Read the conversation on self-publishing, by Gayle and myself, right here.
Easily, this is the funniest interview I’ve ever had to do, and I love it for that reason.
K.G.
Whew. This has been a very nutty three days so far.
Here’s the skinny, in short form:
- Gayle has interviewed me. Yes, she’s also my editor. I’ll also interview her. That link is coming up.
- Jamie DeBree of the Variety Pages will post another chunk of Book 1 for your reading pleasure.
- I have revived my account on Goodreads! And, lo and behold, Books 1 and 2 have been on there for some time. Those links are added, and updated. Addendum: Shelfari page for Book 3 is also up.
- The About The Index Series page is updated also, with precise book-buying links. Previews included.
- The proof copy for Book 3 will arrive earlier than scheduled! I expect it tomorrow, in face.
- Same goes for the postcards. If you’re not a New Yorker, and you spot the ‘cards..well, I have minions everywhere! *evil cackle*
…ahem.
And so it begins…
K.G.
It hadn’t hit me until I was filling out questions for an interview exactly how much work self-publishing turned out to be.
It’s one of those things that I hadn’t thought about, in retrospect, because I simply accepted it as something that I had to do, and get everything that it entailed done as well. But when Gayle posed a few choice questions, I had to give the matter some thought.
As the market is slowly shifting to giving self-published authors their due, I realized that the biggest reason that an agent or a publisher will pick up a book would be for sales. That is the primary reason. A traditionally published author receives about a 4% royalty off a book sale, and maybe 15% on an e-book sale. You’d not think twice about those numbers, if you consider that whatever is lost on the price tag, the volume makes up for the loss of revenue. However, think about this: sales come first for publishers. Not the quality – sales. Not to go beat a dead horse, but Stephenie Meyer is a classic example. The publisher and the agent both saw potential for huge sales, so they took it on, and the result was huge sales – and the lacking quality in her writing made for an according backlash. And, in that backlash, a lot of people asked, “How did this get published?!!”
Because it could sell. That’s the thing.
Now, the thing to traditional publishing is that you have a team doing your legwork. You have a professional editor proof your work, and send it back to you for revisions. You will have a graphic designer doing your cover. You will have an advertising and marketing team powering the publicity and a publicist to arrange a book tour for you. You have a lot of people working to ensure that you are a success.
With self-publishing? Take that team of powering the creative and 86 it completely. Remove. All you have left is you, your book, and the world.
That’s why I say, self-publication is a much tougher avenue. You have a manuscript, but is it ready to be a book? No? Then edit. And edit until it’s perfect, in your opinion. That takes an extraordinary amount of time and concentration. You will lose your cool. Can’t do it? Hire an editor. Do you have a cover? No? Can you use Photoshop? No? Have someone design the cover. Or can you do it via whatever template your printer provides? And marketing – how will you get your reviews without a test audience? Where will you get reviewed? How? Are you prepared for the fact that self-pubs aren’t stocked in stores? How will you get your book out there?
Only you, the author, can answer those questions.
I learned the hard way, marketing campaigns for things like self-published books need to be ongoing and relentless. If you can manage to get merchandise out there – which reminds yours truly to crack on that CafePress store – then do. But it’s all on your shoulders.
And you know, I didn’t even think that it was that difficult until I answered Gayle’s question. I just took it in stride as Something I Had To Do. I got lucky – I have an awesome editor. And I have an awesome artist, who gave the books a face. And I have a guest artist, who even furthers the challenge for my regular. I’m damn lucky, as far as self-published authors go, because so many of them have to go it completely solo.
To those self-published authors I say…don’t ever give up. We all help each other out, one way or another. Keep at it.
K.G.
My books are now also available in Smashwords format. If you have a Kobo or a Sony E-Reader, I wouldn’t think to keep you out of the loop!
Coming up: interviews! Reviews! Work to do!
Let the good times roll!
K.G.
