SOUR GRAPES (& a good point or two)

July 19, 2013 by 1 Comment

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I’m so powerfully tempted to write this in the third person and distance myself from it in order to keep from sounding bitter.  There are few sounds more distasteful than sour grapes being chewed—I’m aware of this.  For better or for worse, it would also be disingenuous and wildly irrational for me to try to pretend like this was about some “other” independent-press published author. 

 

I’m not going to attempt to give a full sketch of the state of the publishing world.  That would be tedious and complex and too long.  Most people recognize that the foundations are shaking.  Self-publishing through electronic means and the zeal and dexterity with which many small and midsized presses have snapped up the leverage and power offered by e-publishing has cast the mainstream industry into frightened disarray.  Much like CDs, physical books are stacked on a precipitous downward slope that tips toward relative irrelevance (unlike music, I will always prefer a physical book to a file). 

 

Part of me—and I suspect part of many indie authors—cheers this transcendence.  After enough years of disrespect and betrayal and dishonesty at the hands of literary agents and mainstream presses, I can’t help but cheer the rapid entropy.  I can’t help but smirk when they bring lawsuits against Amazon and Apple and whatnot, trying to get their manicured fingertips in the dike.  I almost kissed the self-published author who recently told me that not only had she made the NYT bestseller list, but was enjoying turning down mainstream editors when they called her to buy her book out from under her. 

 

Another part of me, of course, is nostalgic for the days that ended long before I ever published anything—when it was the author’s job to write and the agent’s to sell and the editor’s to edit and the publicist’s to publicize.  And that was that.  The emotionally complex, right-brained artistes could rest easy in the cool shadow, wait to be trotted out après martini or two for a well-attended reading now and then.  Or perhaps it was never that way and it’s just a bittersweet dream some of us share. 

 

But we can’t have it both ways, I realize.  So I swallow my panic at the mandate to “self-promote,” my discomfort at “marketing” an elegy/memoir/love story that is so intimate and meaningful to me.  I swallow the daunting, unhelpful knowledge that I have no idea how to do this and…well, I just start doing it, because the book and what I hope it transmits means that much to me.

 

And I can’t even begin to claim the same duress of solitude that a self-published author can.  I have a mid-sized Canadian press putting my book out, and a team of PR Angels from the Neocom Group that have taken on my plight with tremendous heart because they, too, believe in my work.  But still, it’s a grind through a very dark wood with many moments of temptation to lie down in the snow and go to fucking sleep. 

 

One such moment is what I intended this essay to address.  Let’s say that there’s a certain bookstore in a certain city in Oregon that has gained a great deal of traction as a sort of indie lit clearinghouse and has earned a reputation as ground zero for independent literature in the city and the region.  This store is proudly northwestern in addition to being proudly indie. 

 

My good friend, an affable, well-spoken law student approached this store for me regarding Clearly Now, the Rain, and after following up once or twice, received this response:

 

“I looked into Eli’s book and our buyers elected not to carry that title in stores.  We don’t bring inventory into stores through events, so we would decline a request to host Eli….We just can’t carry every title that gets published each season.” 

 

So, an independent-press published regional author with excellent blurbs (quotes), a kick-ass Kirkus review, and a memoir that takes places majorly in the northwest who’s grinding hard to get some traction isn’t suitable for this store.  (This is the point where I am concerned about the sound of the grapes, but fuck it.)  This does cause one to wonder what is suitable for this store, does it not?  A quick visit to this store’s website evidences no shortage of mainstream press-published, bestselling author, front-list type of titles spotlighted. 

 

If a giant independent bookstore features these titles and turns down…Christ, let’s just say it: turns me down…what precisely does “independent” mean anymore?  And more to the point, how do brick and mortar bookstores expect to survive if they don’t demonstrate any particular interest in, solidarity with or affinity for independent authors?

 

In case I’ve been too harsh on the anonymous J bookstore described above, I should probably add that myself or people working on publicity on my behalf have been simply ignored by all of the bookstores in New Orleans, the University Bookstore in Seattle, and others.  I suppose the question I’m arriving at is: why do bookstores matter anymore if they don’t persist in being locales for literary life and allies in the struggle against corporate domination of art? 

 

And, of course, every single vendor online can indeed “carry every title that’s published each season” if they wish. 

 

(Of course this same Oregon bookstore is selling my book online)

 

Filed Under: clearly now the rain, indielit, Memoir, Philosophy, self-promotion, Writing

Jack London Bar: Writing & Healing (& Gratitude)

July 10, 2013 by Leave a Comment

It was with tremendous trepidation that I descended the staircase into the dark, gritty space of the Jack London Bar (downstairs of the Rialto Room in old town Portland) last night to deliver a “lecture,” a proposition that would have, at many an era in my life, seemed unlikely or downright laughable.  A disco strobe swept the cavernous space and a brilliant young dude named Seth spoke eloquently about the history of mental illness in Oregon.  It was like a combination of a liberal arts symposium and a raucous bender.  But soon enough love and suppor trickled in, in the form of faces old and new–college classmates, activist colleagues, high school homies, and the occasional stranger.   I did my best to speak truth about the experience of writing & healing in my personal and professional life and found that, as I did so, I was weaving myself into a more real and integrated state.  I am deeply grateful to all the love–Lessie, Ben, Alex, Perla, Abel, Larry, Laurel, Paul–and the incredible guidance and support from savvy Mike and smooth Alexis of the Neocom Group.

