Surviving the Publishing Industry’s Looking Glass
By Guest | January 5, 2012 |
Kath here. Literary author Christopher Harris knows a thing or two about the hard knocks of professional writing. As a commentator for ESPN and sports journalist for Yahoo sports and ESPN the magazine among others, plus a slew of published short stories to his credit, Harris spent a year shopping his novel SLOTBACK RHAPSODY to traditional publishers. But being an insider doesn’t guarantee a book deal, especially in today’s risk-adverse industry. As many of us know, publishers find it easier to say no than yes even for a potential novelist with an enviable public platform and potential synergy in the marketplace.
But as many of us also know, these days there is also recourse in the form of digital publishing, and Harris was able to take destiny in his own hands. More work, but also more reward.
SLOTBACK RHAPSODY is a funny, incisive look at today’s sports culture as told by insider Harris:
At 27 years old, undersized but talented Nick “Mouse” Morrison has yet to realize his dreams. After several unsuccessful training camps, Nick decides a minicamp in Detroit will be his last go-round. His rejections have been tough on him, spiritually and emotionally — not least since the previous year marked the end of his on-again-off-again relationship with his college girlfriend Henny. The only way he’s able to regroup for this final try is by attempting a Buddhist approach to his life as well as football, but even that stresses him out. While going through an existential crisis from which only a thinking man’s athlete can suffer, he’s being absolutely crushed by 350-pound defensive tackles and bellowed at by coaches.
The novel follows Nick as he finally finds success as a slotback. But his compromises are many. His buddy Gasper hooks him up with HGH (human growth hormone), while Gasper is betting more money than he’s got on football. Meanwhile, Henny makes a surprise visit, and now that he’s a pro Nick suspects he might have another chance with her. With his life hinging on each game, how much of his identity will he sacrifice for success in a profession that thrives on conformity?
We were happy Christopher agreed to share his story with us. Enjoy!
“I’m so excited for you!”
That’s what a friend of mine said upon learning that my novel, Slotback Rhapsody, had (as they say) “come out.” Without doubt, it was a nice thing for her to say. She knew I’d been working on this book for a while, that I’d been through a couple rounds of major revisions, that I’d been tantalizingly close to deals with a couple major publishing houses. She also knew that I’d been writing fiction for a couple decades, and that while I’d had some small success placing stories in a few literary journals (News from the Republic of Letters, LIT, Washington Square), no book of mine — I’d written several — had ever seen the light of day. Yes, it was a kind thing for my friend to say.
My reply was less gracious: “You must get excited pretty easily.”
Let me explain. Thanks to my agent, Rachel Vogel, I’d finally made the decision to bypass the traditional publishing route, and put Slotback Rhapsody out myself. It made sense. We couldn’t cross the finish line with the editors Rachel was working with, despite a steady stream of interested parties. They would express enthusiasm via email and telephone, talk about possible revisions with Rachel and with me; heck, one editor literally spent an hour on the phone with me talking about the book, what he liked, which characters were based on real-life football players, what I might be open to revising. But soon after they expressed interest, these same editors (or their review boards) would come back to us and say they worried that sports novels don’t sell — Slotback Rhapsody is, in fact, about pro football — and that they didn’t think they could market it effectively enough to do a deal. We heard this several times, while in the same summer that “The Art of Fielding,” Chad Harville’s novel about baseball, was sweeping the literary world. It was madness-provoking.
Rachel and I were especially disappointed because of my day job. I work for ESPN as a writer and a TV personality. Specifically, I write and talk about football. It’s pretty much all I’m known for, professionally. I have about 20,000 Twitter followers. I have about 5,000 Facebook friends. I’m on SportsCenter twice a week. I have my own hour-long national radio show where I can talk about whatever the heck I want. How crazy is it for a publisher to admire a manuscript, to know what I do for a living, to hear from me that ESPN is ready to be extremely supportive to whatever on-air marketing efforts I care to muster (within reason), and for the publisher to say, “Sorry, we just don’t know how to market this thing.” Heck, I’ll admit it: part of the reason I wrote this novel in the first place was craven. I thought about “finally” producing something that was in line with my job, because of the marketing advantages that would provide.
