Joshua Palmatier

Joshua Palmatier/Ben Tate – The Importance of Shelf Space

When Goblin Quest came out from DAW, my agent took me on a madcap bookstore-visiting spree in the Chicago area. We soon discovered a pattern: Borders almost always had copies of my books in stock. B&N had none. This was more than a little disconcerting…

My friend Joshua Palmatier, aka Benjamin Tate (Facebook, Twitter, LJ) is another DAW author, with two series in print: The Throne of Amenkor trilogy (The Skewed Throne, The Cracked Throne, and The Vacant Throne) as Joshua Palmatier, and the Well series (Well of Sorrows and the newly-released Leaves of Flame) as Benjamin Tate. He’s also published short stories in Close Encounters of the Urban Kind, Beauty Has Her Way, and River.  With Patricia Bray, he’s co-edited After Hours: Tales from the Ur-bar and the upcoming The Modern Fae’s Guide to Surviving Humanity (March 2012).

Today, Joshua finds himself in much the same position I was in back in 2006 … only now Borders is gone. I’ll be honest, this is something that scares me as an author. Joshua’s been doing some guest blogging lately, so I asked if he’d be willing to talk about B&N’s decision and how he’s responding to it.

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My newest novel, Leaves of Flame [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy]–sequel to Well of Sorrows–has just hit the shelf . . . so to speak. Typically, an author is ultra-excited when the new book is released, and I am, but almost immediately after the release date I learned some rather disastrous news: Barnes & Noble, practically the only large-scale bookstore chain left in the U.S., elected not to carry the new book on its shelves. For an author attempting to build up an audience, this decision is, in essence, a death knell. It’s also not something that authors generally talk about. We tend to curl in upon ourselves and keep such heart-breaking news hush-hush. I know that was my initial reaction. But Jim asked if I wouldn’t mind talking about it here at his blog, and after some thought I asked myself, “Why shouldn’t I talk about it? It’s the real world of the publishing industry. It happens. Why keep silent?” So here’s why this decision on B&N’s part is so disastrous for me, and what I, as the author, have attempted to do to correct it.

Let’s face facts, I’m writing under a pseudonym now. The reason, to be blunt, is that my first trilogy, published under my real name, Joshua Palmatier, didn’t sell as well as hoped or expected; it didn’t find the audience it was intended for here in the US. So when the new series was set to be released, it was decided to send it into the world with an open pseudonym, Benjamin Tate. The hope was that the new name would attract new readers, and that fans of the Palmatier books would find out about Tate and buy the books as well.

To be honest, I don’t think this happened. WELL, in trade format, did not attract readers. When it came out in mass market with a brand new and incredibly cool cover, B&N decided to put only a few on the shelf, because of the sales of the trade. DAW designed an eye-catching cover for the sequel, LEAVES, that would pop on the shelf. But of course, LEAVES isn’t even on the shelf, which ultimately defeats the purpose of the eye-catching cover.

This means that the chances LEAVES will sell (and potentially bring in sales for WELL) have plummeted. I have little to no hope of a random reader—someone who has never heard of either Palmatier or Tate—even SEEING the book, because the browsing capabilities online at places like bn.com and amazon.com are geared toward the books that are already hot sellers. For all intents and purposes, LEAVES doesn’t exist for the random browser, so my chances of expanding my audience are gone.

What can I do to make LEAVES (and thus WELL) more visible? I really only have two options: cons and word of mouth. Cons are easy, but costly. I’ve signed up for numerous cons over the course of the next few months, but I have a day job, so I’m limited, and besides, each con costs a significant amount–money that I’m unlikely to get back in terms of the sales generated at the con. So cons, while extremely fun (I’m ticked that I couldn’t be part of Author D&D at ConFusion), aren’t cost effective.

Which leaves (ha ha) word of mouth. Immediately after learning B&N had decided not to carry my book in its brick and mortar stores, I e-mailed every friend and author I knew asking if they could help by hosting a guest blog or posting an interview or perhaps just mentioning the book online in Facebook or Twitter. I already had some of these lined up, of course, but now I needed as many as I could get, because the only way to reach new readers was to make the book visible online. You may have noticed numerous blog entries from me posted by my friends and fellow authors over the last few weeks, including this one by Jim. In general, authors are an extremely supportive group. Word of mouth—not just authors supporting other authors, but readers talking about books they’ve read or noticed to their friends in person and online—is the best way for a book to be seen. And for an author to pick up new readers.

