Leonce Gaiter's Blog
November 1, 2024
A Memory of Fictions on the list
Folks have been kind enough to add my book "A Memory of Fictions (or) Just Tiddy-Boom" to some favorites lists. Take a look. If you enjoy, please leave a review. Happy perusal!A Memory of Fictions (or) Just Tiddy-Boom
Social Justice: Books on Racism, Sexism, and Class:
list/show/851.Social_Justice_Books_on_Racism_Sexism_and_Class
Best Black Historical Fiction: list/show/12608.Best_Black_Historical_Fiction
Best Multicultural General Fiction: list/show/22314.Best_Multicultural_General_Fiction
Books by Black Authors: list/show/15020.Books_by_Black_Authors
Best American Historical Fiction: list/show/7462.Best_American_Historical_Fiction
Black Lives Matter Reading List: list/show/82461._BlackLivesMatter_Reading_List [
July 2, 2024
New novel out - "A Memory of Fictions (or) Just Tiddy-Boom"
Just wanted to bay at the moon that my new novel is out. Reviews so far, so good:
“…a bold novel. Sometimes beautiful, sometimes brutal, the prose is always thoroughly engrossing.” - IndieReader
"Gaiter’s wonderfully evocative language, filled with musicality, captures the complexity of Jessie’s emotions as he struggles to make sense of his sexuality and place in the world.” – Blue Ink Review
If Ernest Hemingway was black, gay, and writing about growing up in the [1960s], he would have written something like Leonce Gaiter’s 'A Memory of Fictions (or) Just Tiddy-Boom'…" - Reader Views
The book is a a modern, jazzy take on the bildungsroman that uses everything from personal memoir, a fugue-like structure, poetry, images, lyrics, and diaries to paint a vivid, eloquent portrait of gay, black, Jessie Vincent Grandier. He steadfastly battles to reconcile his existence with expectations and preconceptions of those around him -- black and white -- while navigating the striving black middle class that shaped him in the 1960s. He wends his way through Harvard in the '70s and drinks his way through the Reagan '80s in gay bars from the LA barrios to Beverly Hills. When his grandiose ambitions have abandoned him, when he’s almost beaten, and when it’s a breath away from too late, he looks back, and regards the jagged shards of his life, and pieces them into a whole. A ribald, occasionally hilarious, sometimes brutal and utterly unique look at race, sex, and redemption—the hard way.
“…a bold novel. Sometimes beautiful, sometimes brutal, the prose is always thoroughly engrossing.” - IndieReader
"Gaiter’s wonderfully evocative language, filled with musicality, captures the complexity of Jessie’s emotions as he struggles to make sense of his sexuality and place in the world.” – Blue Ink Review
If Ernest Hemingway was black, gay, and writing about growing up in the [1960s], he would have written something like Leonce Gaiter’s 'A Memory of Fictions (or) Just Tiddy-Boom'…" - Reader Views
The book is a a modern, jazzy take on the bildungsroman that uses everything from personal memoir, a fugue-like structure, poetry, images, lyrics, and diaries to paint a vivid, eloquent portrait of gay, black, Jessie Vincent Grandier. He steadfastly battles to reconcile his existence with expectations and preconceptions of those around him -- black and white -- while navigating the striving black middle class that shaped him in the 1960s. He wends his way through Harvard in the '70s and drinks his way through the Reagan '80s in gay bars from the LA barrios to Beverly Hills. When his grandiose ambitions have abandoned him, when he’s almost beaten, and when it’s a breath away from too late, he looks back, and regards the jagged shards of his life, and pieces them into a whole. A ribald, occasionally hilarious, sometimes brutal and utterly unique look at race, sex, and redemption—the hard way.
