Welcome to the very first stop on the Larry Closs Blog Tour!
I am thrilled beyond words to introduce you to
Larry and his stunning debut novel
Beatitude. Here's a little secret...It was my fear of this incredibly poignant, beautifully complicated novel going unnoticed and unread that instigated this blog tour. As I cracked the cover and began reading, I realized I was holding a book that had the potential to slip between the cracks... to fade away before it had found its chance to shine. And I panicked.
Published through Rebel Satori - a very small, virtually unknown press - Larry found most of the marketing, publicity, and (believe it or not) galley printing, falling onto his shoulders. It was Larry's review pitch that alerted to me to the book initially. Had he not pitched me, Beatitude would very likely have slipped right by me as well!
And therein lies the rub when publishing with an indie, right? If you guys know me at all, you know how obsessed I am with small presses and the amazing literature they continuously crank out. Awesome books with unique stories that appeal to specific sorts of readers. But these publishers also tend to have smaller wallets, which translates into limited funds, which translates into a limited reach. As of today, Larry has not yet toured to promote his novel, which released back in October. So I took the reigns, took action, and decided to launch a tour of sorts for Larry, to help spread the word about Beatitude and get his book into the hands of more readers.
I am so happy you decided to pop in and check it out! And I am extremely grateful to
Emmet,
Mandy,
Patrick, Jenn,
Erica, and
Tara for offering up their blogs as additional stops. I am also immensely grateful to Larry for his enthusiasm and willingness to work hard behind the scenes to help us prepare for what you are about to see.
We have a great tour planned for you. So kick back, relax, and let us woo you and wow you with all things Larry Closs! For starters, I'll be sharing Larry's thoughts on what being indie means to him and how his unfailing devotion to this novel finally paid off:
Let’s be honest:
Every author dreams of writing a book that’s groundbreaking and edgy and yet so
insightful that it’s immediately signed by a major agent, snapped up by a major
publisher with a huge and highly publicized advance (after a fierce bidding war)
and simultaneously translated into a dozen languages. Naturally, the book debuts
at No. 1 on the bestseller lists, and the combined sale of the movie rights and
your screenplay adaptation earns you six figures (seven, anyone?). Then you
start envisioning which A-list actors will play your protagonists on the big
screen and who you’ll thank in your Oscar acceptance speech. Best of all, you’ll
finally have enough money to ditch the day job and do nothing but write. Well,
write and travel.
And then there’s
reality.
You devote every
spare minute for years working on your first novel, as pure a labor of love as
there ever was, for both you and the family and friends who kindly endure draft
after draft after draft as you agonize over every little detail. Final
manuscript in hand, you research literary agents and start at the top. “I write
a little like the guy who wrote No. 3 on the New York Times Fiction Bestseller
List,” you tell yourself. “Who’s his
agent?” But his agent isn’t interested. So uninterested,
in fact, that all you get in response to your carefully crafted query is an
email form rejection, with “sincere apologies and regrets” for sending an email
form rejection. As you work your way down a list of a hundred agents and your
inbox overflows with sincerity for several months, maybe several years, you
have three choices: 1) Allow the rejections to convince you that your book
really isn’t any good and banish it to a dark corner of your hard drive; 2) Damn
the rejections because you still believe in your book—and then self-publish; 3)
Skip the agents, change course and go directly to the publishers—the
independent publishers.
I wrestled with
No. 1, considered No. 2 but ultimately chose No. 3, because I still sought the
validation that self-publishing doesn’t always provide. After much research, I
arrived at
Rebel Satori Press.
The name struck a chord—a Zen revolution!—and the catalog of titles seemed to
share my sensibility as well as an interest in the Beat Generation writers—Jack
Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs—who figure prominently in
Beatitude. I queried the publisher, Sven
Davisson, who asked for an excerpt, then the full manuscript. Six months later,
he sent me a contract.
I didn’t realize
it at the time, but though I had written a book and landed a publisher, my work
had just begun. What does it mean to be an indie author? Here’s what I’ve
discovered:
1. Literary Agent: When I told an author friend that Rebel
Satori had accepted Beatitude, she
said that I should get an agent. And that getting an agent would be easy. She
was right. After all the rejections I’d received, I was shocked to discover
that several literary agents were suddenly interested in representing me. Why?
Because the book had already been sold, mitigating most of the risk. Why would
I need an agent at that point? To help with the contract. I knew nothing about
contracts. My agent helped me negotiate and retain both foreign and adaptation
rights, the two most likely sources of any significant revenue aside from
royalties. The agency receives a commission on those sales, but the agency has
a dedicated foreign rights department and contacts in film and television that
I don’t. It’s much more likely to sell those rights than I would be on my own.
2. Advance: What advance? Some things are
non-negotiable.
3. Editing: With an indie publisher, you’re more
likely to have final say on the final version of the manuscript, for better or
worse. I’m a journalist, with many years experience as both a writer and an
editor. Thanks to friend and fellow editor, Mindy Kitei, whose insightful
advice helped me streamline the manuscript (“Yes,” “No,” “Ugh!”), my book was in
very good shape with regard to structure, pacing and style. But having read
great books from indie publishers that were undermined by rampant typos and
grammatical errors, I hired a friend who’s a professional copy editor to review Beatitude.
