C.M. Albrecht's Posts - CrimeSpace2024-03-29T00:53:52ZC.M. Albrechthttps://crimespace.ning.com/profile/CMAlbrecht391https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/60995593?profile=RESIZE_48X48&width=48&height=48&crop=1%3A1https://crimespace.ning.com/profiles/blog/feed?user=2sqd5byvlw86h&xn_auth=noBook Promotiontag:crimespace.ning.com,2011-05-21:537324:BlogPost:2905662011-05-21T05:24:27.000ZC.M. Albrechthttps://crimespace.ning.com/profile/CMAlbrecht391
<p><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia,palatino;">R</span><span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;">ecently my contract with a publisher was coming to term and I decided not to renew it. Sales were non-existent, and aside from that, I just wasn't happy with certain aspects of my novel (my fault). The cover didn't appeal to me either. I explained this to my publisher.</span></p>
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<p><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia,palatino;">R</span><span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;">ecently my contract with a publisher was coming to term and I decided not to renew it. Sales were non-existent, and aside from that, I just wasn't happy with certain aspects of my novel (my fault). The cover didn't appeal to me either. I explained this to my publisher.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"> </span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"> </span><span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;">My publisher's response was that there was nothing wrong with my book; the problem was that I had done nothing to promote it.</span></p>
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<p><span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"> </span><span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;">Okay, there is considerable truth in that. Shy as I am, I did try to get book signings, but I'd have done better and got more respect asking for change to buy a cup of coffee. Having very little money of my own to toss about, I certainly can't afford to advertise. My public library treated me like I was President Obama at a KKK tailgate party. Our newspaper proudly does not do book reviews.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"> </span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"> I did join groups like Crime Space and e</span><span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;">ventually I was able to get my own website as well, but websites can take a long time to gain a following. I notice too that the followers I do get are mostly people trying to promote their own agenda.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"> </span><span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;">Publishers start their presses not only to encourage talent, but to make money, at least I should think so. In any case, once they fire up that publishing company, they are in business, and the goal of any business has to be to make money, otherwise you can't stay in business.</span></p>
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<p><span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"> Now i</span><span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;">f a writer sits down and begins writing his own Davinci Code, he's living in a dream world and there's no help for him, so I'll pass on to the rest of us. I'm sure almost all of us write because we feel the need to do so. Money? Great, but no one in his right mind is going to think, "Let's see now, how can I make a lot of quick money? Got it! I'll become a writer."</span></p>
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<p><span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;">Let's face it, whether writers want to believe it or not, writing should nearly always be considered a hobby right alongside ceramics, gardening and building birdhouses.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;">When you start making a living from your literary efforts, then you're no longer a hobbyist.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"> Okay, n</span><span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;">ow that we've established that publishers are trying to make money by publishing books, and writers are writing books to satisfy an inner craving, then it becomes pretty obvious that the entity that should have the greatest interest in promotion is the publisher. Of course that doesn't mean that they're going to do it. But at least I can gripe.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;">Admittedly many small publishing houses are working on a food stamp budget, but I believe advertising should be a good part of that budget. An attractive website is great, but someone has to seek it out. And then on that website they have to seek out a certain book. No one knows of the existance of most of the books on the web so how can they think to look for them. How may readers look for publishing houses on the web?</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;">Even if they look for a certain genre of book, yours will be so far down the list on page 1192 (if you're lucky) that few surfers will venture so deep into the murky water of the Internet. In a brick and mortar bookstore or in the library, readers may actually bump into your book.</span></p>
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<p><span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;">Writers, with notable exceptions, are already notoriously introverted unassuming persons who prefer to hide in their dens. In fact they're so much so that many use pen names. If they felt capable of going out and pushing a product, they'd already have a job as an Amway Independent Business Person. With a little money, they too could have a garage full of product. The product being their books.</span></p>
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<p><span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;">A publisher, even a very small publisher, should certainly have more clout, more credibility, than an individual writer. I've tried to interest my local library in my books and they sneer at me. (Probably frustrated writers themselves!)</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"> </span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"> </span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;">I feel pretty sure that if a publisher sent these same libraries little brochures featuring some of their books, the libraries would at least give them some consideration. If the local bookstores got application for a signing from a publishing house, I think there might be a better chance for the writer to get his pen in the door.</span></p>
