Sara Rich's Blog - Posts Tagged "dark-fiction"
The Small Press & the Self-Publisher: lessons learned from Ligatures
I'm not what you'd call an avid fiction writer, even though I've been writing stories since the age of five, so that makes thirty years now. In my adult life, I've written one and a half novels, eight short stories, three children's books, and a whole lot of nonfiction, either magazine essays or academic literature. Of the fiction works, one novel, six short stories, and two children's books have been published. But it's the novel I want to tell you about first.
The first draft of Ligatures was finished in about a month, which I'd taken off between completing an academic book manuscript and starting my doctoral thesis in Belgium. I had a feeling this draft was pretty good or at least pretty promising, but in all honesty, I hadn't been able to read any creative literature (not that academic works are fundamentally non-creative; quite the contrary) for several years at that point, so my only bases for comparison were things I'd read in college or shortly thereafter. Fortunately, my aunt and two closest friends are voracious readers, and all three of them offered to read my manuscript. And while they each saw a great deal of merit in the story and the characters, they also saw a lot of inconsistencies and other areas for improvement. About 4,000 drafts later, we agreed it was ready to publish.
I must have sent out about 50 query letters to agents, and only one of them responded with a personal note: “Though I was intrigued by your premise, I didn't find myself drawn into your opening pages.” At this point, I'd spent four or five months on the agent search and decided that was enough. So I started looking for small publishers who specialize in literary fiction with a dark side. And that was when I came across a call for submissions from the renowned Ex Occidente Press, who was compiling an homage to Joris-Karl Huysmans, author of one of my favorite books of all time, Là-Bas. They requested submissions “of any length” and because at 56,000 words, Ligatures falls somewhere between novel and novella, I decided to give it a try. The anthology editors wrote back a few months later saying that they greatly enjoyed the story but decided it was in fact too long for the anthology; however, they also encouraged me pitch it to the chief editor of Ex Occidente Press as a stand-alone volume. While I never heard back from him, the anthology editors' words had served another purpose. If they were so impressed with the manuscript, then it deserved to be published.
I was nearing the end of my Ph.D., and like many other junior scholars in the humanities, I had no post-doctoral prospects, so I'd been thinking of making my free-lance editing work official and adding to it a publishing facet. Thus was born Dragoman Editing & Publishing. Not wanting to test the waters with someone else's precious word child, I first published Ligatures through my own imprint as a Kindle e-book. The reviews were better than the sales, but this came as no surprise. I've never cared about making money off this book; and I've never kidded myself that it would appeal to a mass market and be featured in Oprah's book club. (But a modest cult following would be nice!)
Because I was located in Belgium at the time, my powers of marketing to an American audience, to which the book was really targeted, were limited to non-existent. That realization soon combined with the fact that after my Ph.D. was finished, I had time to read fiction again but was frequently disappointed with what I read; this disappointment led to another realization that Ligatures really deserved a wider reading audience. So I kept looking for a small press that would be interested in assuming North American print rights. With the search terms “weird fiction novel submissions,” I eventually found Chupa Cabra House, located in Arkansas, very near where Ligatures takes place. They had several open calls, and I submitted a short story, “HEL 266,” to the horror anthology Temporary Skeletons at roughly the same time as handing over Ligatures for consideration. The short story was snatched up immediately, and within a couple weeks, Ligatures was also accepted. Needless to say, I was ecstatic. Finally, someone whose powers surpassed my own feeble ones not only saw merit in my work, but was willing to assume responsibility for it!
And yet it was more than that. Being signed to a small press is like finding a family. Several of the authors whose work appeared in Temporary Skeletons came together for a joint interview on Viktor Aurelius' radioblog talk show, Whispers in the Dark. It was a wonderful feeling of collaboration that fostered a great sense of pride and belonging. But still, I wanted to play it safe. So I ordered copies of a few recent Chupa Cabra House releases, and shortly thereafter came my own copy of Temporary Skeletons. The covers of these books were magnificent. The chief editor was also a graphic designer, and he'd done a great job at adding a sense of emotion and intrigue to the books. As the old adage warns, inside the cover though, it was a different story, so to speak. Having worked as an English language editor for 10 years at that time, it was actually difficult to focus on the plots of some of these stories because I was so sidetracked by the typos, formatting errors, and poor grammar and word choice. The books appeared cheaply produced with narrow page margins, odd sans serif fonts, and stark, thin, white paper, a characteristic trademark of books printed through CreateSpace.
