Writing to the back-list

A back-list is all your older books that are still selling. When I started publishing in 1988 it was a rule of thumb for most publishers to rely on their backlist to contribute at least seventy percent to the companies gross revenue. The back-list gave stability because you could count on it to produce predictable sales. These books were usually non-fiction in genres like guidebooks, cookbooks, biographies, histories and the like. Back-list books required only minor modifications between reprints and since all the preproduction costs of acquisition, editing and design were already expensed these books could be surprisingly profitable. A strong back-list is worth its weight in gold.

It’s easy for writers to concentrate on front-list fiction. It’s exciting to promote your latest work and hopefully see strong sales. I have met writers who have the belief that since ebooks and POD books are never out of print they always remain front-list. However, this assumption doesn't work and leads to disappointment. Most books sell best in their first year and afterwards their sales tend to drop-off, usually dramatically. This process leads to spikes in author revenues and feelings of desperation and stress.

For this reason I believe it's important for authors to build a "traditional" backlist. For instance, if you write fiction you may want to consider also writing some targeted non-fiction for your back-list. This sort of non-fiction can greatly stabilize a writers income and focus a career. Plus, writing in a different genre can strengthen your writing skills and many find it’s sometimes easier to write non-fiction as well. Writers need to be entrepreneurial enough to carefully consider each writing project to maximize their back-list potential. Writing is much more enjoyable when you have a predictably selling stable of books behind you. It allows you to relax a little and explore things with less worry and uncertainty.

My Local Bookstore

Last Wednesday I delivered the first order of “An Island Between Two Shores” to my local independent bookstore. It has been available on Amazon as an eBook for six months and several thousand copies have been downloaded. However, I’m old school enough to feel that until a book is available in print at my local bookstore it doesn’t feel like it has really been published.

Those dozen books sat in a box in the backseat of my car. My two dogs smelled them and were alert when we drove up the alley behind the bookstore and pressed the buzzer at the freight door. The invoice was for barely a $100 and I was more excited than if I was delivering a $5,000 order. I worked for enough years in publishing to know that you lose money delivering small orders. We used to wait until there were enough small local orders to justify a “milk run.” But in the new publishing world we handle small print runs and deliver even tinier orders.

I then went home and ordered another 100 copies from my Print on Demand supplier. With freight it costs under $4 for each book and takes about two weeks to receive them. Ten years ago it was common for me to order 7,000-10,000 books for an average print run and we usually had hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of inventory at any one time. The printing, warehousing and managing this inventory was deceptively high and the risks were enormous.

I appreciate the lack of stress there is in the modern publishing workflow. If you make a production error or editing mistake you fix it in the next hundred copy printing. If you want to market your book you chat on Twitter, Facebook or promote the book on a host of book sites. These efforts can get astonishingly high levels of discussion and increase a books discoverability enormously.

Modern publishing offers independent writers and small publishers great opportunities. However, if you’re not entrepreneurial or web savvy you have a distinct disadvantage. These days there is a suite of skills required to succeed and producing a well crafted book is simply not enough.

My Writing Process...

Sometimes I get asked to describe my writing “process.” I’m not sure if what I do qualifies as a process but I will try to describe some of my thoughts about writing fiction.

First, I’m a big believer in writing shitty first drafts. My first drafts are horrible. Unimaginably bad. But they serve a purpose. Their job is to take the clutter in my mind and put it on paper. Once you have a first draft the real work begins as most of the surprises and creativity are already exposed. For me, rewriting is more laborious and less attractive than writing a first draft. I’m not saying that I find writing a first draft easy. It’s just that mixed in with all that crushing work are moments of flow. Transcendental moments when and hour passes in the blink of an eye. 

I often work on a book idea for more than a year; slowly researching and developing the plot and characters. Sometime I place myself in similar setting to what I am trying to describe in my novel. For instance, my first novel describes a protagonist who must survive on a small northern island. In this case I spent the better part of a day building a shelter under a log on an island on the Yukon River in the winter. It gave my writing insight and allowed the prose to be developed much easier and with greater authenticity. 

I like to write from a detailed outline that I discuss with my editor before I start writing. She always gives me frank suggestions about where I should develop the story to make its arc stronger and characters more believable. I find that this process helps me write more focused books and prevents me from spending time describing things that will be cut later. I find writing difficult and I try to prevent writing anything that will not make it to the final draft.

When I’m working on a first draft I try to write for at least a few hours each morning. I take long walks in the afternoon and try to settle my mind by not reading or talking too much. Having long walks allows me time to reflect on the manuscript and relax. I pamper myself with good meals and feel it’s important to embrace the moment as one of life’s true pleasures. After all I have the opportunity to write a book and I like to savour that privilege.

I usually can write a first draft of a novel in a very immersive month or so and find it energizing to get many pages written each day. Writing in the mornings is important because when you sleep you tend to work through your story. Many times I have awoken to find an idea that I’ve been struggling with has a solution I hadn’t previously considered. An added benefit is that you have wonderful afternoons when you’ve written a lot in the morning. Plus, you have the option of writing for another shorter session later in the day. 