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<p><span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;">Print-on-demand books were for some time considered to be same as self-published books, but I think the tide is turning. Even e-books are becoming ever more popular with the advent of all the neat hardware the reader can tote around. But for all that, they don't get the respect of a solid printed book you can hold up, even autograph.</span></p>
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<p><span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;">Maybe I'm just feeling sorry for myself, but I feel that for small publishers to get anyplace, it's not enough just to find talented writing, but they have to (a) advertise and (b) offer at least pod copies from the day they put the book on the market.</span></p>
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<p> </p>The 29 Year Old Noveltag:crimespace.ning.com,2010-04-01:537324:BlogPost:2314122010-04-01T23:25:01.000ZC.M. Albrechthttps://crimespace.ning.com/profile/CMAlbrecht391
Way way back, somewhere around 1980, I developed an idea for a mystery novel. I've always loved mysteries, and for years, I’d wanted to write a mystery of my own. Time went by however, and other things always prevented my getting started.<br></br><br></br>But this time it was different. I really liked my idea, and I was actually being paid (in a roundabout way). I wrote the first draft of what would become “The Albemarle Affair” during my paid lunch breaks at work. I drank more coffee than Balzac and…
Way way back, somewhere around 1980, I developed an idea for a mystery novel. I've always loved mysteries, and for years, I’d wanted to write a mystery of my own. Time went by however, and other things always prevented my getting started.<br/><br/>But this time it was different. I really liked my idea, and I was actually being paid (in a roundabout way). I wrote the first draft of what would become “The Albemarle Affair” during my paid lunch breaks at work. I drank more coffee than Balzac and wrote witha Bic on yellow legal pads.<br/><br/>Computers were—for me—a complete mystery and had nothing to do with writing. By 1981 I picked up an old office typewriter for $10 and transferred the book to the typewritten page. That wasn’t easy because (a) I could barely read my scribbles, and (b) I make lots of typos and the typewriter was not only ancient, but stubborn. Finally however, I got a draft I thought looked pretty good.<br/><br/>Over the next year I continued to work at it, off and on. I got an electric typewriter, and by 1982, I began to think it might actually go someplace.In 1983 I began researching publishers at the library and found one that looked promising. I sent my manuscript off and began planning what to do with my newfound success.<br/><br/>If you’ve never gone through the old snail mail book submission process, let me explain. First you have to make a carbon copy of your book and—after hoping you’ll be able to decipher it later because of all the smudges from erasures on your main copy—then you send a letter of inquiry to the publisher. After all that, you wait.<br/><br/>You wait.<br/><br/>You’re still waiting...<br/><br/>Chances are pretty good that you’ll never get a response. Sometimes however, months later, you get a letter expressing interest in seeing your novel. Oh joy! You manage to follow all the rules and have your book all typewritten and double spaced on one side of the paper. You package it all up and send it to the publisher with a stamped return envelope inside. Again, you may never get a response, but some months later you may—just may—get your novel back with a printed rejection slip. Those months could easily turn into a year. Once in a while you get a little “sorry” note from an editor, but printed slip or note, it all adds up to: “Don’t quit your day job”.<br/><br/><br/>As you may imagine, in the space of two years you might only have your work seen by two or three editors. Of course, multiple submissions were enough to get you blackballed by the industry and I certainly didn’t want that.<br/><br/>After going through this process for a number of years, I gave up and tossed the manuscript into a drawer. In the meantime, I wrote another book with the same results. It too ended up in a drawer.<br/><br/>I sold a really neat story to a magazine. Success at last! They even wanted my picture so I went out and spent a goodly amount on a studio portrait, which I submitted. In the meantime, the magazine died without a whimper and I never heard another word. Lost picture and my story too, because since I’d mailed it to the magazine over a year earlier, I’d tossed the copy I had.<br/><br/>Understandably, I think, I said to hell with it. I tossed my two books into the trash and swore never to waste my time on such foolishness again.<br/><br/>Some years later though, I felt the urge to write another novel. By now I had a computer and it was not only a lot easier to write and edit, but it became a lot easier to submit to publishers too, since I could query them and even submit the entire manuscript on line without the time and expense of printing up and mailing separate manuscripts. A goodly number of publishers even began agreeing to look at multiple submissions too.<br/><br/>I wrote “The Little Mornings” and it was published, thus giving me a new lease on life. I got busy writing again, and almost immediately another book was accepted and then a third and fourth.<br/><br/>I began thinking about “The Albemarle Affair” again. I still liked the book and thought it was pretty good. Alas, it was long gone, but the more I thought about it, the more it came back to me, so I sat down at my trusty computer and rewrote the entire book from memory. That wasn’t as difficult as it may sound. It had remained pretty fresh in my mind all this time.<br/><br/>Oh, and I tried agents too. One agent kept my book over six months. I wrote and asked about it. She answered that she was holding it because she really liked it and didn’t want to let it go. I said, great. Then, some three more months later, she wrote and informed me that, much as she liked it, she was going to pass. No explanation. Most agents weren’t even that polite and the “nice” ones wanted money.<br/><br/>Well, not to drag a long story out even longer, some 29 years from its inception, “The Albemarle Affair” actually found a nice home. It appeared first as an e-book and is now available in print from <a href="http://www.etreasurespublishing.com/"><font color="#B26400">http://www.etreasurespublishing.com/</font></a>. Other sites such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble have it too.<br/><br/>Moral: In the writing game, you must have patience. Lots and lots of patience.<br/><br/>And I still can't quit that day job.<br/>