November 24, 2011
Denying the Killer Inside Us
I was asked if I feared alienating my audience with the depiction of violence in my latest novel. I was surprised because I had gone through pains to minimize the actual depiction of violent acts. A novel about a real-life group of notorious teenage terrorists who rampaged through Indian Territory at the turn of the century naturally includes violence in significant quantities. However, I took pains to minimize description of the acts. Instead, I focused on the perpetrator’s motivations and the victim’s reactions. To my surprise, though, far from minimizing the impact of the violence, this seems to have heightened it.
Read More
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leonce-...
Read More
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leonce-...
October 1, 2011
FREE ebook Promotion for "I Dreamt I Was in Heaven."
I am doing a free promotion for ebook versions of "I Dreamt I Was in Heaven - The Rampage of the Rufus Buck Gang" through October 6th. Just click here or visit the URL below and at checkout, use this coupon code: WB45M
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/...
Learn more about the book, the history behind it, and view the trailer at buckrampage.com.
Hope you enjoy!
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/...
Learn more about the book, the history behind it, and view the trailer at buckrampage.com.
Hope you enjoy!
August 24, 2011
“The Help,” Redemption, and Genuflecting at the Altar of Ourselves
“How are these characters redeemed?” is a question I often get. I feel as if I’d just slapped a puppy when I have to reply, “They aren’t. They come to realizations, but they are not made pure or whole again. Damage has been done.” The frequency with which I’m confronted with the search for redemption in my writing and the reaction I get to its literal absence suggests that it’s become expected, like genuflection at the altar. The question becomes “at the altar of what?”
“The Help” is a blockbuster that doesn’t just redeem its white heroine—it redeems all of white America right along with her. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this. Such historical/personal wish fulfillment is a templated part of the socially conscious Hollywood and publishing blockbuster. And for good reason. It works! The technique of using a mainstream identification figure to “save” members of a downtrodden minority lets writers and directors tap the gravitas of great historical tragedies while absolving the audience of any potential complicity. “You,” these works tell us, “would have been one of the good ones.”
But this ideal of literary redemption has become so prevalent that, just as we react to its presence like bees to nectar, we react to its absence as we would a loud, malodorous fart—as if our gentility has been punctured, as if an unwelcome reminder of the animal-in-us that we text and google our days away forgetting—the one that will die someday too soon and heaven forfend that in this most Christian of countries, we should do so without redemption and therefore in a state of sin.
The interesting and exasperating literary critic Harold Bloom once wrote, “Sin and redemption are theological categories, not literary themes.” And our deference to literary redemption does seem quasi-religious. That’s what made the whole James Frey/Oprah spectacle so mesmerizing. Redemptive spirituality is Oprah’s brand. The Oprah’s Book Club books provided a surfeit of it. But here we had the high-priestess of redemption-in-all-things being duped by her own obsession with it—the stuff of tragedy. So appalled was she by falling victim to tragedy as opposed to being elevated by redemption that she publicly flogged the author and publisher who had supposedly engineered her fall. Her reaction was the antithesis of redemption. She did not recognize that her reliance on redemption may have become sufficiently facile to be easily exploited or parodied. She lashed out against any such realization. She laid blame elsewhere as opposed to recognizing a potential flaw in her system.
Bloom suggested alternatives to ”sin” and ”redemption” as thematic literary categories. “I suggest that error, not sin, is an authentic literary concept,” Bloom wrote, “and that recognition, rather than redemption, is the inevitable literary theme that emanates from error.” What a liberating concept. Sin can emanate from our own prejudices and preconceptions, thereby encouraging lazy writing that relies on them. Error seems more likely to emanate from the character’s point-of-view. Whereas error relies on understanding the viewpoint of a thoroughly shaded character; sin asks only that we impose our existing value system, cart and horse, on the book. The characters needn’t be fully formed, we simply fill them up with… ourselves.
I fear that the altar at which we genuflect in our demand for redemption is a mirror. We insist on redemption so that we can view ourselves as perfectible, reflecting our fear at the prospect that we may not be. Relying on themes of sin and redemption allow us to bask in literary reflections of our own judgments and preconceptions and consistently have them reflected back at us as right and good. There is narcissism in the reliance and insistence upon them—and narcissism may, depending on your point of view, be a... sin.
