Derek Armstrong

Publisher Kunati Books

Correspondent Crime Report USA

Author Drew Peterson Exposed

This Week's Armstrong Publisher Insider Column in ForeWord:

Following the advice of bloggers and magazines is a sure recipe for entrepreneurial ruin. Does this mean don’t read the blogs or magazines? NO! It means, make the news, don’t follow it. Or—to paraphrase a successful ad campaign: “If you read it, it’s history, if you do it, it’s news.”

Reporting Versus Analyzing

ForeWord, true to its name, is almost certainly the best of the trade magazines—very ForeWord thinking (the theme of my blog today—and clearly the most useful source of information for any independent publisher, independent bookseller, or independent author or librarian. And no, I’m not suggesting you stop reading the trades. Rather, that as a publisher, agent, librarian, bookseller or author, you owe it to yourself to read all the trades—especially the innovative ones such as ForeWord—to give you the foundation from which to launch your new ideas.

But make no mistake—no entrepreneur survives on other people’s ideas. No author succeeds by cloning Harry Potter or The DaVinci Code—or Kunati Books. (Mind you I was tickled to find an indie publisher who "borrowed" our tag line: "Controversial. Bold. Provocative." ) No publisher can thrive for long with an unchanging list of ideas, concepts, marketing plans or authors.

So, read the trades, and the blogs (especially this one, and my publisher blog: http://www.kunati.com/our-publishers-blog/) but only as a base for new-thinking. What’s In and What’s Out is not a good foundation for publishing decisions.

What’s In; What’s Out?

This is the biggest issue I have with the larger magazines and newspapers and their predictions of What’s In and What’s Out in any area: books, fashion, food, wine, you name it. Some journalists and bloggers take on the role of creating fads and fashions, instead of reporting on them.

Independent “Fill-in-the-Blanks” Do It Best

Fortunately, readers don’t always follow these trends, and publishers who simply try to follow fads often find these titles heading straight to the remainder tables.

ForeWord-thinking indies often take the larger risks to introduce new talent, ideas and concepts. I recently read a blog that proclaimed, “Indie’s find the new authors, big publisher’s poach them.” Well, that may be an exaggeration, and clearly the authors have the right to profit from their new-found fame.

But it does highlight the role Indies have taken on; Indie publishers find the new talent and through innovation help them succeed, assisting debut authors to build their brands and careers. Indie booksellers do the same by hand-selling books. Independent magazines such as ForeWord, even more so. Read the story of ForeWord’s inspirational start-up in the 10th Anniversary issue of the magazine. Indies (in any field) are the unsung heroes, you could say.

An Inelegant Segue...
I’ll gratefully make a small plug here that only subtly ties in with my point in this blog: First happy 10th to ForeWord (much deserved!) And thank you ForeWord for recognizing the role of the Indie Publishers with your new Independent Publisher of the Year Award… I’m beyond delighted Kunati and our author’s were honored, and am so much hoping this inspires other indies to innovate, take chances and find new talent. Which is my crazy segue into …

Memoirs… In not Out!
Today I spent two hours chatting with a very talented memoirist with an important story to tell about abuse. Now, I was trying to explain, “post Frey, memoirs are out” but I found myself not believing it. And, in the end, I made an offer on this most wonderful book.

When I look at our book list, I see a dozen memoirs. So, clearly, we don’t believe they’re "out." They sell well. They are not famous people—just important stories from real people with genuine writing talent. Such as Mothering Mother: an important story of a daughter coping with her mother’s Alzheimer’s. And Paul Cook’s new memoir Cooked in LA: a stunning story of addiction to fame, alcohol and drugs. And most certainly Wendy Aron’s amazing Hide & Seek, both a memoir and a story of recovery from one of America’s most debilitating conditions: depression.

Clearly, we don’t believe memoirs are dead. Today, I saw Publisher’s Weekly described Memoirs as “Unstoppable” and cited bidding wars on memoirs. “Publishers continue to snap up memoirs, undermining the perception that the genre is embattled in this post-Frey, post-Seltzer era.” Indies, of course, knew this long ago. It's not news to us.

Novels, a Shrinking Affair?
Commonly accepted “publishing trends” indicates that novels are shrinking affair, certainly for the debut author. Now, here we may be somewhat different from the prototypical indie, and clearly different from the larger publishing houses. We love debut fiction and fiction in all categories. It’s one of the reasons why we’re in business. And we continue to show that debut fiction can be successful, even in a 1 million plus title universe, where self-published fiction will soon outnumber trade-published titles.

But What is the Secret?
Hard work? Innovation? Risk-taking? Creating new trends? All of the above. Our director Kam Wai Yu created the first book trailer back in the eighties. Movie trailers were his inspiration, but it hadn’t been done. Why, we asked? The synergies of two industries combined to create a new phenomenon. Now, we lead with book trailers. But, it’s hardly considered innovative now. Almost mainstream. Nice to set the new mainstream I suppose.

