Silvercat

A Memoir is not fiction!

Robert Goodman — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 00:51:00 +0000

James Frey made himself a larger-than-life member of a group he never belonged to. Timothy Barrus turned himself into Nasdijj, the Navajo who never was. It’s a good bet that many other writers of alleged memoirs have embellished their lives or made up lives they never lived. Perhaps they think they can inflate their importance by bamboozling their readers. Perhaps they think that the bigger the hole they claim to have dug themselves out of, the more impressed their readers will be. Perhaps they think their writing isn’t compelling enough to sell otherwise. Perhaps they are just playing games with us.

Or perhaps they simply want to be cited in the sequel to Henry Frankfurt’s 2005 book, On Bullshit. One of the distinctions Frankfurt draws between lies and bullshit is that we think we can tell the difference. We are willing to overlook the bullshit, because it is benign and, after all, everyone does it. In fact, isn’t that something like the excuse that Frey and his publisher gave for their actions. "What’s the big deal?" they asked, as if the "positive message" and the "uplifting spirituality" of the lies more than compensated for the deceit. Everyone knows that a memoir spins its web around meaning, not facts, right? Isn’t it the subjective truth that matters, not the honest truth?

To some extent, the answer is yes, but only to some extent. A memoir by definition is a subjective reflection on some meaningful part of the writer’s life. Very few memoir writers claim that it is "just the facts, ma’am." If you want "just the facts," you can turn to a biography or an obituary. A memoir is a selective look at a time or a theme in the author’s life that offers some kind of meaning to the reader. It’s "the way I remember it," not "the way it happened in all the bloody details."

A memoir is not a fantasy, however.

What gives a memoir its power is its connection to the truth. The writer may change a name or a place in order to protect someone’s privacy or forestall a legal mess. In fact, most memoir writers include disclaimers that acknowledge they did precisely that. Frey’s book now includes a statement to that effect. But adding the disclaimer after he’s been busted hardly makes up for the earlier deceit. It’s not even good damage control.

A reader needs to trust that a memoir is true. Once that trust has been lost, it’s a lot more difficult to win it back again. No one will ever again believe James Frey or Nasdijj. But what about all the memoir writers who offer honest memoirs? Will they suffer because one or two famous writers got caught cooking the book? The more remarkable the writer’s lfe, the heavier the burden the writer must bear. Should we now expect writers to document their memoirs with footnotes and cross-references? Will the entire genre of memoir fall out of favor simply because a few dishonest writers didn’t respect their readers enough to write with respect for the truth?

In the memoir classes that Peggy Lang and I teach through our sister company, Silver Threads, the question of honesty always comes up. We tell our students that a writer who invents the past is not writing a memoir. Why should they even care now that they can see the financial rewards of lying? After all, A Million Little Pieces hasn’t exactly fallen off the charts since it was exposed. Maybe we should charge so much if we help you tell the truth but so much more if we help you lie about it.

I don’t suppose this means our students will stop dreaming about getting on Oprah, either.

Tips for getting your book into the bookstores: Tip 4

Robert Goodman — Sat, 03 Jun 2006 16:00:00 +0000

Have a distributor

An equally important part of marketing is distribution. You must be able to get books to the bookstore, and the bookstore, unfortunately, must be able to get books back to you. Distributors make those transactions easier in both directions.

Bookstores will seldom deal directly with you. The sheer number of publishers makes it impractical. Costs, time, and logistics would overwhelm any bookseller who tried to maintain accounts with all of them. Bookstores prefer to obtain all but special orders from a handful of suppliers. The chains and even the larger wholesalers, in fact, maintain lists of preferred vendors to which they will refer you when you seek to do business with them. There are exceptions, but if you are reading this blog to find out how to get into bookstores, you will not be one of them.

For your book to receive serious bookstore consideration, it must be available through one of the middlemen that stores prefer to work with. This assures bookstores that transactions for your book will occur with minimal hassle. If you don’t have a distributor, get one before you approach the bookstore. In the United States, there are 5 or 6 "master distributors" and a couple dozen wholesalers that will make your books available to stores and chains.

Getting a distributor to carry your book is a challenge in its own right. I’ll discuss that in a later blog entry or two.

Tips for getting your book into the bookstores: Tip 3

Robert Goodman — Wed, 24 May 2006 23:27:00 +0000

Have a marketing plan

Your book will not jump off the shelf by itself. You need to persuade people to buy it. Bookstores expect you to drive people to the store for your book. If they don’t believe you will get buyers into the store, bookstores are likely to give their valuable shelf space to books that they reasonably expect will be marketed and promoted well.

