Looking Glass Review Makes My Day

Top Reviewer takes close look at Looking Glass, a novel by James R. Strickland
by David A. Rozansky, Publisher, Flying Pen Press
Readers, Writers & Royalties columnist
November 17, 2007
Copyright 2007 David A. Rozansky

 
Today I opened my Gather account and found that Gil T. Wilson, a books and beverages correspondent on Gather, reviewed Looking Glass by James R. Strickland. The review was posted as a feature article on the Books Essentials Group, Books.Gather.com.

Looking Glass is published by Flying Pen Press. In fact, it is the first book we ever published. I am so excited, because we have been working extra hard as a no-name publishing company to get publicity for this unknown author’s first book.

Gil Wilson’s review gives Looking Glass a resounding recommendation. I knew that Jim’s first book was groundbreaking and superbly written from the day it first crossed my palms as a manuscript. It’s been a great privilege to represent the novel, But to see it rise to such acclaim so quickly, I have to say, we can expect great things from James R. Strickland. I am so looking forward to the second novel in the “LookingGlass” world, which Jim says will be coming very soon now.

Because this is such an exciting day (a featured review on a major book review site, on a Christmas-buying Saturday makes for an exciting day), I thought I would take this time with the Readers, Writers & Royalties column and describe how Looking Glass got to where it is today, at least from my standpoint as the publisher.

My part of the story begins in 2005. I launched Flying Pen Press as a company that would publish role-playing-game books. The plan was to take advantage of digital printing on demand. Because the print-on-demand industry at the time did not offer any real system of handling returns, it was easier to focus on the games industry, which does not use returns in its distribution process. However, the role-playing games industry is a very small niche, and trying to launch such a company was nearly impossible.

Then digital printing presses grew up, and one large POD printing company, Lightning Source, came to my attention. They don’t act like a normal POD printer. Rather, they act as a distributor. In fact, Lightning Source is a subsidiary of Ingram, the largest book wholesaler in the world. Lightning Source does not sell to consumers, nor do they work directly with authors, as many PODs do. Instead, they sell directly to the trade, and work only with books from publishers. In this environment, they have a system to handle returns from bookstores, and this changed everything.

Just before Halloween 2006, I saw that this provided Flying Pen Press with the potential to change its focus on what I wanted in the first place, a book publishing company, not a game publishing company.

With the problem of handling returns solved, I wondered if it was going to be as hard to find novelists as it was to find game writers. To find out, I contacted the staff of Mile Hi Con, a local upcoming science fiction convention here in Denver. I asked to speak on some panels about novel writing, and also arranged to hold a “pitch session,” where authors with manuscripts could actually tell me about their book and perhaps submit their novel. I figured that if I got one or two authors to show up at the pitch session, it would be feasible to open Flying Pen Press to novels.

I have developed a habit of wearing a straw hat at major conventions (and poker tournaments) where I will attach a sign in the hat band that reads “Writers and Editors Wanted”. It worked once before in my career, so I did it again at Mile Hi Con, dressed in a fancy suit. That hat has become my signature trait by which most people know me, although I have been able to replace it with a felt fedora when the weather allows.

When I began my writing career in 1987, I never pictured that I would be talking to a man costumed as a Klingon about a novel he wrote. But it was a lot of fun, despite how weird it may have been.

I talked to more than a dozen novelists and I left Mile Hi Con with eight full manuscripts. Gaddy Bergmann’s Migration of the Kamishi was the first pitch I heard, and the first manuscript I read, and I loved it. The second manuscript I read was Looking Glass, and I loved that, too. (Neither Gaddy nor Jim wore any costumes, although Jim did wear his signature T-shirt).

I was amazed. As a freelance writer and magazine editor for the last 20 years, I had always heard that book publishers receive thousands of really bad manuscripts, and that trudging through those manuscripts was very difficult and monotonous; but here, the first two manuscripts to come to Flying Pen Press were stunningly crafted. Later, I would find that most unsolicited manuscripts have to be rejected, but I still see that manuscripts from authors I meet at writers conventions and conferences tend to be much better than the norm.

