BESTSELLERS & BEST FRIENDS
My book publishing blog, with murder mysteries woven through it.
If this is your first visit, be sure to start with “1. Let’s do it!”
______________________________________________________________________
(It is somehow fitting that this posting is my 100th. Lots of love in this one.)
People not only ask if I’ll look at their writing, they also often ask if I can help get their book published.
Me: “What’s it about?”
“My life. It’s what they call a ‘memoir.’”
Me: “Why did you write it? And who did you imagine would read it?”
“I wrote it because I wasn’t always like I am now. I was pretty, even sexy. I danced, I hitchhiked to New York City. I got good grades in physics and chemistry. I was fun. I need my kids and grandkids to know that.” (I absolutely get that.)
Me: “You don’t need Simon & Schuster to do that.”
I suggested she photocopy-and-bind (just like a book) copies of the manuscript and give those to her kids and grandkids.
See what just happened? Perfect publishing! Forget about visions of Random House, The New York Times Book Review, and lovely bookstores.
Just 1) make a manuscript into a book (print, digital, or audio), and 2) get it to its readers. Done! No contract hassles, no credit holds, no warehousing, no under-cutting from Amazon, no negative reviews, and no returns. The author is happy, and we assume her readers are. Woo-hoo! Go have a drink like real publishers used to.
Speaking of which, I perfectly published a book. Once.
It’s impossible for me to write well enough of my father. Born in 1914, he slammed into the Great Depression, and worked his way through dental school. He was a scrappy guy. He boxed for his college team back when colleges had boxing teams. He skipped going to medical school (which is really what he wanted to do) because a $100 scholarship was available for dental school. He worked as an oral surgeon at a Pittsburgh hospital (where he met my mother, a nurse). He liked to work the city ambulances on Saturday nights because he enjoyed fixing the jaws of drunken brawlers. He then fought in the South Pacific during World War II. He was a tough guy. After the war he set up a dental practice but because of an allergy, he did his dental work without Novocain. Even his patients were tough.
Yet Dad was the sweetest guy. Thoughtful, emotional, understanding, a good listener, and forever, madly in love with my mother. He wrote poems to her on Mother’s Day, her birthday, and their anniversaries.
His poems were short (just a few lines), simple, pulled from few words, and they rhymed. “Years” and “tears,” and “boys” and “joys,” often showed up. For example:
Then Alzheimer’s arrived. Dad became forgetful and confused. I wanted to publish a book of his poems, for him, before it was too late. Here was the chance for that odd son off in scary New York City doing weird publishing stuff to step up. I found somebody who printed and bound books by hand. Then friend and colleague Jeff Kinney (yep, that Jeff Kinney...I’m a lucky guy) designed the book and prepared what files the printer needed.
I presented Dad with the book the next time we visited Ligonier (my hometown). I was too late. He was confused. He held it in his hands, and laughed nervously (which he increasingly did when confused), and said “Thanks, son,” when my Mom told him to do so.
But that was OK. His poems were forever collected. My brothers and their wives, their children and their spouses, got copies. And in recent years, so too have of my Dad’s great-grandchildren. I got emotional (cried like a baby) when at my son’s wedding, I gave a copy to my new daughter-in-law.
See that? I made a book and got it to all its intended readers. The best publishing I ever did.
The 50 books I printed should last 200 years. Long after I’m gone, somebody out there with a bit of my Dad’s blood in ‘em might realize that they’re around because of an exceedingly good man who loved exceedingly well, and wrote the best poems he could to his beloved wife.
PS: My son, Max, now has my Dad’s old typewriter. It sits on his desk.
“I like to look at it,” Max told me, “and think about how he typed those poems on it. His fingers on those keys. Makes me smile.”
Tomorrow: I’m not sure