A year ago this month, I and two colleagues began writing a book about the former U.S. Route 66. Yes, that Route 66. The historic road of every driver’s dreams. Specifically, the beginning section between downtown Chicago, where the route began, through to the southern edge of Joliet, where the route’s path leaves urban civilization behind and meets the open road.
Yow. What an undertaking. And I say that as someone who loves to write and is damned good at it.
You’ll forgive this long initial entry, I hope; I have to set the stage.
You say there are already lots of books about Route 66? Agreed: tons. And precious few of them bother much with this particular section of the road. Oh, they might have a few paragraphs to a few pages about Chicago or the four best eateries on the road between Chicago and Joliet, but that’s about it. We figured out that much when we tried to arrange ourselves a day trip for this section last summer (see our newly begun book blog here for more on the backstory).
We also determined that nobody really had that combination of local history, practical guide and colorful armchair reader that we were looking for to prepare for our own jaunt. And since we had already done so much research for our own trip … well, you can guess the rest. Material for a book.
This is the point at which I mention that neither of my two colleagues has ever written a book, although both have published the occasional academic or research paper particular to their jobs (they’re geographers). Which means that my experience in having written a nonfiction book on my own and being a writer and editor by profession makes me the heavy on this project. And if it fails, I’ll bear much of the blame.
Don’t get me wrong: I love my collaborators, and we share the joys and problems of our project equally. They’ve been terrifically supportive in helping me get through various periods of underemployment while we’ve worked on this, and continue to do so; we do all have to make a living at our regular jobs while this gets done. And we don’t expect to get filthy rich from the end product – nobody does that by writing a travel guide – though we would like it to sell well. But when you’re the lone professional writer in the group (I’m a journalist), that puts rather more responsibility for the result on your shoulders. Especially if you have the temerity to edit your colleagues’ entries (and I do).
I also have a much better idea of what to expect from a publisher, and how long it could take to find one. After we manage to land a literary agent, that is. And book publishing isn’t what it used to be: the big houses are fewer, do less marketing than in the past, and go more for already known names. It’s much harder land one. There are newer, hybrid publishers, of course, who do both print versions and e-books, but you never know just how much effort they’ll be willing or able to make for your book until well after you’ve signed on. Too late then if you’re disappointed.
Did I mention that authors are now also expected to have marketed themselves and their prospective books in advance by having a ‘platform’ and an already established fan base? Wait, how can we have that base if we haven’t published yet, you ask? That’s what the ‘platform’ is for: you have to have a following of your own before you can seriously interest a publisher. That used to be the kind of thing they did for the author in years past, but no more. The publishing business is too dicey and too competitive for publishers to have remained like that. Or so they would have us believe.
So how do you get that fan base? Well, it helps to have already published and become well known to readers (I know: circular reasoning, but there it is). If you’re a book-publishing newbie or not well known, you’re expected to get that way by having a relevant blog, a web site for your soon-to-be book, or both, so that you can drum up interest in advance. The amount of interest shown in your blog/web site, as judged by the number of ‘hits’ and where it/they show up in web searches, is the measure of your book’s potential audience. That is, if that potential audience goes online (if it doesn’t, nuts to you and your book). Rude, but true.
Ouch. I am in for it.
This is the kind of stuff that can give you nightmares if you’re a budding author. I’m not a newbie, but it still worries me. I’m also not a household word, my colleagues much less so. Which means we have to develop that all-important platform. Learn to tweet (oh, spare me; I know Twitter is all the rage and I’m a technophile, but honestly, it’s not always that useful … but I’ll have to learn to make it so. Hmph; how Jean-Luc Picard of me. Perhaps that’s the attitude to take towards all this ‘building a platform’ business: treat it as an adventure into the Great Unknown). Yeah. Right. But I’ll do it.
You know you’re a little desperate when you start taking book publishing advice from Star Trek. (And don’t any of you fans start giving me crap for that remark: I was a steady viewer for so long as the Star Trek franchise had a show on the air and never missed one of the films. But the show isn’t a life philosophy, let alone a reliable guide on how to attract a publisher or literary agent. Enough said.)
Attracting a literary agent has become another arcane difficulty these days. Yes of course, I’ve read the Writer’s Digest guides, read the related literary agents’ blog and will take all that advice, but I’m still concerned. Wisely. An author has to do A LOT more of this preliminary work than was ever the case before, and getting the right agent requires as much (or nearly as much) research as writing the book itself. More cause for worry.
If I didn’t really love writing and love this subject, I wouldn’t bother. Well, maybe.
Besides, I hate confessional writing, and this smacks of it. If one isn’t careful, such a tract can quickly descend into an exercise in Too Much Information. A contemporary phenomenon that occurs far too often. As in: no, I don’t really care what kind of underwear Lindsey Lohan (fill in the blank with your own choice of overexposed celeb) wears or doesn’t wear, as the case may be, and nobody else should, either, except maybe her mother.
So why do this? Well, some writers belong to writers’ groups, made up of other professional authors, to get feedback on and support for their own work, a second (and third, and fourth) set of eyes, and so on. It’s also a good way to reach out to potential readers and gauge their interest in the subject. I don’t have a local professional authors’ group in my neck of the woods (SW suburban Chicago), so this will have to do. I hope that other authors will, on occasion, read this and share their own experiences with ‘platform building,’ finding an agent, drumming up reader interest, and dealing with book publishers.
I also hope to hear from readers who may be interested in our upcoming book (the book has its own blog, located here) and learn why they’re interested and what they’d like to see in it. But I suspect posting on this personal journal of sorts will be to keep my own sanity as the book project progresses. The critical beginning has been made: the manuscript is about two-thirds done, but the hardest parts remain to be researched and written (isn’t that always the way? You get the easier stuff out of the way first. At least, that’s what I’ve done previously when writing a nonfiction book. Works for me).
Well, we’ll see just how vermisched I get (or don’t get) before it’s all over. Which will be a while yet. Then again, there is a sort of adrenaline-jolt edge to this business. Not unlike riding a roller coaster.
Welcome to the journey. As Bette Davis once said, it’s going to be a bumpy ride! Which should be fun.
Now all I need is that red Mustang ...
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