It's the title of a spot-on 40-minute film here on YouTube by the US sports writer Jeff Pearlman about the lengths that writers - known and unknown - now have to go to in order to publicise their books. In a week where my own publisher oversaw the paperback 'launch' of my last (and I mean that in every sense - it's just not worth it) book without so much as a swift Tweet, it makes for pertinent viewing. It's also very funny.
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Book Whore
IMP - so basically the message to the rest of us is, don't write a book to be a best seller, write and keep your day job ? Right ? I know of two other people (who I know via social media) who self publish through amazon.uk and they have hit the top 10 sellers, but of course, that only happened when the book was free or 99p.
We had a semi-famous author at our local public library a couple of weeks ago, for a reading and signing. She drew 6 people, two of whom worked at the library and one other was her assistant who drove her to the library and carried in boxes of books.
Seems to me if you write books on sports, your signings have to take place at sports venues before a sports event ?
Did you have any signing events - do you have any (bitter) stories ? -
Book Whore
That's awful.
Knowing IMP and what he's been through killed off any faint interest I ever had in publishing.Comment
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Book Whore
When the US edition was published in September last year, I had this notion to do a US book tour. I genuinely, and naively, thought that US soccer clubs/fans would be interested in a book that came with the message that the NASL played a significant role in the development of the modern game. After all, US soccer has an inferiority complex about its perceived lack of history, and here was a book, from a snotty Brit no less, telling it that this is far from true, and that their 'failed league' is a fascinating and historically significant entity on many levels.Exiled off Main Street wrote: Seems to me if you write books on sports, your signings have to take place at sports venues before a sports event ?
Did you have any signing events - do you have any (bitter) stories ?
So I spent the best part of three months last spring and early summer working contacts and writing to individual clubs, book shops and sports bars to try and arrange readings/signings/events (I was proposing quizzes with prizes, getting old NASL players to come in and give talks etc.) - I was planning to start in Florida and go up the east coast, then up to Canada and across to Minnesota/Chicago, and basically anywhere else that would be interested. Some places responded, even with enthusiasm. Some said no, and many ignored my approaches and follow-ups, even teams that were widely discussed in the book. I did not ask anyone to put up any kind of cash for this event - all I needed was a room and some pre-event publicity. Upon second contact, the venues that had originally responded positively to emails stopped responding too. The only concrete offer I got was from DC United, to set me up with a stall outside a home game that kicked off at 7pm on a Friday evening. I cancelled the whole thing - the publisher offered me not one second or cent of support in setting this up.
I wasn't bitter, just disappointed, and not especially surprised by the end (though browned off at how much time and energy I'd wasted). I suppose the reality is that one endorsement on Twitter by a famous player or personality would have done way more for the book than a gruelling six-week road trip.
So yeah, Exiled, don't give up the day job.Comment
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Book Whore
Christ, this subject grinds my gums, to the extent I could write a frigging book on it in addition to the one I've spent the past two years putting together. I decided to go down the self-publishing/Amazon route in the end.
The number of tools and morons who have somehow landed well-padded, well-paid posts in the publishing industry despite a complete inability to do their jobs is genuinely frightening. For every competent person you encounter, there are three or four absolute spanners. After prolonged exposure to these people, you start to wonder how any books ever find their way onto readers' shelves at all.Comment
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Book Whore
What's your book about, Borracho?Comment
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Book Whore
People who grind their gums....pay attention, man.Comment
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Book Whore
I was really looking forward to IMP's book tour.
I assumed you talked to the Rowdies and their "official" sports bar up the street. Sad that they didn't get it. That would have been ideal. I know at least two people who would have shown up for it.
Likewise, I'd think Minnesota United would be really keen to do whatever they could to promote the idea that Minnesota has a grand footballing history as they're trying to close a deal to get tax breaks for their new stadium in St. Paul. My friend Eric in Minnesota really liked the book.
Maybe its a catch-22. With publishers not putting any money into promotion except for a few books about Vampires, and more and more authors focusing on social media, readings/signings just aren't as common as they used to be, which means a lot of the people you contacted had no idea what you were talking about. And then they don't happen and the whole institution dies.
I suppose that the only people who are interested in helping to market a book - or even grasp the concept - are people who are really passionate about books. And, in this case, they'd probably need to be passionate about soccer too and be in a position to offer you time and space to do readings and signings. That's a small list.
I don't know if there are any sports-specific bookshops in the US at all. There are so few bookshops left period.
I'm reading a book right now called How to Weep in Public by a stand-up comedian named Jacqueline Novak. It's sort of funny, but it's about her experience with chronic depression. She seems to be doing a lot of the promotion herself on twitter. She seems to respond to every reasonable comment about it on twitter and shamelessly (and she shouldn't be ashamed) asks everyone who says they like it to rate it and review it on Amazon. I guess that helps a lot. She's also doing a series of short youtubes where she talks to somebody with insight into the topic. I'm not sure who is paying for that. She got Lena Dunhamn on there. That must have helped.
Yeah, getting David Beckham to hype it on twitter would help a lot. But even if you got some of the NASL veterans to talk it up and then get some club twitters to retweet that, would be good.
Wish I could be more help. My readership is about 50 people.Comment
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Book Whore
Thanks for that, Reed. The problem with doing your own publicity is that you quickly become a pain in the ass to your friends and followers (who hear you plug the same thing again and again), and you start to hate yourself for saying the same thing over and over. The bloke in the film I linked to at the start of the thread goes on Twitter and painstakingly friends 45,000 people. I think if I did that I would die inside somewhere along the way and become a postman. In fact I've often thought that would be my ideal job - wondering around all day and talking/humming to myself.