LINKS:
Book 1: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/69557
Book 2: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/69566
Book 3: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/69571
ETA: And this just in – the Nook copy got approved!
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Index-Book-3/Katherine-Gilraine/e/2940012800237
And ETA 2: Amazon Kindle is up!
http://amzn.to/mfAC1a
Now, this is an interesting twist.
You guys know that the cover is the first eye-catcher of any publication, especially for a self-pub like myself. When I first started the book, I had absolutely no idea what I wanted them to look like. When Jenna Bacci stepped forward and, at the age of14, drew me the first cover, I got a crash-course in the importance of a good cover. Jenna’s cover for Book 1 was very, very well-received, and even now, two years after it got released, I get a lot of compliments on the cover art.
Book 2 – same reaction.
So now, the cover of Book 3, which you see here.
This is what I kept under wraps since late 2010: my guest cover designer is none other than Marion Meadows, who doubles as a digital artist, photographer, and web designer in addition to the overall Hurricane Soprano Sax thing. You know him best for the latter; I know him for the fact that the Photoshop-related contents of his computer put the same contents on mine to shame. Seriously, I kid you not. The man is a brilliant designer.
And also know this: the fact that Marion was the contributor this time has absolutely no bearing on Jenna’s art. This is my first full-wraparound cover, and Jenna’s task this time was to design and draw around Marion’s art.
The idea of a joint cover came about accidentally, and it mostly came about because, at the end of the day, I still had no idea what to do for Book 3. My original idea was to have my main character share stage with another, on a select background. However, life happened, and the concept, while still there, was relegated to the back burner. I started thinking of other concepts, and Jenna did too. We hashed, hashed, and rehashed…nothing came to fruition enough to say, “Yes, this is it!”
Enter Capital Jazz Supercruise 2010.
To preface this, I will say first that Marion and I have known each other a few years. Heck, I met him before I got Book 1 out the door! After one show in Jersey, he let me take a look at his unofficial portfolio (read: contents of his hard drive). Believe me when I say that this is a designer of prodigious skill, with a particular gift for fantasy art. Aboard the cruise, lost for ideas still, mid-editing grind, I asked if I could use a piece for a potential book cover.
The hunt was on. He and I found a piece out of his portfolio, and over two hours, transformed it into…well, what you see here. I blanched out the background, touched up some small bits and pieces, and coordinated the fonts, and the cover was complete.
When Jenna and I reunited after the cruise, this piece had been sitting there for some time, and I knew one thing firmly: that I don’t have to have just one artist. I can easily have both.
Voila!
I will say this, guys: Book 3′s back cover is in progress, and if I know Jenna, it will be absolutely stunning.
This, ladies and gents, is how Book 3 cover came to be, and special thanks to Marion Meadows, owner and sole proprietor of RedTele Design, for his contribution, and for inadvertently inspiring an excellent overall concept for the full cover.
K.G.
As The Awesome Gayle and I work hard to get Book 3 ready for preliminary proofing, I find myself thinking – a lot - about the lessons that I learned as a self-published author. Particularly on marketing.
I won’t lie: self-publishing is not for you if you’re looking to make a huge, massive profit immediately. While yes, I do hope that the series will evolve into a primary means of income for me, when I started looking for an agent, I realized that if the traditional route won’t work, then self-publication would be my only choice. But along with that, I knew that if I was going to self-publish, it was not going to be about the money, because that came with massive sales, and I was not naive enough to believe that I’d sell very well, very fast. I had two choices: keep looking for an agent, or self-publish and work like a dog with the hope of my books reaching enough acclaim and forward momentum to make up for the lack of traditional publication.
Of course, life didn’t work out that way.
I won’t say that’s a bad thing, though. The reason that things that were related to the book had taken a back seat – Book 2 did not at all sell well – was still a good one: I got heavily into the music world, and graphic design had taken off. Still, the lost momentum showed. Distraction in consistent book marketing when you’re a self-pub can and does reflect on the long-term success of your work. And it’s a lesson I learned the hard way.
