Use the Top Searches to ID what’s Soon to Be Hot

"If you want to see how a society thinks, look at what it searches for."

—George Bernard Shaw


Allow me to slightly rewrite Shaw’s wise counsel: “If you want to know what a society is thinking about, look at what it searches for.”

As writers of nonfiction books, magazine articles—even novels—it behooves us to be on top of whatever is about to break into the collective consciousness. In other words, to be able to predict what a majority—or at least a large segment—of us are going to be interested in next week, next month, or next year.

Easier said than done
I don’t know about the rest of you, but it seems to me that, by the time I notice a trend exists, it’s already fading.

So how do you figure out what will be hot and thus what you should be pitching to editors? Check out the "Top Searches" lists supplied for free by the many Internet search engines. Most of them keep the lists updated, and archives of past lists are even available.

Check out more than one list. The searched-for items that appear on each list are undoubtedly what people are interested in at the moment and these subjects may be old news by the time you do your research and write about them, so look for subjects that are just beginning to show up here and there on these lists. Editors love fresh and new.

I was going to include a list of search engines with links to their locations for you, but Wendy Boswell’s article on About.com “How to Find the Top Searches on the Web” does a superb job of it and saves me the time. Thanks Wendy.

By the way, George Bernard Shaw is the only person to have been awarded both the Noble Prize for Literature and an Oscar.

Merry Christmas.

How to Sell a Book for 6.7 Million

“Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want.” —Randy Pausch

According to news reports, Hyperion recently paid 6.7 million to acquire the rights to Last Lecture a book by Carnegie Mellon professor Randy Pausch and Jeff Zaslow, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal. The book is based on a lecture Pausch, 46, gave at Carnegie Mellon. Pausch called the lecture “How to Achieve Your Childhood Dreams.”

The lecture was part of a "Last Lecture Series" universities around the country have been holding. In this series, universities ask their best professors to deliver talks about what matters most deeply to them, as if it were the professor’s last lecture.

Pausch’s was especially poignant. At the time of the lecture Pausch, who was suffering from pancreatic cancer, had only weeks to live.

Videos of the lecture—or parts of it—reportedly have been viewed over 6 million times.

Even the Pros Get Lazy

Isabel Allende spent decades as a journalist in South America and had three plays produced in Chile, the country of her youth. She has written a number of award-winning novels, one of which, Daughter of Fortune, is a New York Times best-seller and an Oprah Book Club pick. You don’t reach these rooftops by being a hack.

Yet when I read Daughter recently, I was surprised at how clumsily Allende uses a literary device or two and how much exposition she employs.

Overuse of a Parallel Theme
In Daughter, Allende writes a colorful story about young women suffering from and overcoming strict societal conventions of mid-nineteenth century Protestant England, “papist” Chile, and wild, unrefined California. This makes the story line appropriately attractive to women and may have been the reason Oprah liked it. (Hold onto those letters! I am not being sexist here. Novels are written with the reader in mind. Some are written for men, others for women. Some for young adults, some for those over fifty. This is as it should be. Readers vary, novels vary. Trying to write a novel for everyone is a recipe for failure.)

Still, Allende seems to over use this theme. In the first quarter of the book we are introduced to three women, Rose, Paulina, and Eliza, each of whom have extramarital affairs with men their families don’t approve of. In Rose’s case she is seduced by a married Viennese tenor. The other two young women fall in love with men who, according the women’s relatives, are born into ranks beneath the family.

Eliza is the main protagonist and Rose, her maiden aunt, is thrust into raising her. Although the family has relocated to Chile, Rose afflicts Eliza with the same strict conventions she encountered in England. Allende’s use of the parallels over the two generations to establish the existence of long-instituted social norms works. But, to me, to add Paulina into the mix within so few pages simply brings Allende’s use of the literary device into focus; something one doesn’t want to do to his or her reader.

Introducing a Character

In another instance, at a point in the story where Eliza and her friend Tao Chi’en are on a ship journeying to California, Allende increases the suspense, by having Eliza, who is a stowaway and must remain hidden, become ill and reach the brink of death.