At the same time, I don't want to sound too down about the whole thing - I had a tremendous time writing and researching the book. If you strip out the commercial aspect, and are lucky enough to have a wife who earns enough to support you (never mind that you want to earn enough from a blockbusting book so that she can retire), then you can't complain too much.Comment
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Book Whore
This is confusing. Do you want to be Dan Brown or don't you?Comment
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Book Whore
It's a good example of how we're not living in any kind of meritocracy. IMP is a really good writer. I don't just say that because he's a friend. He's actually really good at putting words together in paragraphs that are both clear and illuminating. Not many people can do that very well and that includes a hell of a lot people getting paid to write shit like why Hillary Clinton is like Princess Leia, FFS.
Honestly, I think IMP, EIM, and Taylor Parkes are three of the best writers I know or know of.Comment
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Book Whore
Heh. I want to have his sales figures, while someone else does all the publicity work.WOM wrote: This is confusing. Do you want to be Dan Brown or don't you?Comment
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Book Whore
If I ever thought I could make a living as a book writer, working here has disabused me of that idea.
If you publish a book in this country - and probably in the US as well - we are probably #1 or #2 on your list of places to send a copy and hope for a review. We're a no-brainer. We get a copy of every book published by a major house, a minor house or by a schmuck with $5000.
Those books pile up in a room the size of two high school classrooms, and three times a year we have a sale and give all the money to the United Way. Three times a year. The books are piled on tables, and in bins under the tables.
Every one had an author, an editor, a publisher and a dream. Many are good. Many are shit. Many are dull. Many have practically no potential audience.
And then there are the odds. If you walk in to a bookstore and think "Man, there's lots of books published" you're only half-right. Those books are only the ones that found a wholesale buyer. They made it to the shelf. Think of how many got passed over at the wholesale level, or didn't get published at all. Holy crap.
All this to reach fewer readers than ever before, who read fewer books than ever before.
But you, sir. You've done it more than once and can say you're a published author with people who actually read you and rate you. I wish it were more lucrative, but fuck me...the odds are stacked against you from every angle.Comment
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Book Whore
IMP, have you tried getting a slot at a book fextival? Hay is probably quite hard to get into but there are others and something as niche as this is the kind of thing they might be interested in. (Hay had a guy talking about slugs this year)Comment
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Book Whore
He could then rename the thread Hay Ho!...Comment
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Book Whore
Great word.Patrick Thistle wrote: ...at a book fextival?Comment
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Book Whore
A lot of those books are published by academics who wrote it for a very specialized audience and never had any expectation that it could make money. I'm not entirely sure why its necessary for those kind of books to be "published" any more. (Or maybe they won't be in the near future.) The sticker price is often very high and the audience is limited, so I'd think it could just be distributed online or print-on-demand (is that really a thing?)
"It's just one of those things."
"One of those things where a cherished dream is smashed into your face and you're humiliated in front of everyone you know?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zg6j9mlw7WoComment
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Book Whore
Print on demand is indeed a real thing, especially in academic publishing. Book stores near major research universities seem to do a decent trade in same.
Imp, I wonder if the relative increase in the NASL's profile (and that of the US Open Cup) will provide a happier hunting ground for you going forward. There do seem to be pockets of interest that weren't there even a few years ago.
Or it may be that I just hang out with too many soccer hipsters.Comment
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Book Whore
[To Reed... (to read?)]
Oh, for sure. Yet many of them thought "Insights into The Peruvian Post-revolution Soy Market" would make an ideal book for a Canadian broadsheet to review in its Arts section. The fuck?
Print On Demand does exist, but I don't know why. Surely a PDF or an e-book does it all, and better. And if you simply must have paper, print the damn PDF.Comment
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Book Whore
There used to be an independent shop here down on College Ave that specialized in selling print-on-demand packages for university classes. Professors would give them the materials they wanted and then students would have to go there to get their copy. It was a small shop loaded with small boxes labeled by course name and number. I recall going in there with my mom once at the beginning of the semester. It was like a combination of an Indian bazaar, the last helicopter out of Vietnam, and the Chicago Commodities Exchange.Print on demand is indeed a real thing, especially in academic publishing. Book stores near major research universities seem to do a decent trade in same.
But now that place is gone. Now teachers just put all of that stuff online.
At W&M, the teachers were usually - but not always - kind enough to pick those things up for us or find a way to distribute it through the college bookstore. The one and only copy place was a hassle to get to without a car, which few people had.
Now that trade, such as it is, is dominated by FedEx/Kinkos. (You have those, right)? Printing a whole book on any of the shitty $100 HP printers I own (they just keep piling up) would be a hassle - it would use up the cartridge and all my paper, I have no way to bind that many pages, it would have to be an unwieldy 8.5 x 11. But Kinkos probably could do something better with that. At least put one of those plastic thingies on them to make a kind of book spine.Comment
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Book Whore
Cerlox binding...the gold standard....Comment
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Book Whore
That's right! When I was a kid, my dad's office had the thingy that put those on. We'd make our own picture books and he'd put them together with it. It felt so official.Comment
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Book Whore
Have to admit that Velo is a new one to me.
Can't stand 'twin loop'.Comment
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Book Whore
Coil-binding is ideal for instruction manuals that need to lay flat while one's hands are doing something else.Comment
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