Finally. Yesterday the contracts arrived from my agent for the fourth novel in the Steve Martinez series, Hang Fire, and were duly executed and mailed back.
The publisher is Five Star Publishing, a subsidiary of Gale, the research book giant. It will bring out a hardcover about a year from now, then, if sales warrant, a paperback and an e-book version shortly afterward.
Five Star historically has marketed chiefly to libraries, not bookstores (although its wares are available on Internet vendors such as Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com). It's now expanding into the ebook market.
This publisher is not well known to ordinary readers, but is familiar to younger mystery and other genre writers as a first stop on the way to acclamation. (It is also familiar to old hands as a last stop after abandonment by traditional publishers.) Its advances are minuscule, but its royalties are generous and paid on time.
Five Star's books are respected in the trade. They are reviewed by advance services such as Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, Booklist and Library Journal. Even the New York Times Book Review notices them now and then. They win industry prizes. They establish careers and save them, too.
I have hopes.
Friday, February 3, 2012
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Year of the Train
 |
| An eastbound California Zephyr approaches Castle Gate, Utah. |
We are longtime rail travel lovers. We love to watch scenery unfold before our eyes. We love to go to bed on the prairie and wake up in the mountains. We enjoy meeting new friends in the lounge and dining cars. We simply prefer relaxed and unhurried travel.
And we don't miss the exciting experience of strangers prodding and fondling us at airport security.
We're starting the travel year in early February with a round trip on Amtrak's Capitol Limited from Chicago to Washington in sleeper roomettes. Our tickets include dinner upon departure and breakfast upon awakening.
Many people think Amtrak sleeper accommodations make train trips far more expensive than flying, and in many of not most cases that is true—but not on this route. We booked early, in December, and got refundable round-trip sleeper tickets for $588. Two refundable economy round-trip tickets on United or American would go for $577. Of course, two nonrefundable "super saver" airline tickets would be $380, but add $50 (each way) cab rides to O'Hare and the cost rises to $480. Without meals.
The lesson: Don't assume that taking a sleeper room on a train is always going to be more expensive than flying.
Next up is a short 5 ½-hour coach round-trip in early March aboard a workaday Amtrak local, the Lincoln Service from Chicago to St. Louis, where I'll be delivering an address. Roundtrip rail fare: $40.50 each for senior citizens. Roundtrip air fare: $162. Plus cabs to and from both airports.
Pricewise, the Lincoln Service wins. Timewise, air travel is faster—tt's only half an hour. But those taxis might add an hour to the overall trip, and then if you get to each airport an hour before departure, you're looking at 3 1/2 hours in transit. Plus the aggravation of TSA's wandering hands.
Then there'll be a ten-day trip in late March on the California Zephyr to San Francisco Bay, in the service of getting trackside photographs for the upcoming e-book version of my 1994 book Zephyr: Tracking a Dream Across America. We'll stop in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, for a couple of days to take the waters as well as gather information and photos.
On the train we'll spend one night in a roomette and three nights in a large bedroom, all of the latter paid for by points amassed over five months on our Amtrak Guest Rewards Master Card. If we were paying cash, a round-trip in that big bedroom would be a staggering (but refundable) $3,532 for two people. Refundable round-trip air fare for two would be about $1,900, or if one wanted to take one's chances and book a nonrefundable ticket, $1,020.
All that scenery and relaxation on the long Western train trips is costly, no doubt about it. But if saving time is not an object, you do get three days of rolling comfort with amiable fellow travelers as well as Rocky Mountain and Sierra Nevada vistas rather than four intense hours at 30,000 feet among indifferent strangers in cattle-car conditions. Some people would consider that priceless. We do,
Winding up our travel plans for the year: A fall round trip on VIA Rail's The Ocean from Montreal to Halifax, Nova Scotia, with a ten-day ground tour of the Maritime Provinces. We'll of course fly from Chicago to Montreal. We could get there by Amtrak (Lake Shore Limited from Chicago to Albany and Adirondack from Albany to Montreal), but that would require a night's layover in Albany, not exactly the City of Gold for us.
It will be costly, of course. VIA's overnight trains are as pricey as Amtrak's, but we haven't yet decided which sleeper accomodations we'll choose—a standard bedroom for two (meals included) or a roomier, more upscale compartment in the classic 1950s Park round-ended dome/observation car that brings up the rear of The Ocean. More about this later.
Of course, I'll put up full reports on all the trips on my rail travel blog at Trainweb.org.
 |
| VIA Rail Park observation cars (here on The Canadian at Capreol, Ont.) also bring up the markers on The Ocean from Montreal to Halifax. |
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
A sense of where I was
This morning I took my camera, a new GPS receiver attached to its hot shoe, up to the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe, Illinois, one of my favorite spots for photography. My goal was to see how well the GPS works in embedding geographical latitude and longitude, altitude and compass direction data into the digital files of my photographs at the instant I take them.