That’s my experience of the traditional publishing industry right now. It’s through the looking glass. Rachel is an experienced agent, and told me that three years ago, she’d have gotten a bidding war going for Slotback Rhapsody, but now everyone just seems so afraid to say “yes” to anything. Going through that process, week after week, I honestly began to get the feeling that editors were just coming up with random reasons for saying no. One would ask for more interior development of the main character. Another would ask for more on-field action. In the end, though, they’d all come back to “sports novels don’t sell.”
So this October, Rachel came up with a plan to bring the book out ourselves. She was awesome. She did the legwork to figure out how to get it distributed digitally for Kindle, Nook and iTunes, and how to use Amazon’s “print-on-demand” paperback service, called CreateSpace. She emailed with me dozens of times to work out price points, manuscript size, graphics, and a million other things. Fortunately, from another life, I have some Photoshop skills, and I wound up producing the cover myself and doing the interior layout. Within a couple weeks, I had a proof copy, and the thing was actually for sale.
And that’s when my friend said she was so excited for me.
My ungracious reaction came from the vestigial notion that unless a book is published by a traditional house, and unless I can run down to my local bookstore and find it, it isn’t “real.” I was, I’ll admit, a little bit ashamed of not being “accepted” by an editor in New York. So I blurted out something stupid, which I immediately regretted. But the experience of having done it this in this manner is changing the way I think about publishing. I no longer particularly care that Slotback Rhapsody isn’t at Barnes & Noble. It would just get lost there anyway, and the royalties I’d make from any sale at a brick-and-mortar store would be negligible. I was worried that folks would only be able to get a digital version, but CreateSpace made it possible for readers to hold a hard copy in their hands, which is amazing. Clearly, with “non-traditional” publishing in its infancy, it’s difficult for any single self-published title to become a mega-hit. But still, it’s so damn easy.
Now that the book truly has “come out,” and now that it has actual readers, the bias I clearly felt against self-publishing a few months ago just as clearly exists in the literary world. One recent review hit me pretty hard, with language I felt was patronizing. I had the sense that the reviewer was trying to say that because this book was self-published, it was half-baked. That mentality is out there, though I hope it’s changing.”.
I used to have pity in my heart for the self-published. Now there’s only love.
Photo courtesy Flickr’s gui.tavares
Many thanks to today’s guest.
You can read more WU guest posts by visiting this link.
?! So much for all of the “you have to have a platform” stuff.
Still, congratulations on getting through the process, whatever form it ended up taking. May your sales be many and your margins high. :)
Christopher, congratulations on your novel ‘coming out’. This is fabulous! I’m in the middle of shopping my novel around with the hope to find a traditional publisher. That being said, I still have self-publishing in the back of my mind. Why spend 5 years polishing and working on something to shove it in a drawer? What’s to lose by going the self publishing route if the traditional publishers say no? I know there is still some stigma attached to self-published writers. I think the ease of it makes it easier for people to throw half baked books into the market. This makes it harder for readers and reviewers to find the polished gems and perpetuates the cynical stereotyping of the wanna be writer who couldn’t make it in the big leagues. This is changing, but it’s a slow process. More stories like yours give validity to those who are self published. Good luck with Slotback Rhapsody and thanks for sharing! :)
Christopher, congratulations and thanks for sharing your story. I’m surprised there wasn’t more interest from publishers, since you have a strong platform. I admire your perseverance and wish you success.
Thanks, Chris, for this. Seems like your experience shows more than ever how difficult it’s becoming to get a traditional deal if you don’t already have one – if you couldn’t get a good (based on Porter’s review) football novel published with your platform, what hope do the rest of us have. I chose the indie path for different reasons, mostly seeing parallels between publishing now and newspapers six or eight years ago, but stories like yours just confirm that for a lot of us, that’s the best available option.
Congratulations, Christopher! I’m sure it was a tough decision, and I’m so glad you’re getting past that ego barrier. Shocking that publishers didn’t eat up your platform, but it should certainly help you now! In this post, you’ve really captured the roller coaster of being on submission for so long. My experience was nearly identical – near-misses, hour-long conversations with editors about revisions and then finally rejections, which always seemed to be for exactly the opposite reason as the last. Although I ended up getting a deal in the end, it wasn’t until I had all but given up and confronted my own shame and prejudice to embrace the idea of self-publishing. It’s a difficult transition you should be proud of getting through. Considering your experience, I think this route is going to work out really well for you. I look forward to reading it and seeing it all over ESPN, which my husband is glued to.
