On "Slow Publishing"

You might know about the Slow Food movement. Last week I heard a Vermont Edition interview on Slow Money. Both refer to models that support the local economy, minimize environmental impact, operate on a human scale, stress diversity over monoculture, and respect the relationship side of transaction. As similar goals have informed the way I’ve brought out my book, this has led me to think about what one might call Slow Publishing. In previous posts I’ve written about local economics and environmental concerns. In the future I’ll start to grapple with scale, diversity, and relationship.

One little secret about Slow Publishing: it’s actually fast. Once you’ve got a manuscript and design ready to go, you can have a physical book within minutes. In traditional publishing, the process can take months. Or more. I remember how odd it was to learn that a book was slated for some far-off season in the future that felt a lifetime away.

Since one feature common to Slow Food, Money, and Publishing is local production, I want to draw attention to another local production, my husband, Tony Eprile’s excellent novel, The Persistence of Memory. It's the story of a young South African man who has a perfect memory--and as a result is always bumping into the people and institutions around him. Every time I read it or hear Tony read from it, I discover something new. The bulk of the book was written in a yurt in our meadow, a few hundred yards from the house.

Yes, I said a yurt. I'm posting both hardcover and softcover designs because I like them both and feel each reflects different aspects of the book.

Tony’s first book, Temporary Sojourner and Other South African Stories, is also quite lovely. Many who grew up in that era in South Africa have said, “Yes, that’s the way it was!” Unfortunately, the book is out of print. Wait a second—I now know a bit about getting a book into print! Must have a chat with this fellow.

Writing and Therapy

On the subject of travels, I thought it time to talk a bit about the odyssey that led to my writing this book, that of training as a psychotherapist. My decision to become a clinician was complicated and in many ways misguided. But I found clinical work endlessly rewarding, fascinating, and surprising—in part through the many parallels between writing and therapy.

Interestingly, when I told people I was doing clinical work their response was, “That will help you so much as a writer. It will give you so much story material!” Actually, it turned out that being a writer helped me as a therapist. The tools I had developed over my writing career—verbal precision, modulations of tone, use of dramatic irony—allowed me to make powerful connections and interventions with my clients. In The Therapist's New Clothes, I explore the many ways in which writing and therapy intersect.

One of these tools is metaphor. As a clinician, I learned that much of a therapy session is conducted through metaphor. Longing for a father may be expressed through frustrations with a boyfriend ("He's just not there for me"). Similarly, a loss may be too painful for someone to address directly so we talk instead about appliances that are “always breaking down.”

I first really “got” metaphor through my uncle’s poems. I remember one I read when I was eleven or so about the end of a friendship called “The Broken Toy”, with a line about how whenever you try to fix it “the glue clings just to your fingers.” Who has not felt that way?

Here is a poem by my late uncle, James L. Weil, about writing that could well also speak for therapy:This broadside of the poem, printed on the occasion of a reading at the Sterling Library at Yale University in 1977, has been over my desk every place I've lived. (Click on it for an easier read.) At my J School reunion a classmate quoted this poem to me word for word. I had recited it to him and he remembered it all these years! I'll close with the sprightly image of the colophon for my uncle's publishing company, The Elizabeth Press:

Book Gets a TV Cameo

While I was on vacation, my book was busy getting itself on Boston television. This clip offers a nice, clear introduction to the Espresso Book Machine. At least one viewer was intrigued enough by the title and image to contact the Northshire and order a copy! Clever of me to have a bright red cover. (Thanks, Amy.)

Since summer vacation only happens once a year, I'm going to take the opportunity to post a family holiday snapshot.That's our boy at a restaurant overlooking Puget Sound. Now it's time to get back to work...and I'll soon report on my wanderings among the independent bookstores of the West.

Book Business 101 (Or Rather, 2.0)

I never took an economics class. I thought that was just for budding investment bankers. (I knew we had crossed a generational divide because when I arrived at college everyone wore sweats and wanted to talk philosophy and when I left everyone had suits and talked of careers in finance.) So of course it makes sense that now I'm writing more on local currencies and grappling with a business strategy.

The predictable distribution hurdles of selling an alternatively-published book are now staring me in the face. The Therapist's New Clothes will soon go up on a large online site, but with a surcharge. I lowered my percentage as far as I could, but it's still much more than buying at the Northshire. This online site's parent company has a POD program, which might make economic sense, but that would undermine the local alliance that I am committed to. A national distributor also has a POD program that would allow me to sell to independent bookstores and folks at the Northshire are looking into that. Then again, if more venues adopt the Espresso Book Machine the distribution question will be moot. And I haven't even mentioned the confounding matter of sales tax...

This is the challenge of using a model that's still being developed. I'm just figuring it out as I go along (or, more accurately, after I've already gone along.) I'm taking a brief break, so I'll leave you with an image of one of my loyal readers.Makes it all worthwhile!

More 'Bout That Book

The book now exists in three-dimensional, full-color (well, mostly red) form. It was extremely cool to watch the proofing copy drop from the binder like a candy bar from a vending machine and with the same satisfying thunk.