“The Help” is a blockbuster that doesn’t just redeem its white heroine—it redeems all of white America right along with her. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this. Such historical/personal wish fulfillment is a templated part of the socially conscious Hollywood and publishing blockbuster. And for good reason. It works! The technique of using a mainstream identification figure to “save” members of a downtrodden minority lets writers and directors tap the gravitas of great historical tragedies while absolving the audience of any potential complicity. “You,” these works tell us, “would have been one of the good ones.”
But this ideal of literary redemption has become so prevalent that, just as we react to its presence like bees to nectar, we react to its absence as we would a loud, malodorous fart—as if our gentility has been punctured, as if an unwelcome reminder of the animal-in-us that we text and google our days away forgetting—the one that will die someday too soon and heaven forfend that in this most Christian of countries, we should do so without redemption and therefore in a state of sin.
The interesting and exasperating literary critic Harold Bloom once wrote, “Sin and redemption are theological categories, not literary themes.” And our deference to literary redemption does seem quasi-religious. That’s what made the whole James Frey/Oprah spectacle so mesmerizing. Redemptive spirituality is Oprah’s brand. The Oprah’s Book Club books provided a surfeit of it. But here we had the high-priestess of redemption-in-all-things being duped by her own obsession with it—the stuff of tragedy. So appalled was she by falling victim to tragedy as opposed to being elevated by redemption that she publicly flogged the author and publisher who had supposedly engineered her fall. Her reaction was the antithesis of redemption. She did not recognize that her reliance on redemption may have become sufficiently facile to be easily exploited or parodied. She lashed out against any such realization. She laid blame elsewhere as opposed to recognizing a potential flaw in her system.
Bloom suggested alternatives to ”sin” and ”redemption” as thematic literary categories. “I suggest that error, not sin, is an authentic literary concept,” Bloom wrote, “and that recognition, rather than redemption, is the inevitable literary theme that emanates from error.” What a liberating concept. Sin can emanate from our own prejudices and preconceptions, thereby encouraging lazy writing that relies on them. Error seems more likely to emanate from the character’s point-of-view. Whereas error relies on understanding the viewpoint of a thoroughly shaded character; sin asks only that we impose our existing value system, cart and horse, on the book. The characters needn’t be fully formed, we simply fill them up with… ourselves.
I fear that the altar at which we genuflect in our demand for redemption is a mirror. We insist on redemption so that we can view ourselves as perfectible, reflecting our fear at the prospect that we may not be. Relying on themes of sin and redemption allow us to bask in literary reflections of our own judgments and preconceptions and consistently have them reflected back at us as right and good. There is narcissism in the reliance and insistence upon them—and narcissism may, depending on your point of view, be a... sin.
August 22, 2011
Story Behind the Story of "I Dreamt I Was in Heaven" From "The Rap Sheet"
Happy to report that The Rap Sheet, a lit mag devoted to crime fiction, has just published a "Story Behind the Story" essay about "I Dreamt I Was in Heaven." If you idly wondered where I got the idea or why the hell I wanted to write about it, here's your chance. Hope you enjoy!
http://therapsheet.blogspot.com/2011/...
http://therapsheet.blogspot.com/2011/...
August 5, 2011
Insane Pricing Protocols and What I'm Doing to Overcome Them
Pricing is one of the perverse quirks of the publishing industry. Publishers place ridiculously high retail prices on their books (near $25 for a regular hardback, $15 for trade paper) and then offer wholesalers a 55% discount in the hopes that they will pass that along to consumers. But sometimes they don't. Thus, you put a $15.95 price tag on the book and give distributors a 50% discount expecting the book to sell for around 10-11 bucks. Imagine one's surprise when it shows up for... you guessed it, $15.95!
