Desperate Authors

I recently heard from an author who has several books in manuscript form ready for readers. His woeful story of getting the books into his readers’ hands is quite typical. By the time I received his query, he'd already exhausted the established route of procuring an agent, and he’d received a drawerful of rejection slips from traditional book publishers. In desperation, he'd subsequently sought out “vanity” publishers, who demanded a lot of money for their layout and printing services and a large print run, and other print on demand (POD) publishers, who will print whatever the author presents, unscrupulously insisted he purchase a minimum 1000 copies of his titles.

He was persuaded to go with a POD publisher, but was badly burned. He invested over $3000 and was left with boxes of unsold, and unread, books.

His despair is not unusual.

It seems that too many commercial operations prey on writers. Each book project becomes a commercial transaction. If you can pay they will put your words into print. The author's sensibilities and painstaking and diligent work are subsumed in the process of transforming the manuscript into a product.

The designation “vanity press” has shades of depredation in its title, or perhaps more truly reflects a poor history. In the infancy of the vanity press, too many poor books were produced. Manuscripts were not edited, books were poorly designed and riddled with grammatical and spelling errors and covers looked cheap. No discussions occurred over a layout that might reflect the intent of the author. It was a service that failed to produce a quality product.

Unfortunately, the vanity press earned a long-lasting reputation, and now even the media often rejects POD books for review, regardless of their quality.

Authors believe that writing the book is the most difficult part of their project, but they are not told of the incredible stamina they need to market, promote and sell their book. Writers are rarely marketers.

If they struggle through the tangled marketing maze on their own, they are beset at every turn by commercial promotional companies who offer representational services -- for large fees -- but will not guarantee results.

At Diamond River Books, I cannot solve all authors' problems, but I do care about the quality of the books I produce. I was gratified to hear recently that a university book store took some of my published books because they didn't look like tasteless POD books.

I can personally guarantee that each book I produce is of high quality and that every effort is made to market the author, the book and the author's point of view.

Return to Diamond River Books website.

A revisitation

`World Made by Hand', a novel written by James Howard Kunstler, is where the author unleashes his imagination into the world he so deftly and convincingly explored in his best selling non-fiction book `The Long Emergency'.
In so many ways, Kunstler closes the circle on the speculative conclusions and dire prognostications inherent in `The Long Emergency.'
Kunstler tells a compelling story set `Sometime in the not-distant future . . .' and diagnoses the calamitous result of society's blind pursuit of a stable technologically driven world.
He draws us into a chaotic world after the end of oil. A world without energy, without systems, without laws, without governance and demonstrates how a small community deals with those problems through trial and error. He shows a re-emergence of a benevolent feudalism, a re-appraisal of community and cooperation and the emergence of local governance.
Kunstler's `World Made By Hand' is full of hope, despite the desperate scenario that unfolds in his imagination. It is a world where resourceful humans survive, adapt and flourish in a bountiful natural world that's so abjectly opposite to our present artificial existence.
It is a novel that should be mandatory reading for every citizen concerned about the planet's uncertain future.
This novel was acclaimed on National Public Radio as one of the top novels of 2008. There are numerous positive reviews of this novel on Amazon.

Anti Amazon

Amazon has declared a trade war against Canadian publishers who wish to use Kindle. As a publisher I was impressed when Amazon announced with great fanfare that Kindle readers were now available to Canadians. E-books only account for a small percentage of the book market but it is a growing segment and I wanted to offer my titles. Personally I prefer physical books. I love the layouts, the paper and the designs. I can’t see readers forsaking physical books en masse to use the latest technology, but for transit commuters, airplane passengers etc., I acknowledge that e-books have a place.
The kindle E-books can use Kindle downloads from Amazon. They are cheap compared to a paper and print book but few Canadian titles are available as Kindle downloads, there are even fewer South African titles, or Australian titles because for a publisher to make Kindle e-book formats available through Amazon, they must have a US Bank Account. A US dollar bank account in Canada does not suffice, it has to be a US dollar bank account physically located within the United Sates.I have located another retail platform which not only offers Kindle e-book downloads, but also has formats for the iPhone, iPod Touch, Sony Reader and IRex Iliad. So I’d suggest that you visit http://www.smashwords.com/ and boycott Amazon. I am testing my first title, The Mercedes Variation, on smashwords, you can even sample up to 20% of the book free before you decide to download the entire book.

Planetary Depression

I have a planetary depression. I have tried to live in harmony with the environment nearly all my life. When I came to British Columbia I wanted to see the `Carmanah Giants’. These extraordinary Sitka spruce dwarf the man made high rises on Vancouver Island. If you ever want to experience the awe of the planet, visit them. But this is not a story about these trees. To see them I had to drive on logging roads. My route went through an immense clear-cut valley. I had never before seen industrial logging on this scale. The valley was a cemetery of tombstone stumps. The devastation was so complete, I wondered if bombs had been dropped.
My mind was so revolted, my stomach threw up.
I was instantly converted from an environmental sympathizer, to an eco-warrior. The pen became my sword. I became a dedicated environmentalist.
I spent a summer living among the majestic trees of the Walbran Valley. I wrote reports for any print media that would print them. I watched the struggle of activists on blockades. They were determined to prevent international timber companies from desecrating our forests. One night I slept in a clear cut to prevent timber workers and police from dismantling a blockade. My horizon was unobstructed. The forest had been felled to become wood for U.S. and Asian industry. The stars were my ceiling. I’d grown accustomed to canopied skies where stars blinked through treetops. In a clearcut, this was like a prairie sky loaded with stars.
But, eventually the demonstrations, the blockades, the arrests, the stories and the lobbying were a success. British Columbia now has the Carmanah Walbran Provincial Park.

