Three Questions

There are two questions that confront an author more than any others. They follow a sequential order and both are, at times, equally difficult to answer. Because they're seemingly simply questions, those asking them always seem surprised when you don't have an answer for them.

The first question comes in variable forms but basically boils down to: When can I buy your book?

With some publishers that might be an easy answer, but it wasn't with mine. I didn't have a firm answer until the day I happened to find it being sold online.

The second question, I suppose, follows logically from the first. Not long after you've finally been able to give an answer to the first, you start getting a second question that you just can't answer, and that is: How many books have you sold?

Again, it's a six-word question, which, on its face, seems to be a simple one but is, in reality, fairly complex. Think, for a moment, about the ways that books are sold. It's not like they're all being sold in one place. Far from it. They're distributed throughout the world in brick-and-mortar bookstores and by online retailers. Even in this computer age, all of that information takes time to get back to the publisher and from the publisher to the author, and business cycles play a role in how long it takes to spread that information.

The one thing that the author has complete control over are the books he sells out of his own hands. In my 2005: Year in Review, I reported that I'd sold 104 copies by hand. I've since added three more to that total, bringing the number to 107. At the time I wrote the Year in Review, I mentioned that I'd soon be getting a report from my publisher that would give me a better idea of how many copies of Lost in the Ivy were sold in the first six months. That report arrived in the mail last week.

Now I can finally give an answer to that second question. In the first six months since its release, roughly 366 copies of Lost in the Ivy were sold. That includes the 107 copies I sold by hand.

Nobody will go "Wow!" when you tell them that you sold 366 copies of your book. But if you think about it, that's two copies that were sold each day of that six-month period. Certainly I didn't break any sales records, but I think I did fairly well.

If I could sustain those kind of sales over a two-year period, I'd be doing really well. Unfortunately, judging by the plummeting Amazon sales ranking, sales seem to have bottomed out.

Truth be told, I've even lost interest myself. You find some authors out there that just don't quit. They'll keep plugging that same book tirelessly day after day, year after year. I'm not one of those. I'm ready to move on. There are other things that I want to focus on.

As my first book, Lost in the Ivy will always hold a special place in my heart. It's opened new and exciting doors for me. Over the last year, however, it has, in many ways, consumed my life. I've answered many questions about it. There was just one more that I wanted to answer, and now I've done that.

There's a third question that follows in the sequential order. I already know what it will be: When will the next book be done?

That's a seven-word question, and it's even more difficult to answer than the first two. I'll answer it the same way I always answered the others: I wish I had an answer.

Selling Yourself Large

What surprised me more than any other thing at my first writer’s conference?

That’s an easy one.

The biggest surprise was that other writers, ones whom I’d never met, some quite successful and established authors, knew me.

How did they know me if they’d never met me? The same way you know Stephen King or John Grisham. You know of them because you know of the books they’ve written.

The difference being of course that Stephen King and John Grisham have written dozens of books and sold millions while I’ve written just one and sold maybe hundreds.

Still, somehow people know of me and my one little book. I swear it happened over and over again. Usually my name alone wasn’t enough. But when you put my name together with my book, Lost in the Ivy, there was almost always a glimmer of recognition. Before I said a word about my book, they’d say things like: “Isn’t that the Wrigley Field book?” “That’s the Cubs book, right?” or “I’ve heard of that. Didn’t it get reviewed in the Trib?”

That all goes to the power of marketing. I’ve spent a small fortune marketing my book. And the greatest amount of that money has been aimed at two markets: Chicagoans (Cubs fans, in particular) and mystery readers. Even if I hadn’t sold many books, had I at least bought some kind of name recognition?

Of course, I have no empirical data to prove that I spent wisely. But if Love is Murder, a mystery writer’s conference that takes place in Chicagoland, is any kind of litmus test, it would seem that the money didn’t go completely to waste.

And if nothing else, it’s pretty cool that respected, successful authors like David Ellis and Brian Pinkerton knew of me before they even met me.

Dead Men Don't Wear Platform Shoes

I have to get me some platform shoes.

That’s the single most important thing I got out of attending the Love is Murder mystery convention in Rosemont, Illinois this past weekend.

What, you think platform shoes were a fad that went out in the seventies?

