Onyx Sun Wins a Writer's Digest Honorable Mention!

I got this news a couple of months ago, but since I am getting back into blogging, I thought I'd include it since it is exciting news...

The Incredible Origins of the Onyx Sun has won an Honorable Mention in the 17th Annual Writer's Digest Self-Published Book Awards!

I sent a copy of my hardcover book, complete with the final artwork and exclusive Epilogue, to Writer's Digest almost a year ago. Of the hundreds of submissions, only three books were selected in the Middle-Grade/Young Adult category for Honorable Mentions.

I couldn't be more excited!

You will see the announcement of the award in the March/April 2010 issue or you can check it out online here. I've also included a scan of the page with my book on it in this post.

Kalamazoo!



Christopher

I'm Back!

It's been a looooong time since I updated my blog, but that doesn't mean I haven't been busy working away on the Onyx Sun when I can. I have and because of that, there is quite a lot to update you on.

Basically, I went silent over a year ago - ironically right around the time my book was finally published - since I joined Sony PlayStation and found myself quite busy helping to get a new business unit off the ground. That didn't leave much time, even on the nights or weekends, after 60+ hour weeks to work on my book. Even when I had the time, I was exhausted and needed to recharge.

So, I held off on promoting my book, preferring instead to submit the book to a couple of contests. Those submissions didn't take too much time and were tasks I could punch out from the couch while watching SportCenter.

I'm glad I did do at least that because it earned my book and Honorable Mention in a Writer's Digest contest, praise from Publisher's Weekly, and a spot in the semifinals of Amazon's Breakthrough Novel Awards, where I was one of 50 people who advanced through a field of 5,000.

I'll cover each of these in a separate post, but for now, I just wanted to say: I'm back!

Kalamazoo!



Christopher

The Rejection Letters Pour In

Well, I've been told from the start that rejection is part of the writing process. Today, I believe it. After Writers House turned down my first submission, I decided to cast my net wider and submit to a number of agents, some exclusively, but most simultaneously.

There's a lot of debate in the writing community about what appropriate practices are for submissions (exclusive versus simultaneous) , but I largely decided on the latter due to the time the whole process takes. If you consider that each agent takes two-to-three months (at best) to review your submission package, you're talking about only four to six agents seeing your material in a year. Since I truly believe my book has market potential and am not afraid to self-publish, I decided to accelerate this process by submitting to many agents simultaneously. I figure if I am going to be rejected, I'd like to get that out of the way as fast as possible.

And that's how I ended up with the forest of letters below. To the agents who included a personal note: I appreciate the time you took to write me. I will take your comments to heart.



So, here I am, three months and thirteen rejections later, standing on the verge of self-publishing, excited as hell.

Kalamazoo!



Christopher

The First Rejection

Well, after two months of waiting on tenterhooks for Writers House to review my entire manuscript, I heard back today. They were very courteous to give me a personalized write-up of my manuscript, but of course I can't help but be disappointed. I know how hard it is to get published, but for a glimmer of a moment, I thought Writers House initial interest might translate into one of those rarefied occasions when a new author gets picked up immediately.

For posterity's sake, here's the letter:



Kalamazoo!



Christopher

A Hit! An Agent Unexpectedly Responds

I can't believe the serendipity of what just happened!

Back in April, I sent my newly minted agent submission package (consisting of a query letter, return postcard, and the first three chapters of my book) to Writers House. To me, Writers House is the Harvard of agencies. They have been around for a long time, are consistently mentioned as having the best agents, and represent some of the top authors in publishing. Given all this, I decided to submit to them first and to give them exclusive opportunity to review my work before I submit to any other agent.

Then the long wait began.

For those uninitiated to the trials of being a new author, you would be shocked the lag-time in this industry considering we are well into the Internet Age. It still amazes me that I have turned on multi-million dollar, global web applications to the barrage of immediate feedback, and I still have to wait two-to-four months for one response from an agent. It makes sense that they get overwhelmed by inquiries and have to put an earnest effort into reading each one, but I really wonder sometimes if the Internet could help streamline this effort somehow. This seems on the surface to be an industry in dire need of modernization.

Regardless, time passed, and I fell into that funk of waiting so many authors will tell you they have experienced. It's a strange feeling of quasi-rejection. You're not really rejected during this time, but you're definitely not accepted either. You are in limbo awaiting some stranger's judgment. It's surreal.

But where the serendipity of this all comes in is that during this time, and probably somewhat sooner than I today realized, Writers House had accepted me! I was working from home today when I decided to take the recycling out. We have two blue bins for our recycling. One we use almost all the time. The other we leave outside by the garbage bins, collecting rain water. It's almost like having a house cat, and a mangy outside dog no one ever plays with. So, I decided, in a moment of strange pity for an inanimate object, to switch out the bins. It was time for the dog to come in and the cat to sit out.

