Guest post by James Dorr: The Marketing Game

Guest post by James Dorr

I’ve just come back from World Horror Convention as I write this, where an editor who had published me some years back happened to mention that he still had slots open in his latest anthology -- one that had been supposed to have been closed months before.  I made a point to say hello and chat a bit later and, now that I’m home, looked up the old guidelines on the computer and went through the stories I have on hand.  

I think I have one that may fit.  

And that’s how the game is played.  It may be a long shot, yes, but he’s liked my work in the past and now he’s been reminded of this.  The anthology pays a professional rate, so I’d be a fool if I didn’t try.

So that’s part of it, to be on the lookout for opportunities to submit work and to be ready to jump when you find them.  I belong to a number of online groups, for instance, on Facebook and elsewhere that sometimes, along with the rest of the gossip, give marketing tips.  I also check lists like Ralan.com from time to time and, even though it costs money as of this year, I’m still getting Duotrope, but on the assumption it will earn its cost back on sales I‘ll make as a result of its listings.  And of course I also keep in touch with other editors’ and publishers’ websites who’ve used my work, checking to see if they have new guidelines for upcoming anthology projects as well as check back with magazines in terms of theme issues.   This includes, if I’m at a convention, looking these people up in the dealers room if only to ask how things are going, but at the same time giving them a face to connect my name to, as well as underscoring that I care -- sort of what businesspeople call networking.  It’s not necessary, but it doesn’t hurt, nor does keeping a fairly high profile, getting on panels when I can, giving readings, etc.

To give an example, a year or two ago I sent some stories to a semipro publisher, Dark Moon Books, for a couple of flash fiction anthologies they’d announced guidelines for.  These were accepted and, at last year’s World Horror Con, I went to their table to pick up a contributor’s copy of one that was just out.  While there, I talked with the publisher about various matters, and also met one of their assistants, Max Booth III, who  it happened was editing an alternative history anthology for them called ZOMBIE JESUS AND OTHER TRUE STORIES which, as it also happened, I had sent a story to about a month before.  As a result, when it came time for him to decide on the stories he’d use, he remembered my name and seeing it in the stack, as he said himself later, “quickly read it and knew right away I wanted it.  The story was, in fact, the first story I accepted for the anthology.”

So, okay, if it was a good story he would have accepted it anyway, but there’s more to it.  When he was later promoting the book, among other things running interviews with some of the authors, I emailed him to let him know I was available too and otherwise worked to cooperate with him.  Then, last fall, he set up his own publishing company, Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing, and, liking what he’d seen of my work thus far (in this case including some other anthologies we’d both had work in), he sent me an email asking if I’d consider doing a book with him   

The result:  in May this year my latest collection THE TEARS OF ISIS was published, timed by mutual agreement to be available a month preceding this year’s World Horror Convention in New Orleans (thus bringing us back to where this column began ) -- seventeen stories and an opening poem of dark fantasy and horror, with maybe some mystery and other things thrown in, about art and artists, and vampires and ghouls. . . , well, Max having given me a free hand, mostly stories published before that have been favorites of mine for various reasons but also chosen with an eye to a coherent whole, along with at least one that’s never been seen before.  And also tales about rats and dragons, and UFOs, and insects, and sleeping beauties and Medusa and Isis. . . .    

So not everyone’s going to publish a book, at least not right away, but we are in a sense members of a family, we writers and publishers and editors.  And when the time comes, it never hurts to have made connections.  But there are other aspects to submitting as well.  I already mentioned reading guidelines, usually obtainable on a publisher’s website.  These may vary in information quality, but if an editor states a preference -- or lists taboos -- adhering to the editor’s wants as closely as possible, or at least explaining in a cover letter why you might be bending a rule if you have a good reason to, will leave a good impression for future submissions even if this particular one fails.  And if an editor says, even though rejecting this story, to please send another, take him or her up on it if you can.  

That’s the big rule for successful marketing:  perseverance.  For myself, I try to send something or other out on an average of three or four a week and, needless to say, when something comes back, the first thing I’ll do is look to see where else I can send it.  But also be polite, businesslike, and cooperative if an editor has suggestions or requests.  If an editor asks you to rewrite something, you don’t necessarily have to agree with everything asked, but if you don’t, give him or her a reason why or, better yet, suggest another way of changing it as a compromise.

Then one more thing, with the number of pieces I send out, it doesn’t mean that I’m that prolific -- just that I’ve been around a long time.  You’ll build up a stable of stories that, while still good, for one reason or another have not yet been published, so keep looking out for places to send them.  But also a lot of marketing I do these days is with reprints, especially in a soft economy where the number of higher paying markets may not be that great, and that’s another reason to read guidelines carefully.  Some markets will be for new stories only, but others are happy to look at older work that hasn’t been in print for a while.  From my point of view it’s still extra money for something I’ve already sold before as well as exposure to new readers.  So on the one hand, I’m not going to get rich on short stories and poems in any event, but if now and then I can make, say, an additional $10, that’s enough to buy a pizza.  Pizza is good.  But also, aggressively keeping my work in the marketplace can sometimes engender new opportunities, a case in point being THE TEARS OF ISIS.   