Well, you couldn’t be more wrong. In the highly evolved world of book publishing, platform shoes are all the rage, man. They’re what separate those that get noticed from those that don’t.

And this makes sense, since it’s well known that tall people are more likely to get noticed than those that are, well, vertically challenged. Think Yao Ming.

The beauty of platform shoes is that you can instantly elevate your stature. Be Yao Ming.

You can’t deny that an agent or a publisher isn’t going to take notice when you’re wearing these.

By this point you’ve undoubtedly figured out that I’m wearing my clown shoes. But I do not write completely in jest.

My opening is by way of lead-in to the serious topic of “platform”, which, aside from perhaps Joe Konrath, was the one thing I heard being discussed at the convention more than any other.

Platform was the subject of the opening night speech by David Morrell, the author who created Rambo. His daughter and publicist, Sarie Morrell, writes about platform on her Beyond the Spine column on ReadersRoom.com.

What is platform? Basically it’s a buzzword from the book marketing world. It’s your hook, the way that you sell your book in two minutes or less not based on plot but on the theme surrounding that plot.

Take my book, Lost in the Ivy, for illustrative purposes. What’s it about? Well, there are different ways to answer that question.

One way is to summarize the plot. Here’s how I used to do it for radio interviews:

“The book follows the story of reporter Charley Hubbs, who has been drawn to Wrigley Field after leaving behind a mysterious past in California. Charley just wants a fresh start in Chicago. But just as he begins to put the pieces of his life back together, they unravel all over again when he becomes entangled in a murder mystery and ultimately is charged with killing his neighbor.”

Are you hearing the yawns yet from the marketing department?

The other is to focus on a theme that surrounds the plot. What audience is most likely to buy Lost in the Ivy? Baseball fans, in general. Cubs fans, in particular. So that’s how you pitch it. Here’s how I’ve woven the Cubs theme into press releases:

“Lost in the Ivy follows reporter Charley Hubbs in a race against time for the truth. Against the backdrop of Chicago’s storied Wrigley Field, a baseball shrine cursed by a billy goat, Charley is caught in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse that plays out in two seasons--one of futility and the other of hope. Only by unlocking the mysteries of his past and opening his heart again will he be able to find if hope truly does spring eternal.”

Is my book about baseball? No. Is it about the Cubs? No. Is it about Wrigley Field? No. But they're all intertwined themes running through the book and they're the platforms that make it marketable. When I’ve done appearances, roughly 90 percent of the books I’ve sold have gone to baseball fans or Cubs fans.

At Love is Murder, for instance, Terri Ridgell, author of Operation Stiletto (notice the recurring shoe theme in this blog entry) was signing books at a table with Robert Goldsborough, author of Three Strikes You’re Dead. Someone came up and bought Goldsborough’s book because it was a "baseball book." Ridgell kindly pointed that same book buyer to my book and I got a book sale as a result. Thanks, Terri.

Book publishers increasingly are being driven by their marketing departments, David Morrell told his audience Friday night.

That is a rather depressing statement but it should not be all that surprising. I’ve written before that fiction is a hard sell. When you look at the top sellers on Amazon.com and see that about 90 percent of the top 25 books are non-fiction, it’s not hard to figure out why profit-driven publishers would begin to adopt a sales model for fiction that has dominated non-fiction for years.

Although Morrell urged writers to always keep platform in mind, he also acknowledged that you must first and foremost write what is in your heart. And I think that is key. You may be able to write a novel about NASCAR even if you have no passion about stock car racing, but it would almost certainly show and you’d have a clunker of a book.

So the three lessons for today:

1. Write passionately.
2. Think platform.
3. Don’t wear platform shoes. You’ll only stumble and fall.

Update on Monday, February 6, 2006 at 12:52PM by Randy Richardson

Many thanks to the wonderful people who organized Love is Murder 2006. You put on a great conference. Special thanks to Julie Hyzy and Robert W. Walker for convincing me to come. I’m so glad that I did.

Finally, there were some true literary stars at the conference, like Morrell and Judith Guest, the author of Ordinary People. Although it was pretty cool just basking in their presence, the real highlight for me was meeting some of those whose names are not yet known. Jason Cole traveled all the way from Rocklin, Calif.; R.J. Baker came in from Goles, Mich. The three of us met at the hotel bar and talked about our ambitions and dreams as writers and how cool it would be if one day we all met up again as the conference’s guests of honor, the Morrells or Guests of the future. How cool, indeed.