But the beautiful thing is that in my work with music, I learned the ins and outs of marketing – and it’s a tool that is invaluable for a self-pub author. That is the skill I will be taking with me as I am prepping to proof Book 3
All of this I’m keeping in mind, and hope to keep the momentum going before I begin the rewrite and prep of Book 4. The next arc – 3 books long – will wait, but in getting that out, I hope to keep the lessons that I have learned from the first one.
K.G.
PS: A chunk of Book 1 for your reading pleasure at Jamie DeBree’s!
I don’t comment on popular things often, but it seems to me that something can’t go unsaid.
The latest on Amy Winehouse, who is the UK’s response to Britney Spears as far as musical trainwrecks go, is that she had to be literally pushed onto the stage to perform, after being booed off the stage in Belgrade.
What I find highly distressing are the comments on that article. They’re basically lambasting her up one side and down another. Which, considering that Winehouse is in dire need of time off and professional help, is outright cruel.
Now, just for the record: I’m not an Amy Winehouse fan by any stretch of the imagination. Nor am I a Britney fan; I’m no longer 15. Those two women do have one thing in common: they no longer have a choice as to whether or not they want to be on stage.
You may not recall this, but it wasn’t that long ago since Jamie Spears, Britney’s father, won a court case that granted him permanent guardianship over Britney (video is the closest reference I can find to the case). In other words, Britney, who is – dare I point out? – thirty years old and a mother of two children, no longer has any say in what she does, or whether or not she holds onto the assets that she gained by route of her showbiz career. And this is after she had made headlines when she sheared off her hair.
Taking that, plus the MTV Movie Awards show, which was nowhere near on par with the shows she used to put on when she was about 18-20, I realized that Britney was, effectively, sick of being a show puppet. I don’t think that she had made music that she genuinely liked for a long time, and after she was effectively reduced to being paraded like a sex-appeal show dog after the flash-marriage, the other marriage, the kids, the divorce, she wanted nothing to do with the stage. So, as most people tend to do when she reached her limit, she snapped.
We know now that the sheared hair, etc. was a scream of help on her end. Spears had been in the spotlight almost continuously since she was a kid on the Mickey Mouse Club. We’ve already borne witness to how continuous stage exposure affects someone; Michael Jackson is an ideal case in point. And after Spears’s father pretty much took ownership of her – trademark, money, music – it was inevitable that she was going to snap one way or the next. And she did. She’s a lot better after the rehab/therapy, but the battle’s not over.
So now there’s Amy Winehouse, who was strung out on stage in Belgrade.
Let’s state a known truth: the music business was never known for holiness. I know it’s no longer the eighties, and if a rock star shows up on stage now high as a kite in this day and age, the audience will have none of it. But there’s a clear and distinctive line between an occasional drink or two to calm pre-stage nerves, and what happened with Winehouse. I took a look at the videos and said, “She does NOT need to be on stage right now.”
I don’t think Amy Winehouse wanted to be on stage that night. I got proved right when I saw the article that the bodyguards had to push her physically towards the mic.
Which makes me ask, when is the last time that she even liked performing? And who’s behind the scenes, pushing her at all of this? Yes, she may have a drug problem, but that being beside the point completely. The biggest problem here is that there is a woman on stage, who clearly and distinctly does not want to be on that stage. And on top of that, she has thousands booing the resulting trainwreck, with very few people aware that she has no say in it to begin with. This does a number on a person, and not in the best ways.
Amy Winehouse does not, does not need to be on stage. She hadn’t needed to be on stage since the first time she went to rehab. And it’s not because of the sort of music she plays or how she dresses: it’s because she wants nothing to do with the stage and needs time – and professional help – to sort herself out. Most crucially, I want to know who is behind the scenes who thinks it’s perfectly appropriate to drag her physically to the mic. That person/people need to be eviscerated.
Yes, the show must go on…but I think that Winehouse’s shows should not have been scheduled to begin with.