 

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Filed Under: clearly now the rain, Memoir, Narrative Therapy, Pongo, self-promotion, Writing, Youth

#clearlynowtherain #launched! @ #EBB

June 24, 2013 by 1 Comment

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All due respect to the various kick-ass indie lit stores in Seattle, we all know where the mother ship is—well, you know if you haven’t been living elsewhere and missed the headline that the mother ship is no longer docked in drafty, desolate Pioneer Square and is now a crown jewel in the hipster crown of Capitol Hill.  Yes, I’m talking about Elliott Bay Book Company, the mecca of memoir, the coffee table of coffee table books, the real story of the novel, the palace of poetry, etc.  My good friend Amanda Carr’s parents founded the store some indecent number of years ago (I say indecent only because I just creaked out of my 35th year yesterday and am feeling it), and I don’t know if they knew what they were creating, culturally speaking.  I read at the original EBB in 2006, from my first book, Falling Room, and was daunted and humbled by the proverbial size of the stage I took. 

 

 One might think that seven years later, I’d be less daunted and humbled by taking the stage again, but that wasn’t the case.  The great Benjamin Percy was the last person I saw sit a folding chair in the soft glare of those track lights.  So when I got there Saturday and schlepped my pounds of beer and ice and sausage and cheese and wine through the underground catacombs and into the cavernous and cinematic reading room, I just sat up there, quiet and alone for a few minutes, looking out and trying to channel the poise of Percy—but I was already feeling the churn of emotion that I knew this evening would bring me. I felt incredibly grateful when Emily Holt, my colleague and friend from Pongo Teen Writing arrived and we started sitting that space together. 

 

It is one thing to pack the house for any literary gig (especially on a sunny Solstice eve), but it’s quite another to pack it with people from nearly every realm of my life: childhood homies, my late father’s employee-friends, my grandmother-in-law, my clinical internship instructor, my co-interns, activists and allies from social social justice work, family of blood and choice, kick ass writers of all genres, babies and toddlers and even if a few curious strangers!  And it’s another thing altogether to have all those people uncross their arms and lean in and show not only interest, but deep love and solidarity. 

 

I don’t want to make it sound like this reading was a therapy session, of course.  It was much better than that.  It was the launch of a love story that I’ve carried around carefully for many years.  And it had to happen at Elliott Bay Book Company. 

 

Thanks.

 

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Filed Under: clearly now the rain, Dad, Memoir, Pongo, self-promotion, Writing

#struggling

June 12, 2013 by Leave a Comment

I’m probably writing this now because it’s something I know how to do: write. Versus, say, pushing text and hyperlink pebbles around on Twitter. Or cold calling media figures with the hail mary request that they become instantly interested in my book and go out of their way to interview me. Or trying really, really hard for a really, really long time to figure out how to integrate my personal FB page with my “author” FB page in a way that make sense. I don’t know how to do these things with any dexterity and grace. I don’t know how to do these things without self-doubt and wincing. But I know how to write. I know how to write about pain, frustration, humor, love, dogs, toddlers, loss, grief, healing, masculinity and a lot of other things. I just need someone to put the fucking hashtags on right.

 

There is so much to say about the process of independently marketing a book. I dare to hope that someday I will be able to share what I’ve learned effectively, but for the moment I’m just praying—and scouring the web—for more resources that can guide me. Mike Philips and Alexis Dane @ the Neocom Group have been godsends, but they have day jobs, of course. I’m sure Guy Kawasaki would rock my world—but his webinars are always scheduled when I’m working. Bleary-eyed, I’ve perused the bookshelves for guerrilla marketing titles after long days of counseling young people about problems far graver than selling books, but none of them has felt accessible somehow.

 

This new era is a bitch. It demands equal parts social media/guerrilla marketing prowess and artistry. Since when do we find those two attributes firmly rooted together in a person? Very rarely. They literally require different parts of the brain. When I wax all wishful about a mainstream publisher that would just handle my shit for me in fine form, my friends chuckle at me—I’m too young to be nostalgic for that era. I never knew it. I just fantasized about it. Anymore, it doesn’t exist. And I’m sharp enough (at least after coffee and conversation) to know that those authors who are up and coming and somehow do get some sort of quasi silver platter treatment by big presses are actually being done a disservice in the long run, unless they can stick the dismount perfectly and transform themselves into the next John Irving or whatever. I say John Irving as if he doesn’t tweet. He probably does. Those of us that are being forged by this new era of self-promotion via social media will one day be grateful for it, I’m sure. When we read the epitaph on Random House our hearts won’t be as troubled. When publishers themselves have become irrelevant, the new humble rulers of the literary space will be people who know how—because they learned by necessity—to do it without big corporate hands.

 

I know this, even feel it in my bones sometimes—yet when I find two hours a day to drag my tired mind through Twitter feeds and message boards and Goodreads member logs instead of writing one of the twenty-six essays or stories that are thumping in the attic of my life, I sometimes wonder if I’m on the right track.

Filed Under: Philosophy, self-promotion, Writing