How to Write a Book

This morning I had a Facebook notification that a friend had tagged me on a post of a friend of hers, which read in part, "Has anyone written a book before?! I need to know where to start. I have like 7-8pg." I realized my advice would be rather lengthy for a Facebook post, then I thought hey, I could do this as a blogpost. Pretty good topic.

First of all, the friend-of-a-friend appears to be an adult. I say that only because I'm often asked the exact same question by children, and my answers to children would be somewhat different. I'm against children seeking publication--they have no idea how hard it can be and they're up against adult professionals, both of which are also true of adults new to writing, but they're also still kids. They shouldn't be making something fun into work, not yet, and they're often being pushed to make "real books" by the adults in their lives. You don't expect Little Leaguers to play for the Braves. Quit expecting the equivalent from young writers.

Now. Said FOF is an adult woman, knows very little about publishing. Is inspired to write. GREAT. She's got everything she needs: a story and the ability to learn. Because publishing is a business. It helps very much if you think of it like performing onstage: those actors in Hamilton are making bank, because that show is amazing, they're incredibly talented, and they've worked very, very hard for a very long time. You, too, could work that hard. Whether you're that talented is your own business--but--I'm loving this analogy here--there are lots of parts of writing, like performing onstage, that can be learned. Some people are total naturals, complete freaks of nature. Most, even the very successful ones, aren't. I'll say it here: Lin Manuel Miranda's natural voice, while good, isn't on par with most Broadway musical stars. But he's learned enough and worked enough and is good enough at other things that it all works out pretty well.

But just as there's Broadway, so too is there off-Broadway. Regional theaters. Local amateur productions. You don't have to streak straight to the top of the bestseller lists, and, in fact, you aren't likely to. That's fine.

Back to writing. Let's start with a few questions. One: who is your story for? Children? If so, which children? Toddlers being read to? First graders starting to read on their own? Sixteen-year-olds? Those are all very different. If it's for adults, that's not a monolithic audience either. Fiction? Nonfiction? Poetry? Memoir? Different rules. (I'm going to go ahead and assume you're not writing for an academic audience--that's another branch entirely.) Then think about genre: historical fiction, romance, mystery, fantasy, etc. If you're not sure, that's okay, just start thinking about it.

Here's another primary question. What is your ultimate aim? There's a wide difference between wanting to write up some family stories to pass down to the next generation and wanting to become the next Stephen King. Publishing right now can be divided into two types: traditional and self-published. When you write for a traditional publisher, as I do, you submit a manuscript to the publisher. They decide whether or not they want to publish it. (I'm simplifying here a bit.) They assign you an editor, and you and the editor revise the manuscript until everyone is happy with the result. (If you're happy and they aren't, tough noogies. Back to work.) Then they have in-house staff design the layout, cover, trim size. They put your book into their marketing plan, their salespeople pitch it to bookstores and distributors, standard reviewing journals (Publisher's Weekly, Library Journal, etc.) review it, and it gets sold in bookstores nationwide without the author having to do very much. The author is paid an advance on royalties and then a certain percentage of the price of all the books sold. You never have to pay back the advance even if your book tanks, but an advance for beginning writers will be in the low thousands of dollars, not necessarily a lot--but if your book sells well, you'll get more.

When you self-publish, you, the author, bear the cost of producing the book. You will likely pay for an editor to review your work and suggest edits, but if you don't want to do the edits that's up to you. You'll either pay someone else or you yourself will supervise the design and select the cover. You'll direct the marketing. You'll pay upfront for your book to be physically produced. You'll be responsible for trying to get it into bookstores, and this will likely be difficult to do. You can pay some journals to review your book, but not all of them, and you do have to pay them. On the other hand, you get complete control of your product, and you get a higher percentage of the book's price as profit. You might pay $3 per copy to create your book but sell it for $15--$12 profit per copy, instead of the $1.50 per copy profit you'll make traditionally publishing. On the other hand, better distribution means you're much more likely to sell lots of copies through traditional publishing. With self-publishing you take the risk. It's worth understanding that most people who self-publish do not sell enough copies of their book to make any profit at all. Most are out money. On the other hand, I have personal friends who have done very well for themselves through self-publishing: they understand their market and are very good at that end of the business, as well as being good writers.

