An Author’s Event Planner

I’ve been to quite a few author events over the years. Some went well; others didn’t. Some of the writers had done hundreds of them, and it showed, not always for the better. A couple were personable and comfortable, doing brief readings and answering questions enthusiastically, even though they must have heard most of them a hundred times. (“Where do you get your ideas?”) A couple looked like they’d done hundreds of them and were mailing it in.

Now I’ve done a few events of my own, and watched panels and the signings of others with a different perspective. I’m lucky in two ways. I’m one of those strange rare people who enjoys public speaking. This is a huge hurdle for many, and I appreciate how fortunate I am not to have to worry about it.

I’m also a classically trained musician. Author events are performances. It’s not the wage slave and father who leaves the toilet seat up and can belch the alphabet the audience wants to see, or even cares about; they came to see an author. The trick is to be yourself. Not the scratching your ass in the bathroom self; the author self.

This should be easy: the author self is just as much you as the other disgusting elements. It’s the performance part that makes it hard. Most of us don’t perform publicly that often, or ever. The performance can’t seem phony, or you’ll seem like a phony, and no one likes phonies. (Anyone who says they do is a phony by definition.)

So how do you give a performance that doesn’t come across as a performance—which would be phony—if you have no performance background? Same way you get to Carnegie Hall: practice. Which is, in its purest form, preparation.

First, know what you want to do before you get there. Seems like the simplest thing in the world, but a lot of people don’t do it. They have an idea of what they want to do, but the audience hasn’t given you two of their most valuable possessions—their time and their money—to watch you figure it out as you go. You’re taking their money, in the form of paying for your book. Be a professional.

After consulting with Laurie Stephens of the Mystery Lovers Bookshop, my launch event broke into three parts: a brief (five minutes) talk about how the book came to be written; a short reading; and questions from the audience.

How did the book come to be written?

The fraternal twin of the dreaded “Where do you get your ideas?” Never underestimate the fascination readers have with how authors create books. We tend to talk with other authors, with whom this is a settled topic. Readers don’t know that. Give them the lowdown on how you came up with and developed the story, They’ll love you for it.

Oh yeah, and write it down. Not word for word, but have a detailed outline for reference. If you create, edit, then rehearse it a few times, you may not need the outline, but it’s the preparation that makes it superfluous. Remember, they didn’t come to hear an extemporaneous speaker; they came for an author. Authors write shit down.

Is The Book Any Good?

The critical question, and the only answer you have is the book itself. Take five minutes or so and read a chapter. (Two, if they’re short.) The first chapter is always nice, but if there’s another that gives a better feel for the style and tone of the book, read it. The first chapter of Grind Joint is only a few hundred words long. I read that and Chapter 3, where Doc interviews the guard who (spoiler alert!) found the body. It’s also fairly short, but it shows the kinds of people the book is about, how they talk, and a bit of the style. It also, hopefully, helps to set the hook.

This is part of the performance; don’t drone through it. I printed both chapters in 16 point font, double spaced, and read then aloud several times in the week leading up to the event. I marked the pages with orange ink to show where I wanted pauses, which words should be stressed, which laid lack, and to remind myself to leave space between narrative and speech, between speech and attribution. The listening audience can’t see the quotation marks; they have to be implied. Also critical: take your time. If you’re like most people, you read aloud about 50% faster than you think you do, maybe more when reading your own work, because you know what comes next. They don’t. Cut them a break.

Questions

Everything else primes the pump for questions; a dearth of them can doom the event. The audience knows how the book came to be written and what it sounds like; now they want to know you. Monosyllabic answers are death. They stifle enthusiasm, and may be perceived as disrespectful to the questioner, who came out in shitty weather to ask you this question when they could have stayed home warm and dry and watched Castle, and you dismissed it with a word. Don’t ramble, but give each question the courtesy of a full reply.

Some people are naturally funny, some aren’t. Play to your strengths. If you’re funny, don’t shy away. (Just be careful you don’t think you’re funnier than you are.) If you’re not comfortable with the idea, it’s possible to be personable without being Louis CK. Be yourself. If an appropriate story comes to mind, tell it. You’re a storyteller; that’s why they came out.