Since Tao’s duties as shipboard cook made it illogical for him to have the time to take care of a person so ill, Allende needed someone he could call upon to help. But, at this point there is no appropriate character for her to use, so—it appears—Allende simply went back in the storyline and introduced one.

This is all fine and well. As novels are crafted the author often finds she needs to go back to earlier parts of the story and lay the groundwork for something that will happen later in the story.

But Allende, in an apparent moment of laziness, went back a scant five pages and suddenly and clumsily introduces a new character, Azucena Placeres, the archetypical whore-with-a-heart-of-gold. (Remember Miss Kitty in the old Gunsmoke TV shows?)

In one long paragraph of exposition Allende tells us the background of this woman: Although a prostitute, she’s a kind soul who has nursed a young sailor back to health. Because of this she had earned the respect of the ship’s captain and the freedom to move about the ship, thus she is free to administer to Eliza. After this paragraph, Azucena disappears until Tao calls on her for help.

Show Don’t Tell
The suddenness of the appearance this character and the transparently contrived use of her to fulfill a plot twist is something one might expect from an author of less skill. And, by choosing to tell us Azucena’s background, rather than showing us, Allende missed a superb opportunity to weave this potentially colorful character into the story. She could have done this by showing us the how the sailor was injured and how it came about that Azucena ministered to him.

Allende could even have created some tension between Tao and Azucena since Tao was a healer in his old country and one of them could have felt threatened by the other. This tension would add to the scene where Tao approaches Azucena for help.

Showing the reader would have worked for a seamless introduction of this necessary character and worked to move the plot along as well.

In another missed opportunity, Tao is faced with the problem of sneaking Eliza onto the ship. Yet, the reader only learns how Eliza makes it on board when Allende writes:

Eliza was taken aboard in a sack over the back of a stevedore, one of many loading cargo and luggage in Valparaiso.

Here Allende had a chance to put the reader into the sack with Eliza. We could have felt how scratchy the sack was, how hard it was to breathe in it, how humiliating it was to be tossed over this brute’s shoulder like so much carriage, and how frightened Eliza was that even the slightest movement on her part would result in being discovered.

There is an old saw that every writer needs an editor. Isabel Allende is a hugely successful author and one wonders if an editor somewhere along the way was too intimidated to suggest a few changes that would have made her excellent work even better.

How does this apply to your writing? Go back over your work and look for places you tried too hard to make a point. Also, search out and replace exposition with vivid scenes that will take your reader into whatever is happening so they become part of the experience.

Harry Potter Meets Jesus

I ran across an interesting article in my local paper the other day. It was written by two professors at Fresno Pacific University a well-thought-of Mennonite institution. In it Eleanor Nickel and Audrey Hindes make note of the many nods they feel the Harry Potter series gives to the Bible.

For instance, the writers note the grave of Potter’s parents bears a biblical quote from Corinthians, and a war monument in a town square metamorphoses into a statue of Potter’s mother holding the infant Harry “replacing an image of violent conquest with one of the Madonna and Child.” Even in Harry’s mother’s name, Lily, they see “overtones of peace and the resurrection of Easter.”

The professors also remark on the parallels in the journeys of Potter and Jesus:

• Both have a “Gethsemane experience” where they agonize over the sacrifice they will choose to make.

• Both turn to a mentor for guidance, Potter to the white-bearded Dumbledore, Jesus to God the Father.

• Both walk willingly into death’s arms.

• Both return to the world they left.

Stories of struggle, death, and rebirth fascinate us and it may be that the trigger for this fascination is to be found buried deeply in our own psyches.

It was mythologist Joseph Campbell who first identified the twelve stages of what has come to be known as the “hero’s journey.” He found that these stages existed in stories told across all cultures and times. Campbell surmised that, on a primal level, all of us are drawn to this universal pattern.

The four stages demonstrated in the list above, in order, are:

• Refusal of the call—The hero's reluctance to leave the ordinary world.

• Meeting the mentor—The mentor may appear numerous times and take any guise.

• Supreme ordeal—This is the hero's greatest challenge. The hero often appears to die—metaphorically or otherwise—at this stage.