Here's the other thing: self-publishing is akin to amateur theatrics, in that anyone can do it. Some people are going to be very talented, and work very hard, but a lot of people are just dabbling. That's fine. There's plenty of room for dabblers. But it you want to be traditionally published, you're going to have to think of that more as Broadway--there are a lot of people trying to get onstage, and they don't reserve spots for newbies. You'll have to audition and prove yourself.

(This is also why the person who suggested you write to publishers and ask for advice is off base: because it's the equivalent of asking Lin Manuel Miranda how to get started in theatre. It's not that he doesn't know or isn't a nice guy, he just doesn't have time to send you an answer.)

So. This is a lot of words, and I still haven't given you any advice. So here it is: take some time and do your research. You don't have to stop writing while you do that. Write whatever you like, enjoy yourself, and at the same time, start learning. Read a lot of books in your genre. Develop a feel for the structure, characters, general rules. At the same time, start learning about the business side. Go to the library and get the current Writer's Market. There's one published every year, and most libraries have them. (There's a separate one for writing for children.) Read it. Read Stephen King's book On Writing. Practice. Learn to revise. Think about your craft. Take yourself seriously, while still having fun. If you're writing for kids, there's an organization called the Society of Chidren's Book Writers and Illustrators that runs conferences and has lots of good information online. There are organizations for writers for adults, too, though I don't know them by name.

Join a writer's group, if you can. Learn to have your work critiqued, and to offer critiques. Practice. Finish a story, even if halfway through you think it's crap (and it probably is.). You'll learn things by writing a story all the way to the end that you can't learn otherwise. 

Understand that there are very, very few overnight successes in this world. There are a few, and some of them are even nice people, but most of us have to work at our craft for a long time. It took me nine years of writing for horse magazines and doing random bits of journalism and working my way up to remote editing and writing work-for-hire before my first novel was published. It took me 9 drafts to get my penultimate book right--and that was my 17th (traditionally) published book. It's a lot of work no matter how talented you are.

Also? It's worth it. Start now.

Fourteen lovely minutes

So the last two days, though mostly fine, have been marred by a few pieces of genuine bad news. One isn't mine enough to share publicly. Another is that T, the horse I rented for nine months until last spring, died a few days ago. He was living happily and well at the farm he went to after mine, and he died of one of those stupid things that sometimes affect horses and can't be made right quickly enough to save them. 

I miss T's sweet spirit. I miss his sense of genuine good. I'm grateful for the time we had together.

I hadn't been planning on riding today. I've got an appliance repairment whose arrival was originally scheduled as "between 8 and 5" and my husband's partners and their spouses are coming for dinner tonight. Thankfully, the broken appliance is not required to cook the dinner, and all the guests are bringing a dish. I spent some time this morning ironing my good napkins, very grateful that, unlike last year, I had a reason to use them this year--which is probably the only time I've ever been grateful to be ironing--and then the appliance people texted that they were narrowing their arrival time to "between 4:41 and 6:11" or, in other words, "perfectly arranged to screw up your dinner, but hey, now you can leave the house."

So I did. I went to ALI World Headquarters to fill one last order that came in before the schools shut for break, and then I grabbed lunch with my husband, and then, while we were in the middle of eating, the other bad news showed up and put a damper on everything. So after lunch I scoffed at my housework and went to the barn.

I'd have to go to the barn anyhow, of course, to feed things. The cats milled around, frantic, having not eaten since they scammed an extra meal yesterday. The horses looked peeved. Yesterday, when I went to feed, I found their water trough entirely empty, and it was clear from the reproachful way that they guzzled once I'd filled it that they blamed me entirely. Which was outrageous, since one of them--and Sarah, I think we all know it was you--had knocked the halfway full trough off the blocks it sits on precisely so that Sarah can't dump it over, dumped it over, flung the water heater halfway down the field, then stomped about in the mud puddle they'd created. In short, not at all my fault.