To get around this, my publisher is switching distributors and placing a flat and much more reasonable price on "I Dreamt I Was in Heaven - The Rampage of the Rufus Buck Gang." Thus, in the next week or so, it should be showing up at Amazon for $10.99, and B&N should then compete with an equal or lower price.
I am a firm believer that books are too often overpriced. This industry pricing convention is a big reason. I was a bit of a fool to try to play into it. It beat me, but I've learned my lesson: Don't play in tainted sandboxes.
To get around this, my publisher is switching distributors and placing a flat and much more reasonable price on "I Dreamt I Was in Heaven - The Rampage of the Rufus Buck Gang." Thus, in the next week or so, it should be showing up at Amazon for $10.99, and B&N should then compete with an equal or lower price.
I am a firm believer that books are too often overpriced. This industry pricing convention is a big reason. I was a bit of a fool to try to play into it. It beat me, but I've learned my lesson: Don't play in tainted sandboxes.
August 2, 2011
The Unforgettable, Forgotten Story of Rufus Buck
Black marshalls, Indian lawmen, half-black outlaws, black towns, half-white Indian chiefs... The former Indian Territories (today's Oklahoma), were shockingly multi-racial, and held all of the racial prejudices, contradictions, and conundrums that we see in our own 21st century multi-racial society.
Truly representative was Rufus Buck. Half black, half Creek Indian, he formed a multi-racial gang of near-teenaged outlaws in 1895 with the aim of ridding the Indian Territories of its every growing population of whites.
Infamous "Hanging Judge" Isaac Parker presided over two of Buck's trials. Buck shared the Ft. Smith jail with famous half-black, half-Cherokee outlaw Cherokee Bill. The first man Buck killed was a black lawman. The Creek Indian Lighthorse helped track him down. All of this at a time when Indian Territory held more white men than Indians.
Buck has disappeared from American history, as has much of the reality of the Indian Territories. Americans don't like to recall our reneging on our promises. But his story is fascinating and telling of the world we've allowed to fade from view because we find it too painful to look at.
I first heard about Rufus Buck and his gang about 20 years ago, and I have remained fascinated ever since. Thus, the novel, "I Dreamt I Was in Heaven - The Rampage of the Rufus Buck Gang."
I hope you enjoy.
Truly representative was Rufus Buck. Half black, half Creek Indian, he formed a multi-racial gang of near-teenaged outlaws in 1895 with the aim of ridding the Indian Territories of its every growing population of whites.
Infamous "Hanging Judge" Isaac Parker presided over two of Buck's trials. Buck shared the Ft. Smith jail with famous half-black, half-Cherokee outlaw Cherokee Bill. The first man Buck killed was a black lawman. The Creek Indian Lighthorse helped track him down. All of this at a time when Indian Territory held more white men than Indians.
Buck has disappeared from American history, as has much of the reality of the Indian Territories. Americans don't like to recall our reneging on our promises. But his story is fascinating and telling of the world we've allowed to fade from view because we find it too painful to look at.
I first heard about Rufus Buck and his gang about 20 years ago, and I have remained fascinated ever since. Thus, the novel, "I Dreamt I Was in Heaven - The Rampage of the Rufus Buck Gang."
I hope you enjoy.
With Traditional Publishing Dies the Passive Writer-Victim
It had been a longtime dream; I had thought about it and wanted it since childhood. But then, with my dream in hand, my only response was a small nod and a sotto, "oh, alright." Akin to a tepid "how nice." My book was to be published by a well-regarded NY publishing house, and I couldn't even muster a facade of enthusiasm. I assumed I was numb; that it hadn't sunk in yet. So I went about my business and I waited for the thrill to fill me up.
It never did. The process had been long—a cryptic agent who condescended to take my once-a-month call, a fake chuckle to hide her irritation as she complained about having to hold clients' hands. It was on one of my monthly calls that she told me that I had sold a book. I wonder if she would have bothered to mention it if I hadn't phoned. I guess I'll never know.