• Return with the Elixir—After the supreme ordeal, the hero returns with his new knowledge and shares it with those who stayed behind. Often the hero, since he has changed, no longer fits in the ordinary world and is unable to stay and enjoy the fruits of his journey.

Christ and Potter are archetypical heroes on a journey, and the writer of fiction—and biographies—desirous of a wide, lasting readership is wise to take a hint from their appeal and include as many of the stages of the hero’s journey in his stories as he can.

For more on the hero’s journey and how it applies to writers read Chris Vogler’s excellent book, The Writer’s Journey.

Fresno Bee's Insipid Reporting

One of the things that pushes a button for me is to read a news article that doesn't include all the necessary information. Needless to say, to leave your reader without important information is not good writing—or reporting.

I remember a couple of years ago a study reported that mega-doses of vitamin C were not healthy. I must have read half a dozen articles based on this report and none of them identified what constituted a mega-dose. I imagine they were all generated from one wire story, perhaps an AP bulletin, that omitted this bit of information and no subsequent reporter or editor took the time to correct it.

An article by staff writer George Hostetter in Thursday's edition of the Fresno Bee commits the same sin. Hostetter's story reports on the ongoing saga of the Running Horse golf course. Running Horse, started a couple of years ago with the promise of a PGA tour event, is now in bankruptcy with only two of the 18 holes completed. A PGA event would be a huge boost to Fresno's national image, to say nothing of its self-image, so it is important to readers of the Bee.

The story has extra drama to it because, a few weeks ago, out of blue, riding a white charger, Donald Trump—yes The Donald—arrived with visions of saving the golf course and building a huge, fancy resort or some similar project around it. (Okay, it wasn't a white charger, but I think his private jet is white.)

According to Hostetter's article, Trump's plan has hit a snag because, Trump feels he needs six additional parcels that were not part of Running Horse's 420 acres. The subtitle to the article is "Six parcels seen as crucial to Fresno's project's viability." It goes on to quote Trump's daughter, Ivanka Trump, his VP of real estate development: "If we can't come to an agreement, [on the six parcels], we say thank you very much, we loved the experience, we loved the city of Fresno. But this is not negotiable for us." Obviously this is a story about six parcels.

However, Hostetter doesn't identify the six parcels, their location relative to the project, or who their owners are. Nor does he say anything about ongoing negotiations for these parcels if there are any. Property ownership is a matter of public record and Hostetter undoubtedly knows how to get the names of the property owners. He should have attempted to contact these owners to learn of their thoughts and intentions.

On the other hand if he for some reason couldn't identify the parcels, he needed to explain that, at press time, this information was not available and why.

In Hostetter's defense, newspaper articles are a team sport and perhaps the night editor didn't have enough column inches available and deleted the necessary information. Whatever, incomplete reporting makes for fewer readers and who among us vying for a seemingly dwindling number of readers has any to spare?

Psychic Gifts

Jim Frey e-mailed me the other day and said he had written a book I ought to take a look at. It was the biography of Annette Martin who, Jim told me, is America's greatest psychic.

I admire Jim's writing, but wasn't particularly excited about publishing a memoir and didn't know a thing about Annette. Still, I asked Jim to send me the manuscript. He and Annette have been friends for years and Jim evolved from a position of skepticism of Annette's abilities to a believer.

I read parts of the manuscript and thought, "How nice it would be to get a book in that doesn't require heavy editing or worse yet, rewriting." Jim's, as would be expected from one of the best novelists and writing teachers on the planet, is not only well written but tells an amazing story. Still it is a memoir, one of the toughest genres to market unless the subject is famous. I had my doubts that QDB should get involved.

Friday, Annette, Jim, and my friend Cassandra Williams—who, coincidentally, knew Annette from 20 years ago—met at Annette's house in Los Gatos. It's a beautiful house with a gorgeously-flowered back yard. Annette had spread photos and articles out on the dining room table for us to go over.

Annette has an amazing set of accomplishments. She is active with police departments across the nation and has about 10 ongoing investigations where she has identified the killer, helped find the body, or otherwise helped solved the case. These she can't discuss until the appeal process ends, but she has dozens of ones she can.

