Where's the writer?

My internship with SFWP couldn't have come at a better time as we are about to put out two new releases on May 1. Wendy J. Fox's If the Ice Had Held and Elizabeth Geoghegan's eightball are currently in presale on Amazon and SFWP's website and we have been working hard to push both books.

Given that SFWP is such a small team and there are only two spring releases I've had the opportunity to interact with both authors during the presale marketing process. Both Wendy and Elizabeth are extremely active on social media and both just attended AWP where their books went out into the world for the first time (ARCs don't count!).

The part of the process I did miss out on for their books was the initial editing phase and cover creation though I have to say, in my extremely humble opinion, that both books came out absolutely beautiful. My job has been to work with both authors to find the best outlets for marketing the book, getting shoutouts and early praise. Both books received positive Kirkus reviews and a heap of advanced praise. Wendy's book was included on BuzzFeed's 37 Amazing New Books To Add To Your Spring Reading List. I'll also be helping both authors find contests that they're eligible for.

I'm also helping with the final go-through of the upcoming fall release, Dan Ford's Body Broker. I'll have the opportunity to do marketing for the book when we get closer to its release.

Beyond that, I've had the chance to read a number of contest submissions which has been an interesting experience. I use Submittable for Dark Ink so I'm generally fine with being rather ruthless about turning down a submission because it's for my own magazine and I know exactly what I'm looking for. With the contest, I have to weigh out more factors. Is this something I think has wide appeal, or am I the only one who's ever going to like it? Does this author seem to have a voice of his/her own, or does it sound like something I've read before? It's a different way of approaching the writer in the process since these contest submissions are supposed to be blind. We have to judge the writer simply by what we get off the page in one reading. It's an interesting, and challenging process.

Overall, this entire experience has been very enlightening, especially watching how each individual author has created a platform and markets their work. I also have enjoyed watching how they interact with Andrew. The relationships are very strong and very easy going, but Andrew isn't afraid to tell his authors what he needs from them to make their books a success. I'm looking forward to what's still to come in this internship!

Surprise!

This week's question is what surprised me about my internship.

To be honest, there hasn't been much. I don't know if it's because I was already neck deep in running my own press, or because I had nerded out enough and done enough research that I saw most of the work coming a mile away.

However, I will say that I learned something that has been imperative to my growth as a potential publisher. When I started Dark Ink I was taking over something that was already established. I bought out a press that was failing but had already established its structure and overall business practices. The previous owner relied strictly on Amazon as a "distributor" and that's what we stuck with when we rebranded as Dark Ink. We discovered almost immediately that Amazon is NOT friendly to independent authors or independent presses. In fact, they do their level best to throw up roadblocks that make it very difficult to do high volume business. In order to combat that problem, we started using IngramSpark which was designed specifically for indie publishers. They function as a print on demand warehouse so that indie publishers can make their books available to stores like Barnes and Noble-- essentially expanded distribution that functions better than Amazon's limited distribution options.

One thing that happens to be very important to stores like B&N and even a lot of small indie stores, is the ability to 1) order at wholesale prices and 2) return unsold copies. Neither of those options is available through Amazon because they are too busy trying to scrape the very last penny out of the soul of every indie publisher who uses the service. Once we started using Ingram, we saw an uptick in orders and distribution but we were still moving fewer than 100 units per month of any given book at any one time (except for Dee Michel's Friends of Dorothy which flies out of the warehouse faster than it can be printed).

When I started working with Andrew distribution was the first thing I asked him about. He had mentioned a company called IPG which functions as his "warehouse". However, they do far more than that. They also handle a good deal of the marketing including printing and sending out ARCs, soliciting reviews, and pushing sales. That pushes the selling volume into the 10,000s and puts authors in a much stronger marketing position.

I was surprised to learn that this option existed because I assumed that all marketing in the indie world fell to the publisher and the author. What IPG does bridges the gap between indie and traditional publishing in a creative way. It makes me hopeful that there are options for indies that will actually allow them to gain a greater foothold in the market, allowing them to play on the same field as the traditional houses.

A surprise that makes everyone smile.

A Few of My Favorite Things

But first, a shameless plug for Ed Farrell's debut novel with Dark Ink Press:
White Angel. Clergyman Mickey Powell has been accused of murder...