The production process was—subliminal. I spoke with the book's ostensible editor for a grand total of about 5 minutes—in my entire life. A proof showed up with a picture of a flirty, naked black woman on the cover—when the only black female character died before the beginning of the book and she wasn't the flirty type. It was a nice cover, but it had little to do with the book beneath it.
The publicist sent the requisite press release to the usual suspects, who probably gave it the attention it deserved (They ignored it). Gamely, I stepped into the breach, purchasing some cheap online ads, hawking the book to reviewers, etc., all to middling success, but infinitely greater satisfaction than I got from any other stage of the process save the writing. Finally, I had some control, and I began to suspect that I was a sophomoric cliché of the passive writer-victim—passively awaiting my agent's actions; passively awaiting publisher response; passively awaiting for someone to design my book, passively awaiting critical and commercial reaction. Yes, I began to suspect... but I was still to programmed and scared to do anything about it.
As the next novel hit editors' desks (from a new, and altogether more suitable agent) and I passively awaited reaction, my agent received notes like these:
"It’s an impressively gripping story, and a fascinating story about a time and topic I knew little about."
"I can see what you mean about the strong pacing of Gaiter’s narrative, and the novel’s strong sense of place, which seems to stem from deep research into and thorough knowledge..."
"I thought this was a really well-written and fascinating story. I loved the historical details and enjoyed the book on a personal level."
Each of these statements preceded a "pass." One editor told my agent that "the market" was telling her that only frothy, "feel good" books have a chance at sales success today. This was an odd statement, considering that it presupposes that the publishing industry has a good idea of what "the market" wants. I quote author and business writer Michael Levin from Forbes Magazine:
...the books that publishers choose are almost entirely of zero interest to actual book-buyers. After 9/11, there were a ton of books about 9/11, which nobody bought. Same thing with the Iraq War, the rise of Obama, the economic meltdown... Or the books are rehashed business lessons, religious truths, sports clichés, motivational babble, exercise fads, weight loss techniques, or pandering to the political left or the right. Who wants these books? Almost no one.
Most of the major publishers today are owned by international conglomerates who, at some point, will awaken to the realization that English majors in their employ are spending millions of dollars on books that no one wants to read.
Levin further points out the antediluvian hilarity of the publishing "business model," in which "the publisher bears the entire risk of buying, editing, printing, and shipping copies of the book to bookstores all over the country on a 100% returnable basis. If your local Barnes & Noble doesn’t sell a particular book, it goes right back to the publisher, at the publisher’s shipping cost, for a full refund. Especially in the Internet era, you can’t make money putting books on trucks and hoping someone buys them."
After my first book was released, I was scheduled for a radio appearance. The day prior, I was informed that Amazon was out of my book. Publicity can generate sales. It's bad form to generate publicity for a product, and then inform prospective buyers at a primary outlet that the product is unavailable. When I screamed loudly about this to my agent and editor, the editor said, and I quote, "If they want the book badly enough, they'll wait for it or find it." My jaw dropped. Apple Computer can afford to be that lazy and arrogant. James Patterson can. Leonce Gaiter and Carroll & Graf Publishers could not. This man was so clueless to business realities, he expected people to seek out or wait for a product about which they knew little or nothing from someone they had never heard of. To him, the reader had to do all the work. Our job was to look pretty while we sat back and waited for them to do it.
I read reports from one of the large book conferences in which a major editor insisted that the "intrinsic value" of a book justified their exorbitant price tags. ($12.99 for an ebook? Fuck you! Even Amazon wanted to sell them for $9.99.) Again, the ignorance is blinding. In a market economy, no product qua product has "intrinsic value." Suggesting that it does stinks of the arrogance of decay drenched in decadence. See also this shamefully smug op-ed.
