Convention News for the Unconventional

(NOTE: The following is a memoir and as such is told using lies, misinformation, faulty geography, and plain BS. Dialog has been invented for a number of reasons, none suitable to repeat in mixed company. The moral compass is pointed north where the good people of the Mendocino Coast lead pure, chaste lives while making books. Am I a bestseller yet?)

Do laundry, get a haircut, pack the bag, and rush to the airport and stand in line at the Richard Reid Memorial Shoe Check. Ever since 2002, when the dippy Mr. Reid tried to sneak plastic explosive and triacetone triperoxide in his suede high-tops on a Paris to Miami flight, the air travel experience includes presenting officers of the Transportation Security Administration with your footwear. The added time to an already tedious check-in procedure is used for worry. Who cares about my book? Why should they seek me out for an unreadable signature? What am I doing?

I am going to Washington, DC, where I attended my first American Booksellers Association convention in 1989 as a publishing shill. Now the show is called BookExpo America and I am a writer with a book. The hour-long stopover in Phoenix is spent outside the airport to chain-smoke in the Bone Yard, a dog walk of rocks, pebbles, and dust surrounded by wrought iron fencing. Another take-off and landing later is the baggage carousel at Dulles International, and meeting Donna, a novelist, and Steve, a nonfiction writer. We ride to Potomac, Maryland, where Steve’s sister, Wendy, has generously offered lodging. Donna has done the show before with her agent, Nancy Ellis, and knows what to expect. Wish I did.

Friday morning begins warm and bright. Inside the convention center, hundreds of publishers have booths ready to attract buyers for bookstores. Catalogs are handed out by smiling and vaguely hungover sales staff, deals are made in the International Rights Center, and Google distributes iced cookies from carts placed where conventioneers’ blood sugar is lowest. There are 22,366 attendees and 7,324 of them official book buyers. BookExpo is not a literary Ozzfest, except for John Updike giving props to independent booksellers instead of touting his new book, TERRORIST, at the Saturday morning “Book and Author Breakfast.” A light step around the booths of major publishers like Random House and Penguin shows tired retreads, celebrity goofs like Tracey Ullman’s knitting book, and novels destined for the remainder shelves at Barnes & Nobel. The independent publishers give hope, MacAdam and Cage relentless in publishing new fiction by new writers and Coffee House Press with Gilbert Sorrentino’s A STRANGE COMMONPLACE.

(Sorrentino passed away on Saturday from lung cancer after a lifetime of chasing the book. He had been an editor at Grove Press, taught at Stanford University, and wrote a stack of brilliant novels like MULLIGAN STEW, CRYSTAL VISION, BLUE PASTORAL, and ABERRATION OF STARLIGHT. He was a writer’s writer who happily goofed with structure and composed sentences washed in energetic humanity. If you do not know this man’s work, get to www.powellsbooks.com for the out-of-print, and www.coffeehousepress.org for Sorrentino’s later work, LUNAR FOLLIES, THE MOON IN ITS FLIGHT, and LITTLE CASINO. Screw the rent and buy the books.)

In the green room on Saturday afternoon, there is one bottle of lukewarm diet Coke to share among the writers, and a video crew filming interviews. One cup of coffee is what I want, along with a chaser of Valium and Xanax. A spectral black figure in wide-brimmed hat sits at a table, Joyce Carol Oates in her funereal finery. Knopf published a collection of her stories in the spring and another book is on the way, AFTER THE WRECK, I PICKED MYSELF UP, SPREAD MY WINGS, AND FLEW AWAY.

I’ve attended signings where the writer sat with pen poised and embarrassment at no one showing. Please let this not be me. Going against Oates is ridiculous. If I wasn’t scheduled to sign, I’d be in her line. Cynthia and I leave to paw at the boxes of prepublication copies. DOG WALKED looks sharp in laminated cover and the print-on-demand is not bad. The final book will look even better. We carry the boxes from behind the curtain and dump them at table 19. My favorite Lamy steel-nib fountain pen leaked on the plane. Cynthia shoves a Bic rollerball in my hand and walks the empty aisle to find someone who might like to have a copy of our bastard child.