I finally wrapped up the editing/rewriting job on Book 3: Lineage. The fully-edited (as in, Gayle had gutted through the line and the content edit) manuscript is complete through Chapter 12. So six more chapters to touch up, and then, we are good to go!
While this is by no means the first time I’ve written or published a book, every time I do one, I look back and think of what happened when I first conceived the plot for this part of the series, and the effort that it took to produce it. This book, however, is a joint effort on many levels, and although I’m the sole concept copyright holder for the series and the content, it belongs equal parts to everyone who contributed to the manuscript, whether directly or not so much.
So, now that I’ve wrapped it up, I’m looking back to November of 2008, NaNoWriMo. I’ve had my one-year anniversary of working at the Day Job. By then, I had my first tax season. And I booked my very first jazz vacation, the All Star Cruise 2009. And I was rereading the past two manuscripts, even in their woefully incomplete state, and asked myself, “What should I do with the third book? I don’t quite have the Big Picture of the overall series plot. And I know I want to introduce a character or two…or five.”
You read correctly: I didn’t have the full series, or at least the arc, plotted through just yet. I just didn’t! Books 1 and 2, respectively, while related, could’ve clearly stood as separate books, but I wanted to have something maybe a little bit a la J.K. Rowling, at least in the sense that as the series progressed, every book became connected. I just had no idea how to make it happen at that time. And it was November 1st! You know what that meant: time to write. The what to write part…I clearly recall saying something like “screw it, I’ll wing it!”
Except, um…I was still editing Book 1.
Oh yeah. That was an interesting time. For those of y’all who didn’t know me then…and that’s a lot of you…I wrote, edited, prepped, and published Book 1 completely on my own. This was before Gayle took the reins of editing. I sent the draft to several friends who pointed out whatever small errors they could find, but the bulk of ferreting out plotline errors, phrasing, scenery, etc. fell to me. And it was a grueling task. I wrapped the first manuscript in Christmas 06, spent most of 2007 rewriting the beginning half, and the bulk of 2008 editing the rewrite. To say that choosing that time to start writing Book 3 – while Book 2 stood on the sidelines, awaiting an edit – was a bad idea is an understatement.
But I did it anyway. And before I knew it, the characters were writing themselves. And, as I kept going back and referring to Books 1 and 2 to help me set the stage for the Book 3 plot, I realized that the overall plotline was getting clearer too. The arc was now set up to the point where I knew I could at least scene-block the opening bits of Book 4, which would help me immensely later on, when it came time to write it.
I won NaNo that year, went on the cruise in January of ’09, finished the edit of and released Book 1, and dug back into Book 3′s first draft full force.
That’s when I realized that I’ve had some key contributors that I couldn’t ignore.
One of my best friends, a fellow writer, and most crucially someone with one of the wackiest senses of humor I’ve ever met, had been my sound-board for a lot of the fun scenes. I will tell you this: suggestions on shenanigans involving Jason Watson involved things like, “Turn him into a chicken!” and “Put him into Underworld? If you wrote Kirare as you did, he’d kill him first!” The infamous s’mores scene came about in a plotting conversation with her, when I exclaimed, “If Jason were to experiment with his powers, he’d make s’mores, knowing him!”
My friend’s response: “WRITE IT!”
And so I did, right then and there. And I still chuckle whenever I think about it!
I can’t forget Jenna either, and her you may know already: you see her artwork on the first two covers. The first cover, she did at the age of 14, second cover happened shortly before her 16th birthday. Now, she’s 17, and has been continuously evolving as an artist and graphic designer in her own right. And you know – she gave the characters a face. You may see The Index Series Facebook page, it has all of her artwork related to the series, and even with the sketchpad cover art, she had contributed every bit to making the books come alive. It’s fair to say that without her, I would really not have “met” my characters.
Of course, then, there is Gayle. By now, I no longer remember how we connected, but I do know this: I will never hire another editor if I can help it. So far, she’s been a key counsel on various plot points, hashing them through over the phone, via chat, via email, or otherwise.
