Book Release Party Now!

This is it. This is the whole thing. Trust me, it's not that much different than a real book release party. 

(Or an art gallery opening. It's really all the same thing.)

Our scene is a book store or a library or a hotel lobby. Somewhere around here is a plastic coated card reading "Meet The Author" so and so and "Book Release Party". Free food and drinks are being served. People are milling around in small clumps. There's a din of soft chatter wafting from clearings in the potted ferns. Grab a cheese curd. Those go fast.

You soon discover that most of the people here are either employees of the store or pals of the author, the editor, or some other relation. For many, this is just a stop to make before a night on the town: a dinner, dinner and a movie, something fun after this obligatory showing up is over. Then there are those people who were passing by when they spotted the free food. Ah, the literary life.

There's the guy, Mister Author. Back there, by the table with the glasses on it. The one in the beret. The one with the cigarette holder. He's protected by a disordered curve of  people--pals, creditors, pals of pals, employees of creditors.  You drift to the outskirts of this gaggle, catching a snippet of the author's self-indulgent, self-involved  banter:

I was going to do this last week, but someone shot up a Batman movie. Sort of killed the whole vibe. As a blogger, I suppose I should comment on that. Do you really want my opinion on mentally ill people having access to firearms? Me neither. And I don't think it's time to do jokes about it. Besides, someone has already done a 'Don't Blame Batman' piece. 

I try to keep the blog on topic. My topic is magazines and magazine fiction. Mostly I do history of pulp fiction. Not as an adjunct to anything. That is the thing, what it's about. My book? No, it isn't about that. It is fiction, not really pulp fiction, nor is it about fiction. 

Batman would be on topic for the blog. Funny character. The whole Dark Knight thing is something of a new take on it. Unless you go back to the first year or so of the comic, it wasn't really all that grim. In the first few issues he was sort of grim, but that was because he was fighting giant vampire zombies and that sort of thing. Then the retailers started to bitch and they made it more like Dick Tracy. 

 Really, the whole Batman thing is a rip-off. First, it's a flat out rip-off of The Shadow. I was just reading  an old Shadow novel that was word for word swiped by the Batman people for the first issue of the comic. As The Shadow's originator said, Batman was just The Shadow in a clown outfit. Once The Shadow became a hit in the pulps, it spawned a ton of imitators. Batman was also something of a swipe from the Green Hornet. A cross between the Green Hornet and Dick Tracy is what they seem to have been going for. The Green Hornet came first. A lot of people don't know that. Second--there must be a second because I had a 'first'--Batman is actually a direct rip-off of a character called the Black Bat. 

The original Black Bat showed up around 1935--four years before Batman. Now that character was more of a take off on The Saint, although the name was a play on the Green Hornet's. A lot of comic book characters wound up with names like that: Blue Beetle, Green Mask and Crimson Avenger. Wow. I got your eyes to gloss over. 

Anyway, it was sort of a fad in hero naming conventions at the time. The first Black Bat did dress up funny, like all pulp avengers did, but he dressed up funny like The Shadow, not like Superman. The pulp guys didn't wear tights. But they did wear capes or cloaks, which was kind of odd. Like The Shadow, the Black Bat was another guy with a vampire motif.

The Black Bat didn't last that long. It must have done alright though, because two parties tried to revive the character at the same time. And by 'revive' I mean 'steal', which is something pulp publishers did with alarming frequency. They stole titles. They stole character names. In this case, they both decided to revive the Black Bat in exactly the same way. 

The second Black Bat appeared at the exact same time as Batman. And the characters are pretty much identical. Black Bat beat Batman into print by several months, but it's a toss up which one was actually done first. Given that both publishers were essentially ripping off something that wasn't theirs, they decided not to sue each other. For the next few years these identical characters ran in their respective mediums. I'm not sure if DC eventually bought the rights to Black Bat, but the Black Bat's publisher rather mysteriously, suddenly got into comics at the same time. If you look at the layouts of the Thrilling Group's comics and those issued by DC at the time, they are very similar. 

I can imagine the phone call "Hey, Ned, I know we ripped off your Black Bat character and everything. And we both know that neither of us 'owns' the concept, so why bother spending money on legal fees. Say, how would you like to get into the comic book business? It's like high school with money here. I'll set you up." But that's just my pet theory.