The world’s cheapest plastic chain holds back the takers for DOG WALKED. As the chain is released, booksellers and neophyte writers fill the aisle leading to table 19. Cynthia Frank had set the Cypress House publicist to sending out two hundred invitations for the signing. We were cooler than cool. I wrote inscriptions and scribbled my name, effusive for a King County librarian on account of spending much of my childhood in Seattle libraries and flirtatious for a bookseller from Wisconsin. The worries, grunts, and groans since sending Cynthia the manuscript dissipate into the thick air of the convention center. Mr. Detroit is there, George Young who hired me years ago as an editorial assistant, and Duke with a jug of spiked lemonade. I am kicked from the table at 4:30 after scrawling across the title page in sixty books. Being a writer is fun.

NEXT: Goin’ to the Press and We’re Gonna to be Printed

Sailing on the Galleys

(NOTE: The following is a memoir and as such is told using lies, misinformation, faulty geography, and plain BS. Dialog has been invented for fun and to plumb the depths of honesty for a more meaningful fiction. The moral compass is pointed to where children sing and gambol. Am I an advance order yet?)


After a steamy, cross-cultural weekend involving trans fat-free snacks and two Portuguese-speaking au pairs, the galleys arrived in a fresh white box. Many writers have lost their reason when they see the projected book set in type. The editorial process does not lessen the surprise, and the writer’s question changes from “Does my book suck?” to “Do I suck?” Galleys can intimidate even the writers who score major advances. Thomas Sanchez received the galleys of his novel, MILE ZERO, and rewrote the entire book. This caused problems for publisher Knopf, who spent serious money having several hundred copies printed and were unable to hand them out at the annual bookseller’s convention on account of the changes. Would I do the same to Cynthia Frank and Cypress House? Naw.

The page proportions were solid with enough space allowed for the gutter and the small cap running heads reminded the reader what book they were reading. My concerns were over the typeface, my prejudices coming from years of working with the beasts in lead and on desktop. Any designed by Frederick Goudy were out (too blocky and stolid), along with san serifs (uncomfortable reading best for machines), and Palatino (display face by Herman Zapf accidentally used for text, though Aldus is fine), and the heavy or plain weird designer types. A typeface needs to be readable but should also have a hidden grace based on the movements of the scribe and stonecutter’s hand.

I bless the Cypress House designer’s surgically-cleared eyes. DOG WALKED is in Bembo, a classic typeface named after scholar Pietro Bembo, whose AETNA tanked when first published by Aldus Manutius in fifteenth-century Venice. The face was revived by the Monotype Corporation in the early twentieth century and since become a standard for bookwork. A line of Bembo has a friendly rhythm without being obtrusive, what every reader wants. I have set Bembo in lead and the type is damn terrific to handle. Having DOG WALKED in this typeface is double cool. I burned a pot of coffee and marked the pages. There were two names to add in the acknowledgments and the last entry in the Annotated Resource List read flat so I had to rewrite the short paragraph. Design questions were asked, changes suggested along with a couple of demands. Cynthia had kept her word. DOG WALKED sang in the best of humanist typefaces.

The month is May and BookExpo America runs the weekend of the19th in Washington, DC. Any corrections will wait until after the show. We must have prepublication copies available and this means going print-on-demand, not the least expensive solution. BookExpo America is the grand convention of the American Booksellers Association and showplace for publishers to display what tomfoolery is on press for the big fall season. Booksellers complain about rising gasoline prices and too many chain outlets. Publishers complain about making not enough money. This is business.

“We have a signing scheduled for DOG WALKED on Saturday,” Cynthia told me. “There’ll be a blow-up of the cover and you’re at Table 19, from 3:30 to 4:30.”
“What should I wear?”
“Don’t mix stripes and plaids and be on time.”