Jim let me know that Looking Glass started out as a National Novel Writing Month project. He drew on his frustrations and experiences as an IT technician in the Bay Area. But what was most amazing about the book was how he could put himself into the mind of a middle-aged, paraplegic, bisexual, nearly paranoid schizophrenic woman suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, and do it so well that the reader can’t put the book down. While I could easily see that he was drawing on his degree in creative writing, this was pure and rare talent, and I knew it. I didn’t waste much time writing up a contract (the contract by which all of our other author contracts are based) and get Looking Glass into the editorial process.

Fortunately, I had also found Scott Humphries at Mile Hi Con, an experienced book editor who loves science fiction and travels extensively to those science fiction and fantasy conventions I am finding are so full of great writers. While I worked at doing some of the early editing, I hooked Jim and Scott up with each other.

There were others I met at Mile Hi Con that eventually became part of Flying Pen Press: Carol Hightshoe, who became the Senior Acquisition Editor; Stace Johnson, the FlyingPenPress.com webmaster; and David Boop, who has become something of an unofficial consultant to the company as well as a novelist working on a science fiction pulp mystery that I have been eagerly awaiting.

We made the decision to have the publication of Looking Glass and Migration of the Kamishi set for June 1, 2007, the day of Book Expo America in New York City. We planned a pre-publication premiere of Looking Glass alongside Migration of the Kamishi at Flying Pen Press’s Grand Launch party on May 25. I was fortunate that the Tattered Cover Bookstore agreed to host the company’s Grand Launch.

It was a struggle to get everything into place. While I have been in publishing since 1987, I found out that the difference between publishing magazine and publishing books was enormous. Everyday was a learning process as I typeset the books myself, and every day, it seemed I was making major, expensive mistakes. But it all came into place. We found some great artwork for the cover by Timothy Lantz just hanging around the Internet, and we were lucky that the book-cover rights were available. Getting the files in shape for the printer took some technical education, but eventually, I got it all sorted out at the last minute and had the first 12 books sent by Next Day Air, just in time for the Grand Launch. It would be a gamble to have the first regular shipment appear at Book Expo.

On the day of our Grand Launch, no one yet had heard of Flying Pen Press, and the company is a shoestring business, in that I have launched this company with practically no starting capital. We did not expect more than 35 people to come to the Grand Launch, an intimate affair. However, with all the e-mailing and letters and phone calls to everyone’s contacts, Flying Pen Press filled the room to standing capacity. Stace, our webmaster, is in a band, the Steel River Three, and the band was kind enough to play at the party, and so the entire bookstore rocked on all night, and we were a hit.

But the press was clearly absent.

I had banners made up of the two books’ covers. If you have seen the cover of Looking Glass, you know it is an image that grabs you. Imagine a three-foot tall banner of that cover.

Right after the Grand Launch, Scott and I began packing for the trip to Book Expo in New York. I had contracted the very last booth, in the last row, in the small press area of Book Expo. I had a box of each novel sent to my father’s house in New Jersey and we were not sure if they would arrive in time, but luckily they came at the very last minute. We set up our banners, placed our little piles of books, and we were ready to take the world by storm.

We discovered that the small press area of Book Expo is where the self-published authors set up booths, and it was situated behind the children’s publishers, downstairs, out of the way of all the established publishers. The only people who came by our booth were children’s books buyers and librarians. The big banner of the Looking Glass cover scared away anyone looking for children’s books. In the end, we had not taken a single order for our books. Book Expo had turned out to be a $5,000 mistake.

Dejected, but still determined to bring Looking Glass to the market, I began an Internet campaign. I went to Amazon and worked every trick that is available there. I sent out review copies to top reviewers. I made lists of books that complemented Looking Glass. I called bookstore after bookstore, often to no avail.

At one point we got very lucky. I had just been learning about the concept of paring one’s book with a bestseller novel through various means when William Gibson’s novel Spook Country came out. I started looking online, and found that on publication date, the day I started this process, Spook Country was ranked #13 on Amazon, Straight to the top. I did a little tinkering and managed to connect Looking Glass with Spook Country, so that Looking Glass appeared as a complementary book on Spook Country’s Amazon page. It even appeared as a “Better Together” sales combination.