To describe it, let me defer to that quintessential art form, the jacket copy:

"I believed so wholeheartedly in psychotherapy that I became a psychotherapist." In The Therapist's New Clothes, Judith D. Schwartz tells of training as a therapist, shifting back and forth between her experience as beginning clinician and her own increasingly devastating therapy treatment. It is the story of the author's belief system crumbling--and how she comes out the other side."

In the book I explore my love/hate relationship with psychotherapy through my own experiences: the profoundly rewarding experience of helping a client past fear or pain as well as self-delusions that bound me to a process that was leading straight downhill. That's the thematic material. There is also a story: however improbable, these things happened to me. I'll dip back into the narrative shortly. For now, here's a corner of my writing desk with my mouse pad, a replica of what is arguably the most famous Oriental rug in history--the one that covered Freud's psychoanalytic couch.

Interview with POD Pioneer John Oakes of OR Books

The Therapist’s New Clothes is now available!
It’s real. I’m speechless.

How convenient, then, that I happened to have talked to John Oakes, who, together with fellow publishing veteran Colin Robinson, has just launched OR Books—which seeks to combine the editorial professionalism of traditional publishing with a model that draws on new technologies for production, marketing, and delivery.John Oakes (in shades) with Colin Robinson (with the bullhorn) at the OR Books "launch party" during BEA. Photo by Miriam Berkley.

JDS: I’ve been reading about OR Books and admire your willingness to try something new. What keeps you in publishing at a time like this?

JO: What draws people to the book business is a sense of fun and wide-ranging interests. I have a restless mind—an English major also fascinated by science. The appeal of books remains. The world is too fascinating a place to be tied down to one thing.

JDS: Is there still fun to be had?

JO: The system of traditional publishing has gotten less fun over the last several decades. The decline in book-reading predates the Internet. Not reading per se but book reading. But now there’s electronic reading: still less than 1% of the reading public, but skyrocketing as people read on computers more and more. Print on Demand is part of an answer. There’s no upfront cash, production quality is now first rate, and the delivery system more streamlined.

JDS: One thing that interests me about POD-- haven’t explored electronic publishing—is the waste it cuts out.

JO: The traditional book system is hell on the environment. One little book is printed at the printer. Then shipped to the publisher’s warehouse. Then to the wholesaler or a major retail client. Then from wholesaler to the bookstore. If the book is among the 50% that are not sold, it goes back to the warehouse of the wholesaler then the warehouse of the publisher. Most likely, unless it’s made of Teflon, the book will be damaged and can’t be sold. This is bad for the publisher, the author, the bookstore—as the book had taken up shelf space—and bad for the planet. For that you’ve cut down a tree.

JDS: Yet most companies haven’t taken this to heart.

JO: The big guys are so entangled in the system it’s hard for them to extricate themselves. You’ve still got those high advances, publishers plunking down $1 million bucks for a first novel. It may be a good first novel, but they do that because they panic—they’re desperate for a hit and think this is the way to get it.

JDS: Where does OR Books fit in?

JO: Colin and I had been talking for a long time before we both, so to speak, found ourselves out on the street. We believe this shift is going to happen, that this is how publishing will look in the future. There’s still a need for professional editors and publishers to work with authors to shape a book and to market it. Some of the technicalities will change but the roles are the same. I don’t know that we will be, say, the Simon & Schuster of the 21st century, but someone will be.

JDS: Will authors balk if you’re not offering those mega-advances?

JO: I don’t think authors will be a problem. We’ve got books in the pipeline and are another round of drinks away from author deals with Dale Peck and a bunch of other name-brand authors tired of their experience with the traditional publishing system. We’re interested in progressive ideas but we look at that broadly. We will do contemporary fiction, edgy popular science, politics and memoir. It will be the independent publishing ideal of publishing what we love.

Thoughts On Local (Continued)

The last few days I’ve been going up to the Northshire to look at the galleys and make corrections. I’m in that almost-book stage, when one frets over commas and looks up words in the dictionary ten times.

The Northshire and my other favorite shop in town, Al Ducci's Italian Pantry, have in their windows "Buy Local" decals that look like this.

Upon moving to Vermont a dozen years ago, I was struck by the awareness that in a small market like ours every purchase matters. I found that knowing this, buying things from local merchants took on an added dimension, that of a relationship as well as a transaction. This consciousness of how and where I buy combined with my recent explorations in economic processes have led me to look more deeply at "Buy Local" programs. One result is this article that's been up this week on Time.com on why buying local matters.

Okay, so I've got this book that's written, designed, and produced locally. This is an approach that I value and want to support. The book will be sold at the Northshire (and whatever other outlets I can convince!) as well as online. But do I want this to be a "local" book and reach only readers around here? Heck no! I believe that there's another kind of "localness" based on common interest. These are the communities that the Internet and the new social media have allowed us to form. How to find this community of readers will be my next challenge. And that means grappling with the subject of the book.

But for the moment, let's stay local as in Southern Vermont. This is Al Ducci's. I dare you to stop by and not want to buy everything on the shelf. Homemade mozzarella, anyone?