With respect to my own work, I had to realize that some NY Editors are sufficiently egotistical to believe that they are so advanced in their educations and outlook that a book they find "fascinating" could not possibly engage a more general audience (unless it includes vampires or comes with pictures, of course). That, and the fact that their marketing sense and infrastructures are as outmoded and inefficient as the rest of their business, so they only have the ability to sell books that run the gamut from A to C to audiences that are equally diverse.
Finally, I had to accept both the death of my romantic vision of publishing and the gross facts of the corporate publishing reality. With my agent's help and blessing, I found the tools and mustered the will to do things differently.
Ingram, the major book distributor, owns Lightning Source, which gives authors access to distribution channels similar to those the publishing houses get, and at reasonable prices; your book can be available for print-on-demand from any bookstore, online or off. That takes care of the physical books. Ebooks, of course, are also within any author's grasp; between Smashwords and Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing, you can pretty much cover the territory. This time, I chose my own physical book's format, dimensions, and I laid out the text within the appropriate template myself. A wonderful designer I know provided the marvelous cover art. The novel is mine, soup to nuts. I feel an ownership and pride that never even teased me with my traditionally published book. From an economic standpoint, if the book sells as well as my largely-ignored traditionally published novel, I will make three times the money from it. Carroll & Graf put a $24 price tag on my first book. Consumers will be able to buy this one for less than $10.
How can you not recommend this option to authors? With today's tools, the idea of waiting for approval from the minions of a multinational sounds as lazy and self-defeating as a band that won't burn CDs until they get a major label record deal. Just as musicians have to know their way around a sound board, writers need facility with the layout and design software used to create books, the ins and outs of formatting for ebooks; they need design sense enough to guarantee that their book looks good inside and out.
We used to wait passively for the pearly gates to open and then gratefully pass our manuscripts through to hallowed ground. In music and in books, those days are gone forever. And good riddance.
It never did. The process had been long—a cryptic agent who condescended to take my once-a-month call, a fake chuckle to hide her irritation as she complained about having to hold clients' hands. It was on one of my monthly calls that she told me that I had sold a book. I wonder if she would have bothered to mention it if I hadn't phoned. I guess I'll never know.
The production process was—subliminal. I spoke with the book's ostensible editor for a grand total of about 5 minutes—in my entire life. A proof showed up with a picture of a flirty, naked black woman on the cover—when the only black female character died before the beginning of the book and she wasn't the flirty type. It was a nice cover, but it had little to do with the book beneath it.
The publicist sent the requisite press release to the usual suspects, who probably gave it the attention it deserved (They ignored it). Gamely, I stepped into the breach, purchasing some cheap online ads, hawking the book to reviewers, etc., all to middling success, but infinitely greater satisfaction than I got from any other stage of the process save the writing. Finally, I had some control, and I began to suspect that I was a sophomoric cliché of the passive writer-victim—passively awaiting my agent's actions; passively awaiting publisher response; passively awaiting for someone to design my book, passively awaiting critical and commercial reaction. Yes, I began to suspect... but I was still to programmed and scared to do anything about it.
As the next novel hit editors' desks (from a new, and altogether more suitable agent) and I passively awaited reaction, my agent received notes like these:
"It’s an impressively gripping story, and a fascinating story about a time and topic I knew little about."
"I can see what you mean about the strong pacing of Gaiter’s narrative, and the novel’s strong sense of place, which seems to stem from deep research into and thorough knowledge..."
"I thought this was a really well-written and fascinating story. I loved the historical details and enjoyed the book on a personal level."
Each of these statements preceded a "pass." One editor told my agent that "the market" was telling her that only frothy, "feel good" books have a chance at sales success today. This was an odd statement, considering that it presupposes that the publishing industry has a good idea of what "the market" wants. I quote author and business writer Michael Levin from Forbes Magazine:
...the books that publishers choose are almost entirely of zero interest to actual book-buyers. After 9/11, there were a ton of books about 9/11, which nobody bought. Same thing with the Iraq War, the rise of Obama, the economic meltdown... Or the books are rehashed business lessons, religious truths, sports clichés, motivational babble, exercise fads, weight loss techniques, or pandering to the political left or the right. Who wants these books? Almost no one.
