Rachael Preston's Blog

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In the spring of this year I wrote an article for Quill & Quire about my experience moving from traditional publishing to self-publishing…and back again. The article was published online and so behind the Quill & Quire paywall. Rights reverted, here it is:

Self-publishing. The refuge of the vain and talentless. Well, Shelley self-published. As did Hawthorne, Dickinson, Sterne, Proust, Stein. Leaves of Grass was self-published. Still Alice, Sense and Sensibility, The Wealthy Barber, The Best Laid Plans. Still, who hasn’t passed that poor soul in the mall seated before a table of books with cringe-inducing covers, their cheap pages formatted in Word and printed on a dot matrix? There but for the grace of God we all think.

It’s what I thought, smug, safely ensconced in the world of traditional publishing. My books had been reviewed in newspapers and literary magazines; I’d been invited to readings and festivals, radio and television interviews. And then my agent couldn’t place my third novel. Oh, it was powerful, memorable, darkly poetic, the writing fluid and fine, editors and readers swept away. But. But, but, but. It’s the market, my agent said. Have you thought of putting it on Amazon? I had. Amazon had always been plan B. No way was I prepared to toss six years’ work to the back of the drawer and start again. I was proud of The Fishers of Paradise—the writing, the gritty, multi-layered characters; I loved the Cootes Paradise setting. And in my bones I believed that the story of Hamilton’s boathouse community deserved to be heard.

So I went over to the other side. Big learning curve: permissions, ISBNs, GBIP, html, EPUB, mobipocket, calibre. Thankfully, I’m a process person, far more interested in doing than in having done. At the time I was living on Saturna, BC’s southernmost gulf island, population 325, including renowned, award-winning graphic designer, Mark Timmings. I commissioned him to do the cover.  Then I emailed bloggers, took out ads, went on blog “tours” and periodically set the book for free to drive up the sales rank. Watching your book download at 100 copies an hour—now there’s a dopamine kick. Free downloads don’t always get read, and they bring out the one-star trolls, the sock puppets and the genre junkies who have no compunction telling the world what they think of your dark book and dysfunctional characters. I realized maybe 150 sales, lousy odds for 13,000 downloads. But that’s 13,000 potential readers more than I had before clicking the Publish button.

That was the U.S. Here in Canada, many of my ereader-less friends and fans had yet to read Fishers. If I could cajole them into downloading, I sure as hell couldn’t make them sit at their computers to read. “I wanna real book,” they chorused. “A book book.” Like my wily gambler, Ray Fisher, I calculated the angles. I had no desire to be that poor sod sitting in the mall. Goose Lane books in hand, I approached an on-demand press in Victoria. The pages must look EXACTLY like these, I told the typesetter. I paid for better quality paper and heavier card stock. I asked writer friends for blurbs.

With book books I was on more familiar ground. On Friday I picked up my order—300—and by Saturday afternoon I’d hand-sold 7o. Saturna’s Bootcove Books and Hamilton’s three independent bookstores agreed to carry it. The amazing staff at Bryan Prince, Bookseller moved some 90 copies. The rest I sold over the bar at Lighthouse Pub. Propped them between the wine menu and the beer tower at the start of each shift and served fish and chips with a side of book.

Print copies led to a Jeff Mahoney article in the Hamilton Spectator. Daniel Coleman put Fishers on a graduate course at McMaster. And in an unplanned bonus, I now met the submission requirements for the Arts Hamilton awards. In November 2013, The Fishers of Paradise won the inaugural Kerry Schooley Award for the book that best captures the spirit of Hamilton, and Noelle Allen of Wolsak & Wynn invited me to lunch to chat about a reprint edition. With its striking new cover, The Fishers of Paradise was rereleased this April under a brand new imprint, James Street North Books, to find a place in libraries and bookstores beyond Hamilton and Saturna Island.

Those book books opened the door to something else thrilling and uniquely Canadian. Miranda Hill, author and founder of Project Bookmark Canada, read one. She wanted Fishers as part of her Literary Trail. As Project Bookmark Canada “only marks places from works published by recognized publishers,” Wolsak & Wynn’s role was key. Bookmark #16, The Fishers of Paradise, was unveiled June 1oth on Hamilton’s Waterfront Trail.

I never wanted to be on the outside looking in. It’s chilly out there. But, if I hadn’t embraced the whole process of self-publishing, if I had shelved my work instead of my pride, I would never have found my way back to traditional publishing, where I’d much rather be.

So, it’s been two years–and a bit–since my last post. I’ve been teaching myself how to makeover my website, and this is a test to see if I’ve handled the blog page correctly. We’ll see what happens when the urls are changed. I’m paying someone to do that bit.