Ned? Ned Pines. The guy who owned the Thrilling Group. That's who published the Black Bat. Stop yawning. 

Anyway, the whole Dark Knight thing doesn't come out of the older comics. It's not really getting the character back to its roots. It's more an advent of this graphic novel Frank Miller did. And it was fine for what it was. But that's not what Bob Kane--the guy in charge of Batman--was shooting for. Kane saw the character as a slightly more swashbuckling version of Sherlock Holmes. These latest movies are all based on the Frank Miller version--which is fine--but it has no fun in it at all. These last few movies have been painful to watch. It's a darkness overdose. If you think Miller's vision is so wonderful, check out what he did with The Spirit. I thought Miller liked Will Eisner. It didn't look like it. Miller had total control of The Spirit movie. I walked out of that movie wondering if Will Eisner had run over Frank Miller's dog. 

Will Eisner is the guy who drew The Spirit. The Spirit is a comic book character. Am I going too fast? You look confused. Or bored. 

I tried to get The Spirit licence for Weird Detective Mystery Adventures way back when. Eisner wrote me a letter saying that there was a TV show based on The Spirit coming out and that he didn't want to mess up any product endorsements. It was nice of him to respond to my request, in any case. I think I still have the letter. 

They did produce The Spirit pilot, but it never aired. I understand it's available on DVD, but I haven't seen it. The Spirit would be hard to adapt directly, because it's massively politically incorrect.

Will Eisner once swore at me. I had asked him how he came up with the idea for The Flame. I was a big golden age fan back then. Now, the guy could have said that he ripped off the Human Torch or the Green Lama or that he was inspired by the Tibet myth, or whatever. Instead he snarls "Who the fuck knows how anyone thinks up anything!" I might have understood this a tad better, had I not been ten years old at the time. 

I guess a discussion of Batman becomes deeply besides the point, given what happened. Still, you have to feel sorry for the people who worked on the movie. Not that those are the first people on my list to feel sorry for. But it must suck. 

The only thing I can equate it with is my college graduation party. I did college on the three year plan. I went to school full time and worked nights full time. I had already blown a bunch of years. It was sort of a now or never sort of thing. It was wretched. It was three years in a hole. But I wanted to get my degree before I turned thirty. 

 I'll never darken another classroom again, but I got through it. My parents were thrilled. They decided to throw me a party.

Then my grandmother died. My graduation party became the after funeral event. That was about as much of a wet blanket as can be thrown on things.

My book? No. It's not about that. I don't write about me. I  blog mostly about pulp fiction. The book itself is fiction-fiction.

I wrote Hardware Store for a specific market. Error One, by the way. I submitted it to them electronically. I got the "We are reviewing your submission" email. That was three years ago. I used to check its status every few weeks. After three years, they can blow me.

I waited eight months and I sent it to another place. It was accepted twice, but each time they wanted me to cut it down to 5000 words. I'm as much of a print hog as anyone, but these markets weren't paying enough to justify slaughtering the thing.  Note to self: Comedy Novellas have no market. I could have waited for someone to open a Comedy anthology, but in three years, no one did.

Besides length, my real problem is that it's only slightly science fiction. It's sort of a first person account of a science fiction crime, as told by the perpetrator. By slightly science fiction, I mean that the device Travis Island uses to commit his crime is about five seconds away from being reality. If I waited too long, it was likely to become a true crime procedural. Not that I am out to give anyone any ideas here. Sometimes you can prevent bad things by setting them down in type.

I did try to peddle it as funny science fiction, but that's seemingly a no-no currently. It would have made a fine treatment for an episode of the Twilight Zone radio show, if that were still in production. Or a demented installment of Mayberry RFD--as long as we are wishing for markets that don't exist. Hardware Store is one of the few commentaries about current life in ex-urbia that I've seen. 

I could have expanded it to a novel. There are two other parts. But in three years I haven't done it. And then the ebook format became available. This release is sort of a test, a proof of concept.

What concept am I out to prove? If ebooks are worthwhile at all. Right now, no one knows. So far Hardware Store has sold two copies since I posted it last weekend. T-W-O. "Two" has more letters than the number of copies that I have sold.