The other contribution came very recently, and came well after I began the official rewrite of Book 3, and about this one…well, I’ll tell you the who, the what, and the how after I release the book. But suffice it to say, this contribution, which came around almost accidentally, is an interesting one. For one, it made the cover of the third book a joint effort across three individuals. For two, it kind of tied my music and my writing in an entirely different way; while I write at jazz shows, this one is clearly a new twist on a creative link.
This series isn’t just mine anymore, and few things make me happier than to say that. Creatively, it is very much a joint effort, and it brought together a lot of influences from friends and creative counterparts alike.
And now, it’s a slow slide to release…which will happen soon!
K.G.
The finish line for Book 3 is in sight!!
In news:
- Got interviewed by my fellow author, Jamie DeBree! Interview here. You can find out more about Jamie at her blog, The Variety Pages.
- Chapters 12-16 are in the hands of my beloved editor, Gayle, and are percolating.
- Which means that only Chapter 17 and 18 are left!!!
This is a very special book to me, on many levels. It was kind of waiting in the background, while Gayle, Jenna, and I clocked away at making Books 1 and 2 happen. Book 3 is a joint effort in a lot of ways…and I’ll tell you more about it once it is done. :)
Which – if things go as planned! – will be soon!
K.G.
I needn’t say it, do I? The Legend is back.
This will probably not be as long of a write-up as usual, if only on the account of my own extreme exhaustion, but three hours of sleep or zero hours of sleep, there are just certain things that you have to see. And those particular events – screw the camera. Seriously. Don’t even bother taking pictures. You just have to see it. See and remember.
The very first time I saw Dave Brubeck was, in fact, at the Blue Note, and this was, I think, the first time since Christmas that I’ve come back to the club. Work, business, books, and other obligations had kept me from that lovely, music-filled sardine can of a club (sorry, Blue Note management but…seriously, 86 some tables and your patrons will thank you for the leg room). And, at the time I saw Dave, I was just taken aback that this guy, who had played with the best of them and then some, who is now 90 and needing some assistance walking, can sit down at the piano, and be every bit as lively an emcee as any of the whippersnappers coming in the scene today.
Tonight, I watched Dave more closely, as he went from Sunny Side of the Street to It’s a Raggy Waltz, and understood exactly what about Dave Brubeck is so entrancing. He hadn’t changed at all in the way he plays his music, and after so many years, after watching the world change and change again, he still maintains the same energy. We all have that little “zen spot” – that place in our lives where we feel most at home, and for Dave Brubeck, it’s sitting at the keys of a baby grand. That’s his zen spot, and he had known it all his life.
Dave didn’t use the mic tonight, for the most part, as he spoke. From telling stories about his songs, to reciting his wife Iola’s lyrics to some of his music, he didn’t need to use the mic. The audience, all hundred-and-change of us, crammed into a tiny space, would quiet down and hang onto his every word. The bartender would even stop mixing ,and the waitstaff would stop and listen too. And still, he would segue into a lovely solo, full of spirited meanders, then suddenly stop, peek over the baby grand at his bandmates, smile, and ask, “What do you want to play?”
Yes, the man is 90, and still a ham. :)
It’s that tried-and-true cheekiness, and the knowledge that he hadn’t changed, that gives people who watch him a solid impression that the clock had turned back half a century for the hour that Dave played. He speaks of the same things as our grandparents would speak of, and he would season it with music that speaks to every generation. The audience tonight had, literally, every age group under the sun in the house, from someone whom Dave knew in his youth, to someone fresh out of high school, and it’s a nigh guarantee that the Brubeck magic was felt by all, if the standing ovation at Take Five is any sign of it.
It’s amazing to see him, it really is, and it’s even more amazing to hear him talk about performing with all four of his sons in the coming future. I can only hope that I will see him back at the Note again, and hear of him celebrating his hundredth birthday in as good a spirit as he had tonight, and at every show he plays.
K.G.