I also want to offer my congratulations and thanks to you, Christopher. I may be joining you soon by publishing my labor of love myself. As Heather said above, stories like yours, and well-crafted books like yours (no, haven’t read it yet, but totally trust Porter Anderson’s assessment on RU, and soon will) can only help to change the mindset of the literary world.
Good luck and thanks for sharing!
Sports novels don’t sell? Yeah, sure, neither do novels about the Holocaust, pre-history, the sea, Africa…on and on. I hear these excuses all the time when novels by our clients are being declined.
They’re silly, of course, since there are so many examples to the contrary. What’s really going on though, I find, is that however enthusiastic these editors may sound, they’re bothered by something in the writing or storytelling–something that’s complex, unique, hard to identify and harder to articulate when you’re not being paid to do so.
I wonder if in all the constructive comments you got from editors at traditional publishers there was anything that actually made sense, was useful and something to improve the story or its telling?
I think a failing of traditional publishing is not in failing to recognize great stories, or in failure of nerve, but in failing to have the time, commitment or sometimes even the vocabulary to talk with authors about their stories.
Fact is, any subject matter can sell. Blowing away all objections isn’t easy, of course, but I do think an industry that isn’t focused on that objective and how it’s achieved is going to wind up relying on luck, chasing trends and gimmickry.
Uh…sort of like ours. Congrats on “coming out”, Chris. I’ll be keen to learn how your experience goes. Report back, will you?
What Rebecca said.
Really. Congratulations Chris. Platform isn’t the be-all-end-all. I’m sure it wasn’t an easy decision, but one I’m glad you make for it inspires me.
Don’t you just love Donald Maass’ comments?
I’m convinced publishing is kind of like the Wild West right now. Survival of the fittest and those who can shoot straight and aren’t afraid to take the shot.
“Rachel is an experienced agent, and told me that three years ago, she’d have gotten a bidding war going for Slotback Rhapsody, but now everyone just seems so afraid to say “yes” to anything. Going through that process, week after week, I honestly began to get the feeling that editors were just coming up with random reasons for saying no.”
Wow–this is almost exactly what I’ve been experiencing. And I ended up going the same route as you with my debut title. My agent is still working hard to get a different novel to publication, but I honestly don’t see things changing much in the big 6 until the main model changes radically.
Good luck with the book.
I have come to have sympathy with traditional publishers of paper books. The economics of paper publishing and distribution vs digital are so bad and will only get worse. You use the term ‘risk adverse’ for paper publishers. They have to be. Congrats on taking the digital route. History is on your side. Chopping up trees and hauling freight around and accepting returns is so archaic that it no longer makes sense when the stories can be distributed to every imaginable type of ‘reader’ effortlessly, weightlessly, instantly with the push of a button. The challenge still remains to get the book noticed and bought whether on a shelf or in the cloud.
Great comments here so far.
totally understand where you’re coming from — I feel it too. I think the whole industry, and that includes readers, are shedding our long-held notions about self-publishing, but it takes time. What will help it go faster is more authors putting quality books out, putting the same care and hard work into their offerings as traditional publishers. So congratulations, and thank you, for doing that. May it bring good things to us all.
Congratulations to you, Christopher Harris for a good-looking book! I too tried for years and years to find a traditional publisher. My first agent was sure my father being a sports figure would draw interest. (He is 1981 NBA Coach of the Year Jack McKinney. I’d gotten blurb promises from NBA players.) Ha! By the lack of interest, I began to think people in NY publishing didn’t even watch sports.
Over the years that I was trying, I tweaked and honed my story. I got advice from writers and industry people including a former Simon and Schuster Editor in Chief (lucky me!) so that by the time a gal walked into my spa in Mexico for a pedicure last February, it was in top shape. Chatting with the client, I found out she had a small publishing company. I said I had a manuscript.
Finally it wasn’t a struggle any more. She read it and liked it and Flirting in Spanish is now published by Antaeus Books. Maybe there is some truth to what Donald Maass says above – that during all those years I sent it out, it was rejected for being less than perfect. But of course I was also told nobody wants to read about Mexico. Can’t market this, etc.