Of course, I haven't promoted it yet. This is it. This is my promotion. You can order it by clicking the banner ad above this posting or by going to http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008M2I9L0

I do intend to put up an author's page on Amazon and a link on HIL-GLE.com. And maybe a web page for the book, but that's pretty much it. It's going to be on Kindle exclusively for the first six months. If you are a Kindle owner, I understand that there is an option for you to borrow the book for free. I strongly encourage this. I put it on Kindle because it has the widest possible audience. If the Kindle thing works out, I will put it on Nook and demand print.

There is some sort of game that Kindle authors are playing. In this scheme a knitting circle of aligned writers band together and write good reviews of each other's books. They rate up and 'like' each other's books to raise the book's profile in the Amazon listing. I don't have time for that sort of thing. Between the blog and the HIL-GLE web, I have enough platform. Hopefully enough people will find it that way.

If the Kindle thing does work out, it would save me a lot of time. Putting a book together is a lot of work. I think everyone knows the writing part is fairly easy. It's the rewriting--the corrections and revisions--that accounts for most of the real work. Thankfully I have the skill set to do the packaging, type work and covers on my own, too. That's the work that counts. That's the product, what people are out to buy 

Sadly, there's a whole 100% more work to do which counts for nothing. It's already driven me out of the small press/magazine fiction market. Finding the markets has become a pain in the ass. Half of the markets that claim to be open are really closed. Many of them want money to electronically submit to them. (And you get free spam emails begging for money as a reward.) When coupled with half year plus turn around times and rather slight payments, it's no longer worthwhile. At least not for me. I've been published there enough. And I'm reaching more people with the website and the blog than I ever did before. 

Take the above and double it when dealing with peddling a novel.  Here my track record is nothing to crow about. I have had a novel accepted, cancelled and got to keep the advance. As a self-publisher, Weird Detective Mystery Adventures did fine. Well enough for me to blow off working for a summer. And there still are some book markets that don't require an agent to submit to.

Before I go into agents. let's back up a half pace. For most writers, just writing the novel is task enough. If the guy gets it done, he needs to manifest enough balls to show it to someone. Maybe he gets help? Maybe he gets an editor? Once exposed to criticism, the writer has to use the criticism, to be guided by it. And then fun time is over. That's where the work starts. If you want in, you should at least be willing to go this far.

I'm convinced that the best novel ever written is still riding around in the trunk of someone's car. Even if the guy robbed his piggy bank to print it up and mail it, there's a fairly good chance no one is going to read it. Most of the publishing houses do not read their own mail. Instead, they rely upon pimps to cull their material for them. 

I have had two agents. Neither of them were agents. They were people posing as agents. There is no Consumer Reports for literary agents. Anyone can claim to be one. You cannot count on the writing magazines or the New York Times (the places where I found my two fake agents) to set you on the path. Instead, you can do two hit or miss things: (1) Go to the bookstore and search the acknowledgement sections of  books like yours. The author usually mentions an agent. (2) Subscribe to a lit mag which is the bible for your genre of writing, assuming that you have one. I subscribe to Locus, which lists the sales of agents handling science fiction. 

As if the odds of the world's greatest novel ever leaving the trunk of the car weren't already steep, many of these agents are not taking new clients. Or might shunt you off to an office mate, one who has never made a sale, but used to be an assistant editor someplace. And if they are open, they are going to ask you for something that isn't your novel--because they don't want to read your novel. Instead, they want something that is even more work.

It's something different for each agent. Some of these agents have the audacity to ask for a resume. What for, God knows? They want to see if you have 'platform'. They want to see how you personally appear, what value-added thing you might bring to the package--as if providing the product for nothing isn't good enough. So on top of being fucking Shakespeare you also have to be God damned Don Draper, too. 

That's a bridge too far. There are some perfectly undesirable, drooling, snot-encrusted people out there who are wonderful writers. If you want to go the whole 'platform route', you are going to weed out everyone south of Mark Twain and Will Rogers. You might as well claim that novels are being written by celebrities--by the way, the only hot new trend in novel packaging today. Snooki has written three novels. And Snooki can't spell  'novel'. 

