blogsite to mentioning your book to that person sitting next to you at the dentist office.

Plan subsequent work in your subject area.
Perhaps your niche is writing about Japanese zen gardens or Western novels. Your first book may gather good reviews and decent sales. If so, many readers would love to see a another book by you. So would your publisher. (Don’t try to sell multiple works off the bat – a publisher won’t be ready for that, and you might later want to move elsewhere; just make this part of your personal planning and general discussions with a publisher.)

Do your research to find the right publisher.
Finding the right match is like getting married. Don’t jump at the first opportunity if it doesn’t seem ideal. And don’t court a publisher as a one-sided effort; find one that wants you as much as you want them.

THE SEARCH PROCESS

Visit your library.
One major resource is Literary Market Place — the leading directory of the book trade. (It requires a press to publish at least 3 books a year to be listed.) The bible for smaller and edgier presses is the International Directory of Little Magazines and Small Presses (Dustbooks), also available in your library.

Look for publishers in your immediate locale, state, or region.
Do a web search for book publishers in your area. A local publisher might be more open to your proposal. Why? Because they have existing contacts with regional stores, newspapers, and reviewers that will have some interest in you as a local author.

Check the Independent Book Publishers Association.
Formerly known as Publishers Marketing Association, they have a membership of more than 4,000 small publishers, from microscopic to heavy hitters like Sourcebooks. Look for publishers with awards, good websites, great cover designs, clear niches, etc. Publishers join to get access to IBPA’s marketing programs to libraries and stores, which is good for an author.

Check the Council of Literary Magazines and Publishers.
Because there are dues involved, and member services, and some screening or review process, membership in a professional trade organization tends to be a good starting point in any search.

Join organizations for writers.
Associations like the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) or the Romance Writers of America (RWA) – or any of the other national organizations for specific types of writers – maintain detailed lists of publishers. Membership gives you access to insider info and interviews, workshops, and valuable networking.

Check the web; check your bookstore.
For nonfiction publishers, search the Web for listings using your subject area, plus key words like press, publishers, or book(s).

Another good method is to scan your library or bookstore shelves for the names of publishers who have published books similar to yours. Bookstores carry more new titles, and so will be more useful than library collections if you want to see what’s being published now.

Examine similar books closely. Do they include illustrations? Charts? Extensive appendices of resources? Make sure your own book proposal includes those.

Publisher websites.
Finally, many publishers have websites with writer guidelines, or you can check annual guides like Writer’s Market that list publishers by category, with summaries of what they publish and how to contact them.

HOW TO CHECK OUT A SMALL PRESS

Study their most recent catalog (print or online).
How do they describe their books? (This will give outstanding hints on what the publishers like and what they think the buyers will like!) How much catalog space do they devote to new books and also to backlist (which your book will become soon after it is released).

A very, very important question: Is this a group of authors and titles you want to be associated with? Will it reflect well on you and boost your prestige? You will be judged by the company you keep.

Do they have a good distributor?
A good distributor has the punch to get a book out to more stores if demand warrants it. Influential ones include National Book Network (Lanham, MD) and Independent Publishers Group (Chicago). There are others that handle varied other distribution needs.

And good distributors are picky; they don’t want to work with fly-by-night presses or ones that publish occasionally or unevenly.

Look for a steady presence in your niche market.
This can be ads in specialty publication or regular booths at important conferences. If you have written a science-fiction novel, for instance, check the magazines – Locus, Asimov’s, etc. – to see who is actively advertising. Would you rather be with a publisher that runs lots of large ads? . . . occasional small ads? . . . a classified listing in the back? . . . or no ads at all? The answer should be clear.

Once you enter discussions with a small press, ask for details on the most similar project.
How many copies did they sell? Over what time period? How did they do that? What kind of mailings, ads, and special activities did they undertake to achieve success? You want to ferret out more than just: “We’ve sold 20,000 copies of our best title.” As the warning phrase says, “Your actual experience might vary.”

Seek some details. Although a press may not share every scrap of info, they should be able to give some sense of what has worked best and why.

Look for genuine chemistry and enthusiasm.
Yes, it’s hard to quantify, but you’ll know it when you see it: a publisher that is truly excited by your work and really wants to do their best to make it a success.