A bit of subterfuge may come in handy. In any group, people are often reluctant to go first. This is especially true of readers, who are often introverts by nature. Everyone will feel uncomfortable if the hostess asks for questions and everyone sits there like guests at a Marcel Marceau tribute. I was lucky: Laurie Stephens got the ball rolling with a couple of questions for me, and things flowed from there. (Authors, if you can get an event at the Mystery Lovers Bookshop in Oakmont PA, go for it. Everyone will treat you like you’re Robert Crais, and they know how to pull off an event.) Not all hostesses are as accommodating, so don’t be afraid to use a plant. If someone you know is there, give them a softball question to ask in case things slow down. Once the seal is broken, questions may pour out. (This can also come in handy if some long-winded person is in the process of hijacking the show.)

If there’s one critical takeaway, it’s this: It doesn’t matter if you traveled a great distance to get there, or it’s the last event of a tour, or you’re tired, or you’re sick or hungry or have to pee or if three people showed up and you brought two of them with you: they get your best show, every time. You wouldn’t turn in less than your best work when submitting the book; it’s the same thing.

The people at your event are paying you the most sincere compliment. They have left their homes and a myriad of other things they could have done, traveled whatever distance, spent their limited time to listen to you, spent their limited cash to buy the book, and will now almost certainly spend several more hours reading the book. This is how you have chosen to earn money, and it doesn’t work without them. You owe them that much.

Grind Joint Launch, November 16, 2013

Grind Joint launched last Saturday at the Mystery Lovers Bookshop in Oakmont, PA. The plan was to post a recap here on Monday, but I wasn’t ready. I told myself it was due to a busy day and travel.

I’ll begin with an apology. This should be about the event, and I’m afraid it’s going to be more about me. So it goes. I’ve been thinking about this for a couple of days and have not found a way to adequately express how the day went from my perspective. Anyone who was there and wants to give a more objective account, comment away.

Saturday morning’s events started Friday when The Sole Heir and her mother (aka The Good Ex) made an unannounced appearance at my parents’ home. I had been under the impression they had a conflicting obligation, booked well before the launch date had been finalized. They were wholly unexpected.

And, they bore gifts:

With Saturday already guaranteed to be a good day, The Beloved Spouse and I approached MLB with a spring in our step. I almost tripped from stopping short when I saw Charlie Stella and the lovely Princepessa, Ann Marie, already inside. (Charlie had made many assurances and apologies about his own previous commitment. This was, by the way, the day’s only surprise of which The Beloved Spouse was unaware. I can’t trust anyone to give me the straight story.)

(Charlie Stella with not The Princepessa.)

Laurie Stephens of MLB is the perfect hostess for a virgin author. All I had to do was pretend to be personable (I think I fooled most of them, with one notable exception, the old sonofabitch), do my reading, answer questions without overtly offending anyone, and sign some books. I was made to feel not only welcome, but like everyone was genuinely happy for me to be there. Laurie’s introduction set me up well, she got the Q & A rolling, and stepped in during a brief lag. She was an enormous help and was, is, much appreciated.

The surprises continued to walk in. An uncle I see once a year, if I’m lucky; twice a year, if he’s not. Two dear friends, unknown to each other, came all the way from DC. The Good Ex’s mother and father were there; her aunt and uncle drove in from Philadelphia. My parents’ neighbors came, bringing their grown daughter and a visiting relation, who bought a book and took it back to Canada, establishing Grind Joint internationally.

The event went well. I had some small concern about the reception of how I depict my fictionalized town—everyone there would, of course, recognize it; they live in or near it—so I began with a brief bio and described how the germ of an idea, based on personal observation, grew into the book. Heads nodded. They got it. We sold 25 of the 30 books that had been ordered, which certainly exceeded my expectations; I hope Laurie and everyone at MLB was similarly pleased.

(Charlie Stella, Laurie Stephens, your humble correspondent, Rick Ollerman)

Before we left for lunch, The Sole Heir had one more surprise:

In the end, Mystery Lovers Bookshop and Stark House had an author event; I had much more. The effort and expense undertaken on my behalf was more than gratifying; it was, and is, humbling. Words cannot express how much this has meant to me. It was the single most joyous day I can remember. (No offense to The Sole Heir, but she was born via C-section after 34 hours of induced labor; the first thing I did when I got home was throw up.)

Publishing is a weird business. We may already have sold half of all the copies Grind Joint will ever sell. This could have been my final launch; there may never be another contract. I could reach the bestseller list, win an award, garner national media attention, get a movie deal, whatever. Doesn’t matter. Everything after this is gravy.