Taken aback by how many minor but irksome issues she caught, I realized that
hiring her was one of the best investments I’d made.
4. Legal: Beatitude
features lyrics from popular songs, excerpts from works by Jack Kerouac and
Allen Ginsberg and appearances by real-life, living individuals, all of which
required permissions, licenses, releases and, in some cases, fees. I made a
list of everything potentially problematic and consulted with an intellectual
property lawyer for advice on the paths of least resistance. Obtaining
permission to reprint song lyrics proved to be the most difficult and most
expensive. I discovered that you can use a song title but even a line from a
song will cost you plenty. Fair Use does not apply. As a result, I edited out
all but one lyric. Brief excerpts from Kerouac’s books and Ginsberg’s poems
were less expensive, but I still needed to track down who owned the rights and
get contracts for them. Getting signed appearance releases from people whose
real names I wanted to use was also relatively easy, because I knew the
individuals and, ultimately, because every character in Beatitude is presented in a positive light.
5. Galleys: Media outlets that devote coverage to
books usually want a galley—an uncorrected advance copy of the book, often without
the final cover—six to eight months prior to the publication date. This is
especially true of monthly magazines, where editors plan issues three months
ahead of time and will only review a book on or near the pub date. After that,
it’s old news. Many indie publishers do not print galleys because major
monthlies and mainstream websites are less likely to publish reviews of indie
titles, so there’s no return on investment. Rebel Satori doesn’t print galleys.
So I did, believing that I needed reviews that coincided with the pub date to
ensure the book’s success and hoping I could impress where others couldn’t. I
researched printers and paid to produce 60 copies of Beatitude wrapped in a plain white cover with Helvetica text. I
sent nearly all of them to editors and writers at magazines, book-related
websites, bloggers and NPR. How many reviews coinciding with the pub date did Beatitude receive as a result? One. One
very significant review. But, still. One. Looking back, I’m not sure I would do
it again.
6. Book Cover: While negotiating the book contract, I
retained the right—and responsibility—to oversee the cover design. I’m not a
designer, but I co-owned a communication design studio for seven years. I
studied thousands of book covers and decided on the aesthetic I wanted—simple,
bold, graphic. A friend put me in touch with artist
Anthony Freda, renowned for his gallery exhibits as
well as his award-winning illustrations for
Rolling Stone,
The New Yorker,
Esquire,
The New York Times,
The Village Voice,
Entertainment Weekly,
Playboy and many others. Anthony and I
hit it off immediately. He read
Beatitude,
asked what I had in mind and produced a cover that exceeded every expectation.
Simple, bold, graphic. Fantastic. I was doubly fortunate to have another
amazing artist, John Barrow, design the equally important back cover and spine,
playing off Anthony’s illustration for the front and adding a whole other
dimension, the ying to the yang. All the times I’d ever imagined what the cover
of
Beatitude might look like, I never
imagined the incredible result. But, being an indie author, I was able to
choose whom I wanted to work with and have input, two things that wouldn’t
necessarily have happened at a mainstream publisher.
7. Marketing: Author website, book trailer, Facebook,
Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Google+, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble. I
really should be tweeting.
8. Publicity: Unless you hire a publicist—even if you
hire a publicist—you will spend every free minute for months, networking,
emailing and calling to promote your book and convince editors and writers that
it is more worthy of attention than the 50 other books that were published the
same day. You have to steel yourself to the silence—the response rate is about
the same as finding a publisher. The good news is that there are thousands of
book-related websites and blogs and if you focus your efforts on those that
focus on the type of book you’ve written, you can get coverage—a mention, an article, a post, an interview, a
review. In all likelihood, however, you will spend as many hours getting that
coverage as you spent writing the book.
9. Reviews: You want reviews. You need reviews. To
get reviews—hopefully, great ones—you need to stand out from the crowd while
treading the thin line between being persistent and being a pest. Confronted by
a daily onslaught of new titles, editors have to make quick decisions about
what they will and won’t review, many times based on industry buzz, news of a
huge advance, a ubiquitous marketing campaign or a bio that includes the Iowa
Writers’ Workshop (which seems to guarantee a book deal and instant gravitas).
How to tactfully stand out as an indie author? Prior to the pub date, I sent a
galley, then, in consecutive weeks, followed up with an email, a link to the
trailer and a large jpg of the book cover. After the pub date, I sent actual
books and hoped for the best. Sometimes I scored, sometimes I didn’t. But the
times I did more than made up for the times I didn’t.
10. Spontaneous Cool: In “Like Other Guys,” one of two
previously unpublished poems by Allen Ginsberg that appears in Beatitude, the Beat poet writes that he
should devote his energy to poetry and stop messing around with music because
he’s a “rock star, automatically.” So are you! Despite all the challenges indie
authors face, one undeniable plus is that being indie automatically confers a
counter-cultural cool that Knopf cannot.
Rock on.
**Be sure to join us tomorrow over at ...I Can Stay, where the amazing Emmet hosts Day Two of the tour**