Even with these warning signs, another year had passed between having published the e-book and the release date as a paperback. So I signed away the world print rights for five years to Chupa Cabra House, with the promise of royalties for 50% of the proceeds (the norm for small publishers). I knew that there were few to zero typos in my manuscript, as I'd already formatted it for print through my own company, Dragoman. I also supplied the chief editor with a cover design but said he could keep it or change it completely, as he liked.
When my copy arrived from Amazon (full price paid), I immediately regretted not having requested a proof copy. I was shocked to see that the cover design was completely unchanged – to the point that it did not even have the Chupa Cabra House logo. It looked worse than self-published. And upon opening it up, it became clear that an outdated manuscript draft is what had been printed, not the most recent version (with acknowedgments, disclaimer, etc.) that I'd sent months before. My email to the editor did not hide my disappointment. There were many apologies and excuses, and promises to upload the correct manuscript and a new cover. Soon thereafter, we were featured together on another episode of Whispers in the Dark, where the editor glowed with praise for LigaturesLigatures, and we discussed the ins and outs of the indie publishing industry. After the interview, we continued emailing about future Dragoman-Chupa Cabra House collaborations. With one of us based in the US and one in Europe, we could market each other's work more effectively.
The manuscript was quickly replaced with the correct one, but I had to hound him for the cover, which was never changed. With the help of friends in the music and film industries, we made a very cool book trailer for Ligatures, which was all but ignored by the editor, who put it on the Facebook page, but not on the website or anywhere else. Then my first royalties check came due. No answer, no answer. I eventually contacted one of the other Chupa Cabra House authors whose award-winning novella had been released right before mine, and he encouraged me to continue badgering the editor. Three emails later, and then came the apologies, excuses, promises, and do you prefer PayPal or check, and then came absolutely nothing at all. We are not even talking about an enormous sum of money here, but that's hardly the point.
By this time, I'd moved to England for a post-doctoral research appointment, and a friend of mine from grad school in Wisconsin was coming over on a research trip and would be paying me a visit. I wanted to give her a signed copy of the paperback; even though she wouldn't have time for fiction for some months, I knew she would love the story once the deadlines became less threatening. So I went back to Amazon, yet again prepared to pay full price (a staggering 14 euros plus shipping) for my own book, only to see that it was no longer available. Correction: four copies were available in all of Europe ranging in price from 32 to 99 euros apiece. I did a quick search for other Chupa Cabra House books and found that they too were no longer available. Once again, I emailed the editor with a subject line marked “URGENT,” and once again, there was no response. There had been no activity on the company's Facebook or Twitter pages, nor on his personal Facebook page, for months.
A few days and several glasses of wine later, and I sent a message to every author on Facebook who had published a novel with Chupa Cabra House to find out if anyone knew what was going on. The books must have just days before gone up in smoke because most of the other authors hadn't yet realized that their novels had been de-shelved. No one had received correspondence from the editor in months, let alone a single penny in royalties.
Fortunately, one of the authors had the editor's phone number and called. Surprisingly, he answered, but not so surprisingly, he was mostly incoherent. So the author passed the number on to me, and I waited a few hours and then tried again. He answered, and was promptly overflowing with apologies and excuses, but no promises this time. Most importantly though was that all contracts were deemed null and void, and all publications rights would revert to the respective authors. I went back to the Facebook group with the news that we were no longer bound to our contracts, but that we were all going to have to start completely over again with the publisher search.