So does the world's greatest novel have a chance to leave the trunk if the author is willing to say Snooki wrote it? No. If only selling your soul were that easy. Those writing slots are reserved for previously published writers whose efforts have flopped. I know of a writer whose third book went toilet town and who is now writing under the name of an actor who normally appears on detective shows. Hey, Lovecraft wrote as Houdini. It's an old racket, but it's a closed one. The entire publishing industry is a scoundrel recycling program. To get in through Snooki you have to get somewhere and fail, first. 

All of that said, some of the agents' requests are perfectly reasonable. It's not really in anyone's interest for you to send the entire book. Ditto it isn't in anyone's interest for you to be shopping a book you haven't finished yet. Most agents are going to ask for the first fifty pages. Here they are going to be on patrol for sentences like "I know of a writer whose third book went toilet town and who is now writing under the name of an actor who normally appears on detective shows." Don't have too many of those. Those suck up editorial bandwidth. And if you don't know what's wrong with that sentence, you don't belong talking to agents. Pour over your stuff first. If you can't do it yourself, find someone who can. There is a feel to professional grade work. Read. Get it. There's a certain dance that good text has. If you don't have it, get out of the pool. Anyone can type. 

Shading the ridiculous are requests for synopsis and chapter outlines. This is a skill foreign to fiction writers. And the agents know this. Chances are, if you are good at this, your fiction sucks. Instead, tell them the book is finished and give them a word count. If they ask for the whole thing, send them a cover letter indicating your willingness to make revisions, guillotine, masticate, change the Indians into zombies and the zombies into pirates or whatever is called for. Yes, that's selling your soul, but it's selling your soul with a purpose.

None of this is gospel, by the way. And consider the source. The world's greatest novel will have the spare and the jack for its sole pals, forever. Your novel, however, may have a fighting chance if you have found a real agent that is open to new writers. If you have the time, by all mean give the agent whatever the fuck they want. Go in knowing that it's a custom job and a time suck. Constructing some sort of comprehensive blaster package that you intend to plaster the world of agents with is a waste of time, an impossibility and a cash drain. There is no conventional method to goose the process.

Also, even if you have done things absolutely correctly, your book may get whacked by factors outside of your control. The genres change. What's expected and what's acceptable change. For an example current today but perhaps not the next day: if you are writing science fiction, do not lace your text with f-bombs. Your text has to be clean for teens, since sci fi is generally considered a subset of the much larger Young Adult market. Another current example: Oh, your novel is 257,679 words? You're a fucking idiot! It's not a fast and hard rule, but it does help to know what the fuck you're doing. 

The most frequently requested agent item is for an amazing elevator pitch. "Give me your idea in two sentences or less and make it fabulous" is the instruction, often followed by "I can tell within ten words if an author or his proposal have any merit." Bullshit. The long and short of this is that the agent is closed. He would love to hear great ideas (perhaps to pass them on), but he has enough proven clients. 

If I could pull off a mind blowing elevator pitch, I would have a much better gig than 'writer'. 

Don Draper don't work for no two grand advance. Besides, this is the agent's job. Or it's the job of the publisher's promotions department--the people who use the same fifty words over and over again. 

To bring this back to my point a bit, there is something of a work around to this process. Agents today are trolling Amazon. They're trolling the sellers, to be blunt. And so are the publishers. Although it seems sort of strange to fish for books which are technically already published, that is the trend. For the same amount of effort as it takes to put together one submission package, I was able to format an entire ebook. 

Seeing as how Hardware Store doesn't have a viable market in the first place, I have nothing to lose  

As you suspected, it's some shnook with a book, a nobody name dropping names of nobodies he does not really know. Poor soul. Was he drafted into a career in the arts? Perhaps he will gain greater satisfaction whacking the weeds in the parkway median, or whatever it is he really does for a living. In a short time, the confab evaporates as various peoples' babysitters expire, reservations come due or coming attraction times start. Our author has toddled off to answer a page. The next thing you know, it's just the ferns and the glasses left behind.

Thank you for attending my book launch! If this works out, I may put out another edition of Weird Detective Mystery Adventures also on Kindle. And I have a new game called Big Three which will play on Kindle.  Plus I'm working on another novel. Watch this space for exciting new announcements!

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Coda

Science proves that no one has ever died from having a bad attitude.