So, on to the next innovation. Blog tours. Okay, that’s mainstream now too. Ezines. Been there, done that. Social Marketing 2.0. Very yesterday. What’s next… well, I’ll share, but not today. (Hint: I share often at http://www.blogertize.com)

Does this Mean You Must Invent?
Of course not. It does mean you must be an enthusiastic early adopter. Make it your own.

By watching ForeWord and the blogs, you stay on top of the next great trend: interactive trailers, paperless galleys, paperless catalogs, live web, online PR... And then you add your own personality to what has proven successful. Blend your brand of enthusiasm with the hottest new trend. Ignore the big publisher trends. By the time you hear what’s hot, it’s yesterday. Live author chat? So old now. Virtual book plates. Done. Think beyond.

Make it your own. Work it (that’s the hard work part). Take risks, especially the ones that only cost time versus money. Invest the time (who needs TV time or sleep?—if I wanted TV time would I be writing this blog?) These are the tools of the indie. There’s no secret.

We Just Want it More
Why does this work for the indie? It’s simple, really. We want it more. We work harder because we want it more. There’s no stopping innovation--and innovation has always come from individual minds.

Individuality is definitely the territory of independent publishers, independent booksellers, and independent magazines such as ForeWord. We have to invent to succeed. We have to work to grow. And we do it with a big smile, because enthusiasm is a big part of the formula for success.

Excerpts from Our Publisher's Replies to Emails

Derek Armstrong's Reply

Thanks for writing, but of course we're a publishing house, not an agency. Speaking as a publisher and author — and in my opinion —  you should never have to pay any amount of money to publish your book. This would be considered self-publishing, or even vanity publishing. An agent will help you to send to royalty traditional publishers, of course, or you can try submitting directly to the independent publishers such as Kunati who are known to be traditional royalty paying companies (meaning, they license the rights to edit, publish and distribute and they invest their own money to market your books, and they pay you a percentage of sales).  A quality publisher will never ask an author for money — not even one penny. If you are looking for an agent I suggest Writer's Market, which you can find with a quick Google Search. Their directory is a good investment, or you can sign up with them online for a small fee to research all the "looking" agencies and publishers.

Hope this helps and best wishes with your novel.

Best,

Derek Armstrong
Publisher, Kunati Books
"A publisher to watch." Booklist
ForeWord's PUBLISHER OF THE YEAR 2007 at BEA

W www.kunati.com

During my career as author, I've had four agents, two publishers and many, many "please sends." It was a long, long journey to success, and patience is really called for, but I'll share what I've learned as an author.

My master plan as author, back in 1993 was to pitch a NONFICTION project that no one could resist. Get published. Then use my credential to get an agent. Up until then, I had good success with "please sends" from agents but I'd get variations on "loved your book, but not for us." (Those were the polite ones).

Thank goodness I had a background in marketing, and my living was established, because as a writer (other than as an ad copywriter - my day job) I'd be starving. Plus, I parlayed my marketing expertise into my non-fiction project.

I learned five lessons from my fifteen year journey:

LESSON ONE: Unsolicited Proposals to publishers work! Yipee!

1. I received FIVE please sends from publishers, and a SIMON & SCHUSTER editor PHONED ME (I remember that day... I was in the Apple Store buying my first Mac laptop... a big, happy day all around). While I was fishing for my credit card, she phoned and made me a pre-emptive offer with a $65,000 advance.
2. Of course I didn't think about it. I probably should have, because I did get two other offers.
3. So, here's the lesson I learned: NO agents responded to my query, even months later. FIVE publishers gave please sends. Simon & Schuster bought by phone with a big advance.

So, to me, this meant: agents aren't necessary to get published, even with the big five. That lesson stuck with me. I think my advance was probably as high as any agent would have secured.

I did parlay my nonfiction project into many "please sends" for my fiction projects, which resulted in ten years of with agents who couldn't close my novels. I assumed I needed an agent because every book and expert gave variations on: "Fiction writers must have an agent or they will never be published."

So I locked myself up with agent after agent.

LESSON TWO:
Top agents can be closed by authors, but do you want to? They all gave variations on "love this book, this will sell."

But, as it turned out, (and I'm generalizing a bit) these top agents seemed only interested in the top five publishers. Now, once one of these agents pitches and loses to these top five, the next big agent has no chance. It's been pitched already. It's dead.

So, agent after agent I fired. I found new ones. Similar stories. Finally, all the top agents were gone. The big lesson... they don't pitch to the indy's and they only want the big deal.

SO. That suggests smaller agent right? NOT REALLY.

LESSON THREE:
Smaller agents have no great chance of getting you read than YOU DO. I've learned that, too. That's lesson three. Most indie publishers will read without agented submissions.

Finally, I peeled off and represented myself. I started submitting to INDIES (like Kunati, but, of course, back then Kunati didn't exist... small publishers with vision, though. I had many please sends from indies)

LESSON FOUR:
Publishers expect authors to market themselves, even the big publishers. Smaller publishers tend to partner with authors (with a better possible outcome, if the author is a hard-working promoter).

So, I came to believe, with near religious zeal, that Indies are the way to go for DEBUT authors. The advances are small (microscopic, even) but you save a lot of time by submitting WITHOUT an agent, and if they sign you, you've built a direct pipeline to the publisher, editor-in-chief, marketing people... it's wonderful. Once you're published, you can start building your author brand. Your franchise.