Bookstores often need to be convinced that your book is going to sell, especially if you are relatively unknown as an author or a publisher. So, tell them what your are going to do to make that happen. How much are you going to spend on promotion, and how are you going to spend it? What tasks are you going to perform? Will you advertise? (Please say no!) Will you seek book reviews from trade and consumer publications, newspapers, and other print media? Will you arrange a media tour? Will you have a web site or a blog? Will you promote the book on the Internet? Will you participate in bookstore events related to your book? What other kinds of publicity will you develop? Will you do it yourself or hire a publicist? What else are you going to do?

Be as specific as you can be, even if your book is still at the galley stage. The challenge to publishing comes during the marketing, where the competition for publicity and promotion is as vigorous as the competition for space on the book shelf. Make a compelling case that you are committed to marketing your book more effectively than the publisher next door. The best way to do this is to show that you have a plan to do it.

Tips for getting your book into the bookstores: Tip 2

Robert Goodman — Mon, 22 May 2006 21:13:00 +0000

Stand on a platform

Are you a world-recognized expert? Is yours one of the first names people think of when they think about the subject of your book? Can you add "M.D." or "Ph.D." after your name? Are you a CEO, a lawyer, a chef, or portfolio manager at an investment house? Are you a regular on Court TV? Do you have a syndicated radio show? If so, you probably won’t have much trouble getting your book on bookstore shelves.

If you don’t have those kinds of advantage, you need to establish that you are qualified to write the book, at least in they eyes of readers and store buyers. Calling yourself an expert doesn’t make you one. Just writing the book doesn’t make you one, either. Why should any reader even look at your book when there’s another one right next to it by an author who is already acknowledged as an expert?

That may not be fair or even smart. Authors and publishers alike wish that readers and buyers would accept the book for its own sake, not the name behind it. But that’s not the way the world works. Bookstores know that other things being equal, buyers will choose books because they’ve heard of the author or trust the author’s professional reputation.

Fiction and non-fiction authors can solicit endorsements from writers who have already made their names. If you can’t claim credentials for writing non-fiction, you might find an acknowledged authority to stand behind you, perhaps by contributing a foreword or a chapter, for example, or, even better, by agreeing to be listed as a co-author. If your book is fiction, you can still draw in experts to talk about something you say. The DaVinci Code is fiction, but that hasn’t stopped the experts from giving the book a very visible platform.

Whatever you do, remember that people need to believe that your book will deliver what it promises to. Having authority behind the book doesn’t guarantee that, but it certainly makes it easier for bookstore buyers to give you a chance.

Tips for getting your book into the bookstores, Tip 1

Robert Goodman — Mon, 17 Apr 2006 16:13:00 +0000

Have a book people want to read!

That should go without saying. Yet it is one of the publishing rules most often "violated." It doesn’t matter that you’ve written the elusive, great American novel or that the world needs to know what you are telling it. That and a buck-fifty will get you a small cup at the coffee bar in the bookstore.

That is not likely to impress bookstores. They exist to sell book (and cd’s, writing tools, greeting cards, coffee drinks, pastries, etc.–but that’s for a later blog entry). They need to know people will be interested in what you have to say. Just because the subject is important to you doesn’t mean it is important to anyone else. Just because everyone should read your book doesn’t mean they will. Books that are too narrow or too broad in subject, too regional in focus, or too personal in scope have limited appeal to the broader population that bookstores try to serve.

Make sure your book has a market. Is it timely? Does it fill a need or answer a question people are asking? Would people be likely to pick your book up without any prompting from you? How wide is your market? How narrow? Be realistic. Everyone in the world has two ears, but that doesn’t make everyone a potential buyer of a book on cleaning ears. Your home town might be a fascinating place, but "fascinating" by itself is not enough to grab the attention of someone on the other side of the continent. And why should anyone believe that a novel by an unknown writer is more entertaining than the best seller right next to it?

Are a lot of similar books on the shelves? That certainly indicates the presence of a market. But it also means you may be such a small fish that bookstores won’t want to be bothered. Can you find no other books on the subject? That might indicate that you’ve found an unmined niche. On the other hand, there may be a reason why no other books exist. It certainly wouldn’t hurt to ask a few bookstores for their frank opinions about books like yours.

Investigate these issues carefully. Books can be risky. It may be painful to realize that you don’t have a marketable book. But this is the same scrutiny a bookstore will give your book, and it’s better to know before you invest a year or so of time and thousands of dollars of resources in a book that can’t get into the bookstore. At the same time, it will be exciting if you can give honest, favorable answers to each of the questions, too!