An Interview With Rick Ollerman of Stark House

As was noted recently, I plugged away for well over ten years before anyone paid me to publish one of my novels. Who was this daring man, who scoffed at conventional wisdom and braved the currents of uncertainty to give an aging rookie a glimpse of the Land of Publication, where food tastes better, the winters are milder, and women ask you to autograph their breasts. (Richard Castle lives in one of the tonier neighborhoods in the Land of Publication.)

Rick Ollerman is such a man, and he proved his generosity of spirit yet again by agreeing to answer a handful of questions that, it is hoped, will provide some insight to his thought processes.

One Bite at a Time: Rick, you’re the first honest to Maxwell Perkins editor we’ve ever had here at One Bite at a Time. Describe your ivory tower for us. How’s the view?

Rick Ollerman: Only about knee high.

Stark House originally started out selling American versions of fantasy books by Storm Constantine. Then there were some collections by the classic fantasist Algernon Blackwood. Somewhere along the way, Stark House printed a non-fiction tribute to the great film Invasion of the Body Snatchers, co-authored by Ed Gorman and star of the movie Kevin McCartthy. A long way from classic hard-boiled and noir fiction, right?

But then Stark House did an original novel by a woman named Catherine Butzen called Thief of Midnight. We released a slightly updated edition of the classic Beat writer collection called The Beat Generation & The Angry Young Men. That came about because one of the original editors, Max Gartenberg, was Peter Rabe’s agent and upon Max’s passing, his daughter offered the book to us. Under the Shepardson Books imprint we released a collection of publisher Greg Shepard’s father’s old newspaper columns that talk about life in old California. After Thief of Night was published, we started publishing new novels by the great Charlie Stella.

All that’s kind of a long way of saying that what I do as an editor is not strictly the same thing that an editor at another house would do. Yes, I read manuscripts–last year I rejected two that were bought by other publishers and kept one, yes, your own Grind Joint. I have a constant trickle of manuscripts to go through and so far none but yours has really measured up.

I proofread every book myself, I’ve started to write many of the introductions for the books, I’ve edited and recreated lost pages for a previously unpublished novel by one of the greats, I sometimes write but more often revise or edit the teaser pages.

For our recent non-fiction book, Paperback Confidential, I edited that book which included writing an introduction, writing six of the 132 entries, and compiling the index of pseudonyms that I hope people find truly handy (the Pseudodex).

I’ve influenced which books have appeared in some of our collections, I’m recruiting possible cover artists for future books, and I’m also heavily involved in some of the publicity that we do.

Maxwell Perkins never had it so good. Better, I’m sure.

OBAAT: Tell us what’s up with Stark House.

RO: Quite a lot, actually. When we publish books by authors who are actually still alive, there’s a lot more work that goes into gearing up each launch, especially if the author is a new one. One of my pet projects is trying to establish what we, as a small house, can do for independent booksellers who are feeling fairly ignored by the Big 5 in New York. There are all sorts of arguments that can be made for doing business as usual, but I think there’s a potentially huge role in the future for small presses. For instance, I could go buy a book by Random House just because it’s published by Random House, but there’s no guarantee, not that there is with any book but go with me here, and I don’t know what I’m getting. But Stark House has a wonderful reputation, thanks to the curation of our publisher Greg Shepherd, that even if you’re unfamiliar with a book or an author, that you know if it’s published by Stark House there’s a good chance you already have a sense of the kind of book you’re going to get.

Recent numbers seem to show that e-book sales are leveling off and that the number of independent bookstore is increasing. By forging new and tighter relationships with the bookstores, I hope that we can deliver new forms of the books that give both the bookstores and the readers what they want, which believe it or not are not always thirty dollar hardcovers and oversized trade paperbacks.

We’ve also increased the number of books we release each year, and we want to keep trying to find top level new writers to introduce to the world. We also have a Crime Club service where readers can sign up and receive deals on each new book as it comes out, shipped in pristine condition in a cardboard wraparound container, and a monthly or so newsletter that not only let’s people know what we’re up to, but also adds discounts to selected back list titles. Joining either or both is as easy as sending us an e-mail.

OBAAT: How did you get connected to Stark House?

