Book reviews, sales and other confusions

Float Street Press has been experimenting with things, trying to figure out how to reach readers. We'd like our books to be read (seeing as that is the point of publishing them) and especially find readers who like a particular author. Javaid Qazi writes strange and wonderful short stories, but his two collections (UNLIKELY STORIES and THE JEWELED WEB) have not sent tremors through the publishing world. Still, when UNLIKELY STORIES came out, it got good reviews. Someone giving it a five star review wrote:

 

Excellent stories from Pakistan to Silicon Valley 

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

Javaid Qazi's first collection of short stories is notable both for their insightful nature and amazing variety. A country-western barfly, Silicon Valley office workers, a doctor and his family in Pakistan, a lustful maid in Portugal, and a German 'stripteuse' populate these tales. Throughout the world Qazi finds interesting people in interesting dilemmas. His language is as original as it too is varied. A highly recommended first book by an upcoming writer who measures up internationally.

 

 That was lovely, but it doesn't seem that it encouraged shoppers to avail themselves of the book.

 

Okay, I get it that short story collections, especially when they lurk in a strange limbo between experimental and mainstream fiction, sometimes encroaching on one, sometimes the other, isn't the easiest sell. How do you tell people what it is? Our thought was to publish some stories individually and let people know they were from a large collection of such stories.

So we published two stories and made them available at 99cents and used the Kindle free days to let the world know.

 

 Both received an encouraging number of downloads, both free and paid. And one reviewer (the only reviewer) of President Sahib's Blue Period gave it:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wise, metaphorical, entertaining May 16, 2013

By Scrabble Fan

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

This short story contains many allegories and metaphors for our age, at the same time containing irony and humor. The writing style reminds me of Marquez' "One Hundred Years of Solitude." 

 

We've seen no reviews for Berlin Danse Macabre yet, but it is a challenging story.

 

Understanding what this anecdotal evidence means is difficult. I don't know what inspires people to write reviews, or how other people relate to reviews. I take them along with salt tablets myself, as single grains are usually inadequate, but the reviews of Javaid's books suggest that they struck a lovely chord with some readers.Now we are hoping that the interest this generated is enough to get readers to go for the collections. We could publish all of the stories individually and we will if that is what readers prefer. Given that the least we can charge for a story is 99 cents and the collection of 11 stories in UNLIKELY STORIES is $3.99 and THE JEWELED WEB has 18 for $4,99, I am not sure why readers would prefer single stories, but I know that I am not a typical reader. (We have both in paperback as well, for those who are not addicted to ereaders and like the touch and feel of books.)

It's a fun experiment and the results are sketchy. If you have any thoughts on the idea or value of individual stories versus collections, or how to let people taste a collection in another way, I'd love to hear them.

 

The Music From the Story

My good friend Edward Null, who is a wonderful songwriter and folksinger, took the time to read a draft of my new novel, UNDER LOW SKIES and claimed he enjoyed it. When I asked him if he liked it well enough to write some songs based on it, he said yes. I think he actually said "Hell yes" but then that is what I wanted to hear, and I think I'll stick to that version of the history.

Things never go exactly as intended, and of course, the album that got finished isn't exactly about the story I wrote. The story is a murder mystery/suspense story that takes place in Venezuela, where I lived for seven years. As things developed, we wound up with songs were inspired by the kind of life of the main character Martin Billings, who captains an inter-island freighter in the Caribbean, leads. As we worked on it, I decided that was probably a better result (more fun, more interesting), as it doesn't contain any spoilers or any contrived lyrics stuffed in to sell the book. It's just good music that relates to life on a boat in the Caribbean. Hey, what more could you want?

In putting together the material, Ed decided to re-rerecord a couple of my tunes that fit the theme, as well as write some new ones of his own, including the title song. I got to tweak the lyrics a bit, even enough to get a co-writing credit in one case, and play a harp fill on one song. I couldn't talk him into using another song of his that is excellent as he didn't think it fit.

It was a fun collaboration and seeing as Ed is in Missouri and I am in Cambodia, we were tickled with how well it came together. I am trying to get enough photos and video material to do a trailer for the book that will feature the song UNDER LOW SKIES. Don't hold your breath though. When it comes to visual stuff, I work kinda slow (and painfully).

I've posted the album cover below. The music should be available for download soon, if not already, at Edward Null's CD Baby site. If it isn't there yet, well Hurricane Rosie is a damn good listen too.

 Now those of you with a nautical bent  are going to notice that the boat in the graphic to port isn't an inter-island freighter, but a sailboat. Yes, sharp eyes there, mate. But then, as a I said, the songs are the right feeling for the book, not actually the story, and well, the sailboat wound up fitting the songs better than a freighter would.

Below is a little another graphic I did that pushes the album and book into one space. That is sort of an advertising gimmick--inserting gratuitously and then pointing it out provides a convenient excuse for me to stick a link to Amazon where you can buy the book (print or kindle) online. But it is also available from iTunes Bookstore, Kobo and Barnes & Noble.

So this is the latest push from Float Street Press. We have some other exciting books and miscellany in the works and I will be talking a bit about our intention to publish our first romance novel. If things stay more or less on what passes for schedules around here, we will be releasing it in November of this year. But it is a rather large book, so there is much to do.

Rain

It seems odd to be wishing for rain in SE Asia. It is the tropics after all, but it has been hot. Even the breeze, when there is any, was hot. And it was humid. The sky hung heavy. It needed to rain. Rain cools things.