Why I Find the Personal Essay So Compelling

Robert Goodman — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 22:29:00 +0000

Guest blogger: nationally acclaimed writing teacher, Sheila Bender, author of Writing and Publishing Personal Essays

I have been a fan of writing the personal essay since 1981 when I finished graduate school in creative writing (poetry) and went to work for community colleges teaching freshman composition. Most of the students were terrified of having to take the writing requirement to gain admittance into advanced classes, but all had stories to tell—some came from immigrant backgrounds, some from poverty, and many from families where illnesses curtailed education and economic advancement. They were working—some all night before coming to school in the morning. Some were divorced and raising children; some had children a half a country away. Some had been raised by grandparents or served in the Gulf War; one suffered from diabetes and another was a dwarf. They relaxed when they realized two things: In my class, personal experience counted and I had devised a way for everyone to use patterns of thinking to facilitate not only the clear telling of their stories but the coming to insight and discovery. In other words, using the structure of the personal essay, anyone could find meaning in their experience and communicate it to others. Robert Frost's way of saying it was, "No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader." And William Wordsworth, speaking of poetry, said it another way: one person's insides were speaker to another's insides.

That is the reason writing personal essays is so compelling and why they are, when they are well done, so compelling to read. The writer learns from their experience by creating that experience on the page so others live it, too, through their senses. Since we all are alike in our feelings, once we sense the situation, we experience similar emotions and once we do that, we feel intimate and connected to the person who wrote the experience down.

My book, Writing and Publishing Personal Essays from Silver Threads, is written directly from my experience, first helping class upon class accomplish the writing of successful personal essays and then taking my method to those outside of school who want to write from life experience. The book poses and pairs "Write Questions" with particular patterns of thinking. For instance, all of us can remember a time we lost someone, something, or some opportunity that was important to us. Asking ourselves when such a thing happened and pairing our answer with the narration (telling a story through time) pattern, we will write moving essays--telling the story of losing a job might show that the real story is in receiving a new opportunity that one might not have gotten otherwise or the story of almost drowning in a current until a stranger suddenly appeared from nowhere and offered rescue might become in its telling the story of a renewed sense of destiny.

I truly believe that anyone who has the desire to write personal experience can find a way to successfully put that experience on the page. People who use my book tell me it helps them do just that. I also now publish Writing It Real at and offer in-depth articles in which I talk about ways to find topics, to find the emotional occasion of the writing, and to develop one's ear to realize final drafts that make discovery and move readers. The magazine is devoted to helping its readers gather the kind of information and experience available at writer's conferences. This fall, I launched LifeJournal for Writers with Chronicles Software--I wrote the prompts and tips and organized the kinds of journals and notebooks a writer likes to keep for this Windows tool; many early purchasers say they are more prolific because the tool makes going to the computer and starting and then staying organized easier.

I am devoted to the personal essay and to journaling to create a gold mine of material because I love learning about peoples' experience and delving more deeply into my own. I have also learned that writing personal essays can lead to writing memoir--either by linking the essays or by merging and expanding them. If you want some examples, check out Rebecca McClanahan's Riddle Song and Brenda Miller's Season of the Body. Of course, you might like to read collections of essays by Philip Lopate, Garrison Keiller and Andre Cordescu. There are so many wonderful collections out there: In Short and In Brief co-edited by Judith Kitchen are too anthologies that include loads of lovely essays and there is also the annual Best American Essays. Read lots of essays; then reread your favorites, and then sit down and write from your own experience. Next, find a way to publish what you've written--by reading it to others in a writing group, sending it to a newspaper or newsletter or magazine or as a letter to those you care about. We need to be hearing from one another, we really do. There really is nothing else like it.

What makes a small book sell big?

Robert Goodman — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 00:00:00 +0000

We published Nancy Canfield’s, Home Kids: The Story of St. Agatha Home for Children, earlier this month (October 2005). In its first two weeks, the book has sold between 150 and 200 copies. That may not seem like a large number of books, but Home Kids has no bookstore presence. In fact, it has no commercial presence at all. Every book has been sold at full price directly to end readers. I have received several phone calls from readers who told me how wonderful they thought the book was. Nancy and I have gotten calls from previous buyers who wanted to buy three, four, or five additional books for their friends and relatives.

Home Kids exemplifies what makes a small press book sell.

• It has a distinct, immediate market and it speaks to that audience, the men and women who spent some or all of their formative years at St. Agatha and other orphanages in New York. It draws readers into the story by including nostalgic stories about former home kids and former staff members whom many readers remember fondly.

• The author has credentials. Nancy is a former home kid herself. She knows much of the history of St. Agatha and many of the people whom she mentions in the book.

• The story is fired by Nancy’s obvious passion. Nancy worked hard with Peggy Lang to write and craft the narration well.

• It presents itself well. We put a lot of thought into making the pages look good, and we designed an eye-catching cover around a familiar photograph that grabs the attention of the intended audience. We chose 100 or so photographs carefully to complement the text.

• It is timely. The book was prepared for the closing reunion of St. Agatha earlier this month. Many readers bought copies to keep the memory of the ceremonies alive.