When I’m writing I never reread what I have written until I am absolutely finished the entire draft. I don’t want to slow down the writing process and slip into a critical frame of mind. And if I come to a spot that I can’t finish because it requires more research I simply leave a hole with some notes indicating where I feel the prose should be headed. Before I begin the second draft I fill all these holes. 

I usually use the second and third drafts to develop characters as I find my first drafts tend to be more action oriented. Second drafts are terrific for making certain the story flows and the characters are becoming three dimensional. But to be honest I am often still working on these qualities until the final draft. My first novel required seven end-to-end rewrites and I can say with certainty that each subsequent draft improved although the last few required less of an over-haul. I usually have a structural review by an editor after at least a few rewrites. At this point we don’t touch the spelling or grammar and are more interested in ensuring the story is developing believably. The last couple of rewrites are focused on syntax, grammar and copy editing. But every book is different and require different levels of rewriting and editing.

I don’t find writing easy and many times it’s maddening. However, it’s always meaningful and rich and I feel lucky to be able to call myself a writer.  

Getting Well

I was saddened when my doctor left his practice several years ago. He was a terrific doctor and I had been going to him for many years. But I was healthy and I rarely went to a doctor anyways.

A year or so later I noticed that I was feeling exhausted and my wife felt I seemed depressed. I spoke with our marriage counsellor and she suggested I see a doctor to determine if there was anything medically wrong with me.  A new practice was being set-up and I made an appointment with a doctor that had recently come to town. He was Iranian and told me that he took his job very seriously and planned to live in my town for a long time. He sent me to the lab for a comprehensive set of tests and two weeks later we reviewed the results. The lab had found I had low Thyroid functioning but the doctor told me that I wasn’t Hypothyroid because my glucose levels were fine. There is often a connection between thyroid functioning and glucose levels and he reassured me we should ignore the findings. This opinion was unfortunate and had huge implications beyond what I could imagine.

The doctor thought I seemed lethargic and said he wanted to closely monitor my condition. He kept doing tests and over the next year I seemed to visit his office at least twice a month. However, I continued to feel tired, depressed, gained weight and was cold sensitive - all classic symptoms of Hypothyroidism. At one point the doctor told me that my problems were psychological and were likely due to problems in my marriage. He even asked me to bring my wife to the next appointment because he wanted to do marriage counseling - I told him we already were going to a marriage counsellor who was a licensed psychologist. Nothing seemed to improve and my lack of energy and depression gradually worsened. My body felt out of control and prevented me from doing things I had always loved like hiking and skiing. I started carrying candies when I went for walks because I found I quickly lost energy and felt light headed. Finally I came to the conclusion that it must be what it feels like to get older and was something I needed to accept. I went to the doctor less frequently and tried to get a long as best as I could.

During this time my marriage of more than twenty years started to unravel and in many ways my condition was the straw that broke its back. We had our problems but things seemed to intensify and worsen. Eventually I felt so horrible I decided to leave and while the divorce was nasty it was resolved relatively quickly. I moved into a small rental and adjusted to being a divorced dad. I started to blame my lack of energy and depression on the divorce and hoped I would soon start to feel better over time. 

Eventually the Iranian Doctor quit his practice and moved out of the country. He told me he was moving because the winters were too cold and long and he had received a good offer elsewhere. A few weeks after he left I started hearing rumors that he wasn’t qualified to practice medicine in Canada.

Several months later I found another doctor and made sure she was credentialed. I Googled her and was pleased to see she had received academic awards while at medical school and had a lot of positive comments from former patients. Within a few visits she called me to review my test results. She told me was that I was pre-diabetic and suggested I consider taking Diabetes medication. Then she told my that my TSH levels were too low and I was Hypothyroid. I was stunned and didn’t know how to respond. We decided to treat the Hypothyroidism and hopefully in time my glucose levels would improve. I started taking Synthroid and almost immediately began feeling better. Finally I had energy and felt much more optimistic and happy. 

Soon afterwards I went to a writing retreat in southern Spain for a couple of months. The sun and warmth invigorated me and I was hiking many miles each day on goat trails through the Andalusian mountains. Within a few months my glucose levels improved and I felt better than I had in years. It was like a light had been turned on. I no longer felt cold, lethargic and depressed and I was slowly losing weight too. Fortunately I hadn’t developed other problems such as diabetes and I was recovering.

Every day I wake feeling great. Then I become angry at the years I endured untreated Hypothyroidism and all the opportunities that were lost. My kids are now in their late teens and have memories of me was as lethargic and depressed for several years. I sometimes wonder if the Iranian doctor deliberately kept me sick so he could bill thousands of dollars worth of visits? But I prefer to think he was just incompetent and/or unqualified and hurt me unintentionally.