The episode of Psychic Detectives that chronicles a missing person case she solved is the third most popular of all of the episodes and was sold from whatever cable TV network it's on to NBC which still airs it now and again. She also has done a show for Psychic Investigators which airs in Canada. She is an entertainer/opera singer who still performs. She's had stories about her in Cosmopolitan, the San Francisco Chronicle and dozens of other publications.

She has been on lots of TV programs, Montel Williams, and others. She had her own radio show in the Bay Area and in Hawaii.

She still does readings of the standard love and health kind for individuals and she channels Edgar Cayce--the most famous psychic of them all when the situation calls for it. Yes, seemingly sooo strange, but likely not without some kind of merit. Hordes of intelligent, well-educated people endorse her—including Buzz Aldrin.

She is delightful. I'd say she has recently passed the 70-year milestone, but looks and acts 10 years younger. Lots of irons in the fire, a real go-getter. She has a film agent and currently has three shows she is hawking to TV.

I had gone to the meeting thinking that I'd leave telling Jim and Annette I needed to think about it before making an offer for the book. Yet, after about two hours of conversation, I was sold. I cemented my decision by asking Annette, "If Quill Driver Books were to publish the book, would it be a success?" She instantly shot back a vigorous "Yes!" So there you have it, for the first time in my decade-and-a-half career as a publisher, I know in advance that I have a book that will sell well.

Since it is already written and doesn't need much editing, we can make it a spring 2008 title.

Annette will be a delight to work with. She'll travel and do free readings at bookstores and conferences. We should be able to draw a crowd anywhere she goes.

She's used to being interviewed and she and her psychic journey should be good fodder for talk shows. We'll have her do readings at the Northern California Independent Bookseller Association's annual October conference to whet the appetite of Bay Area books sellers and get us mentioned in Publishers Weekly's coverage of the show.

The working title of the book is The Gift of the White Light: The Life and Times of Annette Martin, America's Greatest Psychic. Watch for it, it'll be fun to see if Annette's prediction of best-sellerdom materializes.

Titling a Book

Newsweek, using Booksinprint.com as a source, recently reported that the top 5 words to be found in a book's title over the last 100 years (1906 to 2006) are:

1. Man—122,221 [men 57,485]
2. Diet—9,960
3. House—100,648
4. Woman—36,123 [women—98,140]
5. Sex/Sexual—[Sex—23,235, Sexual—12,772]

House is a somewhat surprising inclusion to me. Newsweek gives "The House of [you name it]" as an explanation of why this word is so popular. When I did an Amazon.com search, "house" came in second to "man." (The numbers in the list above are from my Amazon search.)

"Diet" came up with a surprisingly low return on Amazon, only 9,960, compared to "man" at 122,221. Diet books are, of course, huge sellers. At Quill Driver Books, we've published two, one of which, after making it a New York Times bestseller we eventually sold to Warner Books for a princely sum.

Since the Amazon "woman" figure seemed somewhat low, I searched on "women" and the two of them come in at 134,263 combined. The "men" "man" searches returned 179,706. Sex/sexual combined came in at 36,007.

Apparently in reference to an accompanying article (I only have a clipping someone sent me.), Newsweek reports "Jesus" has never been in the title of a bestseller. When I Amazoned "Jesus," I got 35, 392 hits about the same as "sex/sexual." And the pope's new book Jesus of Nazareth at #38 in Amazon's bestseller ranking today might be considered a bestseller. The number one bestseller each year and in the course of history is a book about Jesus, but, of course, his name isn't in the title.

Why does all this interest us as writers? There is an argument to be made that including the most popular words in your book's title might help it sell. If that is the case, someone bring to me a proposal for The Man and Woman's Guide to the House of Sex and Diet.

By the way, the word "guide" returned 477,180 hits.

Does Funny Ever Get Old?

Here's a press release we are using with Gene Perret's new book. It's basically a self-test challenging you to discern between old jokes and new ones.

According to Gene Perret, funny is funny, and what people are laughing at today is much like what people were laughing at yesterday, "We think because a gag is old, it’s old-fashioned. That’s not necessarily so."