RO: That’s the simple question for me. I bought a Stark House book by one of my favorite authors, and after enough instances of people “jumping in their ear and driving off” I knew the proofreading was a little off. Soooo many publishers now just scan, OCR and print and don’t bother proofreading the work. This is especially true with e-books. I just read a half dozen as research for an introduction I’m working on and I couldn’t believe that a name publisher can charge you $9.99, a robust price, and knowingly supply you with a subpar product.

Anyway, I e-mailed Stark House and said I wanted to buy more Stark House books, but not if they were that full of typos. Yes, typos drive me crazy. I’m one of those. I’ve done proofreading for other publishers and I offered to do some for Stark House. Greg sent me the pages for the book I had just finished reading and things grew from there, especially after Ed Gorman ended his relationship with Stark House. I’ve been accumulating additional responsibilities since then.

OBAAT: What’s the best thing about being an editor at a small publisher?

RO: Those five minutes a year when you feel you’ve actually caught up. Otherwise, there are a lot of little joys, like when I can suggest an alternative novel for a collection that gets approved, or when I contribute to some of the things that I know would have come out differently without my involvement. All the positive reviews we get, like when prominent bloggers say they believe everyone out there should just be buying each Stark House title as they come out. The occasional hate mail you get back after rejecting someone’s work is a little harsh, especially when we go out of our way to be author-friendly. You know you’re in trouble when someone starts a sentence with, “I’m normally thick-skinned about my work”–you know that will be automatically followed by irrefutable proof that it really isn’t so.

Another good thing is uncovering previously unpublished works. We have a book coming out by Jada Davis, a man who only published two books in his lifetime, one of which, One For Hell, is like reading Jim Thompson on steroids and deserves to be known as a hard-boiled noir classic. But Midnight Road, coming in early 2014, is his masterpiece, a really poignant coming of age rural story where crime is an element, but only one among many other, more human ones. It’s a brilliant book that deserves the widest possible audience.

OBAAT: What’s your greatest challenge, working for a small house that’s earning its niche?

RO: Trying to keep it all going, trying to figure out where the small fish figure in the Big 5 dominated book world. When New York is simultaneously publishing expensive hardcovers and (relatively) cheap e-book versions, what does the customer do who still likes reading books and not computer files? What do the independents sell when the collectors buy the hardcovers but the only “inexpensive” solution is to get an e-book or wait for a not-quite-so-inexpensive trade paperback? There’s a place for all of it, but it’s a constantly moving target. The Holy Grail would be to give the readers what they want and give the bookstores what they need. The online sales seem to be taking care of themselves.

OBAAT: What do you do when you’re not editing other writers’ work?

RO: Theoretically, I started out as a writer but contracted a chronic illness that at one time left me bedridden for eight straight months. Not good for your workout program. That’s been an ongoing battle for many years now and while at first I didn’t want to do anything that took away from my writing time, I really wasn’t able to focus and concentrate enough to do it well. There’s a long list of writers who have had to stop writing, sometimes permanently, because of illness. Those guys are different from me, because you’ve actually heard of them. But still, the point remains.

Things have been slowly improving, which is good, and I just sold a short story recently, and a two-in-one edition of two of my early books is coming out next year from Stark House. I have a more recent book that’s sitting here in the first draft stage, and another project for Stark House that’s just waiting for a few more hours to be added to the day. I’m working on introductions for Stark House books, as well, that hopefully add to the value of each volume.

Beyond that, I home school our two children and get routinely mauled by three dogs and two Guinea pigs. It’s the pigs that make me bleed, though. Apparently I have fingers that look too much like carrots. I’d rather have the slobber.

(Rick will be accompanying me to the launch of Grind Joint, November 16 at 10:00 AM at the Mystery Lovers Bookshop in Oakmont PA.)

Grind Joint Launch Announcement

I am pleased—and, frankly, shocked—to announce the official launch for Grind Joint will take place at the highly respected Mystery Lovers Bookshop, 514 Allegheny River Blvd, Oakmont, PA. The event will be held Saturday, November 16 at 10:00 AM, as part of MLBS’s Coffee and Crime series.

The Mystery Lovers Bookshop sits about halfway between Penns River—the setting of Grind Joint—and the Burgh, a mile or so from the famous Oakmont Country Club. Getting an opportunity to launch my first book so near to its setting, where the events that shaped the story and characters took place, is a treat and a privilege. Many thanks to Laurie Stephens from MLBS, as well as Rick Ollerman and Greg Shepherd of Stark House for making this possible.

Don’t worry. I’ll make sure no one forgets about it.