I put them in, then zipped my riding boots over the yoga pants I was wearing--close enough to breeches if you're not doing much. Fetched Rosie from her stall. Rosie's the little mare I bought last July. We went out to my small sand arena, and Rosie, I was pleased to see, let out a little sigh of happiness. The small arena is for flatwork, dressage; historically, neither me nor any horse I ride has enjoyed dressage. But Rosie and I are starting to get the hang of it. Rosie loves it when I ride well and hates it when I ride poorly. She doesn't buck or kick or doing anything awful, but she puts back her ears, gnashes her teeth, and stiffens her whole body whenever I do something wrong. Sometimes I'm not sure what I've done wrong, but with Rosie's immediate feedback I know I've screwed up something. For awhile I was dropping my inside shoulder on upward canter transitions. Lately I've fixed that, but been putting my outside leg too far back at the trot while using my inside leg to make her round. She starts to transition to canter, realizes I'm not actually asking her to, just flailing incoherently, and goes back to the trot pissed off about it. Rosie has a smart forward walk--unless I tighten my seat, in which case she slows and stiffens and glares at me. You see how it goes.

As a result our flatwork sessions have become amazingly zen. I need to be fluid and balanced and precise with my body; I need to be focused yet relaxed, clear but soft in my aids. And Rosie rounds herself into my hands, and we dance--sometimes for as many as six or seven strides before I tighten somewhere and screw us up again. And then we take a deep breath, and try again.

I time my rides on the exercise app on my watch. Today Rosie and I were right more than we were wrong. We found harmony. She practically purred.

At times like that it's tempting to just keep going, to push yourself and your horse and see what else you can achieve. Lateral work? Perfect downward transitions?

Not today. I needed some good news, and Rosie gave it to me. I patted her and called it quits, and when I dismounted saw that I'd been riding for exactly fourteen minutes.

Sometimes that's long enough.

How It's Going With the Books

 No, not the ones I write. They're going fine, fine-ish, anyhow, after a somewhat difficult quarantine year. (All the writers I know had some degree of a difficult quarantine year.) I have a completed draft of a novel sitting in my editor's hands: she was supposed to get back to me about it three weeks ago, and hasn't, and now it's December 1. Publishing absolutely entirely shuts down for two weeks leading up to the New Year--they lock the offices, everyone goes home--of course, this year they might already be home--but in truth they mostly shut down as soon as Thanksgiving rolls around. I won't likely hear anything until January. Years ago this used to frustrate me, but now I just embrace the holiday spirit. Why not? I can't change it so I might as well enjoy.

I am working on the start of a new book, but it's too new to talk about yet.

Today I'm going to talk about the books from Appalachian Literacy Initiative. Phew. We're nearly halfway into our fourth year of operation. (We follow the school calendar.) We've grown so much and we're doing so well, and there's so much more to be done. I know I've talked in this space quite a lot about how important it is that kids have access to books. Today I'm going to talk nuts and bolts.

This year we were graciously granted permanent office space in a building owned by another local nonprofit. It's a largish room, and we've filled it with industrial book shelves (bought cheap at Sam's Club, they hold several hundred pounds per shelf, which is good because we need them to). When you walk in the door, there's a shelf immediately to your left, where until yesterday UPS put unopened boxes of books that we'd ordered. (We had a stack of boxes obscured the door, so we've changed plans.) After that, running clockwise around the outside of the room, two desks crammed beneath the one window. One desk has some office supplies on top, the other holds our laptop and printer. The office supply desk is used for all sorts of things. The printer desk is the order and shipping hub.

Now we're on the wall across from the door. Four sets of bookshelves. The first set is office supplies--paper, stickers, tape, folders--some boxes of books we've set aside for various reasons, including ones that arrive damaged, and, on the top shelves, some YA books we were donated that we haven't yet found homes for. 

The next three sets of shelves are the third-grade choices for this school year. Twenty-four books, and each gets half a shelf. We put stickers inside all of the books we give away: they say Appalachian Literacy Initiative and have a space for the child to put their name. That way, when 14 kids in the same class get the same title, they can tell the books apart. We also have stickers for some of the organizations that have sponsored entire schools: "A Gift from Ballad Health." "A Gift from the Bill Gatton Foundation."