• It was pre-marketed well. People knew about the book ahead of time. Home Kids was anticipated eagerly long before it was published. It was also sold with the approval of the event organizers.

• It was available for sale on time. United Graphics produced a high-quality book and delivered it to us ahead of schedule. The books were ready to be sold when the occasion demanded it.

• It was marketed in person. Nancy attended the reunion and made the book available at the event.

• Finally, Nancy associated the book with a larger cause. All profits from book sales will be donated to the foster and group homes of St. Agatha and to the New York Foundling Hospital. A promise to do that is printed prominently on the back cover.

We are optimistic that readers will continue to show interest in Home Kids when the early bloom has passed. Nancy has already found local museums and historical societies that are eager to carry the book in their bookstores. Orphanages became important social institutions for a number of reasons. Many of the issues have survived the decades intact; many others have been reshaped by social and political changes. As history, as memoir, as genealogy, Home Kids is a meaningful book with a broad potential readership. Our challenge was and is to let those readers know about it. I don’t expect we’ll have to do much more than give them a gentle nudge.

Writers Conferences

Robert Goodman — Thu, 06 Oct 2005 04:35:00 +0000

I’m spending the coming weekend (October 7-9) at the La Jolla Writers Conference <http://www.lajollawritersconference.com/> here in San Diego. I am teaching one class by myself–alternatives to traditional publishing–and three more with my friend and colleague, Peggy Lang--one on the use of story-telling techniques in non-fiction writing and two on writing memoirs.

I’m looking forward to it, even to my 8 AM class on Saturday morning. I don’t normally get business from conferences like this. But I do get recharged. Writing, editing, publishing, and book packaging have at least one common drawback: you spend a lot of time alone. I’m not sure it’s healthy. In fact, I suspect that the first Morlock was a writer, editor, or publisher, and you know what’s going to happen to them!

The La Jolla conference gets me out of the office and into the company of stimulating and interesting people. Some of them are old friends whom I see at similar events throughout the year. Some of them attend this conference year after year. Some of them are flourishing writers whose success and discipline (I hope) will rub off on me. Most of them are aspiring writers whose passion and enthusiasm always lift my mood.

I encourage everyone to attend writers conferences. They are everywhere. Check out the Shaw Guides <http://www.shawguides.com/> for an exhaustive list of conferences. Writers in particular stand to gain a lot. You rub elbows with experienced authors, some of whom you may have admired for years. It’s inspiring to learn that they are almost always nice people. You pick up tips and pointers. You get constructive feedback about your writing from people who know a lot and like to share what they know. You get to visit a place like San Diego in October, Whidbey Island in the Spring, or Gotham anytime. Best of all, you get fired up all over again.

Find a writers conference near you and sign up!

Welcome to the Silvercat and Silver Threads blog

Robert Goodman — Wed, 28 Sep 2005 23:38:00 +0000

Becoming a published author is like becoming President–anyone can do it. Unlike being President, however, almost everyone is doing it.

R.R. Bowker, the company that oversees the ISBN system, reported that approximately 194,000 books were published in the year 2004. This represented an increase of about 15% over the previous year. Even that is a conservative guess about the growth of publishing, because it counts only those books with new ISBNs.

It’s anyone’s guess about how many books were published without ISBNs. Chances are, as many as a half million books were actually published last year in the United States alone. It’s a fair guess that over a million books were published throughout the world last year.

Gabriel Zaid (Too Many Books) made a fun observation. You can read a book an hour, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and you’ll still fall behind the mounting body of wisdom and insight published every year. It’s almost as if every book that is published makes us that much more ignorant!

These book numbers are both encouraging and discouraging. Only a few years ago, the barrier to becoming a published author was in production. You had to interest a publisher in your book, which has always been a challenge. Or you had to become a publisher yourself and invest many hours and dollars in layout, prepress, printing, and other infernal details of the business.

Today, almost every author has a computer with at least a rudimentary layout program. Becoming a publisher has never been easier. And those who prefer someone else to be the publisher can spend a few hundred dollars to hire anyone off a long list of on-line, “Publish on Demand” publishers. In either case, authors can see their books published within a few measly months–or less.

The barrier to a successful book, however, has not been battered down. Instead it has moved from production to marketing and distribution. It is now relatively easy to get your book published. It is quite a bit more difficult to get your book onto bookstore shelves.

How many bookstores have you seen that have shelf space for 194,000 books? Bookstores and chains have to find some way of selecting books to occupy their valuable real estate. One of the many things they look at, especially when they are considering books by unknown authors, is the commitment of the author or publisher to marketing the book.

Welcome to the Silvercat and Silver Threads blog. We’ll speculate and pontificate on these and other publishing issues as the blog gets longer. We’ll add a few guest opinions and a few comments on book content and design, too. And we might even throw in a personal comment or two. I hope you enjoy it!