In case you doubt Perret’s qualifications to make such a judgement, consider the following: Perett was Bob Hope’s head joke writer for more than a decade, he has won three Emmys, he has written and produced numerous situation comedies including Three’s Company and Welcome Back Kotter, and he authored the book comedy writers have used to break into the industry for more than 25 years. Proof in point: Joe Medeiros, head writer of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, says, "My career all started because of [Perret’s] book."

Think you can tell old jokes from new? The following is a list of gags about marriage. It’s adapted from The New Comedy Writing Step by Step, Perret’s newly updated edition of his classic tome. See if you can tell which are dated and which are current.

a) I chased a girl for two years only to discover that her tastes were exactly like mine. We were both crazy about girls.

b) Marriage is an adventure—like going to war.

c) Getting married is like sitting in a tub of hot water. After you've been in it for a while, it’s not so hot.

d) Marriage is forever—some days longer.

e) Always get married in the morning. That way if it doesn't work out you haven’t wasted the whole day.

f) I love being married. It’s so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.

Have you read them carefully? Have you made any decisions? Are some definitely old? Some definitely new? It’s hard to tell the new from the old, isn’t it? Here’s the skinny:

a) This gag is attributed to Groucho Marx—definitely old school.

b) This one’s from G. K. Chesterton—even more old school.

c) This is a Minnie Pearl line, so it’s not exactly current.

d) This one is only four years old. Perret wrote it as the title for a joke book about marriage.

e) This one is from Mickey Rooney, who’s not exactly knocking ’em dead in today’s comedy clubs.

f) This one is from Rita Rudner—definitely today’s comedy.

If you want to write comedy, or just add humor to anything you write, you could do worse than to pick up a copy of Perret’s The New Comedy Writing Step by Step: Revised and Updated with Words of Instruction, Encouragement, and Inspiration from Legends of the Comedy Profession.

Author promotion

Offering a free item with a book's purchase and coupling that with a time-table to create a sense of urgency as David Meerman Scott does here is a good book-marketing idea and needn't be done at the book's launch.

Any excuse (a Wall Street Journal review, for instance) could prompt such an offer.

Scott's set this up to raise his book's Amazon.com rating for one day—a strategy book marketing gurus seem to have taken on as conventional wisdom—but no one has explained to me what this might do for the book in the long term.

We "owned" Amazon for 3 days in a row by having the #1 selling book out of all of Amazon's titles. This brought us a lot of attention.

But, we have seen other of our titles dip below the 200 mark and we pretty often have a title in the top 25 writing books and we haven't witnessed any media stampedes to cover these books because of it.

All authors who want to sell more of their books can profit from using ideas from those like Scott who are great self-promoters. The big thing in promoting a book is to do many things over a long period of time. If the marketing gods smile on you, eventually you'll reach the tipping point and the book will take on a life of its own.

—Steve Mettee

After the Book Expo

Thursday I took in the Publisher's Marketing Association's "Graduate School" one-day conference. At first it seemed a tad expensive, but as always, the two or three things I took away from it were worth the time and money.

I enjoyed spending time with other publishers, people who share the same concerns, interests and challenges I do. As a matter of fact the relative isolation independent publishers work under was a recurring theme during the open discussion periods. Another was that all of us are looking for new out-of-the-bookstore markets for our titles. Strangely, very little came up about digital publishing, in its many guises, the current topic in many publishing articles.

One of the most open and giving speakers there was Steve Piersanti, publisher and president of Berrett-Koehler a book publisher out of San Francisco. BK is best known for excellent business books but they also publish BK Currents, books that "advance social and economic justice" and BK Life, books that "help people create positive change in their lives."

Piersanti is likely unique in the world of publishing executives in that he works from nearly exclusively from home—and has since he founded the press in 1992. BK has a staff of about 20 which Piersanti oversees. He says working from home allows him to do the editing which he loves and also eliminates the daily commute, which he didn't love when he worked for Jossey-Bass.

I found a number of things Piersanti told us about BK interesting:

• BK has sold more than 1,600 subsidary rights
• BK has had 27 books that sold over 100,000 copies and 3 that have sold 500,000 plus
• One out every three titles sells more than 20,000 copies
• Of the approximately 20 BK employees, 9 are in sales and marketing
• BK doesn't pay author advances
• BK acknowledges the people and organizations that help BK to be the success by listing them in the back it its catalogs—everyone from the company they use to print postcards to their insurance agents.