Now. The number of copies of each book that can fit in the designated space depends entirely upon the size of the books. All books are different. Alien Ocean Animals is probably our smallest, space-wise; Magnus Chase, in hardcover, is the largest. We don't put any books on the grade shelves until they're properly stickered. Sometimes we store extra boxes of stickered books on the tip-top shelves. 

Turn the corner, and the next wall is fourth grade. Turn it again, and the shelves for the fifth grade books fit neatly along the wall with the door. 

In the center of the room, three more sets of bookshelves, crammed together, and two more work tables for packing books. The shelves are full--crammed full--of extra books, ones that aren't part of the lists for the three grades we're doing this year. Sometimes that's because we couldn't get enough copies or a title even if we wanted to. Sometimes these books are donations direct from writers or publishers. When we order through Scholastic's nonprofit arm, Scholastic Literacy Partnerships, they send us boxes of random free books, and we put those on these shelves as well. If the local teachers enrolled in our program come to pick their books up, instead of having us mail them, we let them pick out a couple of extra books for their classrooms. We also give them out to different community organizations--a hundred earlier this fall for a local after-school group in a federal housing project, a couple hundred to Girls Inc, a couple hundred soon to be sent to a school system's holiday gift program.

In all the corners of the room we've stuffed flattened cardboard boxes. Books come out of the boxes, we save the boxes, we put books back into the boxes and we ship them out.

This year Tuesdays are our big ship-out days. We welcome any and all volunteers any and all Tuesday afternoons. If you'd like to come by, please do: at the very least there are always books to sticker. 

We ship our teachers sets of six titles four times a year.  We sent the second teacher sets a few weeks ago--six books each to 185 teachers. It was a helluva day. They first teacher sets we shipped out over several weeks, because we got some last-minute funding that allowed us to add several additional schools. That was fabulous but has also created chaos, as it meant we no longer had enough books for the year. 

We get our books cheaply through First Book, Scholastic Literacy Partners, and publisher donations (big shouts out to Thorndike and Penguin Random House). This means that the money people donate goes a lot farther than it otherwise would, but it also means we have to stay on top of our game. A title available last week might not be available again for six months, or ever.  Last summer I'd figured we needed at least 200 copies of any one title to have it in our program, but that was a serious underestimation. We ended up enrolling 1200 students per grade. Each student picks one book from every set of six. That would suggest that 200 copies might be just enough--except that the teachers get classroom sets. We need 60 to 65 copies of each title, depending on the grade, just for the classroom sets. Also we are very firm about kids getting to choose whichever books they want--and we can't always predict which titles will be popular. We're realizing that 275 is the absolute minimum for any title this year--we'll need 350 or more for many. That's fun math to be doing in December--and I mean that absolutely. We are DELIGHTED to be in this position. We are loving giving away this many books. It's the best damn thing in the world.

So yesterday: I showed up at what I love to call World Headquarters early, because the local news channel wanted to interview me. (The resulting spot turned out ghastly, with the anchor mangling ALI's name and it all going downhill from there--what possessed me to wear that shirt?--so no link, thank you.) UPS delivered some books shortly afterward: "Hi, Ma'am, just add them to the pile?" It was a huge pile, causing problems. Happily we've just been given a bit more space in the back of the building, and when a couple of college kids showed up (we give out official volunteer hours!) the first thing I had them do was move all the unopened boxes of books out of the main room. Then they stickered some of the free Scholastic books, since we'll be giving those away next week. I sat down at the computer and started printing out student orders from our teachers. The other board members grabbed the order sheets, and started packing boxes.

We had at least a dozen orders. Some were for one class, some for an entire school. Here's a sample, from one of our largest enrolled schools:

Fifth grade: Best Friends 12; The Crossover 3; The Girl Who Drank the Moon 1; The Player King 4; 100 Things to Be 11; Be Prepared 42; Black Panther 34; Flora & Ulyssess 4; From the Desk of Zoe Washington 16; The War I Finally Won 5. 

You'll notice that it's more than six titles. That's because students are always allowed to order from previous lists.

What I noticed: Be Prepared 42. Shoot.

