Richard Snodgrass's Blog - Posts Tagged "self-publishing"
Confessions of a Shy Self-Publisher No. 1 — Introduction
It was a just year ago that we made the final decision to self-publish the Books of Furnass series, rather than try to have them printed with traditional mainstream publishers. My first inclination is to say that if I knew then what I know now about self-publishing, I might have second thoughts about attempting such a venture—but that’s too easy. The fact is there was little choice at this stage of my work (I’d be pushing it to call it a career); or to put it another way, it almost seemed ordained that we would self-publish, that everything that had happened with the books over the years had put us on this path. Who was I to argue with the workings of the world? Or rather, with where my decisions over the past decades had led us?
After thirty-five years or so in development (forty-plus, if you include the photographs I took of the mill towns north of Pittsburgh in the 1970s), the books about the fictitious town of Furnass were finally in shape for publication. All the characters were coordinated between the various stories; all events reconciled into the relevant time frame; all the dates correlated, so that a particular character didn’t turn out to be a hundred and twenty-five when such-and-such was said to occur.
Yes, over the years I had tried to find mainstream publishers for several of the books, but somehow things never worked out—either the publishers weren’t interested, or I wasn’t interested in what was offered. And in each case, I was grateful afterward that the books weren’t published earlier. Every time I thought a book was finished and ready to face the world, I found it was amiss in the series as I continued on with the next book.
Which is why the series took thirty-five years to develop. Which is what we’ll talk about in the next installment of these Tales.
After thirty-five years or so in development (forty-plus, if you include the photographs I took of the mill towns north of Pittsburgh in the 1970s), the books about the fictitious town of Furnass were finally in shape for publication. All the characters were coordinated between the various stories; all events reconciled into the relevant time frame; all the dates correlated, so that a particular character didn’t turn out to be a hundred and twenty-five when such-and-such was said to occur.
Yes, over the years I had tried to find mainstream publishers for several of the books, but somehow things never worked out—either the publishers weren’t interested, or I wasn’t interested in what was offered. And in each case, I was grateful afterward that the books weren’t published earlier. Every time I thought a book was finished and ready to face the world, I found it was amiss in the series as I continued on with the next book.
Which is why the series took thirty-five years to develop. Which is what we’ll talk about in the next installment of these Tales.
Confessions of a Shy Self-Publisher No. 2 — Why Thirty-Five Years
So…why did it take me thirty-five years to complete the Books of Furnass series? Am I really that slow of a writer? Truth is, I never set out to write an eight-book series about a fictitious mill town, or any other subject for that matter.
In 1980, after I finished writing my first novel, There’s Something in the Back Yard, I thought I’d apply what I’d learned in writing that book to a subject I’d been thinking about for some time, the construction of a high-rise building. For close to a dozen years I had worked as an inspector on high-rise buildings in San Francisco, and my experiences and the people I met during those years seemed ready-made for a book.
The problem was, when I started to sketch out such a novel, to do justice to all the various people engaged in such a multi-story (pun intended) project, I realized I was looking at a two- or three-thousand-page book. Besides, I wouldn’t be writing fiction. I would be retelling stories of which I already knew the outcome—and what fun was that? Writing for me is a process of self-discovery, finding out what I didn’t know that I knew. I also believe that such discoveries make for the most interesting reading. As Robert Frost put it, no surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.
One of the main reasons I had decided to leave San Francisco and return to Western Pennsylvania was the desire to write about the area, the place where I was born and raised. But I didn’t want to make the same mistake I would with writing about a forty-story high rise—that is, simply retelling stories that I already knew.
So, it occurred to me…why not transplant my high-rise building to a small mill town? It was a quirk of the area that most of the mill towns had a new high-rise building sticking up in the middle of the business district, the result of government-induced low-income housing and/or too-readily available real estate loans. A twelve-story building in a mill town of three-and four-story buildings was comparable to a fifty-story tower in a city of twenty- and thirty-story towers, but with unique challenges.
The question was, in which mill town to place the tower? . . .
In 1980, after I finished writing my first novel, There’s Something in the Back Yard, I thought I’d apply what I’d learned in writing that book to a subject I’d been thinking about for some time, the construction of a high-rise building. For close to a dozen years I had worked as an inspector on high-rise buildings in San Francisco, and my experiences and the people I met during those years seemed ready-made for a book.
The problem was, when I started to sketch out such a novel, to do justice to all the various people engaged in such a multi-story (pun intended) project, I realized I was looking at a two- or three-thousand-page book. Besides, I wouldn’t be writing fiction. I would be retelling stories of which I already knew the outcome—and what fun was that? Writing for me is a process of self-discovery, finding out what I didn’t know that I knew. I also believe that such discoveries make for the most interesting reading. As Robert Frost put it, no surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.
