THE PERILS OF PUBLISHING & THE UNDERSTANDABLE URGE TO EXPRESS PERTINENT IDEAS!

THE PERILS OF PUBLISHING & THE UNDERSTANDABLE URGE TO EXPRESS PERTINENT IDEAS!

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© August 19, 2009

REFERENCE: I’m always getting request to read writers’ manuscripts. Some of them are already published authors; others are people with solid ideas that would like to get published. I must confess that I sometimes fail to answer them at all, especially when they mount up to a significant backlog, but his comes from someone I know and respect. I wish I could give him better advice.

A WOULD-BE-AUTHOR WRITES:

Dear Jim,

I very much enjoy your learned and insightful comments; especially your recent one on Jackson interested me. I saw that book, hesitated spending the money to buy it but see now I must. I am a history buff, especially ante-bellum history, acquired since living in South Carolina, and teaching South Carolina history to 7th graders for two years. I became a fan of John C. Calhoun, reading about him.

It actually is a shame I think that he either wasn't smart enough, considered brilliant and finishing No.1 in his 1804 class at Yale, to either see slavery to a better conclusion, preventing the Civil War, and/or becoming president, in which position he may have accomplished that. As Webster maintained, if the north left slavery to be settled by the south, it would have phased itself out.

Anyway, finding there was no school-agers biography on John C. Calhoun in print, in libraries--school or public, I attempted to write one as my first or one and only book. I believe I might have been successful if I wrote it 30 years ago when kids read such books, even if reluctantly, before computers and power point presentations.

I submitted it to a few children's book publishers, received a little encouragement though not much. I felt my book would even appeal to those adults who liked that history period and would buy and read a short, interesting biography. I mean look at the length and complexity of the book on Jackson that you previewed. One publisher told me they hire their biographers to write on topics the publisher chooses for a fee, like $5000, and they weren't sold on Calhoun being a viable topic. I think his abilities and accomplishments are grossly overlooked, partly because of him not being a president and partly because of his strong slavery, white supremist stance.

Anyway to the reason writing you (I did buy read and enjoyed your book, IN the Shadow of the Courthouse (2003), and I did also grow up in Clinton/Lyons roughly during the time you did, graduating from LHS in 1950).

What I would like to ask you is if you would read and editorialize or critique my efforts. Should I attempt to self-publish it or just keep it for my own enjoyment? Biographies are much harder to properly write and edit, and publish than are novels. I rigorously researched Calhoun before trying to write my manuscript and am sure of the accuracy.

Is it readable and interesting enough to worry about for a teenage and casual adult readership? I tried to keep it to 25,000 words as suggested by an editor; it is a little over 30K. I developed his childhood and his family more than most biographies would because I was trying to show him as a total person and how he got to his positions. Anyway, if you'd allow me to do so, I'd like to send you a copy for you to read and comment on however you saw fit to do.

Thank you,

Dick

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DR. FISHER RESPONDS:
Dick,

I admire your effort to write a book on Calhoun. It is obvious you have put a lot of time and effort into the project. There wouldn't be much point to read your manuscript, first, because quite frankly I don't have the time, and second, because I cannot give you much encouragement for a viable outcome.

The publishing business has been decimated by technology, a change in tastes and by a new college age generation with a short attention span.

Young people today are smart, quick, impatient and hip to what is going on "now," without much understanding or interest in what has happened before 1990.

Scary? Yes. At least for us that see a connection with the past that determines the future.

Nearly forty years ago, I published my first book, Confident Selling (Prentice-Hall). It sold like hot cakes, and went through printing after printing. It stayed in print for twenty years (1970 - 1990).

Since then, I've published eight books, seven of them in the genre of organizational psychology, and the one memoir you mentioned, IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE.

The courthouse book was published-on-demand (POD) through AuthorHouse. It has sold well over a thousand copies and I've broken even on it, but I didn't make any money. I wrote it to remember Bobby Witt and a time, and have been repaid in kind. That has been my satisfaction.

Three other books were published through The Delta Group Florida. I lost close to $100,000 in that venture. Three others were published through AuthorHouse. I've come close to breaking even on those books. Confident Selling is the only book that made money.

So, you ask, why do I write? A writer is what I am.

You have taken on a subject that deserves an audience, namely the life of John Calhoun, but the stigma of historical intransigence, plus young people today worrying mainly about their cell phone and Internet social connections, along with the changing nature of the publishing industry, give a sense of the challenge.

Should you self-published? Should you contact a POD publisher? That is up to you. I can only tell you from the standpoint of experience that marketing is 80 percent of the publishing business and writing 20 percent of it.

Chances of making money with POD books is not impossible, but I would venture to say that most people who publish through such outlets do not recover their initial investment, which is likely a few thousand dollars.

Why? Newspapers traditionally will not review POD books, nor will periodicals. It cost tons of money to advertise, and that is even a bigger gamble. An entrepreneurial writer with an angle can breakthrough this barrier. This makes writing more of a business than an art. I've never been interested in that end. You may be so inclined.

Now, if you are a magician on the computer and the Internet -- which I am not -- it opens a whole new world to you.

That is the problem and opportunity. Millions of people surf the net, and who knows if they might be interested in your book. I will tell you this. If you self-publish, you should expect to lose money, and be pleasantly surprised if you don't. Discouraging? Yes, but unfortunately true.

Americans don't read but Europeans and people of the Far East do. I'm reading Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.'s last book, "Armageddon In Retrospect" (2008). He writes:

"My son, Mark (a medical doctor), was on the Admissions Committee of the Harvard Medical School, and he said that if they had played the admission game fairly, half of the entering class would be Asian women."

But of course Harvard cheats, as does everyone else to make up for lazy Americans. The tide is not coming in for us, as I've often pointed out.

How do I know? Independent bookstores are dinosaurs and Borders is threatening to go out of business with Barnes & Noble going more for pabulum to stay afloat.

Then there are those handheld computer books with a library on a single device. One day it might be the only way books are packaged.

That said I would not discourage you from continuing to pound on doors, of thinking creatively, perhaps illustrating your work, of celebrating the antebellum South, but with no guarantee anything might happen.

Margaret Mitchell wrote "Gone With The Wind" (1936), a book I read in high school, but a book that was said not to be "literature," now it is deemed a "classic." Why? Not so much for the Civil War, but for the people brought to life such as Scarlet O'Hara and Rhett Butler as representative of the times.

I mention that because of the temper of Calhoun's times. Meacham in his "American Lion" makes the people come alive by quoting personal letters and journals. As you know, Calhoun was a stuff shirt, but so was his wife to complete the imagery.

It may not seem like much but publishers have responded to your work! I've had tons of publishers who didn't display that courtesy.

Perhaps it's my age, or perhaps I'm mellowing. I say that because I have empathy for publishers and booksellers. They are up against it. I don't know what the answer is.

I don't read any of the books on the bestseller lists yet I buy books and read books every single week. I am told I am one-tenth of one percent of the American populace. Do the math! That's not much support to an entire industry.

Finally, consider turning the book into a novel. Make Calhoun a tragic figure of history. Show how he was trying to hold back history, when Nat Turner and others had already crippled the South’s hold on slavery.

William Styron wrote a novel, "Confessions of Nat Turner" (1993), which was a national best seller as the narrative of a man with a mission. He used James Baldwin, the great African American novelist, as his source.

Baldwin's novels are rich lyrical pieces of why today we have an African American in the White House. I've read them all.

Momentum! That's what stirs the drink. What I'm saying, Dick is that Calhoun is a tragic figure, and his essence lies in exploiting this. Good luck.

And always be well,

Jim

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