Be Prepared is a graphic novel. It's funny, and quirky, and I love it. I scored 200 hardcover copies last summer at an unbelievable discount, something like $1 for a $23 book. A few weeks ago I managed to get another 40 copies, in paperback, through First Book, but that was all they had. I bought them out. They'll get more eventually, probably, but it could take months.

I didn't think this would be a problem. Be Prepared really is quirky. It's not nearly as well known as some of the other graphic novels on our list. 

I was wrong. We started filling orders, and it was clear that Be Prepared was in high demand. I started the day with 175 copies and ended the day with 20, and we hadn't filled all the orders that had come in, and there are still a bunch more orders to come.

Anyhow, I want to tell you about the process: it's this. We take the printed order, take the books off the shelves, find a box or boxes to put them in. We tape the box, weigh it, print postage, copy the postage label onto a copy of the order form, so we know we've filled it, put the postage on the box, stack the boxes in the lobby of the building for the postman. Check off the schools/grades on our master list. Subtract the copies from our inventory.

We did that all afternoon. This morning I sat at my home computer with the inventory list and spent a moment being very very grateful for donations we've recently received. Then I went on First Book. First I looked for Be Prepared. I'd looked for it the day before, as soon as I saw we didn't have enough, and it wasn't in stock, but sometimes restocking miracles happen. Nope. Then I scanned the rest of the graphic novels for sale. It's a tough time of year, they're out of everything. Got 14 copies of Pea, Bee, & Jay when I'd have happily bought 150. ($3.50 for a $7.99 retail price). Went on to get 100 copies of Ghose ($3.75 each), 75 of Animal Smackdown--a real victory, that, as we've given out 363 copies so far this year. The price has gone up, from $4.95 a copy to $5.85, but this is a glossy full-color book with a retail price of $14.99. I got one lonely copy of The One and Only Ivan, 18 of Power Forward, 96 of Unusual Chickens for the Exceptional Poultry Farmer ($3.25/copy). I looked at the Book Bank, where the huge bargains are--it's there I got the hardcover Be Prepareds, back last summer. Bought one carton of Percy Jackson's Demigod Collection, 12 books for a total of $8.40. It might be brilliant but it might be too bulky to ship, hard to tell so we'll try a few first. Ghetto Cowboy, another favorite 120 copies. One copy of Hello Universe. I look in vain for Front Desk, which I've been trying to get more of for months, along with Guinness Animal Records, How to Steal a Dog, and Love That Dog. Love That Dog is particularly worrisome--we're running out. Oooh--the new Diary of a Wimpy Kid, #16! Three hundred copies. That, along with the 200 copies we have on hand of #15, should get us through the school year. 

I log into Scholastic Literary Partnerships, and am overjoyed to find both Narwhal and Jelly ($3.96, rp $8.99) and Love That Dog ($4.53, rp $7.99). I buy 100 copies of each. They've got Captain Underpants ($3.41, rp $5.99) back in stock, so I grab 100 of that and 100 of I Survived the Sinking of the Titanic. ($1.50, rp $4.95) This order qualifies us for 160 additional free books--I can't chose the titles, but I choose the age ranges. It'll be enough to ensure we have plenty for the school Christmas program. 

This does not solve my Be Prepared problem. We have new orders in and we can't fill them. We can buy the book through an independent bookstore, which will give us a hefty discount (though not as good as FB or SLP), but shipping comes direct from the publisher and will take a few weeks. I don't have an in with the publisher, First Second--I've been known to beg unashamedly from publishers where I do. 

Sighing, I go on Amazon. I can get the paperback of Be Prepared (rp $14.99) for $10.49, which is steep, but I'm desperate. 

Amazon will only let me buy 30 copies. I don't know why, they've got quotas now of most titles. I once bought 80 copies of How to Steal a Dog from them, and now I can't buy anymore ever. I buy 30 copies, then call one of the other board members and have her buy 30 copies from her home computer too. It's not enough, but it'll buy us a bit of time.

This. This is why we do it. Just look at her. She's holding the first book she ordered. This child attends the school that ordered 42 copies of Be Prepared. We intend to see that they get them.

We've got a fundraiser going on Facebook right now, which I'm going to link to this exceptionally long post. You can also donate to us via our website, or by mail to PO Box 3283, Bristol, TN 37625. xoxox