A New Book and a New Press
Hello Readers!
I am a writing with some real news about a real new book and my soon-to-be-real publishing company. Dreamland Books (my publishing company) will publishing The Book of the Most Precious Substance (my next book) on February 8, 2022. The book is available for retail pre-order at Amazon, and wholesale pre-order at Ingram. Very soon it will be available for pre-orders at the local bookstores we love. The Book of the Most Precious Substance is a stand-alone thriller about rare books, sex, and despair/hope—all the best things! You can read more about it here and here.
We’re just in the process of bringing it to my foreign publishers right now, but if all goes well it will be available in England, France, Germany, and every other language on earth over the next few years. Business on foreign lands will continue as normal.
This month, I’m giving away 10 egalleys to the first 10 readers to respond. I’ll be giving out plenty more between now and February, so if you miss this month, your time will come. Pre-orders and social media mentions and personal recommendations can help sales a lot, and if you’re so inclined, all of those are very much appreciated, especially as we get closer to the release date.
if you’re a reviewer, book buyer, or otherwise professionally involved with books, let me know and I can get you whatever you need to review/buy/otherwise professionally engage.
Dreamland Books is a small press where I will (if all goes well) publish my own books, and eventually another 2-4 books a year by other writers. No submissions right now please. And if all does not go well, then, well, on to a different way.
As regular readers know, starting my own press has been a dream since I published my first book, twenty (!!) years ago this month. I remember making the final arrangements for Saturn’s Return with Soho Press and thinking, do I really want to do this? Do I really want to just, like, give this away? For money? And put it in someone else’s hands? Like basically forever? Soho Press has been wonderful, so no regrets. And at the time publishing my own book would have been nearly impossible—I had no reputation as a writer, no way to get into bookstores, knew nothing about printing, had no money, etc. But now I have all of those things, to some degree (I’m highly aware of how fortunate I am). (And I now know only slightly less than nothing about printing.)
The trickiest part, as anticipated, has been figuring out bookstore distribution. Ultimately, I decided to go with print on demand. The print quality isn’t quite as high as I would prefer, but I’ve had the same problem with books from big big big publishers. I hope to publish a limited-edition hardcover as well, but that will take some time to figure out. There’s been a few other small stressful moments, but nothing more challenging than I’ve encountered in going through this same process with 6 1/2 other books (I’m counting my audio original as half)—I now have different problems, but not bigger or harder problems. I like learning new things more than I like just about anything else, so this is a net gain for me. The other tricky part, as mentioned, is figuring out the printing—even with print on demand, there’s specs to meet, and the universe of ebook options, and new terminology to learn. It’s a universe I’ve always wanted to know more about, so this is great fun, if intimidating at times. And there’s a world of stuff to do with ISBNs and barcodes and Library of Congress and all that that I find off-putting and challenging and am not naturally gifted at. Everything takes twice as long as I think it will. None of this is a big deal. It’s just stuff to figure out.
On the whole, it’s been enormously fun! I’m at an age and bitchiness level where it’s way more enjoyable for me to make all the decisions myself than to let someone else make them. I’m deeply invested in my books and I want to make the correct (to me) decisions about the interior, the cover, and how I’m presenting it to the world. I’ve always loved books as objects almost as much I love books as things to read (although my favorite is books as things I write—if I had to pick one, I’d pick writing). Working with an extraordinary designer to put the book together from start to finish has been fantastically gratifying. It’s a beautiful book, and the design helps tell the story; the package and the book are all of a piece. I have an equally extraordinary publicist, and we’re working together both on how we present the book and what kind of PR we pursue. I was able to hire the best copyeditor I’ve ever worked with (she copyedited the first two Claire DeWitt books), and as expected she did a perfect job, both catching my plentiful errors and making minor adjustments for consistency and tone. The book did not have an editor. I got editorial suggestions from two different agents (I switched agents after I wrote it), but none of them were major. I took some of their suggestions and didn’t take others. I have had books that needed a strong editorial hand, and I will again (the next Claire Dewitt book is going to need a multi-national editorial team to keep all the plot threads straight), but I did not think this book would come out of that process improved.
I started working in Hollywood ten or twelve years ago, and that’s where probably 75% of my income comes from. American book advances are roughly ten percent of my earnings. (The remainder is foreign book advances and royalties.) (I just did all that math in my head but it feels right.) So I can afford both to lose my book advances and to pay for, you know, publishing a book. If the book sells well, I’ll make much more than I would have with on royalties, of course. If it sells poorly, I’ll lose a little money, but I’ll still be really happy. If this continues to be as fun and as interesting as it has been, I don’t care if I make money from it. If I lose a LOT of money, I’ll do it more cheaply next time. But I have a good income and no other expensive tastes. I’m already excited about the next book, and the next. And if it ceases to be fun and interesting, well, I can always go to back to working with a normal publisher.
I’m happier than I’ve been in a long time.
Send me all your questions, comments, and et ceteras, and I’ll answer them in the next newsletter. Thank as always for being the best fans any writer on earth has.