I stopped on the footbridge between the Botanic Garden's main island and the visitor center and took a quick shot (above) of the frozen channel between lagoons just southeast of the bridge. Then I went home and loaded the photograph file into my computer and called it up with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 software.
Quickly I clicked a button that took me over the wi-fi to Google Maps, and the result (considerably enlarged) is shown in the screen-grab illustration below. The green arrow marks the spot where I was standing when I took the shot.
The point, of course, is that weeks, months and even years from now, I will be able to recover from the computer's memory, if not my own, the exact spot where the photograph was taken.
Soon I'll be riding the California Zephyr through winding canyons of the Colorado Rockies and twisting ridges of the Sierra Nevada, shooting madly out the train's windows in the service of gathering photographs for the upcoming e-edition of Zephyr: Tracking a Dream Across America. If all goes well, I'll be able to pinpoint (and describe) the location of every photograph with perfect accuracy rather than relying on my aging brain's ability to recall places and details.
Isn't that absolutely cool?
Saturday, January 14, 2012
A sense of where you were
 |
| The device on top of the camera is a GPS receiver. |
One of the tasks of a travel author is to take decent photographs of the locales he is writing about, both as aides-memoires for the text and icing on the book's cake in the form of a photo section. Come March, the Lady Friend and I will be taking a ten-day-long trip to San Francisco Bay aboard Amtrak's California Zephyr primarily to gather new photos for the upcoming e-edition of my 1994 book Zephyr: Tracking a Dream Across America.
As a photographer I tend to be an indiscriminate shooter, pointing the camera at anything and everything that appears in front of me, hoping to remember later what the subjects were all about and especially where they were shot. Is that a photo of the Colorado River at Dotsero or was it Orestod? Does this abandoned rail yard lie at Soldier Summit or somewhere else?
Some years ago I took a shot of a beautiful rock formation from the open vestibule window of a private car behind an eastbound Zephyr, but never used it anywhere because I couldn't identify the locale. Only after seeing someone else's similar picture of the same place a few weeks ago did I realize that I'd captured the western approach to Castle Gate, Utah, one of the lordliest sights possible from American rails. It's going to go right into the e-book of Zephyr.
Of course I should have taken notes on the individual frames, as a good photojournalist should, but "should" and "did" have different meanings. As a writer I am careful to do due diligence, but as a photographer I just have been too undisciplined.
But now there is a brand new gadget in my photo bag that I hope will make life much easier for me.
It is a Pentax O-GPS1, an inexpensive ($200) little GPS receiver that attaches to the hot shoes of the current crop of Pentax digital single-lens-reflex cameras.
The receiver records not only the precise latitude and longitude of the spot where the photographer was standing when he snapped the shutter, but also its altitude above sea level and the compass direction in which the camera was pointing.
The camera embeds in the digital file of the photo all this information, along with the customary "metadata" about the f-stop, shutter speed, sensor sensitivity (or ISO), lens focal length, camera make and model, etc.
When I upload the photo files into my computer, I can use special geotagging software to find their precise locations on Google Earth or a similar mapping site. Being able to locate on a map the exact spots where I took my shots is going to be an enormous help.
That is, if the device works as I hope it will. I don't yet know if it will lock on to at least four satellites from the windows of a train speeding at 79 miles an hour, or if it can lock on from deep in a canyon. We'll find out in February, when the Lady Friend and I will take Amtrak's Capitol Limited to Washington, D.C.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Shot in the dark
The biggest problem I've run into while updating my 1994 book Zephyr: Tracking a Dream Across America for ebook publication this spring is tracking down the old Amtrak train crew members the book celebrates.
I rode the California Zephyr with a dozen of them and interviewed another dozen or so in crew bases and at stations. That was in 1991, more than 20 years ago.
The idea is to tell "Where They Are Today" in a long epilogue written for the new edition.
So far I have located ten crew members and station personnel, plus two civilians also featured in the book. But there are seven to go, and despite my best efforts they are elusive.
Part of the problem is my lack of resources. If I were wealthy, I could hire a skip-tracer private eye to do the magic they do on television cop shows with computers and supergeeks. But no, I've had to rely on free Internet tools available to me, such as whitepages.com.
The trouble with these Internet resources is that they are at bottom commercial ones and naturally want to be paid. They may find people with the same names (and ages) as the ones you're looking for, but more often than not the information they display is old and outdated (the phone numbers tend to be out of service) and if you check the box to see what the most recent info might be, you get a page asking for money first. A couple of times I've paid, but to no avail.
Of course some of the old crew members I have found have been helpful—they remember that So-and-so moved to this locality and here's his phone number, but it's ten years old. Often checking a local phone directory for that locality yields a number of identical names, and a couple of times just eliminating them one by one finds the man or woman I'm looking for.