Last night we ate Thai with Dave Husley, vice-president of sales and marketing for Sports Publishing. I'd met Dave once before and am impressed with his clear-eyed appraisal of the many opportunities book publishing offers. He has a sound grasp of what it takes to move books and a deep knowledge of where to do it.

Afterward, we walked at least a hundred blocks to the PGW (Publisher's Group West, a distributor now in transition due to it's parent company's recent bankruptcy) party. An invitation only event, it was held in an old theater at 23rd and Lexington. A large dance floor fronted the stage with cash bars on either side. A band was scheduled to start at 9, but, just before, I asked Josh and Dave how they would feel about finding somewhere quieter where we wouldn't have to sit theater style and have our conversation drowned out by loud music (I'm afraid my years of owning a rock and roll club fulfilled my need to have my eardrums assailed by decibelly dangerous music.)

We ended up at the Wheeltappers, a local pub where we continued our conversation solving all the world's problems over a couple of brews.

—Steve Mettee

Book Expo America

Off to NYC tomorrow. The big book trade show, Book Expo America, starts Friday. It is an amazing show for those who love books. You are almost guaranteed to see someone famous, since books by famous people sell well.

Quill Driver Books doesn't have a booth. All of the action is in networking and rights sales. It used to be that independent bookstore owners and managers came to the show and placed orders, but that is a thing of the past—for the most part.

Today there are fewer bookstores and the owners use other methods to learn about new books. Still, all the big publishers will be there, and most stack at least some of their new releases out so anyone who wants can take a free copy.

Scores of authors autograph books according to a posted schedule. The books are free, so the lines to get them are often quite long.

I spend a lot of time walking the floor, running into people I know, often only from shows like this. I have scheduled meetings with different buyers, sales reps, agents, and old friends. At night there is always one party or another, hosted by a large publisher or distributor, to go to.

I met Dr. Ruth at one of those parties a number of years ago and our book, Dr. Ruth's Sex After 50: Revving up the Romance, Passion and Excitement was the eventual result. The party was hosted by Playboy (they publish books too). I went as the guest of my friend John Kremer, the book marketing guru.

Alan Greenspan is giving a talk Friday night. It's all a lot of fun. And like every business, this is a people business so networking is important. My son, Josh, owns American West Books, a successful book wholesaler. We'll fly there together and meet after the work day for the festivities, but that's about all I'll see of him.

—Steve Mettee

For an Author, Blogging is Marketing

One of the most effective marketing an author can do is to develop and maintain a Web presence. This means both a website and a blog.

Blogger Rob Enderle (ITBusinessEdge) presents a strong argument for the importance of blogging in marketing here. It doesn't hurt that he plugs QDB's The New Influencers as well.

Publishers Weekly reports on the Simon & Schuster–Author's Guild latest confrontation in an article on PW Daily. It has been traditional for the rights to a book to revert to the author after the book goes out of print. Basically, out of print means the book is no longer listed in the publisher's catalog and there is no longer any stock in the publisher's warehouse. Getting the rights back allows the author to try to find another publisher who would like to republish it.

S & S announced recently that they would include wording in their standard contract that would give S & S the rights without any provision for those rights ever to revert to the author. S & S's argument is that the book would still be available on a print-on-demand basis, thus, in a way, still in print.

Certainly the ability to deliver books digitally and via POD avenues clouds the out-of-print issue. If a book can be ordered one at a time from a POD venue or as a PDF off the publisher's warehouse, does that constitute in print?

A book that a publisher has lost interest in promoting and distributing is unlikely to sell many copies via digital avenues. (Of course, the argument that the author should still be promoting his book and that the sales generated by him will keep the publisher's interest up has merit.)

We've gone to using a formula based on royalties paid to the author. If QDB has run out of inventory, but is still generating sales via digital or POD avenues, and paying the author X dollars in royalties each year, then the book is considered still in print. If the royalties drop below a certain threshold for two reporting periods in a row, the book is deemed out of print and the rights revert back to the author.