Finally it did rain. Several times. We found new holes in the roof and the gutter had backed up so a wall was running water. Who cares? Things cooled down. Life became more energetic. The moo frogs were happy. The tokay gekos were shouting "oh oh!" (that means they are happy).

Now it's hot. The breeze is hot. It is overcast. I hope it will rain.

New Video

I've been playing with videos to promote my books. Okay this post is kinda self serving, but making little videos is fun and there are some cool shots of strange places.

Lasagne and Publishers

Sometimes there are things in life that elude you. The two things I notice that I am never able to nail down are lasagne and publishers. I wonder if there is a connection?

I love lasagne. With meat. (Note to chefs, lasagne has meat. Meatless lasagne should be condemned to the same hell as light beer) Throughout my life I have had great difficulty getting lasagne in restaurants. I have walked into restaurants that specialize in lasagne and not been able to get it. They are out. I have ordered it ahead of time, going into the restaurant and saying, "I am coming in on Wednesday. The only thing I am coming for is lasagne. With meat. I don't care if you have running water, but promise you will have lasagne." They write down my name and my order.

When I arrive they don't have it.Or they made a mistake and saved some meatless thing that vaguely resembles what I ordered. Even if the waiter says yes they have it and takes my order, I won't get it (once a group of 24 people came into a restaurant and ordered all the lasagne about three minutes before they took my order.)

This has nothing to do with where I live. It has happened:
In the United States. (Boston, Austin, New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland OR...)

In Italy (for crying out loud!).

And now in Cambodia.

A neighbor, out of pity for my plight, went to the same damn place that I struck out the last time and called to ask if I wanted her to bring me some as she was there and they had lasagne coming out of their ears. So sometimes I actually get some, but not when I go out to eat.

It has been this way all my life and isn't likely to change now. My wife laughed when I told her about. Now, lo these many years later she has seen this in operation too many times and always hints nicely that I might consider the lovely ravioli.


I've been writing for many years now. Magazine articles, nonfiction books, poetry, short stories and novels.
My luck with publishers, at least with fiction, follows a path reminiscent of my search for lasagne. I write a book, and after a great deal of effort, find a publisher who loves it. Hurrah, I cry.

But just because the waiter took the order, it doesn't mean you get the lasagne.

So the publisher loves the book. Contract is signed. Celebrate! The publisher gets to work (we are not talking cons here) and spends eons working on the book. Me too. Back in the old days I wrote a lot of science fiction and Ermine Publishing was excited about bringing out a double novella of mine. That was in the days of physical galleys. They hired someone to do the cover art. They edited the text. They typeset it. Lots of work.

Then they went out of business.

A few years later I sold a book to a publisher I won't name, but the editor got fired a week later and it turned out he didn't have the authority to sign the contract and anyway, they were changing their focus to cook books.

Then I sold a humorous novel (THE LEGEND OF RON ANEJO) to NovelBooks. They actually published it. A lot of angst and chaos later, they were out of business and, fortunately, the rights returned to me. (Lucky you can get it through the link on the right.)

A little bit ago, I announced that Glass Page Books was going to publish my murder mystery novel, based in Venezuela, called UNDER LOW SKIES. They did a nice cover. And then... went out of business.

So I will publish the book myself, along with the sequel, BANDIDO, that is almost done.

Fortunately, I've worked in publishing a lot of my adult life as a magazine editor, book editor (freelance) and sometimes publisher. I can see why the publishers I worked with failed. Float Street Press, my imprint, is a more cautious toe in those waters. I publish myself and a few others. We will try to develop the process and have fun with it.

Meantime, I have to remember not to expect to get lasagne or a publisher. And interestingly enough, I can actually do fine without either. It turns out that neither is particularly healthy.

UNDER LOW SKIES

Recently my agent, Rebecca Pratt, contacted me with the news that a publisher in the US was interested in my mystery novel UNDER LOW SKIES. We negotiated and I am happy to say that Glass Page Books will be publishing the book later this year.


This is the story of Martin Billings, an exSeal who is captain of an inter-island freighter. It is a tough life and requires an independent spirit. In this story, his younger brother is accused of murdering a Venezuelan fisherman. Martin goes to Cumana, Venezuela to try and sort things out and finds that the mess his brother has stepped into is a lot bigger than he could have imagined.

The publisher did this cover, which I think is great, and my good friend Derek Marabolí corrected both my Spanish and a few errors I made in place names in Venezuela. 

Needless to say I am looking forward to its release.

Colds and construction

The terrible onslaught of colds and flu hit here in Asia just as it has in so many places. It seemed odd at first, that we were sitting in weather that was 90F and snorting away with winter colds, but there it was. I thought it a poor choice of ways to begin the new year, but on the other hand maybe it gets all the being sick out of the way for a good long time. There ought to be some sort of karmic value to it -- short term, I mean. I suppose everything factors in karmically if you look at a long enough span of time.

It doesn't help that Dr. Philippe, our landlord, started putting up a new old house next door. He bought it standing out the jungle or someplace, had it taken down and brought here. It looks like a nice house, but with the crew working it was hard to sit around and take it easy and get over being sick. Below are photos of the ritual blessing on site, and two photos of the first wall going up. Reconstruction, Cambodian style.

Now the house is mostly done, at least that is what we are told. It seems to us like there is a lot left to do.