What financial commitment is the publisher making?
What exactly will they commit to a project? A decent advance? Promises to place ads in key publications? Lots of postcards or bookmarks you can mail and hand out? This may not appear in your contract, but you can discuss it and get it planned, written down, and agreed to in advance. The more “skin in the game” a publisher has, the greater their vested interest in making your book succeed.

KEEP YOUR FUTURE OPTIONS OPEN

Like all relationships, while hoping for the best, it’s prudent to be prepared for the worst. You may wish to limit the rights, or the time frame of the contract, or not include subsequent works. If things go well, you can extend the relationship.

As the project moves forward, trust but verify. Keep in touch. Don’t be a pest, but don’t sit on your hands. Ask what’s happening with production, release plans, promotions, and once launched, with sales. Best of all, ask how you can help!

For any author wanting to reach a niche audience, or wanting to break into print to get some good reviews and a sales history, then to seek to move up the ladder, small presses can be a great stepping stone.

Or a match made in heaven.

[Disclaimer: yes, I currently run a small indie press, Crickhollow Books. For more on that effort, visit the Crickhollow Books website.]

Getting Publishing with a Small Indie Press – The Negatives

[This is Part 3 in a 4-part series, based on an article of mine in The New Writer's Handbook 2007.]

Let’s look at things that can be real problems in getting a book published with a small independent presses.

Minimal Advances
Small often means just that when it comes to advances. The up-front money handed over to an author before books hit the streets can be microscopic, from virtually nil to a few thousand dollars. Small presses often point out they prefer to put their cash into promotions. However, this creates more risk for the author, who must wait for elusive future royalties, without the guaranteed income of a decent advance.

Lack of Prestige
A small-press label may offer little or no name recognition. Unfortunately, many people assume that a book published by a small press wasn’t good enough to be published by a larger press. You tell people you have been published, but when you tell them by whom, they get a funny look on their faces, different than if you had said Random House.

Small Marketing Budgets
Marketing budgets are rarely big. Smaller presses rely heavily on low-cost promotions: sending review copies, courting word-of-mouth support from niche audiences.

In the bookstore world, a small-press label tips off a buyer that there is probably less money for store placement or co-op efforts or PR campaigns to drive readers quickly into stores. Accordingly, small-press books are less likely to get prime placement—if stocked at all. Too often a small-press book needs to be special-ordered by a bookstore if a customer takes the trouble to request it.

All publishing houses, large and small, rely on authors playing some role in marketing. Authors need to consider the time, money, and effort of developing a author platform (in advance) and then using that platform to fuel sales in the author’s sphere of influence.

The same is true for author-involved marketing that can occur after a book’s release: book launches, author signings, mini-tours, being a speaker or having a booth at a regional trade show or conference. Most of those will only happen if authors do the booking and pay their own way.

For any size of press, authors need to be a partner in marketing a book, but more so with small presses. The good news: small presses will gladly work closely with you. But they may have little cash and a small staff, and this will limit what they can do.

Meager Reserves
Small can mean slow to publish or slow to pay. With fewer titles in a hopper, any setback (on any title, not just yours) can affect the whole line, if the press doesn’t have enough cash reserves. A small press has less likelihood of the occasional bestseller, creating revenues that can cover a lot of overhead and make the whole business profitable.

Small presses, especially the micro-presses, have any number of things that can throw them off stride: illness striking a tiny staff, an owner with personal financial difficulties, a poor decision to expand that isn’t well planned.

Small presses also may be at greater risk from problems occurring elsewhere in the distribution/sales chain. Famous examples: the occasional closings of middlemen distributors, leaving the smallest presses in chaos and with the smallest amount of clout in negotiating a settlement to recover income or inventory.

Of course, authors published by big presses also have horror stories. These include cases of questionable accounting, mysterious deductions, editors leaving abruptly, or projects getting cancelled. They may be more prone to back-office politics or sudden changes in management philosophy, compared to the steady operations of a well-run, focused small press.

And even good-sized publishing houses occasionally go belly-up. But the business or the titles are often acquired by someone else; this creates headaches for an author, but less risk of a total collapse.