And that's all I'm going to give you. The book is stunning, set at General Seminary in New York, which coincidentally has appeared in numerous episodes of Law & Order. Mickey Powell is the perfect embodiment of the human side of an Episcopalian minister, desperate to clear his name and solve a murder he most definitely didn't commit.

Ed has also entered his book into the Santa Fe Writer's Project's 2019 Literary Awards! I may be a bit biased since I published this book, but I think it's a winner. Hopefully, guest judge Carmen Machado will think so too.

When I was first assigned to SFWP for my internship I didn't know what to expect. Would I be treated as an equal, or a lowly MFA student who couldn't do much more than proofread emails? I wondered whether I would be happy with my internship and learn anything valuable, or if it would be just one more thing I'd resent having to add to my schedule.

A few weeks before the semester started and our internships officially kicked off, Andrew sent out an email asking if Beth and I would be interested in starting our internships early. Of course, we both said yes because who wouldn't? I jumped in on social media and helped straighten out the Instagram account which, prior to the start of the semester, consisted mostly of photos of Andrew's weekends at the Mussel Bar in Bethesda. Of course the weekend Instagram crowd still loves the cocktail shots but it's been a blast creating and posting a variety of content that helps promote the current catalog, new releases, the literary magazine, and the contest. I've also found that grammar humor goes a long way for the reading crowd! Who knew?

What I love most about this internship is I was allowed to slide right in and start working as if I had been there all along. There was no awkward "getting to know you" phase, no moments of feeling measured up or judged. I was just accepted as part of the team and allowed to operate using my best judgment. I was given access to all of the social media accounts after Andrew joked that it wasn't worth stealing his identity or personal information, and I am constantly being sent items that can be posted. I'm never at a loss for content. If anything, we have far more than we'll ever have an opportunity to use.

The best part of working with Andrew is being able to tell him what I want to accomplish and he provides me with everything I need to do it, including sending me hard copies of books and connecting me directly to the authors he prints. He's even given me the opportunity to do small projects for the authors above and beyond my media work.

I've also gotten to be chief reader on the contest entries that we get in which has actually been a blast. I love reading people's work and seeing what they've decided to send out into the world, knowing that it's one of the scariest things a writer can do. I'm pulling for each and every one of them while occasionally being astonished by the patent lack of preparation some writers put into their submissions. All I can say is, don't submit until your piece has been edited to its best!

Now I'm embarking on a final read of a manuscript that will be coming out in the fall and prepping the media for that novel. I'm also prepping media for the two releases coming out in May which both just earned favorable Kirkus reviews which was really exciting.

All in all, I think it would be really difficult for me to find something I DON'T like about this internship...

All Good Things

I'm taking a break from everything by watching a psychological thriller called All Good Things with Ryan Gosling and Kirsten Dunst. I do this a lot while working on my thesis to help ground me in my work. The movie is based on the real-life disappearance of Kathleen Durst, wife of New York real estate heir Robert Durst. It's live action creative nonfiction in a way and makes me think about my tone and my approach as I'm writing. I also watch a lot of documentaries. A favorite is Cropsey, a doc about an urban legend that grew from the foundations of the abandoned Willowbrook State School in Staten Island. Rewatching Cropsey actually helped me re-form the beginning of my thesis.

I thought that writing my thesis while doing an internship (plus working and running my own press) was a recipe for stress and possible disaster. Funny enough, I've never felt more organized and settled. I fell into a groove with my internship that was like slipping on a favorite sweater. Andrew welcomed me onto the team as if I had always been there, had always been a part of the team. He assumed I knew what I was doing and treated me as such. So far I think I've done well proving that his confidence in me was just.

It didn't feel like a beginning of any kind, more like a continuation, even though this year has been a new beginning in many ways. I started my married life, transferred to a new school, started work on two new books.

But it was also a continuation of things. Continuing on the path to my MFA, continuing to work on the house.

Then there were the restarts. Picking up my art again. Then striking a deal with a publisher to restart the first book I ever wrote ten years ago, prepping it for a relaunch.

So here I am, learning the ins and outs of SFWP which is the press I would most like Dark Ink to look like, and I'm having a blast. I've had the opportunity to learn more about marketing, evaluating full-length pieces for a contest, and pulling marketing material from the short pieces that will make up the current issue of the Quarterly. I've gotten to see how a strong, effective team of readers and writers works together to make the press run smoothly.

