I'm often asked how
I "got a book contract." It
usually comes out as, "How did you
get a book contract?!" With the "you" italicized and the
sentence concluded with a stunned interrobang. As if the idea were as
unfathomable as watching a troupe of dancing marmots sing opera.
And I have to admit
that I occasionally feel the same way.
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| A marmot. This marmot is not singing and dancing, but it was, just before this photo was taken. Now it is resting, in preparation for its next performance. [Image licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Contributed by user Inklein.] |
Often the people who
ask this question are writers themselves, or possibly wannabe-writers. They're
looking for some "secret," some arcane knowledge that would allow
them to make the same leap. And why not? Many are in fact excellent writers who deserve the opportunity
to publish, to get their work out in front of as many eyes as possible.
(Though, keep in mind that publishing is
only one part of the equation. The thing that really sells books, apart from
word-of-mouth, is marketing. That's a
completely different set of skills, an undertaking at which many of us
writerly-types are woefully deficient. I would like to think that I'm a decent
writer, but I know I am a terrible
marketer.)
In any case, and not
at all surprisingly, it turns out that there is no single, simple route to
getting your book published. I kind of fell into it. But it was a very long fall, lasting some 35 years or so.
I like to think that
there's some skill involved, something that is both art and craft, and often
both at once. I had years of experience: I had written newspaper articles and radio
news pieces for media outlets in Oregon as far back as 1979, and my first published
magazine piece was in 1984, for a (now-defunct) magazine called Electronic Learning. (I'm almost positive that the publication of my
article had nothing to do with the mag's swift decline and sudden demise soon
afterward.) This writing was what I think of as "craftwork." It was
journeyman stuff, deadline-driven pieces that filled a specific number of
column inches, and done on deadline. The editor would say that he needed 6 1/2
column inches on that night's school board meeting and he needed it by 11:30
p.m. And that's what a responsible, skilled journalist would deliver: exactly 6 1/2 column inches, no more and no
less, at or before 11:30 p.m. (Editors were fond of saying that the only reason
they needed my copy at all was to "keep the ads from bumping into each
other." Editors were not big on patting you on the back.)
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| Yes, I actually still have a copy of that very first article. |
This sort of
environment did not lend itself to agonizing over one's muse, or waiting for
inspiration. One did not wait; one wrote. Quickly, and on command. It was good
training.
Years later I spent
some time writing freelance articles for a family of computer magazines, after
which I was offered a position as editor of one of those magazines. That was
truly a learning experience. I worked with a number of very good writers and learned
a great deal about production, creating editorial calendars, dealing with
advertisers, scheduling, working with other editors, and the like. It was like
going to school all over again, except that this time they paid me.
So I went into this
with some background, but mainly . . . Well, I got lucky.
One day, Lesley and I
were in Barnes & Noble when I happened upon a B&N edition of Joshua
Slocum's Sailing Alone Around the World.
As someone who loves boats and sailing, I had read that book before, so I was
enjoying flipping through it. As we stood there, I said to Lesley that it
was kind of a shame that the book was probably not going to be read by many
outside the nautical fraternity: The language and what had once been
contemporary historical references were obsolete, and much of the book was
filled with specialized nautical jargon, some of which was also archaic. I commented that it would be nice to see an annotated version of
the book so that it could draw a wider audience. At that point, Lesley called
my bluff and suggested that I write an
annotated version.
And so I did.
Actually, I annotated one sample chapter, wrote up a pitch, and sent it off to
a group of six publishers with a history of publishing books with nautical
content. I received back a couple of TNT (thanks-but-no-thanks) letters, and
that was about it. Then, several weeks later, I heard from Sheridan House
Publishing, a (very) small publisher that specialized in boating books of
various sorts. After some back-and-forth negotiation (at first, they wanted me
to annotate the entire book and then
they would think about a contract, but I asked for a contract beforehand, since
annotating the entire book would take many months), we came to an agreement,
and they sent out a contract and a small advance. The annotated version of Sailing Alone was published in the early
spring of 2009.
Soon after, I
pitched the idea of another annotation, this one of Richard Henry Dana's
classic, Two Years Before the Mast.
Sheridan House said yes, sent out another contract and another advance, and we
were off to the races.
Except that as I was
finishing up the Dana book, the publishing company was sold to another
publisher, a much larger company with dozens of imprints.
I wasn't sure
whether this was good or bad for me, to be honest, but it ended up being an
excellent development. The new publisher, Rowman & Littlefield, had more
resources (not that a no-name author such as myself would have much access to
those resources). More importantly, because it actually runs a large group of
smaller publishers, that meant that when I pitched R&L another book, there
was every possibility that there would be a fit someplace
in the organization. And because I was pitching to the editor who oversaw all of those imprints, that meant that I was
actually pitching to dozens of smaller publishers at once. It was very
efficient.
And, as luck would
have it, the R&L acquisitions editor thought that my idea for a book called
Leveling the Playing Field was a good
one, and he was willing to publish it. Almost two years later, Leveling was published by one of those
imprints, Lyons Press.
And that's how I
came to be in charge of a troupe of dancing, singing marmots.
