The POD Shimmy

Got the POD shimmy yesterday at a chain bookstore. You know the look. I am sorry we are not carrying your book...it is a POD book. Usually some low level manager who stares at all authors as if they just self published after reading the book yesterday. My book is not POD. It is traditional as bread. POD is an order driven system where books are produced by demand. Traditional is you print the books before hand. To make it more confusing many publishers back up their print runs with POD tech. So back to my man at the store.

Well my book is not POD could you check again. The man with the name tag stared at his computer. No. This is a POD book. By now he wants to be done with the pesky author. Look. My books were with Random House. This book is with a different press. Surely you can see that there are books in the warehouse. Noooo. I am sorry sir. But there is nothing I can do. And so we continued our POD shimmy. He behind a desk. Me in that sea of books.

Now look. I know you can do this. I am local. I have an interview coming up. I want to do a signing. And we shimmied on. Because the deal is POD books have no chance in bookstores. This is something most publishers wont tell their authors but the brutal truth is most books die because they never see the light of day. They never get seen by the consumer. Unless those books are sitting in a warehouse and a buyer makes the call and stocks them...then the author has no chance.

No. I am sorry sir. This is definitely a POD book. I could see our dance was at a standstill. We shook hands in mutual hate and I left the floor. I called up another store of the same chain in Chicago from the car. Of course we have your book! Would you like us to hold it for you? I thanked the girl and hung up. Sometimes you just want to know you still have it.

The Pitcher....sometimes a dream is all you have



 

Serial Sex Murders and the State of Publishing

I had  a friend say to me he was glad he had published his two books when he did and gotten the contract he did then because now it would be impossible Maybe that is why a film company is bringing out a 3D version of The Great Gatsby. They said it would allow them to give a faithful telling of the novel by bringing a stage quality (3D) to the film. Hmmm. Or like my dad said the other day, the only  people getting published are those that do something notorious (branding/celebrity) and suggested I go ride a motorcycle off a mountain or leap from this planet to the next and write a book about it. Thanks dad.

But if you are a fiction writer then there is a bit of feeling of yelling into a void. It would seem that Fitzgerald might reach more people in his 3D format than the original pulp version. Or that might friend might not get the contract he got before or maybe I really should jump into the next universe and write about it. But certainly a lot of the rules governing fiction might be on their head between the Kindle, the economy, and the more brazen publish somebody famous and play it safe.

Saying all that you have to believe good fiction by unknown writers is still being published. I remember a letter I received when I first started out and she said I had a good novel (an agent) but that serial sex murderers are what get published now. But for me to keep at it, "quietly good books do get published" One would like to believe that but maybe that quietly is the undoing of it all now. Quietly might not suffice in the age of the Internet.

We live in a loud polymorphic culture of multiple stimuli. I run my UVERSE from my phone and DVR movies while I  sit in the dentist office so I hae them to watch when I get home. That is a lot of  options to have in the palm of ones hand. And yet there those novels I still flip off the television to go read. I am a writer, so I may be the exception, but maybe those "quiet books" are the ones that people will still seek out. But you have to have a publisher take a chance on those people who will turn from the media of the age.

I have to say though, a good story should be the determining factor. As a novelist you have to cling to that notion and ignore everything else. So in a way I guess I am back to to battling it out with the serial sex murders with the book quietly published. Let's hope it still gets published.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Twains Response to Keillor review of his Autobiography

Long dead that I am I will take a moment to respond to a man who lives in a age where the majority of people watch Dancing with the Stars and ruminate on the misfortune of Snooki and most people can't read a book without running to their infernal computer to see if someone sent them a bit of mail that has not a damn thing to do with anything and people write blogs that pass for literature and are just a rambling bunch of horse manure and a  man of that time has the infernal audacity to say my autobiography is the ramblings of an old man. Well Mr. Keillor as one one old man to another, I am dead, what is your excuse?

Wouldn't lower myself to read your stories of small town life that was never that-a-way-anyhow. Couldn't care less if you do think my ramblings are of no interest to men of your time and ilk or women for that matter. I will note that I have survived a hundred years plus while I seriously doubt you will be yesterdays news when you join your brethren in hell or heaven whichever your choosing. I spent a life giving my left foot to people like you and I am glad to see the New York Times has survived as a testament to that all is wrong in that business or reviewing literature. And good to see they have the same low standards that allowed them to take on a man who would pass himself of as a writer of  contemporary hogwash.

I might point out that you cannot get my book such is the demand. For a man who has been dead for a hundred years and has no advertising budget I would say that is pretty damn good and speaks volumes to my veracity as a writer of fiction and satire while you sir are a hawker of all things trivial and sentimental and once you have slipped below the terrestrial ground you so mightily besmirch, you will be hard pressed to find one buyer of your ruminations on your short journey of hell on earth.

Now I put a stipulation of a hundred years to publish my autobiography, but I see that is still too short a time for mankind to stop producing jackasses such as yourself. I think I will stipulate next time, if there is a next time, two hundred and fifty years. That should be enough time for man to either kill himself off or at least bleed out men who claim to speak with authority when in fact they are the baboon of our origins. With no regards at all...Mark Twain.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man will be out in January.