All in all, the slimmer resources of a small press are definitely a concern for authors. As with most comparisons of small vs. large, working with a smaller business gets you more attention, bigger clout with that business, and possibly a more informed and interactive relationship. But there are plenty of unavoidable negatives to consider.

[Next in this series: Getting Published with a Small Indie Press: How To Find the Right Press for You]

Disclaimer: yes, I currently run a small indie press, Crickhollow Books. For more on that effort, visit the Crickhollow Books website.

Getting Published with a Small Indie Press – The Positives

[This is Part 2 in a 4-part series, based on an article of mine in The New Writer's Handbook 2007.]

Let’s look at things that good-quality, small independent presses do well for writers.

Risk-Taking
They often take risks on new or unconventional writers. They look for work with literary or social value, or useful to a specialized niche, rather than demanding a more common denominator (such as being similar to other work already published, or appealing to a very large demographic, or having the elusive compelling author platform already in place). They may read relevant submissions more carefully. And they might consider offbeat submissions, something larger presses seldom do. Sometimes, a small press will stretch itself to reach into a new area if they get a great manuscript, realizing an author might bring new audiences into their fold.

Grassroots Niche Marketing
The better ones do creative publicity, using low-cost, grassroots guerrilla tactics. They seek reviews with small but respected publications, send catalogs to regional or specialty shops, attend professional conferences. They get books adopted for university courses. They try harder and longer to reach specialized audiences, whether organic gardeners or feminist mystery fans or Hispanic-speaking families of the American Southwest or Christian homeschoolers, and often develop long-term relationships with those communities. Their familiarity with a niche audience can in turn provide useful feedback to develop a good book project, with more detailed information about what that audience wants and needs.

Editorial Involvement
A good small press may provide lots of hands-on editorial support to help an author who has a special story to tell or a great concept, even if the manuscript needs a bit of extra work. Large presses can sit back and reject promising but unpolished work, waiting for the ready-to-go, easy-to-sell manuscript. But quality small presses are generally known for their editorial accessibility and hands-on support.

Open to an Author’s Diversity
Small presses might publish work by an established author who wishes to branch out into a new field. Joseph Bruchac’s popular children’s books of Native legends are published by major presses like Harcourt, Philomel, and Dial, but he turned to a small press, Holy Cow! Press of Duluth, Minn., to publish his poetry. Other well-known authors like Ursula K. Le Guin or Jane Yolen have chosen in their illustrious careers to publish an occasional book with a smaller press to get worthwhile work out into the light of day.

Patience
Small presses may shepherd a slow-developing title longer as it reaches for its grassroots readership, which can take time, especially in fields where success may depend on a particular annual conference, a quarterly journal, or a post-publication blurb from an influential person. Tenaciously, they stay on the case, seeking publicity and sales long after big presses would move on to greener pastures. In contrast, large presses are famous for Darwinian tactics: publishing lots of titles, throwing them out to the wolves of the trade, then waiting to see which books do well quickly, fully prepared to pull resources from slow-to-develop titles.

Loyalty
Small presses tend to be loyal to their authors. Once they have invested their slim resources to develop an author and explore niche audiences, they look favorably on subsequent work by that author. They may do this even if a first title had only modest success, to sell more copies of that earlier title as well as to expand their foothold in small markets.

As Susan Vreeland, author of Girl in Hyacinth Blue, summarized her very successful experience getting published with an excellent indie press: “For a first-time author, working with a small publisher can be a boon. A personal relationship with staff members representing all aspects of the publishing process develops quickly. With a small house publishing only a few books each season, individual authors are very important people. I found that the entire staff of MacMurray & Beck got behind Girl in Hyacinth Blue, believed in me, celebrated each good review with me, and was profoundly happy at its success.

[Next in this series: Getting Published with a Small Indie Press: The Negatives]

Disclaimer: yes, I currently run a small indie press, Crickhollow Books. For more on that effort, visit the Crickhollow Books website.

Getting Published with a Small Indie Press – Is It Right for You?

[This is Part 1 in a 4-part series, based on an article of mine in The New Writer's Handbook 2007.]