LESSON FIVE:
The only secret is to "take control of your own destiny." If you sign with an agent, make it short term and control the relationship. if you are debut, I'd suggest you try the indies first -- and build your brand and author name. Larger publishers will remember your first book when considering your second. Learn the lessons on your debut novel with a publisher who will support, nurture and work with you and help you:
- do events
- speaking engagements (this is why I got the big advance above — obviously this is a non-fiction specific element of the marketing mix, and they assumed I would use my advance to travel and speak)
- blog
- arrange  signings
- radio publicity
- press releases.

You'll never be disapointed if you research, plan and take charge of your own careers. Agents can't do that. Neither can publishers. But, most of my author friends seem to believe agents and publishers make or break authors. It has never been so. You make or break your career.

By Derek Armstrong, Author of, let's see MADicine (one word), The Game (two), The Last Troubadour (three)....

Novel titles are like clothes. They follow trends and fashions and they get longer and shorter, reveal more, then less.

For the last few years, the bestsellers lists have been dominated by thrilling, short titles that said little but seemed to promise crisp pace and excitement. Perhaps the over saturation of titles on the market, 300,000 new titles per year on average, with 1.2 million titles in print, will change all that.

One word titles are so “out” now, perhaps because an online search nets too many identical hits, or perhaps because they are out of fashion. Stephen King brought it on with IT and Dreamcatcher and other thriller authors dove in with Rabid and Jaws and James Patterson’s snippy titles such as Sail and Jester. Of course there were the classics such as Lolita and Ulysses.

Lately, perhaps because of issues of similarity, the titles have grown back up to two and three word bites, with the bestseller lists dominated by plays such as: The Quickie and Simple Genius and of course all of Janet Evanovich’s eternally two word titles, such as Fearless Fourteen.

Classical Four Word Titles

Classically, the turn should go back to the longer titles if fashion is any judge (and with titles such as A Thousand Splendid Suns and The Memory Keeper’s Daughter the tend seems certain), the ones we all remember and will always remember, such as:

• Gone With the Wind

• Up the Down Staircase

• From Here to Eternity

• Splendor in the Grass

• For Whom the Bell Tolls

• The Lord of the Rings

• A Dance with Dragons

• War of the Worlds

• The Pillars of the Earth

• To Kill a Mockingbird
  

Many hot titles are much longer than four words or five, and have caused reader rants and complaints in some cases, but there is little doubt the trend is going long again. And who can argue with the success of A FareWell to Arms or The Sun Also Rises?Ernest Hemmingway seemed stuck on the four word title, and with good reason. Did any other author command such recall from such poetically perfect titles?

Longer Titles Back in Fashion?

So, what’s with the new bevy of longer and longer titles. Do they work? I’d like to invite your comments on these new trends. Here are some popular titles that are inevitably pulling us towards longer and longer titles. In some ways, they sound hip, cool, even catchy. But can anyone remember them?

Quite a Mouthful

In Sloan Crosley’s cool “Quite a Mouthful” column in Publishers Weekly, he particularly highlighted: "Lucinda Rosenfeld's wonderful What She Saw in Roger Mancuso, Günter Hopstock, Jason Barry Gold, Spitty Clark, Jack Geezo, Humphrey Fung, Claude Duvet, Bruce Bledstone, Kevin McFeeley, Arnold Allen, Pablo Miles, Anonymous 1-4, Nobody 5-8, Neil Schmertz, and Bo Pierce. A title that can be absorbed for the bargain count of... 36 words.  Is it any wonder that recent major fiction debuts have been called And Then We Came to the End and Special Topics in Calamity Physics?”

Other hot examples of long titles cited by Sloane:

• Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?

• Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight

• I Love You More Than You Know; You Don't Love Me Yet; I Love You, Beth Cooper.

My own titles go with the fashions. My earliest, The Game was two short words, but nearly impossible to find against sports titles on Amazon. Then, MADicine, easier to find, but one word. The Last Quest and The Last Troubadour are three words each. Other Kunati Titles range from one word, such as Callous, to a lengthy: Mothering Mother, A Daughter's Humorous and Heartbreaking Memoir. Putting aside non-fiction, and long subtitles, Kunati titles run the full spread, all very memorable, but trending longer:

• bang BANG
• Bathtub Admirals
• Belly of the Whale
• Courage in Patience
• A Decent Ransom
• Heart of Diamonds
• Hunting the King
• Janeology
• The Last Troubadour
• The Last Quest
• The Master Planets
• Miracle Myx
• Nuclear Winter Wonderland
• On Ice
• Recycling Jimmy
• The Secret Ever Keeps
• Shadow of Innocence
• Toonamint of Champions
• Truth or Bare
• Unholy Domain
• Whale Song
• Women of Magdalene
Our 2009 titles seem to be pushing into the five to seven word range.

What Do YOU Think?

I’d love to hear comments from readers, authors, agents, librarians and booksellers. What do you think of longer titles? What’s hip right now? What’s just right?