So, a few bookish things have happened. The day after The Fishers of Paradise won Arts Hamilton’s inaugural Kerry Schooley Award in 2013 for the book best representative of the city of Hamilton, Wolsak & Wynn publisher, Noelle Allen, offered to bring the book out as a reprint edition. The new version, complete with snazzy new cover and a copyedit, is due back from the printer today and should be available for purchase next week. Yay!

I’m reading at gritLIT, Hamilton’s Writers & Readers Festival, which runs April 7-10 this year and has a stellar line-up. I haven’t taken part in (read: been invited to) a festival or formal reading in 10 years, so I’m pretty stoked. My last reading of this kind was at, wait for it, gritLIT 2006! This time I will be participating in 3 events–a reading, a panel discussion and a workshop.

I couldn’t possibly pass up the opportunity to mention the other big exciting news: The Fishers of Paradise has been chosen as Bookmark #16 for Miranda Hill’s Project Bookmark Canada. The plaque will be unveiled in Hamilton along the Desjardins Trail below the second rail bridge at the entrance to Cootes Paradise on June 10, 2016. I’ll be the one choked up.

 

I couldn’t be happier that The Fishers of Paradise won the inaugural Kerry Schooley Book Award at last night’s Hamilton Arts Council Literary Awards. Congratulations to all the nominees and to Diana Walsh for her win in the non-fiction category for Empty Cradle, and Miranda Hill for taking the fiction prize for her short story collection, Sleeping Funny. As M/C Robert Howard reiterated, what a validation it is for writers to be nominated for awards. I drew a complete blank halfway through my thank yous. I remembered afterwards I wanted to thank the three fabulous independent bookstores in Hamilton–Jaime at Epic Books, Julie at J.H. Gordon Books and a special and huge shout out to Tracey and Kerry and the rest of the gang at Bryan Prince, Bookseller for always supporting me and The Fishers of Paradise and my other books.

Short-listed for the inaugural Kerry Schooley Book Award, The Fishers of Paradise is going to the 20th Annual Hamilton Literary Awards,[image error]

and I’ve decided to tag along too. Named in honour of the late Kerry Schooley, poet and noir mystery author (under John Swan) and a man who could be found in front of the microphone or behind the scenes at virtually every arts and literary event in Hamilton, the award is given to the book most evocative of the gritty city. I look forward to catching up with the other nominees, including my former creative writing student, Joanne Levy, short-listed in the Fiction category for Small Medium at Large (yes, I’m enormously proud), David Collier, whose Hamilton Illustrated is up for the Non-Fiction Award and who headlined the Graphic Novels event for us at gritLIT back when I was chair in 2005. I also get to meet two people I currently only know from facebook–Miranda Hill, currently up for Sleeping Funny, her debut book of short stories, and Mark Leslie, who is not only the author of Haunted Hamilton, short-listed for Non-Fiction, but also the big boss at Kobo’s self-publishing department. It’ll be refreshing to chat with him about other than corrupted files (mine) and uploading issues (also mine!).

Award night is Tuesday, November 12, 7.30 p.m.at Theatre Aquarius, 190 King William Street, Hamilton. Gambatte everyone!

 

 

 

In April 2013, I was delighted to learn that The Fishers of Paradise had won TheBookDesigner.com‘s March’s eBook Cover Design Award for Fiction.Here’s what book designer Joel Friedlander had to say:

“Beautiful, evocative, balanced, and with a great use of color. When a cover is this well balanced, you can’t imagine moving or changing anything that would upset it. Makes you want to read the book, about the best thing a cover can do for you.”

Remember the good old days when the only reason we used the internet was for research?

Now it’s all about trolling for self-worth. Incessantly googling our names (and the names of those we perceive ourselves to be in competition with). Checking facebook every five minutes for updates–or keeping it open on a different tab all day, one ear cocked for the ‘ping’ of a notification that may tell us someone liked our post, liked our comment on their post, liked a story we shared, liked us. There’s goodreads to check for ratings and reviews, amazon and kobo for rankings and sales data. Booknet. Every minute change in our status–and our perception of ourselves–is available instantly–or depending on the time lag, within hours. And it’s turned us into a global village of idiots, obsessively checking in on our worth. Does the world like me? Does the world care?

Honestly? No. And the world almost certainly doesn’t need the book we’ve just written. Sorry, it doesn’t. I’ve thought about changing all the pronouns in this piece to ‘I’, but come on, I’m the only writer who feels this way? Who engages in such behaviour? Really?

All this obsessive checking, this ob-checking, is depressing. Dangerously so. Just as we can believe our own press, we can also just as easily (perhaps more easily) believe in, and start to crucify ourselves over, our lack of press. When did we become so fickle? So fragile?