Small presses offer opportunities for new or different authors. As we said in the ’60s: small is beautiful. Literary, adventurous, or tightly focused, small presses routinely take chances on new authors who have some thing important to say. And through the democracy of the Internet and guerrilla marketing tactics, they may have a decent shot at financial success, major awards, and media attention with select titles.

Or not.

It can be just the right thing for you. But how do you know?

First, what is a typical small press? “Typical” is not really applicable to this diverse universe. There are thousands of independent presses, as different as cats and dogs and armadillos. They may reflect the personality of a single person working out of a home office. Others have grown into a corporate entities with real offices with potted plants.

Some have been around for decades, others for just a few years. Each year a good number disappear, but many new ones rise to take their place.

A tiny micro-press might publish only one or two books a year. Others might release a dozen or more titles a season. First printings tend to be modest, from a digital Print-on-Demand (POD) approach that only prints books as needed, ranging to runs of 3,000–5,000 copies.

Their editorial goals range from presenting “new voices” to publishing worthwhile books overlooked by big publishers because they didn’t fit somebody’s business plan. Small presses create titles from avocado cookbooks to zoo activity guides, and everything in between.

The name of the game for indie presses: “find the niche.”

In total, these myriad presses are responsible for publishing many of the astounding number of of new titles (more than 100,000 titles each year!) flooding into the American marketplace.

Most prefer the term “independent press” over “small press,” to emphasize their uniqueness. They don’t like to think of their ambitions or literary talents being diminutive in any sense.

However, small press is the term I will use here to focus on the realities of working with most of these publishers: small staff, limited resources.

Given this tremendous diversity, what should you expect when dealing with a small press?

[Next in this series: Getting Published with a Small Indie Press: The Positives]

Disclaimer: yes, I currently run a small indie press, Crickhollow Books. For more on that effort, visit the Crickhollow Books website.

Hasselstrom’s Meditation on a Jar of Jelly

When I wrote my previous post to this blog on a whimsical piece by James Boswell and Samuel Johnson, I mentioned it made me remember a similar piece overflowing in a sense of place.

Here ’tis. It’s by a North Dakota writer, Linda Hasselstrom, who writes and runs a writer’s retreat at her home, Windbreak House, not too far from Rapid City in western South Dakota.

I ran across it quoted in The Sierra Club Nature Writing Handbook (1995), by John A. Murray.

The piece, like Boswell’s “Meditation on a Pudding,” finds an exultant sense of place in an item of food . . . for Linda Hasselstrom, in a jar of buffalo berry jelly.

This is an exquisite piece of writing, one that has stuck with me and that I often have shared in writer workshops as an example of flat-out great writing.

The jelly is a tawny peach color, and the flavor is hard to describe. I might compare it to apple pie with lemon: sweet, extra tangy. But another element lurks in the flavor that I can’t compare to anything else. I think it’s the essence of wildness, clean prairie air made solid. It contains the deer that nibbled the leaves in winter, the brush of a grouse’s wing as it picked berries from the ground, the blundering invulnerability of a porcupine living under the ledge. It’s the taste of blinding white drifts slowly being built and smoothed into glittering sculpture outside the house as you make morning toast, slathering it with butter and buffalo berry jelly. The jelly brings the flavor of summer heat to your tongue, a sheen of sweat to your shoulders; even as you watch the blizzard, it reminds you of spring fragrance and the cool nights of fall.

That paragraph (from “Finding Buffalo Berries” in her book Land Circle) never fails to bring a shiver of awe to me when I read it. The tongue of a poet, the eyes of a writer that sees the place around her . . . and knows how to write so that, like the jelly, “clean prairie air is made solid.”

In this article about her creation of Windbreak House as a writers’ retreat, Hasselstrom writes: “Edith Wharton once observed, ‘There are two ways of spreading light, to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.’” That was the inspiration for the writing retreats she hosts at Windbreak House.

She ends that article with:

Start with the closest spot of earth. . . . Sit outside at midnight and close your eyes; feel the grass, the air, the space. Listen to birds for ten minutes at dawn. Memorize a flower. . . . You can only benefit.

Great advice for writers. Take the time to look closely, inhale, exhale, and keep doing it until you’ve breathed in it. Then, you write.

