One of the many joys I experienced when I became part of the
fold at Down & Out Books was learning Lance Wright was there. Lance was one
of the first people I met on the business side of writing when I first started
to self-publish and was routinely a delight to work with. He and I trade enough
e-mails, especially as a publication date approaches, that I know he was a key
player with Down & Out, but I confess not even I knew exactly how broad his
responsibilities were.
I could go on for a while but it’s much better if you hear
it from Lance himself. Be sure to say hello if you run into him at a
conference. He’s a peach.
One Bite at a Time:
You and I recently started the paperwork on what will be my sixth book for Down
& Out Books and I spend more time in communication with you than anyone
else there, yet I confess I couldn’t list everything you do there, though I
know it’s a not inconsiderable level of effort. Describe what your duties are
for Down & Out.
Lance Wright: I
like to think of myself as the guy in the back office who keeps the day-to-day
operations of the publishing process up and running. I am definitely a process
person, someone who follows a set of guidelines drawn up for almost every task
that are designed and intended to ensure that nothing, or very little, falls
through the cracks. Everyday tasks include: gathering information from authors
about upcoming books (a process you’re familiar with!); assisting with
formatting manuscripts to our own standards; uploading formatted manuscripts to
all retail vendors; a bit of marketing and keeping up with social media;
maintaining the website; and responding promptly (I hope!) to all e-mail — I
come from a customer service management background, and that experience informs
a lot of what I do for Down & Out Books.
OBAAT: You and I
first met when I was self-publishing and you were running the Omnimystery
sites. How did that get started?
LW: Omnimystery
had its origin in the mid-80s with Hidden Staircase Mystery Books, a
pre-internet mail order service specializing in high quality first edition
crime novels. The biggest problem I had with the company was that I was also a
collector, and I had a hard time parting with many of the books in my
inventory. A cross-country move in 1995 caused me to rethink what I was doing.
The internet was still young then — Amazon had just been founded the year
before, and Google was three years into the future — and I thought I could
leverage my knowledge of the mystery genre into a centralized database of
sorts. Life gets in the way, of course, and I had a full-time job, so the idea
simmered in the background for another ten years until I registered the domain
name in 2006. I had assembled half-dozen other sites in the meantime, and when
Omnimystery became a reality, I merged them all under its umbrella. It still
exists today, and I’m still active with parts of it, though some of its divisions
are way out of date.
OBAAT: How did
you get together with Eric Campbell?
LW: That’s an
interesting question, and one that neither Eric or I can really fully answer.
Another cross-country move in 2008 found me in the Tampa area of Florida. I had
left my full-time job, and was looking to monetize the Omnimystery brand. Eric
founded Down & Out Books in 2009, and I’d like to think I was well-known
enough in the mystery community that a year or so later he reached out to me to
help build his new business. Of course, I was looking for advertisers and
sponsors, so it’s quite possible I reached out to him! To this day, we don’t
know who reached out first. But with both of us local to Tampa, we arranged a
lunch meeting to discuss how we might help each other. Quite honestly, nothing
concrete came out of that initial meeting. But we kept in touch, and another
couple of years later we had another lunch meeting and a few months after that
he asked if I might want to work part-time for him. I jumped at the opportunity,
which led to the position I hold today with the company.
OBAAT: What’s the
best part of your job?
LW: It probably
sounds like a cliché, but what I enjoy most is working with Eric. We come from
completely different backgrounds, have vastly different professional
experiences, and yet we both find ourselves working in a field that has held us
captive since childhood. It truly doesn’t get any better than that.
OBAAT: What’s the
worst part? Aside from dealing with whiny, co-dependent writers, that is.
LW: Whiny,
co-dependent writers? They exist? Wow, you’ll have to introduce me to one,
because the second best part of my job is working with our family of authors. I
will say the most frustrating part of my job is that I don’t have the time to
read all the books we publish. Indeed, I probably only read cover-to-cover
10-15% of them. True, I do have the opportunity to get a sense of all of them
during the manuscript prepping and formatting processes, but I do miss simply
reading books for the shear joy of losing myself in the world of crime fiction.
OBAAT: What’s the
greatest challenge of competing with the big publishers?
LW: I’m not sure
this answers your question, but I think the greatest challenge Down & Out
Books and other small, independent publishers have is simply getting
recognition for their authors and their work. The business of selling books —
reviews, awards, features, bookstores — heavily favors the NYC-based publishers.
I believe we could compete just fine if the playing field were even slightly
more level. We publish solidly plotted storylines with strongly drawn
characters, which take place in immersive settings that more than stand up
against the bestselling authors published by New York. But the average reader
simply cannot find them. It’s a tough business, to be sure, but I firmly
believe we are making progress despite the headwinds, and I couldn’t be more
proud of the books that Down & Out Books publishes every year.
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