Words of Wisdom From John Everson!
December 15, 2007
As some of you may be aware, my first book will be published early next year. It’s entitled “Despairs & Delights” and it’s a collection of short stories, some that have appeared elsewhere and others written especially for the book. I’ve heard from several people (message board folks as well as editors and publishers) that I’m doing it backwards, that I should have a novel first, that in fact there isn’t a market for a collection by an unknown author.
Well, I don’t mind flying in the face of popular opinion, especially when I have a publisher betting their money on me, but I don’t want to be stupid and just run into this situation unarmed. Enter John Everson, one of my favorite authors and a guy I can’t wait to have a beer with when I’m able to start attending conventions.
I wrote to him for advice, since he’s made his name the same way I’ll be making mine: backwards, according to all the other advice I’ve recieved. Now, John’s definitely a better writer than I am (part of why I read him) but if he could do it this way, there’s no reason why I can’t. I asked him if there was any particular strategy suited to our way of selling our writing, and his response was so detailed and well-thought that I couldn’t in good conscience keep it to myself.
Without further ado:
Hey Lincoln -
Happy to tell you what I know. And what I can say is that whoever gave you that “general consensus” is… pardon my french, full of shit.
There is no “Right” or “Wrong” way to make it in this business, (aside from the wrong way of pissing off people who might at some point publish you… you never want to do that, but that’s the sort of thing that applies all aspects of life LOL).
It’s a fairly common path, actually, for a writer to make a name for himself by publishing stories for several years in magazines and slowly gaining a bit of recognition that way. Then… some smaller press editor takes a fancy to your work and offers to do a collection… having that book helps raise your profile a little bit more and you go on to the next stage (hopefully). Which could be whatever you decide you want to do next — more short stories, perhaps a novel…
Everyone’s path is different, but virtually all of them have this in common: it generally takes years of writing and publishing stuff before you have “overnight success”. Those novelists who “burst” onto the scene with a big debut novel quite often have a half-dozen novels in their file cabinet that they wrote first and couldn’t sell. I know that’s the case with J.A. Konrath, who scored a 3-book deal a few years back for a crime/mystery series. I don’t think he had done any short fiction publishing prior to this, but he told me once that he had already written several novels that were still in a drawer before scoring the deal…
Here’s how my personal path has gone so far, and everyone’s is obviously different:
From 1993-1999, I published about 30 stories in small to medium sized magazines and a couple anthologies. In ‘99, I sold a story to Delirium magazine that Shane, the editor really liked, and not long after, I pitched him on doing a small paperback collection of some of my fiction, since he was starting a book line at that time. A year later, in 2000, that collection finally came out but it wasn’t small –it had 20 stories, some of them brand new, and the book was a full-fledged hardcover production. That was CAGE OF BONES, which got some nice reviews and sold over 200 copies before it went out of print.
About that time I finished the draft of a novel (THE CLIFF) that I’d been tinkering with for a good 5 years. I took a draft to World Horror Con (my first world con) in Denver where I went to promote the upcoming release of CAGE OF BONES. I pitched the novel to Leisure Books and gave a copy to Dave Barnett at Necro, a small press that I’d been doing proofing work for for years. Dave had published a couple of my stories in the ’90s too, and recently published my 3rd short story collection, NEEDLES & SINS.
Leisure eventually passed on THE CLIFF, and I sent it to a couple other publishers and agents during that period, with little response. But Shane Staley at Delirium dug it, and wanted to release it. So in 2003, I went ahead and sold the novel to Delirium and stopped waiting for a mass market deal.
At the same time, since I knew it would be another year before that book was released (turned out to be 18 mos.) and it had now been 3 years since CAGE, I approached Twilight Tales about doing a small collection to keep my name alive out there. VIGILANTES OF LOVE debuted at the World Horror Con in 2003, has slowly sold around three hundred copies and is still in print (CAGE is out of print as it was a limited edition hardcover).
Sometime between 2002 and its release in late 2004, I sat down and did a couple of major rewrites and edits on THE CLIFF, so that by the time it came out in 2004 it was at least 10,000 words longer and had a new title — COVENANT. So when it was released on Delirium, it was substantially different than the book I’d started sending around back in 2000.
COVENANT ended up winning the Bram Stoker award in 2005 for a first novel, and I finished writing the sequel that year as well — SACRIFICE (released earlier this year on Delirium). I obviously went back to pitching a re-issue of COVENANT hard, and sent it to Leisure since it was much different than the manuscript of a couple years before.
I figured with a Stoker award, a couple collections and two novels, that I could get some mass market interest, but it took me two more years before I finally signed a deal with Leisure Books to issue mass market editions of COVENANT and SACRIFICE (COVENANT will be out next Halloween).
And this fall my 3rd short story collection came out on Necro, the NEEDLES & SINS book I sent you a message about on MySpace.
So my scorecard was: six years to build some cred, then two small press short story collections, followed by two small press novels (there was also a novelette in there, FAILURE), followed by a mass market deal and another short story collection.
My first mass market novel will appear 15 years after my first published short story. A long ride.
You’ll find if you look into the current crop of horror authors, many of them followed a similar path. Brian Keene did a couple small press collections and then sold his first novel THE RISING to both Delirium and Leisure.
Michael Laimo, Charlee Jacob, Jeffrey Thomas… they all did small press short story collections consisting largely of their previous magazine output on Delirium and Necro before signing to a bigger press to release novels. And all of them have released small press novels too, some of which later were reissued (and some not). Charlee’s first Leisure novel was originally out 5 years earlier on Necro (I copy edited it!).
P.D. Cacek did a short story collection and then two novels on a small trade paperback company before selling a 3rd novel to Tor and then a 4th book and reissues of the earlier two novels to Leisure.
Gary Braunbeck did a ton of short fiction and a Cemetery Dance collection before his first novel appeared (which was an Asimov tie-in).
Clive Barker did the Books of Blood short story collections before his novels.
The list goes on and on.
Short fiction is a great way to hone your craft, and it’s nice to compile it periodically if someone will release it and actually market it. Doesn’t do much good to put out a collection on a press that only sells 50 copies cuz nobody knows who they are.
But certainly having a collection out doesn’t “hurt” your profitability down the line — every book you’ve got out (assuming they don’t suck!) builds you some fans (if it gets any distribution) and when you start stacking them up, they can start cross-selling each other. But you still have to keep reaching out to new readers. Selling a critical mass of books is tough, even when you’re on a mass market house and have titles in all the major stores.
This is now ridiculously long so I’ll shut up. Hope there’s something in there of use to you!
Yours in Dark Arts,
John
And, since there’s no way I could follow that, I’ll leave you with a link to John’s website. If you haven’t read him, you’re missing a treat… and you can even catch some of his work free of charge before dropping a few bucks on a great book (or three, or four).