So, I would turn to you, the readers: If you’ve read a book that you liked, or you’ve seen a book that you thought looked interesting, talk about it. Mention it on Facebook, tweet about it on Twitter, blog about it. Hit up amazon.com or bn.com or your favorite online bookstore and leave a brief review. Or go to the book’s page at any of those sites and “like” it. Do the same at reader forums like Goodreads or Library Thing. Every little mention, every good word here and there, may bring in a potential reader for that author. In essence, YOU are the balancing factor when a single person at B&N makes the decision—for you—about what books you’ll be interested in. YOU are the ones who make books bestsellers.

For some of us, whose books are only going to be seen online, *cue R2-D2 holographic image of Leia* “You’re our only hope.”

First Book Friday: Joshua Palmatier

Welcome to First Book Friday, an ongoing series exploring how various authors sold their first books.

Today’s post comes from fantasy author Joshua Palmatier, a.k.a. Benjamin Tate.  His latest book is Well of Sorrows, his fourth novel for DAW Books.  Joshua also runs the DAW Books Community on LiveJournal.

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First of all, thanks to Jim for inviting me to guest blog about my first novel sale! It’s certainly an experience an author never forgets.

My first professional novel sale was The Skewed Throne [B&N | Mysterious Galaxy | Amazon]. This was the fourth book I’d written and the fourth that I’d seriously attempted to sell. I began writing it in the summer of 2002, while in my third year of graduate school, seeking my PhD in mathematics. At this point, I’d been seriously trying to get published for about seven years, sending out queries to agents and editors for the other three books I’d written. I had a list of agents and editors that had been refined using the multiple rejections from those other books. So I had agents who were interested in my writing but hadn’t seen a book from me that they thought would be a good “first” novel. I also had a few editors, specifically Sheila Gilbert at DAW Books, who had seen all of the previous books and wanted to see whatever I wrote next.

I spent that summer writing the first half of The Skewed Throne, put it on hiatus while I worked on the PhD for the Fall and Spring semesters, then finished the book in the summer of 2003. I immediately started sending it out to my list of agents and editors, including Sheila Gilbert at DAW—agents in batches of 7, and one editor at a time. I got multiple rejections (some of them rather harsh) from the agents right away and began working my way down the list, completely and utterly discouraged. I’d reached a point where I’d literally told my local writing support group, “If this didn’t sell, I was done writing.” I don’t believe I would have—or could have—followed through on this, but that’s how beat down I felt at the time. Thankfully, I had PhD work to cheer me up!

I got interest from one agent. YAY! Except, she wanted me to revise the manuscript so it was more YA and change it from first person to third. I spent a month doing that, and the agent’s response was, “Sorry, no longer interested.” This pissed me off, so I rewrote the entire book again, changed it all back to first person, eliminated the YA elements, and created a new list of agents to send it to, including Amy Stout, a new agent at Lori Perkins Agency. Amy expressed interest immediately, but I was wary at this point. We spent a few hours discussing the book on the phone. After extensive questioning, I felt that I could work with Amy and that she had realistic expectations for the book and for revisions. I agreed to let her represent me and told her the book was already on submission to Sheila at DAW.

So by fall 2004, I had an agent and the book was on submission to DAW. I was also nearing the end of the work on my PhD, looking for jobs while finishing off the dissertation. I focused on that (I had an agent to focus on the book now), and while I was away at a mathematics conference in January 2005, I got a call from Amy saying Sheila was interested in The Skewed Throne and, oh, by the way, if there were sequels they wanted to take a look at those, too.

After the resultant OMG OMG OMG dance, I wrote up synopses for sequels and sent them off.

Within three months of getting Amy as my agent—and just under three years after sitting down to start writing the first book—I had a three-book deal with DAW for the Throne of Amenkor series. Since then, all three “Throne” books have been published in English and translated into German. Oh, and in May 2005, I got my PhD.

2005 was a very good year. *grin*