That's when I saw it: one of my return postcards, lying at the bottom of the outside bin, damp with this morning's dew. At first, I thought I'd recycled a postcard I'd never sent. After all, in creating the postcards exactly as I wanted, I had printed several "prototypes" to get the custom text on the back of the card just right.

I plucked the postcard from the bin to check. That's when my mild surprise became glee. On the back of the postcard was a voided stamp. This was one that I had sent to an agent and had been sent back! This must be from Writers House since they were the only one I've queried so far.

It was almost too much for me to scan down the back of the card to where I had printed the accept/reject check boxes. But as my eyes fell, my heart leaped. Writers House wanted to see more! I jumped into the air and yelled, much to the surprise of my neighbor watering her plants, then ran inside to call my girlfriend, Kim.

Amazing! Writers House is asking for the entire manuscript, which I'll send first thing tomorrow.

Kalamazoo!



Christopher

Picking an Illustrator

So now that the first draft of my book is completed, I have begun to search for an illustrator. This is not typically how an author would move forward at this point, since often publishers pick the final illustrator of a chapter novel, but I have two motivations for doing so at this point:

1. Return Postcard: I want to create a postcard agents and publishers can return to me when I send them my query letters to indicate if they are interested in seeing more of my book. I like this approach because a postcard with an image from my book would be personal and would help introduce the concepts from the Onyx Sun to the agent/publisher I am writing to. Hopefully, the right agent/publisher will see the image, read the sample chapters, and become as excited as I am about the prospects for my book.
2. Cover Design Preparation: In case my book is not accepted by an agent or publisher - as is often the case for new writers - I plan to self-publish my book and will employ the same illustrator I used for the postcard. That way, the postcard can serve as an introduction to the characters for the illustrator so when we create the cover, he/she is more educated on how to draw the primary characters.
   

There are a couple of qualifiers I am searching for specifically in this person:

1. Must accurately represent the imagery in the book
2. Must have a unique style
3. Should have a strong work ethic and commitment to deadlines
   
4. Must have a portfolio of past work
5. Should be willing to work on a cash-equity basis

The first two qualifications are interesting because I want to find someone who is capable of balancing the imagery I have described in my book, with their own personal touch. Each artist obviously has a unique style, but I find it is a rare trait to find one that is able to balance that with the unique visuals described in another creative work, like a book.

The last qualification is also slightly different from the way many writers approach self-publishing. Most of the self-published writers I have met have contracted illustrators on a pure cash-basis. Although I could do that, one of the first things I learned in business school was "cash is king". In other words, keeping cash inside your business is on of the most important qualities to keeping your business afloat. It seems like a simple concept, but as we learned at Babson, far too many companies are all to ready to part with their cash in lieu of more creative payment arrangements.

So, I developed a cash-equity payment model where I will give my illustrator 75% of the cash he/she asks for but will negotiate in an "equity" share for the remaining amount. This "equity" will essentially be part of my royalties for each book sold. In order to incentivize the illustrator to be ok with not as much cash up-front, I plan to significantly sweeten the equity share to be far above what the illustrator would have earned from pure cash. For example, if the illustrator I choose to design my book quotes me $1,000 to design my cover, I could counteroffer that I pay $750 up-front, plus a $2 commission per book up to $1,500 in total payments. So that obviously be $500 over what the illustrator cold make on a cash-only basis.

Obviously, I am going to have to find someone who trusts I will deliver on this arrangement. But, in the end, I think this is a significantly better arrangement for both parties: I pay less while I am cash-starved, and the illustrator can stand to make 50% more once the book starts selling. It, in essence, makes us business partners, which I also consider a positive part of this arrangement. It makes us mutually financially interested in the same project instead of just contractor-contractee. In the latter, more common arrangement, the relationship is one more focused on servitude and short-run success. It can also lead to lower quality outcomes, as only one party (the self-published author) is invested in the books success. I took this model from the same process start-up companies use to finance early stages: in lieu of higher wages, give employees equity, which could be worth significantly more in the long-run. Of course, the employee (or illustrator in this case) has to believe in the company founder and the product, but people who know me, know I deliver on my word, and I truly believe my book is a product that can sell...even in the challenging publishing market.

The common expression in the publishing space is "You can't judge a book by its cover, but you can sell it!" If this is truly the case, which it seems to be, why shouldn't a cover illustrator, who holds so much sway on the book's success, be invested and rewarded too?

Kalamazoo!



Christopher