Boswell’s Meditation on Place and a Pudding

Last week I did a pleasant book-signing at Boswell Book Co. (for A Guide to Fantasy Literature; my thanks to Daniel Goldin, proprietor, and Jason, for hosting!).

Boswell Books is a Milwaukee indie bookstore, named for James Boswell (1740–95), a literary Scottish laird, described by one biographer as a complicated fellow, with “his rippling good nature, his extravagance and folly and weakness, his odd piety, his awful glooms, his alternations of revelry and solemnity . . .” and known today mostly as a companion of Samuel Johnson, the famous dictionaryist (okay, lexicographer).

He loved good conversation, liquor, travel, writing . . . hey, a man after my own heart.

Anyhow, the Boswell Books signing made me recall a lovely, fanciful “sense of place” piece from Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, written on a long excursion with Samuel Johnson in the fall of 1773 to the western isles of Scotland.

This is Boswell’s recollection of an afternoon bit of playfulness:

“. . . . He [Johnson] then indulged in a playful fancy, in making a Meditation on a Pudding, of which I hastily wrote down, in his presence, the following note; which, though imperfect, may serve to give my readers some idea of it.

MEDITATION ON A PUDDING

Let us seriously reflect of what a pudding is composed. It is composed of flour that once waved in the golden grain, and drank the dews of the morning; of milk pressed from the swelling udder by the gentle hand of the beauteous milkmaid, whose beauty and innocence might have recommended a worse draught; who, while she stroked the udder, indulged no ambitious thoughts of wandering in palaces, formed no plans for the destruction of her fellow-creatures; milk, which is drawn from the cow, that useful animal, that eats the grass of the field, and supplies us with that which made the greatest part of the food of mankind in the age which the poets have agreed to call golden. It is made with an egg, that miracle of nature, which the theoretical Burnet has compared to creation. An egg contains water within its beautiful smooth surface; and an unformed mass, by the incubation of the parent, becomes a regular animal, furnished with bones and sinews, and covered with feathers. – Let us consider; can there be more wanting to complete the Meditation on a Pudding? If more is wanting, more may be found. It contains salt, which keeps the sea from putrefaction: salt, which is made the image of intellectual excellence, contributes to the formation of a pudding.”

A delightful little piece, by a couple of writers lounging about a Scottish inn on a lazy afternoon, speculating on place and pudding.

(Reminds me of a similar, more modern “sense of place as seen in food” piece by Linda Hasselstrom. I’ll dig it out and share in a coming post.)

Fantasy Literature and the Writer’s Itch

“I write to relive the itch in my head.”

So said American fantasy author N.D. Wilson, author of Dandelion Fire and 100 Cupboards, a wonderful emerging trilogy (set in Kansas) for young readers (and up!) who enjoy Harry Potter and the great works of C.S. Lewis and Tolkien.

I have to admit, that “itch in the head” thing comes closest to describing why I write.

I just wanted to mention that my newest book, A Guide to Fantasy Literature, is in print. For more, visit my Fantasy Literature website, or the book’s blog, Creeping Past Dragons, to celebrate fantasy storytelling in all its diverse forms, exploring why it delights and enchants readers of all ages.

The book, by the way, is a substantially revised edition of book I did in 2002, called The Writer’s Guide to Fantasy Literature, focused on advice for writers. The 2002 edition sold well (about 5,000 copies), but the company later dropped that line of books, and the rights to the title reverted to me. I felt (there’s that itch!) the material had broad applicability beyond writers, and revised and tightened it to focus on points about the diverse types of fantasy and the building blocks of the genre interesting to a general reader . . . while still offering many bits of advice, ideas, and creative paths for writers.

A lot of the book addresses core issues of storytelling, and imagination, and the role of sense of place, theme, and such in good stories, as practiced by some of the finest storytellers ever – from Tolkien and Lewis to the pantheon of other greats: George MacDonald and Lord Dunsany to James Thurber and John Steinbeck to modern literary wizards like Ursula Le Guin, Jonathan Carroll, and others.

So if you want to scratch that itch in your head with the magical wand of fantasy, check out that book, website, blog.

As always, let me know any feedback or comments. I’m happy to try to address them here or in my Creeping Past Dragons blog.