Of course, what we, and most publishers would like, is for the author to work with us to try to get the book selling again. Maybe an update is called for? Maybe the author can begin going on the lecture circuit, or maybe he or she can start blogging. (See above.)

—Steve Mettee

Take Good Photos

One of the proposals I looked at last weekend was for a local history book. As happens, the author had visited historical sites and taken photographs himself with which he was suggesting the book could be illustrated.

IMHO this doesn't usually work. Most photographs by amateurs are, well, amateurish. In one of the photos sent with this proposal, the subject was a interesting rock formation. But in the photo a white SUV was parked behind the rocks and about three feet of it extended beyond the edge of the rock as if it were a pale appendage. The shocking white against the darker rock stole the viewer's attention.

You see this same type of problem in photos of people where a telephone pole appears to be growing out of someone's head.

Another photo was of one of those brass historical markers. The top of the marker was cut off and the photographer hadn't positioned his camera properly so the sides of the marker appeared to converge inward toward the top.

Historical illustrations are best for history books, but if you must take photos yourself, develop an eye for composition.

This week we are hard at work doing the final editing and putting all the finishing touches on our fall 2007 titles as well as keeping all the marketing and other plates spinning.

—Steve Mettee

Looking for Gold in Book Proposals

I spent some time this weekend going over a stack of book proposals I'd received while on my management retreat.

Since I wrote a book on how to write a book proposal, I believe I tend to get more than the average independent publisher.

For me this is an exciting part of my job. What if I find a book to publish that will change the world? Or at least change mine by making a ton of money?

Here is a quick rundown—in no particular order—of a few I looked at. I'll obscure some of the details so as not to embarrass anyone.

A CPA sent me one based on the book of Job aimed at the Christian reader, or at least at a reader whom he would like to become a Christian. It was, not unexpectedly about dealing with life's hurdles.

The proposal was pretty well done. I liked the fact that the author seemed to have a lot of enthusiasm. I decided not to make an offer on it because 1.) We don't do books for the Christian market. Christian bookstores use established Christian book publishers as their gatekeepers. If a book isn't by a publisher they trust, they are much less likely to stock a book. 2.) It didn't fit into any of our categories, such as the Best Half of Life series for those over 50 or our Books to Build Your Career By series. This isn't an absolute necessity, we publish books outside of these series, but it helps.

Unfortunately this author won't ever know that I read his proposal because he didn't enclose an SASE (a stamped, self-addressed, envelope) for my reply. This may sound haughty, but I get way too many queries and proposals to dig out an envelope, address it, and figure out the correct postage—not to mention the cost. If an author has done just a little bit of homework, he or she will know that an SASE is customary if you want to hear from a publisher who isn't interested in your project. Naturally if the editor is interested he'll contact you whether you include an SASE or not.

Another proposal was from a pair of young ladies who wanted to pass on information they wished they had learned in school, but hadn't. It looked like a fun idea, the table of contents they proposed seemed to offer interesting material but the information in the sample chapters they sent was too mundane or simplistic for my tastes. That last phrase, "for my tastes," is telling. Just because I don't like a project is far from the final word on it. There may be an editor out there who "gets it" like I never would.

They had enclosed an SASE, so, as I always do, I wrote a short note declining the project.

A proposal from a retired teacher who is writing his memoirs of all the interesting things his many years teaching brought him didn't light my fire either. Memoirs are tough unless the writer is famous, had a truly exceptional life, or is a truly exceptional writer. He mentioned he has had 20-plus books published but failed to include a list. I would suggest he include a list with some information on sales. That is an impressive quantity and if they sold well, might have influenced my decision.

A giant package was from New Zealand. The author sent the complete manuscript, which appears to be about 400 pages long, and a box of original photos instead of the a set of photocopies of the originals which is safer. His isn't a subject I'm currently interested in, although we did a couple of books on this subject in the past. A check for $80 was included for the return postage. This requires us to deposit the check and make a trip down to the post office to mail the package. I'm not at all sure a large publisher would get around to doing this. A workaround would be for the author to have included international reply coupons (I think that's what they are called) already affixed to the envelope he supplied. This would have saved us having to cut a check and a trip to stand in line at the post office.