What about Amtrak's media relations and personnel people? Won't they help? I have asked, but they seem to be extremely busy as well as perhaps overextended—right now the national railroad is streamlining its management ranks by downsizing with buyouts and the like. I doubt that they have the resources to help out writers of old forgotten books.
And so here's a shot in the dark—these are the old crew and personnel from 1991 I'm still trying to find:
Reggie Howard, train chief based out of Chicago, now returned to sleeper service
John Davis, chef, based out of Chicago
Altagracia Romo, food specialist, based out of Chicago
Noel Prell, lounge car lead service attendant, based out of Chicago but a resident of New Orleans
Mimi Earley, Denver station manager
Chris Younger, assistant engineer based in Oakland
Bob Pimm, conductor based in Oakland
If by some chance you are a rail buff and happen to know where any of them might be, pray let me know. You'll get a free copy of the e-book in the format of your choice as well as my undying gratitude, for whatever it's worth.
I rode the California Zephyr with a dozen of them and interviewed another dozen or so in crew bases and at stations. That was in 1991, more than 20 years ago.
The idea is to tell "Where They Are Today" in a long epilogue written for the new edition.
So far I have located ten crew members and station personnel, plus two civilians also featured in the book. But there are seven to go, and despite my best efforts they are elusive.
Part of the problem is my lack of resources. If I were wealthy, I could hire a skip-tracer private eye to do the magic they do on television cop shows with computers and supergeeks. But no, I've had to rely on free Internet tools available to me, such as whitepages.com.
The trouble with these Internet resources is that they are at bottom commercial ones and naturally want to be paid. They may find people with the same names (and ages) as the ones you're looking for, but more often than not the information they display is old and outdated (the phone numbers tend to be out of service) and if you check the box to see what the most recent info might be, you get a page asking for money first. A couple of times I've paid, but to no avail.
Of course some of the old crew members I have found have been helpful—they remember that So-and-so moved to this locality and here's his phone number, but it's ten years old. Often checking a local phone directory for that locality yields a number of identical names, and a couple of times just eliminating them one by one finds the man or woman I'm looking for.
What about Amtrak's media relations and personnel people? Won't they help? I have asked, but they seem to be extremely busy as well as perhaps overextended—right now the national railroad is streamlining its management ranks by downsizing with buyouts and the like. I doubt that they have the resources to help out writers of old forgotten books.
And so here's a shot in the dark—these are the old crew and personnel from 1991 I'm still trying to find:
Reggie Howard, train chief based out of Chicago, now returned to sleeper service
John Davis, chef, based out of Chicago
Altagracia Romo, food specialist, based out of Chicago
Noel Prell, lounge car lead service attendant, based out of Chicago but a resident of New Orleans
Mimi Earley, Denver station manager
Chris Younger, assistant engineer based in Oakland
Bob Pimm, conductor based in Oakland
If by some chance you are a rail buff and happen to know where any of them might be, pray let me know. You'll get a free copy of the e-book in the format of your choice as well as my undying gratitude, for whatever it's worth.
Sunday, January 1, 2012
Helen Frankenthaler meets Dick Cheney
When the great abstract artist Helen Frankenthaler died last week, I was taken back to 1979 and an interview in the Manhattan home of Bernard Malamud, who had just published his comic novel Dubin's Lives. As Malamud busied himself making tea in the kitchen, a pair of paintings in his foyer caught my eye.
"Helen Frankenthaler originals," said Miriam Berkley, the free-lance literary photographer who had accompanied me to the interview. Miriam, who had modeled for the painter Raphael Soyer, knew something about art.
After the interview I made it my business to learn about Frankenthaler's work—simply possessing it said a great deal about Malamud—even though I was embarrassed to admit I'd never heard of her. One has to start somewhere, after all.
Yesterday I read, in Joseph Epstein's splendid new book Gossip: The Untrivial Pursuit, an anecdote that made me feel a bit less self-conscious about my enormous ignorance.
One night in 1991, Epstein writes, he and Frankenthaler were at dinner in Washington with Irving Kristol, the neoconservative thinker, and his wife Bea, also known as Gertrude Himmelfarb, the renowned Victorian historian. Later in the evening Dick and Lynne Cheney joined the company for dessert. Lynne Cheney, then chair of the National Endowment of the Arts, wanted to know what Epstein and Frankenthaler, both members of the NEA's council, thought about its operation.
According to Epstein, Dick Cheney was "self-effacing and modest," choosing to remain in the background while his wife did the conversational heavy lifting. "Perhaps it was a relief to be silent after crowded days at the Pentagon and after appearing so frequently on television . . . with Colin Powell at his side, to answer questions on how the war [Gulf War I] was going."