I tried again with agents, but again no luck. Then I went in search of Ex Occidente again but found that like so many small publishing companies, it no longer existed. However, several of its authors had moved over to Egaeus Press, which produces similarly gorgeous limited edition hardbacks of esoteric weirdness, so I sent them a query. And I had a good feeling about it. The editor promptly responded saying that he would give the manuscript “a serious look over” and would have an answer for me in a couple weeks. He kept true to his word and soon sent the nicest rejection letter I've ever received – which kind of felt like being dumped by the love of your life who assures you that he's still madly in love with you but just knows that you're not right for each other: “Having said that, I want to stress that I think it's a wonderfully written story, original, beautifully evocative in places, and very grim in others.”
Pushing heartbreak aside, I took this world's nicest rejection letter to heart instead. When I'd published Ligatures on Kindle two years previously, I'd purchased two ISBNs: one for the e-book and one for the paperback. The paperback ISBN of course had never been applied, as Chupa Cabra House had used the free one offered by CreateSpace. So now I could put it to use, and after updating the cover design and title page, Dragoman re-released the book through IngramSpark, which remains my POD supplier of choice. Now Ligatures is available again in both formats, and it looks – and is – professionally produced. My marketing powers are still limited, and I may never see royalties over three digits, but at least the control over my story and how it's presented to its audience is mine alone. And my friend visiting from Wisconsin received the first copy, hot off the press (and for far less than 14 euros).
In some ways, I wish I'd had the guts to just trust in my story and self-publish from the beginning instead of letting that ISBN sit on the computer for two years while somebody else fiddled with my fiction. But then again, this experience has taught me a few things that can be passed on to other writers anxious to let their stories loose on the world. And while not every writer is in a position to self-publish, every writer is in a position to choose her press wisely.
When considering a small press, BEWARE …
1. signs of unprofessionalism: too-casual language, witty pseudonym, party profile pics, etc.
2. previously published books that were not professionally edited or formatted
3. low-quality writing in previously published books
4. undue lag-time in correspondence
5. online rants from once-signed authors
6. lack of commitment to marketing at national events
7. disinterest in press releases or alternative forms of marketing
8. reluctance to reveal marketing plans or numbers of sold volumes
9. elusive website that says little to nothing about the publisher or the signed authors
10. refusal to issue a proof copy before the release date.
The first draft of Ligatures was finished in about a month, which I'd taken off between completing an academic book manuscript and starting my doctoral thesis in Belgium. I had a feeling this draft was pretty good or at least pretty promising, but in all honesty, I hadn't been able to read any creative literature (not that academic works are fundamentally non-creative; quite the contrary) for several years at that point, so my only bases for comparison were things I'd read in college or shortly thereafter. Fortunately, my aunt and two closest friends are voracious readers, and all three of them offered to read my manuscript. And while they each saw a great deal of merit in the story and the characters, they also saw a lot of inconsistencies and other areas for improvement. About 4,000 drafts later, we agreed it was ready to publish.
I must have sent out about 50 query letters to agents, and only one of them responded with a personal note: “Though I was intrigued by your premise, I didn't find myself drawn into your opening pages.” At this point, I'd spent four or five months on the agent search and decided that was enough. So I started looking for small publishers who specialize in literary fiction with a dark side. And that was when I came across a call for submissions from the renowned Ex Occidente Press, who was compiling an homage to Joris-Karl Huysmans, author of one of my favorite books of all time, Là-Bas. They requested submissions “of any length” and because at 56,000 words, Ligatures falls somewhere between novel and novella, I decided to give it a try. The anthology editors wrote back a few months later saying that they greatly enjoyed the story but decided it was in fact too long for the anthology; however, they also encouraged me pitch it to the chief editor of Ex Occidente Press as a stand-alone volume. While I never heard back from him, the anthology editors' words had served another purpose. If they were so impressed with the manuscript, then it deserved to be published.