Never Lose the Faith

Here's an example of the power of the press, the volatility of Amazon sales rankings, and the reason why authors should never lose the faith.

And it has nothing to do with Oprah or James Frey. Well, almost nothing.

Two days ago, A Story of Afflications, a Frey-like memoir of recovering from drug addiction written by Dr. Kenneth Nave that was published a year ago by Lumen-Us Publications, an obscure small press out of Richton Park, Ill., had an Amazon sales ranking over 1.5 million. How small of a press is Lumen-Us? So small that I couldn't even find a website for them.

This morning that same book is ranked among Amazon's top 1,000.  

How did this happen?

The answer to that one is easy. Chicago Sun-Times columnist Mary Mitchell devoted an entire column yesterday gushing over the book.  She even begins her column by writing "Forgive me if I gush like Oprah." Ugh.

I don't mean to take down either Nave or Mitchell, but there are probably hundreds if not thousands of stories just like Nave's Afflications  out there in the book world. The only difference between this one and all the others: it ended up in Mitchell's hands.

I go back to my lead: This is a story of the power of the press, the volatility of Amazon sales rankings, and the reason why authors should never lose the faith. You just never know who might pick up your book.

Lost on Brokeback Mountain?

I haven't seen “Brokeback Mountain” and doubt I ever will. Sorry, I’m just not a fan of cowboy movies.

What, you thought I that I wouldn't see it because it's a gay cowboy movie?

I’ll admit that the image of kissing cowboys makes me squirm a little, but I’ve never been one to avoid a movie just because it makes me a bit uncomfortable.

I’m not quite sure what all the fuss is about anyways. Does it really come as a surprise that cowboys could be gay?

The subject of “Brokeback Mountain” came up in a half-hour radio interview I did on Monday on KXLE 95.3 FM, a station in central Washington that boasts it has 50,000 watts of country power.

This was one of those questions that came right out of the glove of Matt Murton, slated to play left field for the Chicago Cubs this year.

The interviewer, a newsman not a DJ, tiptoed around the question. He referred to “Brokeback Mountain” not by its title but as the much-talked about, Oscar-touted western in theatres now. I was pretty sure he wasn’t talking about “Cheaper by the Dozen 2.”

He was curious if “Lost in the Ivy,” the book I authored and the reason I was on his program, was in any way influenced by “Brokeback Mountain.”

Of course the release of “Lost in the Ivy” came months before the “Brokeback Mountain” hit the big screen, and I’m pretty sure the interviewer was aware of that. But it was his way of delicately dancing around a sensitive topic.

“Brokeback Mountain” deals with subject matter that not too long ago was considered taboo and in some ways still is. How else do you explain all the parodies and jokes that have evolved out of a serious film? I hear them every day on Jonathan Brandmeier’s radio show on WLUP FM 97.9. Even though I’ve never seen the film, I feel like I have. The line from the movie “I wish I knew how to quit you” plays in my head like a broken record.

It’s no big secret that a gay character plays a key role in my book. In some ways the book was inspired by the dichotomy that I saw between two Chicago neighborhoods.

Back in the mid-1990s I was living in a studio apartment located on the border of two very different neighborhoods living somewhat uncomfortably next to each other. On one side there was Wrigleyville and all the testosterone-fueled sports bars. On the other was Boys Town, Chicago’s main gay district. At the time I was living there, there had been a spate of gay-bashing incidents. All of that served as a backdrop for the story that would eventually unfold into “Lost in the Ivy.”

Back in the late 1990s, Annie Proulx published a short story which few people had heard of until this year. Its title: “Brokeback Mountain.” It was about a time and a place that stuck with her.

Maybe someday that piece of my life that stuck with me all these years will be discovered. That’s a dream I’d never want to quit.

Update on Saturday, February 11, 2006 at 08:58PM by Randy Richardson

I seem to get a lot of hits on my blog from wayward surfers searching for "Brokeback" parodies. Thanks to the Fresno Bee's Beehive blog, you don't have to look any further. They've compiled a comprehensive list of online "Brokeback" parodies, for those that "just can't get enough" of them.