I think it was better in the old days, when we didn’t have so much information at our fingertips, when there weren’t so many stats to beat ourselves up with, or preen over. When we only found out how well or how poorly our book was selling every six months when the royalty statement arrived (and only then if we could crack the code).

I’ve run with two computers for years, knowing the dangers of being sucked into surfing the net when I should/could be writing. But my new-ish zippy little laptop sits on the dining-room table, within easy reach, while my noisy 9 year-old writing behemoth sits on my desk in my office (all those stairs), and these days I just can’t seem to bypass its siren-call. “Turn me on. Open facebook. Google yourself.”

I was sick the other day. Actually, I’m into my fourth week with bronchitis and feel entitled to piss and moan. A lot. So let’s rephrase and say I was thoroughly defeated by my bronchitis the other day and decided to spend said day in bed, tucked up with several books I’d been picking through but not managing to read with any sustained concentration. What a perfect holiday for my soul! Sure, I was hacking up parts of my lungs every 20 minutes or so and would have to put the book down once in a while to ease the aching in the my back and shoulders. But the palpable relief in not obsessing over facebook and emails and goodreads and sales stats and rankings! (Because they’ll all be there tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that.) The luxury of losing myself for hours in the very reason we put ourselves through all this in the first place: books. Reading. Escaping to another world, rooting for, falling for and hating characters engaged in pursuits we don’t have the chops for, or who examine and unravel themselves in ways that draw wonder, envy, admiration, ire and tears from us. Because that’s what this writing gig is all about, isn’t it?

I don’t recommend getting sick first, but take it from me, give the internet a miss for a day. You’ll be amazed at what a tonic it is.

Hamilton Spectator columnist Jeff Mahoney, on Cootes Paradise, the setting for my novel, The Fishers of Paradise.

MAHONEY: Requiem for Cootes Paradise ‘canal rats’
By  Jeff Mahoney
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[image error]

There’s nothing left of the once famous/infamous Hamilton boathouse colony at Cootes Paradise, which flourished between 1920 and 1940.
RBG Archives

It’s the kind of community you’d expect to find tucked into the curl of a shoreline on the Louisiana bayou.

Boathouses on stilts. Squatters, pothunters, rogues and rounders. Poor folk, struggling families, many subsisting on fish and game gleaned from the unique and plentiful wetland environment that they’ve claimed as their home.

But it’s not Cajun; it’s Canadjun. More specifically, it’s Cootes Paradise, Hamilton’s own.

Read the rest here:

 

http://www.thespec.com/news/local/article/866287–mahoney-requiem-for-cootes-paradise-canal-rats

 

Just posted on http://www.winnipegreview.com, an essay I wrote on my foray into self-publishing:

Mid-List Gone, E-Books Here, Time To Self-Pub?

By Rachael Preston

“Most TWUCers,” writes John Harris of The Writers’ Union of Canada’s members, “think self-publishing is demeaning, that it’s not much better than wanking, an activity associated with immaturity and best left behind once artistic consummation has been achieved.”

Too right. When I announced (mumbled) to my writer friends that I had decided to self-publish my third novel, they tried to talk me out of it. That’s crazy, one said. Another well-intentioned soul even booked an editor’s slot at TWUC’s recent Vancouver AGM and used it to pitch my book.

They didn’t understand. The truth was, when my agent couldn’t place The Fishers of Paradise with one of the larger publishing houses, she suggested I put it up myself on Amazon. It was her fault idea.

Not that it hadn’t crossed my mind several times during the years I spent procrastinating and wallowing in doubt writing. I’d even promised my husband that if nothing came of going the traditional route, I would put Fishers out as an e-book.

Read the rest here:

 

http://www.winnipegreview.com/wp/

 

 

Just posted on http://www.winnipegreview.com, an essay I wrote on my foray into self-publishing:

Mid-List Gone, E-Books Here, Time To Self-Pub?

By Rachael Preston

“Most TWUCers,” writes John Harris of The Writers’ Union of Canada’s members, “think self-publishing is demeaning, that it’s not much better than wanking, an activity associated with immaturity and best left behind once artistic consummation has been achieved.”

Too right. When I announced (mumbled) to my writer friends that I had decided to self-publish my third novel, they tried to talk me out of it. That’s crazy, one said. Another well-intentioned soul even booked an editor’s slot at TWUC’s recent Vancouver AGM and used it to pitch my book.

They didn’t understand. The truth was, when my agent couldn’t place The Fishers of Paradise with one of the larger publishing houses, she suggested I put it up myself on Amazon. It was her fault idea.

Not that it hadn’t crossed my mind several times during the years I spent procrastinating and wallowing in doubt writing. I’d even promised my husband that if nothing came of going the traditional route, I would put Fishers out as an e-book.

Read the rest here:

 

http://www.winnipegreview.com/wp/