This gave Looking Glass some traction. A few curious people clicked on the Looking Glass link, and some of those people who clicked bought Looking Glass. At first, it was obvious that these sales were dependent on the Looking Glass link on Spook Country’s page, but then something wonderful began to happen. As with any bestselling book, sales of Spook Country started to lag after a couple of weeks, but as the ranking of Spook Country went down, more people began buying Looking Glass, so that it’s rank continued upward. Word of mouth had taken hold.

Jim attended a book signing with Gaddy and another author at Who Else! Books, a small used book dealer inside the Denver Book Mall, where there are about a dozen or so dealers in co-op space. Who Else! Books is the local science-fiction stronghold in Denver, and the Elses are terrific people who truly support the Denver science fiction community. Their store was packed for the signing.

At about this same time, I discovered Gather and signed up. One of the first things I discovered were the book reviews, and one of the top reviewers, a Gather Book Correspondent by the name of Racheline Maltese, had written approving reviews of other high-tech science fiction novels. So I sent her a message and asked if she would review Looking Glass. She agreed, and shortly afterwards, she did indeed write a terrific review of Looking Glass, with a positive recommendation.

Seeing that asking for reviews was fairly easy, I began looking for reviewers everywhere across the Internet and sending out emails. About one in ten agreed to review the book, and soon we were getting nice reviews all over the place. Amazingly, every review of Looking Glass was a five-star review. People began to wonder if we were writing fake reviews. (We recently had a three-star review posted on Amazon by Armchair Interviews, but it’s still a positive review).

However, the reviews have been paying off, and as Looking Glass gets more reviews, more reviewers want to read the book, and there are a large number of readers who follow the reviewers. The book has been reviewed on Amazon, on Gather, and on Armchair Interviews. Gil Wilson was one of the reviewers I contacted. I had seen that he really liked Phillip K. Dick’s novels, which have been inspiration to Jim when he wrote Looking Glass, so I figured that Wilson would enjoy it.

How the Books Essentials Group at Gather picked Wilson’s review as a feature article for today, I don’t know, but after so much frustration with getting the book known, it makes for a happy day. The timing is terrific. I recently sent out a mailer to about 600 independent bookstores across the country, and now I can email them all with news of the latest review. Hopefully, this will be the nudge that places Looking Glass on bookstore shelves.

Where does Flying Pen Press go next with Looking Glass? We hope to generate enough of a following to establish virtual book tours, and I will be sending the new review to the buyers at Borders, Books-A-Million and Barnes & Noble. Locus Magazine and the Bloomsbury Review will get a notice, too.

What is biggest on the horizon is Denvention, where the World Science Fiction Convention will be held in 2008. This will be at the Colorado Convention Center here in our backyard, and as the local science fiction publisher, Flying Pen Press wants to be prominently visible. With these kinds of reviews, Looking Glass will be one of our featured titles there. We are also going back to Book Expo, this time in Los Angeles, and with this kind of publicity and a booth in the proper location, we should have no problem getting the attention of the trade.

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“Get the Word Out! Turn Off the TV and Read a Book!”

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This is just one article in David A. Rozansky’s column, Readers, Writers & Royalties, a blog column about the book trade, from writing and publishing, to selling and reading. His next article will have tips for writing a novel.

Readers may find archived articles or subscribe to Readers, Writers & Royalties at www.ReadWriteRoyalty.Gather.com. Subscribe to all of Mr. Rozansky’s articles at www.FlyingPenPress.Gather.com.

David A. Rozansky is the publisher of Flying Pen Press. He has been in publishing since 1987, and has more than one million published words under his byline. Flying Pen Press is at http://www.FlyingPenPress.com. He is available for speaking on the subject of marketing and promoting books.

T the books mentioned in this article are published by Flying Pen Press. They are available from the publisher or wherever great books are sold:

Looking Glass by James R. Strickland (ISBN 978-0-9795889-0-7, trade, $14.95). Looking Glass is cyberpunk murder mystery where a serial killer is stalking cyberspace and using the Internet itself as a weapon. The author’s website is www.JamesRStrickland.com.

Migration of the Kamishi by Gaddy Bergmann (ISN 978-0-9795889-1-4, trade, $14.95). Migration of the Kamishi is a story of life three thousand years after an asteroid has hit the Earth and wiped out all civilization, and how the Earth is healing from all the things done to it by mankind. Readers can connect with Gaddy Bergmann at Gaddy.Gather.com.