Steven Fernand - S.M.Fernand Blog
It's been two years since my previous post here, within which I claimed it to be "the penultimate in this blog about a book." You who may have read some of these pages, and may have wondered what happened to this old fool's novel, please pardon me for my disregard, and kindly allow me now to finally wrap up this chronicle.
The blog left off describing the release of the revised and re-titled edition of my novel, A Fool Rides the Wheel of Fortune--a title apropos to the book's content, and to my own journey into the publishing business. Self-publishing, that is. After eighty-sixing Amazon's print-on-demand service, CreateSpace, for various reasons expressed in my previous blogs, I had reissued the novel through IngramSpark. This was a bit of a challenging task, reformatting the manuscript from Microsoft Word to Adobe InDesign; but nevertheless, it became quite rewarding regarding the physical aspects of the books themselves--the bindings, covers, and paper. What with its new cover art, I felt the novel to be in a quality package.
The discrepancy that I'd experienced between CreateSpace's creative accounting of copies printed and sold through its "extended distribution" retail outlets, versus the five-times-more reported by Nielsen's BookScan (see blog of April 1, 2014), has not been an issue with IngramSpark, whose respective numbers match up with Nielsen's. Furthermore, what the heck is the deal with seven copies of my out-of-print title, Appalachian Carnival, being reported by Nielsen sold in the last week of August, 2015, nine months after I terminated my contract with CreateSpace to print the novel, and for which I also never have been paid? I don't know, it beats me.
The book business nowadays is a bizarre ball of wax. What with the consolidation of publishing houses into corporate giants that chiefly print only bankable authors; and what with the tsunami of self- and indie-published novels, many ineptly done; and what with the decline of book sellers and book readers--what have we got? An unfortunate ball-buster.
Notwithstanding that, as the publisher of my novel, I have done a poor job--and as its author, I've done even worse--being reluctant to invest the needed effort to realize even meager sales. I did send out 800 postcards announcing the publication to book stores and libraries around the country--with the result of nothing coming from it at all. I did sell a few dozen copies at a weekly street market in Gulfport for a few months. Big deal.
As with any career, even after acquiring its specific skill-set, one must devote years of role-playing on a public stage to become what one strives to be. Me, I've been there and done that with my shoemaker's persona, which has left me with enough wherewithal to likely ride out the rest of my life. Money not being an issue, nor fame, my only motivation remaining is to create a decent work of art. This, I believe, I've done. And my opinion appears bolstered by most of those who have read the novel.
My book is not for everybody. Its genre is ambiguous; its composition forgoes the formulaic. Intended as an allegory of the first half of the Tarot's Major Arcana, portrayed in the alternative world of a 1970 traveling carnival in the hills of West Virginia, the novel depicts this well enough. Nevertheless, very few people are aware of the Tarot as an iconography of life's path. Many fear these cards as the tools of fortune-telling charlatans--the devil's damned picture-book. Carnivals and carnies evoke unsavory memories for many people, as well. My novel is no bedtime story. Its tale of lust, drugs, and greed; its characterizations of freaks, geeks, and con men; its themes of subversion, perversion, and heresy: all feed the distaste of readers who seek more conventional fare.
That being said, this is the book I had to write, whatever its future. I've learned much about how to write a novel, and about the business of publishing. I stand proud of what I've written, and I uphold its qualities, regardless of its commercial fizzle. Although it shall be in print through Ingram as long as I am alive, I now bequeath the book to the dusty shelves of posterity, perhaps to be read by someone decades hence.
So here you have it--the last of this tale of my journey into the world of self-publishing. I hope it has been, or shall be, of some help to other writers. The second half of the Tarot's Major Arcana awaits my allegory of an even more forbidden subject: the world of the dead.
Steven Fernand - S.M.Fernand Blog
It's been two years since my previous post here, within which I claimed it to be "the penultimate in this blog about a book." You who may have read some of these pages, and may have wondered what happened to this old fool's novel, please pardon me for my disregard, and kindly allow me now to finally wrap up this chronicle.
The blog left off describing the release of the revised and re-titled edition of my novel, A Fool Rides the Wheel of Fortune--a title apropos to the book's content, and to my own journey into the publishing business. Self-publishing, that is. After eighty-sixing Amazon's print-on-demand service, CreateSpace, for various reasons expressed in my previous blogs, I had reissued the novel through IngramSpark. This was a bit of a challenging task, reformatting the manuscript from Microsoft Word to Adobe InDesign; but nevertheless, it became quite rewarding regarding the physical aspects of the books themselves--the bindings, covers, and paper. What with its new cover art, I felt the novel to be in a quality package.
The discrepancy that I'd experienced between CreateSpace's creative accounting of copies printed and sold through its "extended distribution" retail outlets, versus the five-times-more reported by Nielsen's BookScan (see blog of April 1, 2014), has not been an issue with IngramSpark, whose respective numbers match up with Nielsen's. Furthermore, what the heck is the deal with seven copies of my out-of-print title, Appalachian Carnival, being reported by Nielsen sold in the last week of August, 2015, nine months after I terminated my contract with CreateSpace to print the novel, and for which I also never have been paid? I don't know, it beats me.
The book business nowadays is a bizarre ball of wax. What with the consolidation of publishing houses into corporate giants that chiefly print only bankable authors; and what with the tsunami of self- and indie-published novels, many ineptly done; and what with the decline of book sellers and book readers--what have we got? An unfortunate ball-buster.
Notwithstanding that, as the publisher of my novel, I have done a poor job--and as its author, I've done even worse--being reluctant to invest the needed effort to realize ev
en meager sales. I did send out 800 postcards announcing the publication to book stores and libraries around the country--with the result of nothing coming from it at all. I did sell a few dozen copies at a weekly street market in Gulfport for a few months. Big deal.
As with any career, even after acquiring its specific skill-set, one must devote years of role-playing on a public stage to become what one strives to be. Me, I've been there and done that with my shoemaker's persona, which has left me with enough wherewithal to likely ride out the rest of my life. Money not being an issue, nor fame, my only motivation remaining is to create a decent work of art. This, I believe, I've done. And my opinion appears bolstered by most of those who have read the novel.
My book is not for everybody. Its genre is ambiguous; its composition forgoes the formulaic. Intended as an allegory of the first half of the Tarot's Major Arcana, portrayed in the alternative world of a 1970 traveling carnival in the hills of West Virginia, the novel depicts this well enough. Nevertheless, very few people are aware of the Tarot as an iconography of life's path. Many fear these cards as the tools of fortune-telling charlatans--the devil's damned picture-book. Carnivals and carnies evoke unsavory memories for many people, as well. My novel is no bedtime story. Its tale of lust, drugs, and greed; its characterizations of freaks, geeks, and con men; its themes of subversion, perversion, and heresy: all feed the distaste of readers who seek more conventional fare.
That being said, this is the book I had to write, whatever its future. I've learned much about how to write a novel, and about the business of publishing. I stand proud of what I've written, and I uphold its qualities, regardless of its commercial fizzle. Although it shall be in print through Ingram as long as I am alive, I now bequeath the book to the dusty shelves of posterity, perhaps to be read by someone decades hence.
So here you have it--the last of this tale of my journey into the world of self-publishing. I hope it has been, or shall be, of some help to other writers. The second half of the Tarot's Major Arcana awaits my allegory of an even more forbidden subject: the world of the dead.