Ten Speed Press made a hit of HOW TO SHIT IN THE WOODS by giving away books at the BookExpo convention, and the inky terror has gone on to sell 1.5 million copies. Free books spread goodwill and the welcome word-of-mouth, and encourage booksellers to place an order. Coming from an independent publisher, DOG WALKED depends on goodwill. This means I have to be on my best behavior and not mention the chapter excised from the finished book, “How a Shower Scene Can Save Your Second Act.”

Once more for the detail-minded:
Book signing for THE DOG WALKED DOWN THE STREET: AN OUTSPOKEN GUIDE FOR WRITERS WHO WANT TO PUBLISH
Saturday, May 20, 2006
3:30 PM to 4:30 PM
Table 19, Autographing Area/Upper Level Exhibit Hall
Washington DC Convention Center

DOG WALKED will also be available at the Partners West booth 3157 in Hall A.

NEXT: Convention News for the Unconventional

Knee Deep in the Amazon

(NOTE: The following is a memoir and as such is told using lies, misinformation, faulty geography, and plain BS. Dialog has been invented for underhanded purposes and the moral compass is pointed away from the local Home Security offices. Oh where, oh where has my little dog gone?)

Down time occurs when a writer has sent off his manuscript, gone through the in-house editorial process, and expects the page proofs. The best approach is to do stay far from bookwork, or forget about the present book and start the next one. Down time turns to drag time for the unprepared. I sunk as low as talking to telephone solicitors while anticipating the publisher’s call, and lower still by checking my name on Google. There was me at different and various guises, and a link to Amazon for DOG WALKED.

Amazon grabs titles when the International Standard Book Number (ISBN) for a new book is registered. This is a swell trick, on account of they can gauge the market before ordering a book, but not without danger. Amazon encourages readers to post reviews, and why not? Books are made for readers, not the marketing department or writers.

Any reader can take you down in e-commerce by posting negative reviews. They can also make you a hit, except dwelling on the positive is never allowed in down time. The book has had a messy going of late. James Frey slipped in a million little fictions and was justly slapped on national television, JT Leroy exposed as a family hustle, and Opal caught trading angst for plagiarism and has a half-million dollar advance to return. Readers should be downright angry at the publishing business for having the collective integrity of a Space Invaders lunch box. To regard a new book with suspicion is the reader’s prerogative, just be nice to mine. Please.

I spent February reading, editing other writers’ manuscripts, and thinking about the latest catalog from Readers’ Subscription, called THE GRIFFIN. The front cover set the tone of the issue with the heading, “Myth is the basis of all human knowledge.” Was this true or lame hyperbole? Rebecca missed the deadline for her novel, but made up for the late date with an interesting excuse:

“Last night I caught my right pointer finger in a fold-up chair. I don’t know if it is broken, but it looks like I’ll lose the fingernail and I am in a lot of pain. Thank goodness I didn’t lose the finger. It was caught so badly I needed two people to open the chair to release my finger caught in the X of the fold-up. Luckily I am stubborn and can do the revisions we talked about with my left hand. I also screwed up my tailbone in the aforementioned chair incident so my butt hurts like a royal bitch as well.”

No calls from Cynthia Frank in February and less in March. I watched my numbers on Amazon swan dive from a high sales rank of 700,000 to the 1,000,000 range and past 2,000,000. The DOG WALKED had developed a limp while still in the kennel. I dialed Cypress House and asked for the publisher.

“We may have a spot of trouble on the schedule, nothing to worry over,” she volunteered.
“Don’t be coy. Give me the bad news.”
“Our designer has cataracts and is set for surgery. I had hoped for galleys this month, but he’s behind with books already late going to press. Yours is in line.”

Responding to such news and not sounding like a completely shallow putz is difficult. The designer is a human being with the frailties necessary to being human, and deserves to be treated with respect.

“Hire someone healthy and throw his ass out. Let him sell pencils with dark glasses and a white stick.”
“We’ll both forget what you’ve said. He’ll have one eye done, recuperate, and then have the other worked on. By April his vision will be better than before. You worry about the tiniest problems.”
“Me? Never. I’m right as rain, sound as a dollar, and fit as a fiddle. I’m fine.”
“Good. Now go make a living.”

NEXT: Sailing on the Galleys