I was nearing the end of my Ph.D., and like many other junior scholars in the humanities, I had no post-doctoral prospects, so I'd been thinking of making my free-lance editing work official and adding to it a publishing facet. Thus was born Dragoman Editing & Publishing. Not wanting to test the waters with someone else's precious word child, I first published Ligatures through my own imprint as a Kindle e-book. The reviews were better than the sales, but this came as no surprise. I've never cared about making money off this book; and I've never kidded myself that it would appeal to a mass market and be featured in Oprah's book club. (But a modest cult following would be nice!)
Because I was located in Belgium at the time, my powers of marketing to an American audience, to which the book was really targeted, were limited to non-existent. That realization soon combined with the fact that after my Ph.D. was finished, I had time to read fiction again but was frequently disappointed with what I read; this disappointment led to another realization that Ligatures really deserved a wider reading audience. So I kept looking for a small press that would be interested in assuming North American print rights. With the search terms “weird fiction novel submissions,” I eventually found Chupa Cabra House, located in Arkansas, very near where Ligatures takes place. They had several open calls, and I submitted a short story, “HEL 266,” to the horror anthology Temporary Skeletons at roughly the same time as handing over Ligatures for consideration. The short story was snatched up immediately, and within a couple weeks, Ligatures was also accepted. Needless to say, I was ecstatic. Finally, someone whose powers surpassed my own feeble ones not only saw merit in my work, but was willing to assume responsibility for it!
And yet it was more than that. Being signed to a small press is like finding a family. Several of the authors whose work appeared in Temporary Skeletons came together for a joint interview on Viktor Aurelius' radioblog talk show, Whispers in the Dark. It was a wonderful feeling of collaboration that fostered a great sense of pride and belonging. But still, I wanted to play it safe. So I ordered copies of a few recent Chupa Cabra House releases, and shortly thereafter came my own copy of Temporary Skeletons. The covers of these books were magnificent. The chief editor was also a graphic designer, and he'd done a great job at adding a sense of emotion and intrigue to the books. As the old adage warns, inside the cover though, it was a different story, so to speak. Having worked as an English language editor for 10 years at that time, it was actually difficult to focus on the plots of some of these stories because I was so sidetracked by the typos, formatting errors, and poor grammar and word choice. The books appeared cheaply produced with narrow page margins, odd sans serif fonts, and stark, thin, white paper, a characteristic trademark of books printed through CreateSpace.
Even with these warning signs, another year had passed between having published the e-book and the release date as a paperback. So I signed away the world print rights for five years to Chupa Cabra House, with the promise of royalties for 50% of the proceeds (the norm for small publishers). I knew that there were few to zero typos in my manuscript, as I'd already formatted it for print through my own company, Dragoman. I also supplied the chief editor with a cover design but said he could keep it or change it completely, as he liked.
When my copy arrived from Amazon (full price paid), I immediately regretted not having requested a proof copy. I was shocked to see that the cover design was completely unchanged – to the point that it did not even have the Chupa Cabra House logo. It looked worse than self-published. And upon opening it up, it became clear that an outdated manuscript draft is what had been printed, not the most recent version (with acknowedgments, disclaimer, etc.) that I'd sent months before. My email to the editor did not hide my disappointment. There were many apologies and excuses, and promises to upload the correct manuscript and a new cover. Soon thereafter, we were featured together on another episode of Whispers in the Dark, where the editor glowed with praise for LigaturesLigatures, and we discussed the ins and outs of the indie publishing industry. After the interview, we continued emailing about future Dragoman-Chupa Cabra House collaborations. With one of us based in the US and one in Europe, we could market each other's work more effectively.
The manuscript was quickly replaced with the correct one, but I had to hound him for the cover, which was never changed. With the help of friends in the music and film industries, we made a very cool book trailer for Ligatures, which was all but ignored by the editor, who put it on the Facebook page, but not on the website or anywhere else. Then my first royalties check came due. No answer, no answer. I eventually contacted one of the other Chupa Cabra House authors whose award-winning novella had been released right before mine, and he encouraged me to continue badgering the editor. Three emails later, and then came the apologies, excuses, promises, and do you prefer PayPal or check, and then came absolutely nothing at all. We are not even talking about an enormous sum of money here, but that's hardly the point.