Most of the major publishers today are owned by international conglomerates who, at some point, will awaken to the realization that English majors in their employ are spending millions of dollars on books that no one wants to read.
Levin further points out the antediluvian hilarity of the publishing "business model," in which "the publisher bears the entire risk of buying, editing, printing, and shipping copies of the book to bookstores all over the country on a 100% returnable basis. If your local Barnes & Noble doesn’t sell a particular book, it goes right back to the publisher, at the publisher’s shipping cost, for a full refund. Especially in the Internet era, you can’t make money putting books on trucks and hoping someone buys them."
After my first book was released, I was scheduled for a radio appearance. The day prior, I was informed that Amazon was out of my book. Publicity can generate sales. It's bad form to generate publicity for a product, and then inform prospective buyers at a primary outlet that the product is unavailable. When I screamed loudly about this to my agent and editor, the editor said, and I quote, "If they want the book badly enough, they'll wait for it or find it." My jaw dropped. Apple Computer can afford to be that lazy and arrogant. James Patterson can. Leonce Gaiter and Carroll & Graf Publishers could not. This man was so clueless to business realities, he expected people to seek out or wait for a product about which they knew little or nothing from someone they had never heard of. To him, the reader had to do all the work. Our job was to look pretty while we sat back and waited for them to do it.
I read reports from one of the large book conferences in which a major editor insisted that the "intrinsic value" of a book justified their exorbitant price tags. ($12.99 for an ebook? Fuck you! Even Amazon wanted to sell them for $9.99.) Again, the ignorance is blinding. In a market economy, no product qua product has "intrinsic value." Suggesting that it does stinks of the arrogance of decay drenched in decadence. See also this shamefully smug op-ed.
With respect to my own work, I had to realize that some NY Editors are sufficiently egotistical to believe that they are so advanced in their educations and outlook that a book they find "fascinating" could not possibly engage a more general audience (unless it includes vampires or comes with pictures, of course). That, and the fact that their marketing sense and infrastructures are as outmoded and inefficient as the rest of their business, so they only have the ability to sell books that run the gamut from A to C to audiences that are equally diverse.
Finally, I had to accept both the death of my romantic vision of publishing and the gross facts of the corporate publishing reality. With my agent's help and blessing, I found the tools and mustered the will to do things differently.
Ingram, the major book distributor, owns Lightning Source, which gives authors access to distribution channels similar to those the publishing houses get, and at reasonable prices; your book can be available for print-on-demand from any bookstore, online or off. That takes care of the physical books. Ebooks, of course, are also within any author's grasp; between Smashwords and Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing, you can pretty much cover the territory. This time, I chose my own physical book's format, dimensions, and I laid out the text within the appropriate template myself. A wonderful designer I know provided the marvelous cover art. The novel is mine, soup to nuts. I feel an ownership and pride that never even teased me with my traditionally published book. From an economic standpoint, if the book sells as well as my largely-ignored traditionally published novel, I will make three times the money from it. Carroll & Graf put a $24 price tag on my first book. Consumers will be able to buy this one for less than $10.
How can you not recommend this option to authors? With today's tools, the idea of waiting for approval from the minions of a multinational sounds as lazy and self-defeating as a band that won't burn CDs until they get a major label record deal. Just as musicians have to know their way around a sound board, writers need facility with the layout and design software used to create books, the ins and outs of formatting for ebooks; they need design sense enough to guarantee that their book looks good inside and out.
We used to wait passively for the pearly gates to open and then gratefully pass our manuscripts through to hallowed ground. In music and in books, those days are gone forever. And good riddance.