So, over the years, I’ve been keenly aware of the background noise about the planet’s plight. I never did agree with economists who stated that violent plundering of the earth would be to our benefit. I remain convinced that our dedication to consumerism has caused the exploitation and devastation of the planet. I’ve been a Gaiaist for years; I’ve read all of James Lovelock’s books, including his latest and probably last – he’s now in his nineties - The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning.
Lovelock’s conclusions are depressing. Even David Suzuki doesn’t embrace them. But I’ve also read James Kunstler’s book, The Long Emergency. Kunstler wrote this book in 2005 and many of his predictions have come to pass. We have not progressed to the depths of his creative foretelling in, World Made by Hand but I have more faith in these forecasts than in the spun statements expounded by politicians with short term re-election agendas. Their words might comfort, if they were believable.
So, where can we go for comfort? I cannot suggest a solution, but I can indicate a new direction. I found this direction by hearing Wade Davis’s Massey Lectures and reading his book, The Wayfinders. Davis points out that Western culture developed on a singular technological path, while other cultures revere our planet and its origins. Davis, as an anthropologist, shows us belief systems that have survived the onslaught of corporatism and technology. He illustrates with examples of civilizations that have the same mental acuity, the same intellectual capacity but have developed without the technological advances of Western societies. These cultures have extremely sophisticated beliefs but have spiritual, not technological, solutions to our universe.
Davis’s conclusions are reinforced by my recent reading of Edward Berry’s, The Sacred Universe. Berry believes that mankind once had great respect for the earth, but now is alienated from it. In Western culture we are assured that modern technologies hold all the answers. Mankind’s present predicament underlines the absurdity of that belief, but Berry believes that by marrying the sacred to the practical mankind has hope.

I think he may be right.

Indie Books

I attended the `At the Mike' readings in Victoria this week. I was most impressed by Des Kennedy's vigorous reading and re-confirmed our old acquaintance. The reading was organised by Brindle and Glass, an independent publisher. I know this publisher gets support from the hand of government, namely the Canada Council. But there are other independent publishers who survive, even in these harsh economic times, without government assistance. We tend to admire, for instance, an independent film maker who finances a film from his/her own resources, but the independent writer who finances getting their book in print is denigrated. It is extremely difficult to even have the book reviewed. There is a stigma in the world to independent book productions. We don't refer to independently produced moves, or music as `vanity films' or `vanity CD's'. Why have we allowed this to refer only to books?

I am therefore pleased to announce that a book I help to distribute, `Something to Ponder' - independently produced, to the severe detriment of the author's bank balance, has just become a winner of the US Book News prize in the eastern religion category. `Something to Ponder' is a 21st century reflection and intepretation of the Te Ching by Colin Mallard.

Diamond River Books - The Book Blog

The Age of Stupid is an engaging movie I saw this week. Thanks to a screening by the Cowichan Citizens Coalition in Duncan. It stars, according to Steven Spielberg, the best actor in the world. He's talking of Pete Postlethwaite. So what is this movie? I'd describe it as similar to Al Gore's `Inconvenient Truth' with more emotion and less statistics, but it's even more disquieting. If the The Age of Stupid shows us a planet in peril, Wade Davis was in Victoria last week and spoke of people in peril. Wade Davis is the Massey Lecturer for 2009, and although he spoke at length at the University of Victoria, the audience heard a condensed version of the entire Massey Lecture series, as UVIC isn't on the official Massey lecture circuit. The Audience also got a signed copy of Wade Davis' Massey lecture book, `The Wayfinders'. I've been a follower of Wade Davis for many years. I'd just finished reading his first book, the Serpent and the Rainbow, (back in 1986) when he came into a paddle sports store in Victoria where I worked. I have to take some responsibility for selling Wade a traditional red cedar and canvas canoe which he wanted for his home waters in the Stikine Valley of northern British Columbia.

I was at a regular meeting of PEAVI (Professional Editors of Vancouver Island) yesterday evening and listened with rapt attention as mystery author, Nicola Furlong, motivated me with a talk and discussion on E-publishing. In addition to the potential of e-books, she encouraged all the attending editors to set up their own blog. That's why I am writing this. I have my own book, The Mercedes Variation in print, and as a publisher for Diamond River Books, I also have other books in print;
The Sunset Watcher by a local author, Barry Proud - he lives in Victoria. Barry gleaned much of the material for his book from his many years working on development projects in central and South America.
A very successful book is The Polski Affair,
an engaging holocaust novel based upon original research by Abel Shulman on the Hotel Polski's role in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation. It's a really great read. Technically it's historical fiction, but it reads like a suspense novel. The tension is real! For a very good in depth review of this book please visit Jew Wishes