One of the main reasons I had decided to leave San Francisco and return to Western Pennsylvania was the desire to write about the area, the place where I was born and raised. But I didn’t want to make the same mistake I would with writing about a forty-story high rise—that is, simply retelling stories that I already knew.
So, it occurred to me…why not transplant my high-rise building to a small mill town? It was a quirk of the area that most of the mill towns had a new high-rise building sticking up in the middle of the business district, the result of government-induced low-income housing and/or too-readily available real estate loans. A twelve-story building in a mill town of three-and four-story buildings was comparable to a fifty-story tower in a city of twenty- and thirty-story towers, but with unique challenges.
The question was, in which mill town to place the tower? . . .
Confessions of a Shy Self-Publisher No. 3 — The Birth of Furnass
In the mid-1970s, I had a grant from LightWorks at the University of Syracuse to photograph the mill towns north of Pittsburgh where I was born and raised, and then make platinum prints of the images.
As I wandered the streets of those tough little towns with my 4x5 view camera, twenty years after I had left the area, I realized I was looking for images that to me captured the very essence of a mill town—the most representative five & ten; the most typical house on a slanted street—that in effect I was constructing my own idea of a mill town.
When I later went to write text to go along with the images, I called my made-up town Iron City, after a local beer, but even then I knew the name wasn’t right. Later still, after I recognized that I could never capture with non-fiction my feelings about the area—that the area was crying out to me, or maybe I was crying out to it, to try to capture what I felt about this place in fiction— I also recognized where I would locate my story of building a high-rise building in a mill town.
I’m not sure at this point where or how I came up with the name Furnass. I know I had recently read Thomas Bell’s rediscovered novel, Out of This Furnace, the story of three generations of Slovakian immigrants working in the steel mills around Pittsburgh, and the name Furnace was appealing in its symbology as an agent for hardening character, etc.
But my experiences with the mills and mill towns was very different than the ones Bell portrayed. For me, the mills were certainly an everyday fact of life when I was growing up—the playground at my grade school butted up against the tube mill of B & W steel; from my attic window I could watch molten slag dumped down the hillside across the river; whenever it was about to rain the smoke from the mills didn’t rise, shrouding the town in grit and darkness; when we hitchhiked to high school we were dependent on the mill hands driving to or from their shifts.
But I grew up on College Hill, a better place to live in Beaver Falls; I had friends whose fathers worked in the mills but my father was a professional man, a Certified Public Accountant commuting each day to his office in Pittsburgh. I was a cake-eater in the eyes of my Italian girl-friend’s millworker uncles. A funny term for an unfunny class distinction.
The Books of the Furnass Series were not so much about life in the mills as they were about life in the towns around the mills, and how the heat and pressure of that way of life came to test and harden the characters. But, as applicable and descriptive as the name might be, actually calling the town Furnace seemed obvious and heavy-handed.
(to be continued)
As I wandered the streets of those tough little towns with my 4x5 view camera, twenty years after I had left the area, I realized I was looking for images that to me captured the very essence of a mill town—the most representative five & ten; the most typical house on a slanted street—that in effect I was constructing my own idea of a mill town.
When I later went to write text to go along with the images, I called my made-up town Iron City, after a local beer, but even then I knew the name wasn’t right. Later still, after I recognized that I could never capture with non-fiction my feelings about the area—that the area was crying out to me, or maybe I was crying out to it, to try to capture what I felt about this place in fiction— I also recognized where I would locate my story of building a high-rise building in a mill town.
I’m not sure at this point where or how I came up with the name Furnass. I know I had recently read Thomas Bell’s rediscovered novel, Out of This Furnace, the story of three generations of Slovakian immigrants working in the steel mills around Pittsburgh, and the name Furnace was appealing in its symbology as an agent for hardening character, etc.
But my experiences with the mills and mill towns was very different than the ones Bell portrayed. For me, the mills were certainly an everyday fact of life when I was growing up—the playground at my grade school butted up against the tube mill of B & W steel; from my attic window I could watch molten slag dumped down the hillside across the river; whenever it was about to rain the smoke from the mills didn’t rise, shrouding the town in grit and darkness; when we hitchhiked to high school we were dependent on the mill hands driving to or from their shifts.
But I grew up on College Hill, a better place to live in Beaver Falls; I had friends whose fathers worked in the mills but my father was a professional man, a Certified Public Accountant commuting each day to his office in Pittsburgh. I was a cake-eater in the eyes of my Italian girl-friend’s millworker uncles. A funny term for an unfunny class distinction.
The Books of the Furnass Series were not so much about life in the mills as they were about life in the towns around the mills, and how the heat and pressure of that way of life came to test and harden the characters. But, as applicable and descriptive as the name might be, actually calling the town Furnace seemed obvious and heavy-handed.
(to be continued)