You can find out more about James Dorr in his WL interview and at:

• Goodreads 
• Website 
• Facebook 
• http://perpetualpublishing.com/the-tears-of-isis/

THE TEARS OF ISIS: What do Medusa and the goddess Isis have in common?  Are both creatresses through destruction?  And why was Isis oftentimes depicted as weeping?  Herewith are some answers as parts of a journey through art and creation, of sculpture and blood-drinking, crafting musical instruments from bone, revisiting legends of Cinderella and the Golden Fleece, of Sleeping Beauty and Dragons and Snow White -- some of these, of course, well disguised.  For is not art both the recasting of what is, as well as the invention of what is not?       The Elizabethan poet Sir Philip Sidney spoke of art as “making things either better than nature bringeth forth, or, quite anew, forms such as never were in nature,” so here there be vampires, and ghouls, and insects perhaps from outer space as well as from this Earth, and visions of Saturn and life in the sea, and other wonders “such as never were in nature,” but, above all, Isis.  The Weeping Isis.  Isis with vulture wings, breasts bare and smeared with blood as in the earliest forms of her myth.    And of course, as well, Medusa.   The Tears of Isis is available at: http://perpetualpublishing.com/the-tears-of-isis/

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This is T.W. Fendley. Thanks for reading and commenting on The Writers' Lens. Stop by my website at www.twfendley.com or on Twitter @twfendley.