Self publishing is a great option. I had actually done the Create Space option myself two months before my memoir landed with Antaeus Books. Why wait? You still have your unique platform, so market away! Best of luck with your book,
Susan McKinney de Ortega
An inspiring post.
I made up my mind to slow down on querying, when I read a published book by one of the large groups. It had more errors in than a s/p book I had read the previous day. If they can get away with not being 100% clean, and take a chunk of the sales cash, I am not impressed. My work is bound to have an error or two, but at least I am only little old me, not one of the big guns who has a team of proofreaders.
It has been a four year ride for my first novel. I have had good rejection responses, but still cannot find my niche. I am waiting to hear from a small press, but if that comes to nothing, then self publishing is the route I am going to take. Friends have had a lot of success with CreateSpace and being independent.
I feel for agents who are up against the wall with the publishing changes. I had dreams of chatting with an agent, sharing hopes of publishing, now that dream is shared with friends who have gone the DIY route.
It’s funny, because I am with a small royalty paying press who have been concentrating heavily on ebook sales more than print sales, and I felt I was often “less than” and ignored by New York (reviewers, etc), and by brick and mortars. So, I have to say that with all the self-published authors gaining speed and finding success, this has actually made me feel better about my decision to go Small Press! I can’t explain it other than I suppose it made me feel more understood and as if I had Company, compatriots of a sort.
Here’s to much success for you and your book!
Congrats on the publication of your novel!
I heard the same things about The Hazards of Hunting While Heartbroken, dubbed myself the Queen of the encouraging Rejection, and went the indie route this summer. So glad I did. While my press has yet to turn a profit, the book is getting great reviews in the blogosphere, and I like controlling things (the cover, etc.). OF COURSE it would be nice to be noticed by bigger reviewers, but maybe they’ll come around by the time I have a next book.
One thing I realized along the way: a traditional deal doesn’t mean financial security for most authors. I didn’t know how bad the numbers were before I started writing.
Sorry for the rambling reply. Have lots of thoughts on this subject.
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Christopher!
Congrats! Hold your head high. I’ve discovered during my 10-year plus journey through the ups and downs of publishing that readers – our audience – could care less whether you are self-published, traditionally published or small-press published. It’s funny. In this industry, much like any other, it’s easy to keep talking to ourselves, assuming the customer cares about what we care about, the insider knowledge we have of the business.
The readers care about reading great books – the rest will sort itself out. As the distribution and merchandising playing fields become more accessible and not so tightly controlled by the big six, amazing things are going to happen.
Thanks for your post – and no more apologies! I have to keep telling myself the same thing about my upcoming release.
Kaira Rouda
Author
Small press/Greenleaf: Here, Home, Hope
Traditional/Wiley: Real You Incorporated: 8 Essentials for Women Entrepreneurs
Self-publishing: All The Difference (Feb. 2012)
Congrats on your book! It’s strange, too, because just the other day, the CEO of a major house came out saying that they were going to be looking for ‘media-genic’ writers. It seems to me that you define the term.
I spent five years on that ‘random ways for saying no’ treadmill and reached a point where I needed to know for sure whether what they were telling me about what wouldn’t sell (in my case, time travel, romantic historicals, and anything set in medieval Wales) was true. Guess what?–it wasn’t.
Good luck to you and welcome to the indie world.
Christopher, you’ve been on the go-round (I won’t call it merry) and come off it wiser. Thanks for sharing the story with us. Do take a look at Donald Maass’ comment. I certainly can’t say I’ve been through your ordeal or that the editorial suggestions were valid, but I can say Maass is well-respected and one of the most analytical personalities I’ve met in the publishing world. He sees through to the heart of issues. Most helpful when you’re spinning.
Wishing you the best!
Congratulations and good luck bringing your book out. As I sit waiting for the Falcons/Giants game to start, I can’t help but think there’s an audience, especially once the season is over. ;-)
I just sent my manuscript to an editor in anticipation of shopping for an agent but like Heather Reid above, I’m thinking of self-publishing.
I’m really interested in all the work your agent did for you in the self-publishing process. Are more agents doing this? How does the agent make money by being an active participant in the process? Is there a new kind of contract that deals with this new role of the agent?