I've also gotten to watch, first-hand, Andrew's passion for the books that he publishes and the authors he works with. Even though his own work is part of SFWP's catalog, he's more concerned about getting his authors as much exposure as possible and that their work is handled with the utmost care and enthusiasm.

This week he sent me a small collection of works that I had requested from him so that I could start taking some staged photos of the books like the large publishing houses do. My favorite bookstagram feed is Putnam books. Every image is carefully taken and curated to highlight their publications in a smart, and marketable way. They create images that people want to share and that's what is most important in the world of social media marketing. You can't just catch someone's eye-- you have to make them want to tell the rest of the world about what they've seen.

Stupid me, I went and looked at their feed and just got distracted for a good ten minutes. I also may or may not have entered a contest for a free copy of The Editor by Steven Rowley.

What was I talking about again? Oh yes. Beginnings.
I'm beginning to appreciate even more that books, reading, writing, and teaching all of the above were all the right choices.

Intern(al) Affairs

All I want for Christmas...
...Is two weeks of my life back. Rather than celebrating the holiday with my family in the comfort of my home, I celebrated it in a fog of anesthesia and painkillers. The weekend before our last week of school leading up to vacation I found myself in the emergency room doubled over with a stomach ache that felt a lot like a small dumpster fire right below my rib cage. It was 4:00am when I woke my husband up and dragged him out of bed to take me to the hospital. By 11:00am the next day I was in surgery having my gallbladder removed. Turns out it was four times its natural size (not that I know what that is but it sounds bad) and super infected. Next time my stomach hurts like that I'm just going to go play in traffic.

The best part of the whole scenario is that I had never had surgery before and it turns out I'M A GIANT BABY. I left my husband in my room when they wheeled me down to the OR but the minute the nurse started explaining the surgery to me I started to sob. Uncontrollably. Ugly crying with no way to wipe my face because I was connected to every machine they could find. I was so freaked out they had to call up to the floor and have them send my husband down.

So they give me the sedative as they're wheeling me out of prep and down the hall to the operating suite and I remember asking the nurse how old the OR was because it had that cool old turquoise tile on the walls. She said it was about fifty years old, then asked me why. That was about the time the sedative started to kick in and they got me on the table. The last thing I remember is the nurse asking me if I knew anything about Belchertown State School. I think I mumbled something about it being my favorite and may have mentioned my thesis...

The moral of the story? Even under anesthesia I still babble about asylums.

A few weeks before I had elected to start my internship with the Santa Fe Writers Project a little early. I agreed to take over doing social media marketing as the press wasn't seeing the level of interaction the founder, Andrew Gifford, had hoped for.

As authors, most of us have discovered the value of an active social media presence. As much as we might hate it, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have become necessary evils. Luckily SFWP has a lot going on right now, making it really easy to create content and post daily. The press just opened up their annual literary awards contest which is one of the largest events the press hosts. This year Andrew was hoping to increase the number of entrants so we took to social media to do it, reviving the press' Instagram feed.

Even though Facebook is currently the largest social media platform with the greatest number of users, Instagram has overtaken Facebook in relevance. The algorithms that allow Facebook posts to reach a tailored audience are complicated and can't yield any kind of marked results. Instagram, on the other hand, has simple algorithms driven by hashtags, much like Twitter. Many social media users have actually abandoned both Facebook and Twitter in favor of using just Instagram which multiplies engagement opportunities exponentially. All that is a long-winded way of saying there's already been a major increase in traffic to the SFWP feed, most of it direct interaction with the posts and the individual authors whose work is being tagged and shared.

Starting this week I'll continue to work with SFWP's social media accounts but with a greater focus on the next issue of the Quarterly. The contest is open and running until July 15th so I will continue to post about the contest but I will also be working to solicit submissions to the Quarterly, post Kindle daily and monthly deals, and promote the spring releases which I'm very excited about.

Since I'm already in the swing of things, I know that I will be getting a great deal of experience in marketing and working with a team to create engaging content. I also have the pleasure of working closely with Anne Pinkerton, a Bay Path MFA alum! Andrew will also be having me read some of the contest entries and some of the Quarterly submissions which I'm also very much looking forward to.

I'm sure that my understanding of this internship will continue to grow and change as the semester goes on but right now I'm really having a great time watching the interaction and the excitement that SFWP stirs up in writers and readers alike.

Signing off for now but I insist you go check out SFWP!
xoxo