Fantasy/horror author James Dorr: "True" stories resonate with readers

Welcome to James Dorr, whom I met through my publisher L&L Dreamspell. He joins us to talk about his latest book, The Tears of Isis, released on May 15 by Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing. James is a short story writer and poet working mainly in dark fantasy and horror with forays into science fiction and mystery, and  has previously worked as a technical writer for an academic computing center, associate editor on a city magazine, a nonfiction freelance writer, and a semi-professional Renaissance musician. Dorr’s earlier books include two collections from Dark Regions Press, Strange Mistresses: Tales of Wonder and Romance and Darker Loves: Tales of Mystery and Regret, and a poetry collection Vamps (A Retrospective) from Sam’s Dot Publishing (now part of White Cat Publications), joining nearly four hundred individual appearances from Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine to Yellow Bat Review.  An active member of SFWA and HWA, Dorr recently wrote the introduction to Telling Tales of Terror: Essays on Writing Horror & Dark Fiction (Damnation Books, Dec. 2012). You can find more about James and his books at: Goodreads  Website  Facebook  http://perpetualpublishing.com/the-tears-of-isis/ The Writers' Lens is about "Bringing fiction into focus." What brings your writing into focus--the characters, the stories, the love of words? For me character is usually the most important part of a story since (as I see it) fiction is about the testing of a character or characters under stress (in the case of dark fantasy/horror, extreme stress). So the character is in a situation and it's how the character copes with it (or not) that defines the plot.  Characters, in turn, are defined in part by their beliefs and by their environments (my life has been relatively peaceable, for instance, which will give me a different perspective than someone who grew up, say, in Iraq).  The game, then, is to put oneself into the head of that character, look out through his or her eyes, hear with his or her ears, feel with his or her skin and emotions, etc., to translate that character into terms the reader (most likely having had a relatively peaceable life as well) will be able to understand.  It is then that a love of words comes in, choosing those words most apt for the task -- because words can induce mood too, which cycles back into that character’s feelings -- but ultimately it is still the character, the person or other being that the story is about.   What inspired your latest book? Artistically, hopefully some of the answers that follow will give an idea. Because inspiration is a tricky thing, it can come in dribs and drabs from various places and not even be seen as inspiration until something happens to pull it all together. So on one level, the answer might be “I really don’t know.” But there’s a pragmatic side to art too, Michelangelo, for instance, received a commission from Pope Julius II that resulted in the painting of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, so the Pope was somewhat responsible too. In my far more mundane case, Editor/Publisher Max Booth III had just started up Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing and, having recently edited an anthology for Dark Moon Books, Zombie Jesus and Other True Stories, that included a story by me, he asked me if I would like to do a collection. As it happened, I’d had some dribs and drabs of ideas, running in several different directions, so I started putting some of them together and ran with the one that looked the most interesting, one having to do with the idea of art and creation. (Thus the Michelangelo name-dropping, although, of course, it’s after the fact -- itself inspired by Teresa’s question.) And so the result, taking its title from the last story in the volume: The Tears of Isis.          What do you think readers will like about your book? The Tears of Isis is actually a collection of seventeen stories and an opening poem, but, rather than just being a grouping of what I might think are the best of my works at the moment, it also attempts to have a unifying theme, that of creation but coupled with destruction as well as a balancing factor.  Thus it begins and ends with the iconic figures of Medusa and Isis, the former a sculptress who “spoke to her hair” and may literally turn her subjects to stone, and the latter one who, seeking inspiration, discovers Isis and in her herself, one who both creates art, but also takes from those she deals with some piece of their vitality, their souls. Then in between come perhaps some of the tales Medusa’s snakes spoke to her in return, not all of art but some touching on it, and most in one way or another touching on destruction or its possibility. To quote from the editor’s Introduction, “Each story in this book has a purpose. It would not feel complete if even one were omitted...” As author, I hope readers will agree.         Would you share a bit about your next project? An ongoing project of mine has been a series of stories set on a far future, dying Earth centered around a vast necropolis called “The Tombs.” About fifteen of these have been published thus far including two reprints, “Mara’s Room” and “River Red,” and one for the first time, “The Ice Maiden,” in The Tears of Isis, with two others this year in separate anthologies, “Ghost Ship” that came out at the end of April in Techno-Goth Cthulhu from Red Skies Press and “Raising the Dead” to be out in fall in Airships and Automatons by White Cat Publications.  At one time I had been in discussion with a mid-size publisher about a possible novel made up of Tombs stories somewhat along the lines of the late Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles, though problems with the economy at large seem to have put that on hold for now. However, the project could be revived. Also, having published a book of poetry on vampires in 2011 with Sam’s Dot Publishing, Vamps (A Retrospective), I’ve been toying with the possibility of a follow-up volume, perhaps to be titled Vamps (And Friends), opening up to allow zombies, werewolves, demons, etc., into the mix too.   How much fact is in your fiction? Stories have to be “true,” and not just in a factual sense, if they’re to resonate with readers, and so if there are facts they’d better be accurate. Or, if they’re made up facts, as perhaps in science fiction, they’d better still be at least plausible. Why? Because facts are what the reader holds on to first, they’re a sort of anchor from which to reach out to the wonder beyond, the myth and the fantastic. So as to how much in a story is fact, it will depend on the story itself -- some need more, some less -- but even in something like “Bones, Bones, the Musical Fruit” in The Tears of Isis, a wholly fictional, even absurd, account of a man who carves musical instruments from human bones, details about his dealings with the local police, for instance, must be true to how real police and how local politics would operate given the situation.  In this case, I’ve been involved in local politics, not in anything having to do with human bones, but enough that I can extrapolate from my own experience as well as things I might read in the paper or see in the news on TV. Or in the story “The Tears of Isis” scenes taking place in San Francisco, in terms of neighborhoods and streets, are based on library research, while those in Boston where the story ends are again from my own experience living five years across the river in Cambridge (and notice how I threw in the river as well as a city on its other side, to flesh the area out just a little, to give an idea, however slight, about what it would be like to be there yourself).         What makes your book/characters unique? The stories in The Tears of Isis rely in many cases on myth, even fairy tales (although, to be sure, often disguised). And yet I hope a streak of reality runs through them as well, that the people, even in fantastic lands or situations, ring true as actual people, with actual motives and reactions readers can believe in. The fantastic rooted in the actual -- myth rooted in truth. To go up to the previous question again, I research a lot -- in the story “The Bala Worm” I used maps of England and Wales with places with local myths about dragons marked, just as do characters in the story. I followed the same procedure as they did to find where the dragon’s lair might be, then also put in background details of rock bands passing through the area with one-night stands in the neighboring village, just as they do in the town I live in now. I hope that throughout The Tears of Isis readers will see a thematic unity (some stories closer than others, of course, but even here there are musicians, for instance), yet see variety in the stories so each one will be unique in its own way.     What's the highest compliment someone could make about your writing? That it made someone think.  That it made them wonder, and then to reflect beyond the page.   THE TEARS OF ISIS: What do Medusa and the goddess Isis have in common?  Are both creatresses through destruction?  And why was Isis oftentimes depicted as weeping?  Herewith are some answers as parts of a journey through art and creation, of sculpture and blood-drinking, crafting musical instruments from bone, revisiting legends of Cinderella and the Golden Fleece, of Sleeping Beauty and Dragons and Snow White -- some of these, of course, well disguised.  For is not art both the recasting of what is, as well as the invention of what is not?       The Elizabethan poet Sir Philip Sidney spoke of art as “making things either better than nature bringeth forth, or, quite anew, forms such as never were in nature,” so here there be vampires, and ghouls, and insects perhaps from outer space as well as from this Earth, and visions of Saturn and life in the sea, and other wonders “such as never were in nature,” but, above all, Isis.  The Weeping Isis.  Isis with vulture wings, breasts bare and smeared with blood as in the earliest forms of her myth.    And of course, as well, Medusa.   The Tears of Isis is available at: http://perpetualpublishing.com/the-tears-of-isis/