A couple of days ago,
American Zen
arrived in the mail. It's a novel on which I'd been working
intermittently since March 18, 2008, although the drafting phase only
took 120 days flat (if only they could
all be that easy).
The
CreateSpace folks gave me exactly what I'd sent, proofed and approved
and any faults I completely own. It's a high-quality production with a
nice, glossy cover (albeit at a coffee table-sized 8x10). What I can't
understand is, why didn't I feel the sense of elation that I predicted
I'd feel on seeing one of my novels professionally printed and bound for
the very first time?
Perhaps
it's the fact that CreateSpace, however noble its intention, is
essentially a glorified vanity press, minus the outrageous printing
costs. I know there was no editorial gatekeeping and no hurdles to
overcome aside from the headache of formatting, uploading, proofing,
etc. Any idiot with a pile of words and internet access can publish and
all too many of us prove that every day.
It
wasn't as if I was blase or nonplussed by the book's arrival. I knew it
was mine, I was seeing it ritualized in print and I still feel that
American Zen
is my most brilliant sustained literary effort to date. I know it
belongs between covers. It was more like a sense of numbness at seeing
my book in print, one of only two copies thus far extant on the planet earth.
The closest I can come to describing the experience is to refer you all to that scene in Steven Spielberg's
AI
in which the husband brings home the robot boy David for the first time
and
his wife reacts coldly to it. He looked like a boy, spoke like a boy and
acted like a boy but the wife knew he wasn't the real thing. That's
what it was like for me. It looked like a book, felt like a book and
read like a book. But I knew it wasn't the real McCoy simply because it
neither validated my existence as a writer nor honestly realized my
ambitions, because no real
editor was involved, no P&L done on it, no real publicity and
advertising behind it, no agent that had sold it. Through no fault of
its own, it's a fraud. It's like that guy you see scuttling from the
bushes in the last 100 yards of a marathon. He crosses the finish line
like everyone else but it doesn't count and everyone knows it.
Maybe
in time I'll come to accept it and, hopefully, those who order it will
feel a greater sense of excitement than had I. But I regret that I can't
share the
elation of others who receive their CS books in the mail for the first
time. I doubt that when I get my second book,
The Toy Cop, the reception will be much warmer.
Here's a mini preview of how it would look on your Kindle in landscape.
All told, the book stands at a trim 358 pages (although there are 46
lines on each page, as opposed to the standard 32. There's only so much
you can compress a 150,000 word manuscript.), which comes out to just
under 2.5¢ per page, which is pretty comparable to "real" paperbacks
that generally have lower word counts. Right now, I'm in the process of
writing a "sell sheet" and learning how to register my novels with mega
distributor Ingram's so I can get it on their catalog.
Now,
I've begun taking some hits ever since I took a sabbatical from
political commentary. My own hit count here has gone down, I'm losing
followers on Twitter by the droves and if I gave a shit about that, I'd
be wringing my hands. It's not as if most people give a damn what I have
to say about anything, anyway.
But
American Zen
was different, a completely atypical novel for me, and this represents
the best of me and, I'd like to think, the best in all of us as a
species. There are no car chases, no exploding buildings, no serial
killers or body counts, no dark, twisted conspiracies. It's a fairly
simple and straightfoward story of a typical, middle aged guy who's
comfortable and then begins to wonder, as do many of us at that age, "Is
this all there is? Should I have gone in another direction way back
when?"
I know of only one other author who can share my near out-of-body-experience and that's Richard Bach, author of
Jonathan Livingston Seagull
(who, ironically, crashed his plane and was nearly killed this past
fall). Bach said right after the book's publication in 1970 that it was
unlike anything he'd ever written. In fact, the genesis for his novella
was even stranger than mine. He reported hearing a loud voice in his
head that shouted, "
Jonathan Livingston Seagull!" and the book then took shape.
Well, I didn't hear any disembodied voices in my head, thank goodness,
although I can imagine the voices of each of my characters as vividly as
their physical characteristics. By Day One or Two, I had all the
dramatic spikes lined up and it was merely a matter of writing the
transitional chapters that would come later.
American Zen
not only is by far the most atypical novel I've ever written, it was
also the easiest to write, revise and the only one written more or less
in chronological order. Despite the fact it was extremely difficult to
hold off from writing the later chapters that I had percolating in my
head for up to four months, the self discipline I used shows, making for
an unforgettable yet believable story. Believe me, I wouldn't be
pimping this book for years unless I thoroughly believed in it.
I never wrote nor will ever write a political blog post I'd ever
want to put between covers and the topical 1660-odd articles I've put up at Pottersville and here over the last four and a half years will be forgotten in time. But
I'd like to think this will stand and that it and other books I've
written and am writing now will be my way of saying not only, "I was
here" but "We were here and this is what it was like to be human."
He points out the difference in royalties, 10 or 15% if you go with S&S or Random House or one of those, vs. 70% with, say, Amazon. And what do those publishers give you for taking 85 or 90% of what your book earns, besides a warm feeling?
Publicity? They'll help a little, but you gotta largely do it yourself. Advertising? Fuhgedaboudid. Bookstore distribution? Well yes, in the five (or is it three?) bookstores left on the planet.
"These days," says my author friend, "going with one of the publishing houses is the new definition of vanity publishing."
Very crankily yours,
The New York Cank
I've been saying that for years.