After the Cheneys left the restaurant, Epstein continues, "I found myself much impressed with them. So, too, did Helen Frankenthaler, who said: 'She is a very bright woman. Her questions were genuinely penetrating. Very impressive. Really smart, Lynne Cheney. But tell me, her husband, what does he do?"
"Bea, Irving, and I looked at one another.
"'Actually,' I said, 'he's secretary of defense.'"
Somehow that delicious bit of gossip makes me feel better about all the holes in my knowledge.
"Helen Frankenthaler originals," said Miriam Berkley, the free-lance literary photographer who had accompanied me to the interview. Miriam, who had modeled for the painter Raphael Soyer, knew something about art.
After the interview I made it my business to learn about Frankenthaler's work—simply possessing it said a great deal about Malamud—even though I was embarrassed to admit I'd never heard of her. One has to start somewhere, after all.
Yesterday I read, in Joseph Epstein's splendid new book Gossip: The Untrivial Pursuit, an anecdote that made me feel a bit less self-conscious about my enormous ignorance.
One night in 1991, Epstein writes, he and Frankenthaler were at dinner in Washington with Irving Kristol, the neoconservative thinker, and his wife Bea, also known as Gertrude Himmelfarb, the renowned Victorian historian. Later in the evening Dick and Lynne Cheney joined the company for dessert. Lynne Cheney, then chair of the National Endowment of the Arts, wanted to know what Epstein and Frankenthaler, both members of the NEA's council, thought about its operation.
According to Epstein, Dick Cheney was "self-effacing and modest," choosing to remain in the background while his wife did the conversational heavy lifting. "Perhaps it was a relief to be silent after crowded days at the Pentagon and after appearing so frequently on television . . . with Colin Powell at his side, to answer questions on how the war [Gulf War I] was going."
After the Cheneys left the restaurant, Epstein continues, "I found myself much impressed with them. So, too, did Helen Frankenthaler, who said: 'She is a very bright woman. Her questions were genuinely penetrating. Very impressive. Really smart, Lynne Cheney. But tell me, her husband, what does he do?"
"Bea, Irving, and I looked at one another.
"'Actually,' I said, 'he's secretary of defense.'"
Somehow that delicious bit of gossip makes me feel better about all the holes in my knowledge.
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Backlist eBooks
One of the toughest things about promoting one's self-published ebooks is that there really are not many choices that aren't expensive. You can of course post frequent reminders on Twitter and Facebook that your books are available, but people generally find repeated pitches highly annoying. Worse, many writers use Twitter and Facebook exclusively for self-promotion and never comment on other people's posts. These wretches are quickly de-friended.
Two veteran writers, Patricia Ryan and Doranna Durgin, came up with a keen new idea last August: Backlist eBooks, a web site devoted entirely to the promotion of ebooks previously published in hardcover (or softcover) by legitimate publishers, not vanity presses. The ebooks featured on Backlist eBooks have all been written by professionals, then acquired and line-edited and copy-edited by professionals. They are not crude amateur offerings.
They run the gamut of popular genres: contemporary romance, fantasy, historical romance, mainstream fiction, mystery & suspense, nonfiction, paranormal romance, romantic suspense, science fiction, women's fiction and young adult fiction.
The site features a dozen ebook versions of Ryan's medieval romances and seven of her mystery novels. Durgin is represented by 18 ebook examples of her fantasies and romances. These clearly are old pros who know the popular fiction business inside and out.
I emailed Ryan and asked what gave her and Durgin the idea for the site.
"I had just published 12 backlist ebooks, and I refused to accept that my professional strategies consisted basically of Facebook and Twitter," she replied. "Back when I lived in New York City, I was promotion manager for a division of Van Nostrand Reinhold Publishing (now defunct) so I've always been interested in self-promotion. Several readers had mentioned in forums and blog comments that they wished there was one central list of authors who were self-publishing their backlists, because these were professionally vetted and edited books for great prices. The light bulb went off. I talked to Doranna about it, and it just took off from there."
At this point Backlist eBooks has a little more than 100 authors, including me, and almost all have promotional pages up on the web site. Here's mine.
Some of the authors are like me, midlist writers cut loose from their original publishers during the economic downturn. Some are staying with their publishers but have talked them into reverting ebook rights. Others, Ryan wrote, have been offered print contracts but are turning them down because they're unwilling to accept the standard 25 per cent royalties for ebooks. "They know they can publish themselves better and make a lot more money."
Is there a way to quantify how well Backlist eBooks has done in increasing sales for its authors? "Not really," Ryan wrote, "partly because our website is pretty new (we had a simpler interim website previously) and partly because only the authors really know how well they're doing. I will say that we get plenty of website hits and click-throughs to the sales venues on the book pages."
It costs $40 to join and $30 a year thereafter to stay on Backlist eBooks—a sum that I think is going to be well spent.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)