By this time, I'd moved to England for a post-doctoral research appointment, and a friend of mine from grad school in Wisconsin was coming over on a research trip and would be paying me a visit. I wanted to give her a signed copy of the paperback; even though she wouldn't have time for fiction for some months, I knew she would love the story once the deadlines became less threatening. So I went back to Amazon, yet again prepared to pay full price (a staggering 14 euros plus shipping) for my own book, only to see that it was no longer available. Correction: four copies were available in all of Europe ranging in price from 32 to 99 euros apiece. I did a quick search for other Chupa Cabra House books and found that they too were no longer available. Once again, I emailed the editor with a subject line marked “URGENT,” and once again, there was no response. There had been no activity on the company's Facebook or Twitter pages, nor on his personal Facebook page, for months.
A few days and several glasses of wine later, and I sent a message to every author on Facebook who had published a novel with Chupa Cabra House to find out if anyone knew what was going on. The books must have just days before gone up in smoke because most of the other authors hadn't yet realized that their novels had been de-shelved. No one had received correspondence from the editor in months, let alone a single penny in royalties.
Fortunately, one of the authors had the editor's phone number and called. Surprisingly, he answered, but not so surprisingly, he was mostly incoherent. So the author passed the number on to me, and I waited a few hours and then tried again. He answered, and was promptly overflowing with apologies and excuses, but no promises this time. Most importantly though was that all contracts were deemed null and void, and all publications rights would revert to the respective authors. I went back to the Facebook group with the news that we were no longer bound to our contracts, but that we were all going to have to start completely over again with the publisher search.
I tried again with agents, but again no luck. Then I went in search of Ex Occidente again but found that like so many small publishing companies, it no longer existed. However, several of its authors had moved over to Egaeus Press, which produces similarly gorgeous limited edition hardbacks of esoteric weirdness, so I sent them a query. And I had a good feeling about it. The editor promptly responded saying that he would give the manuscript “a serious look over” and would have an answer for me in a couple weeks. He kept true to his word and soon sent the nicest rejection letter I've ever received – which kind of felt like being dumped by the love of your life who assures you that he's still madly in love with you but just knows that you're not right for each other: “Having said that, I want to stress that I think it's a wonderfully written story, original, beautifully evocative in places, and very grim in others.”
Pushing heartbreak aside, I took this world's nicest rejection letter to heart instead. When I'd published Ligatures on Kindle two years previously, I'd purchased two ISBNs: one for the e-book and one for the paperback. The paperback ISBN of course had never been applied, as Chupa Cabra House had used the free one offered by CreateSpace. So now I could put it to use, and after updating the cover design and title page, Dragoman re-released the book through IngramSpark, which remains my POD supplier of choice. Now Ligatures is available again in both formats, and it looks – and is – professionally produced. My marketing powers are still limited, and I may never see royalties over three digits, but at least the control over my story and how it's presented to its audience is mine alone. And my friend visiting from Wisconsin received the first copy, hot off the press (and for far less than 14 euros).
In some ways, I wish I'd had the guts to just trust in my story and self-publish from the beginning instead of letting that ISBN sit on the computer for two years while somebody else fiddled with my fiction. But then again, this experience has taught me a few things that can be passed on to other writers anxious to let their stories loose on the world. And while not every writer is in a position to self-publish, every writer is in a position to choose her press wisely.
When considering a small press, BEWARE …
1. signs of unprofessionalism: too-casual language, witty pseudonym, party profile pics, etc.
2. previously published books that were not professionally edited or formatted
3. low-quality writing in previously published books
4. undue lag-time in correspondence
5. online rants from once-signed authors
6. lack of commitment to marketing at national events
7. disinterest in press releases or alternative forms of marketing
8. reluctance to reveal marketing plans or numbers of sold volumes
9. elusive website that says little to nothing about the publisher or the signed authors
10. refusal to issue a proof copy before the release date.