A Sense of Place Pilgrim – Annie Dillard

To learn to see and write better, there are great books to inspire you.

One of the finest, an exquisite book of nature writing, is Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974), winner of a Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction, an account of a year spend looking closely at the world centered around a creek in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.

As Eudora Welty (no slouch herself when it comes to sense of place), wrote in the New York Times Book Review: “The book is a form of meditation . . . about seeing.”

Here’s a brief sample, about a breezy late afternoon in a plowed field:

The wind is terrific out of the west. . . . It’s the most beautiful day of the year. At four o’clock the eastern sky is a dead stratus black flecked with low white clouds. The sun in the west illuminates the ground, the mountains, and especially the bare branches of trees, so that everywhere silver trees cut into the black sky like a photographer’s negative of a landscape. The air and the ground are dry; the mountains are going on and off like neon signs. Clouds slide east as if pulled from the horizon, like a tablecloth whipped off a table. The hemlocks by the barbed-wire fence are flinging themselves east as through their backs would break.
– Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

A page or so earlier, she wrote:

Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery, like the idle, curved tunnels of leaf miners on the face of a leaf. We must somehow take a wider view, look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what’s going on here.
– Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

A beautiful work, compared to Thoreau’s Walden. In another book, The Writing Life, she talks about writing, in her wonderfully exalted, prosaic style, about climbing into a desk that floats in the air, as birds fly underneath:

Get to work. Your job is to keep cranking the flywheel that turns the gears that spin the belt in the engine of belief that keeps you and your desk in midair.

I strongly recommend Annie Dillard’s books, full of open eyes, open heart, and beautiful prose, books to open and read again over the years.

And then, seek in your own way to write descriptions of Place that give a sense that you are in a wonderful place on “the most beautiful day,” passages that combine the two things Dillard says give birth to seeing: knowledge and love.

July Hodgepodge – Creative Names and Cars

I’ve been driving cars around the block. Lots of them. I’m car shopping, looking to replace a venerable Suburu wagon that almost made it to 200,000 miles, but sadly stopped short of that celestial goal in a cloud of smoke a couple of weeks ago.

Accordingly (hey, that’s a Honda pun!) I’ve been studying the names of cars. For some, I can only scratch my head. The Dodge Avenger? What exactly are they avenging . . . and how do they plan to go about it? Should I be worried?

Or the Nissan Armada. Hey, didn’t the most famous armada, the Spanish Armada, end up being blown to bits by the English or running aground on the Irish coast, in one of the greatest disasters of all time? (And can a single vehicle be a whole armada? Isn’t that a little vainglorious? Does the SUV come with an admiral’s jacket with epaulets and a funny hat?)

Great car names? It’s the story of Marianne Moore (1887–1972),  a celebrated American poet. (One of her great lines was to describe poetry as “imaginary gardens with real toads in them.”) In a 1925 essay, William Carlos Williams wrote about Moore’s ability to capture the vastness of the particular: “So that in looking at some apparently small object, one feels the swirl of great events.”

In 1955, Moore was invited informally to submit ideas for names for Ford’s “E-car” (which stood for “experimental” car) project. Her poetic list included:

• “Resilient Bullet”
• “Mongoose Civique”
• “Varsity Stroke”
• “Pastelogram”
• “Intelligent Whale”

And the exquisite offering:

• “Utopian Turtletop.”

Ford, however, in its wisdom, went with the name Henry Ford’s son, Edsel, and slapped it on the car that would up up as perhaps the greatest marketing failure in American history.

Was it the lame name? Ford had also hired an ad firm to come up with a name. However, the ad agency’s report offered an astounding 18,000 possibilities. Wow, now that’s a consultant’s report! When pressed . . . they managed to trim the list to just 6,000 names.

The executives got an eventual 10 names to choose from, none of which they liked, so in a whim, someone offered the name of Henry Ford’s son. In that high-level committee setting, it must have seemed brilliant . . . or impossible to vote against.

Myself, I’d love to drive a Utopian Turtletop.

To paraphrase William Carlos Williams, what I’d like in a car is simply: “So that in driving some apparently small object, one feels the swirl of great events.”

Such as a good speedy merge from an uphill ramp onto the freeway?