Was there anything I liked in this stack? Maybe. I put a proposal on movies aside to read again. The author seems to have a bit of a platform and does have a good idea.

Oh yeah, and a proposal from Chuck Adams, the author of Murder by the Bay—a successful book QDB published a couple of years ago. His idea this time is completely different than Murder, but he's a good writer and it's a good idea. We'll see.

—Steve Mettee

Still Learning

I always love a learning curve. If you're in doubt, blogging is a new sport for me. I understand that blogging is the new journalism, a democratic journalism where everyone has a say. And, of course, I read blogs from time to time--especially those that mention our books, but I still have plenty to learn.
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For instance, yesterday I thought it would be a clever idea to add a place on this blog where Google's AdSense could place an ad. I didn't suppose we would make much moola from from it, but it was simple to do and it seemed like a thing one does with a blog.
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Unfortunately, the first ad Google paired us with was one for an Internet vanity publisher so it looked like we were endorsing this company. Please note, I deleted the ad toot sweet.
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I've spoken at a number of writer's conferences where one of the other presenters was from one Internet vanity publisher or another (sometimes called an "print on demand" publisher or subsidy publisher), and I was on a panel with one a couple of months ago.
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I'm not saying there isn't a scenario where using using one of these company's services might work—on one level or another—for an author. For instance if you want 40 copies of your memoir for friends and family, this might be a simple way to get them. But it isn't an entree into becoming published in the sense that you'll find your book on the shelf at Barnes & Noble in Trenton, New Jersey. Or in a library in Batavia, Illinois. The costs and distribution structures used by the Internet vanity publishers don't work in the book trade where trade wholesalers usually need a 55% discount off the retail price (retailers require 40% or more and normally buy through wholesalers) and books are returnable to the publisher from the bookstores if they don't sell.
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Some of these vanity presses even make rational-sounding promises about helping you market your book. Be especially wary here.
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I questioned a representative of an Internet publisher at one of these conferences and he finally admitted most books from his company sell fewer than 50 copies. Only a handful had sold 500.
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If you can't find a conventional publisher for your book, you might investigate self-publishing. Read Dan Poynter's Self-Publishing Manual first. In it he lists book printers real publishers use and you can get your cost per book down so you can afford to offer it to the stores and wholesalers. Don't forget editing, design, marketing and a hundred other tasks handled by the conventional publishers go into self-publishing.
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Another thing I'd like to learn is how to format these paragraphs with indents or at least a space between them so I don't have to put those periods between them.
—Steve Mettee

Got to start somewhere

Freeport, Bahamas.

Every so often I take a few days and go some place for what I call an "Upper Management Company Retreat." Since I define myself as the only person in upper management, these retreats tend to be quiet and relaxing.

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They give me a chance to:

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• Get my mind around the bigger picture

• Make written plans

• Get projects I couldn't find the time to do off my plate...like getting this blog started.

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And finishing the content editing of Fear and Loathing of Boca Raton: A Hippies' Guide to the Second Sixties by Steven Lewis, a title we will be publishing in the fall of 2007. Fear and Loathing is an anti-retirement retirement book. The first self-help book to claim to not be a self-help book. It's a grand title for us baby boomers looking at retiring in the next 10 years. Lewis has a witty engaging style.

I tacked this trip to Freeport onto a trip to New York City for semi-annual sales meetings. Publishers and sales rep groups hold a flurry of meetings where the publisher introduces the next season's titles. Generally speaking, there are two seasons in the book biz when new titles are released. One in the spring and one in the fall.

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This blog is envisioned to be a place where the people at Quill Driver Books can talk about what we do in our day-to-day work, to discuss the decisions we make, to bury our failures, vent our frustrations and celebrate our successes. We also invite you to chime in.

I don't guarantee we'll make daily posts, but if you are interested in the inside workings of an independent book publisher, please bookmark this blog or rss or whatever you're suppose to do so you won't forget about it.

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BTW, coming from a fellow who just had to eat crow for adding the words, "A Very Unique Book" (Think about it.) to one of the sell-sheets I used in NY, I don't promise perfect spelling, punctuation, or editing. Editors are human too. (That's why we hire proof readers, who are super human.)

—Steve