I found out over the weekend that Son of the Great River was one of the nominees for the 2009 Cybils in the Young Adult Science Fiction/Fantasy category. I’ll put up a more detailed post later that gives me a better chance to express how excited I am by this news.
In case you haven’t noticed, there are several thousand free books available for Kindle readers, and many more that cost about as much as a pulp novel did in 1945 and less than a decent pack of gum costs today. Now, there have always been cheap-as-free books available for eReaders, but this isn’t just your usual suspect list of Project Gutenberg and other public domain goodie goodies. The 99¢ (Or, with the 20% discount, 80¢) Kindle edition isn’t so much a book as it is a marketing venue for non-traditional publishers and authors to generate reviews and attention. It’s an interesting concept, which may not prove economically justifiable, but there’s something wonderfully experimental about print-on-demand and being exposed to all these non-traditional pathways that drags a person along.
So, what are you waiting for, go pick up a Kindle copy of Son of the Great River for 99¢. And when you review it, please don’t mark me down for the execrable quality of the cover illustration. Who knew the Amazon digital book tool was based on 1970s era Xerox technology?
Son of the Great River has been out for two months now and I’m happy to report the reviews have been solidly positive so far. Book reviews get scattered all over the Internet, and it’s a rather maddening trap to start googling yourself and your book, so I’m sticking with what was posted either on GoodReads or Amazon.com. Here’s a sample of what people are saying about it:
This is an enjoyable tale that reminds me of a quaint mixture of Pocahontas, White Fang and the Horseclans Saga. Plenty of primitive splendor comingled with an epic adventure rich in people and interesting places. I cracked open this novelette with an open mind and was pleasantly surprised. The story has some excellent illustrations to aid in the spinning of this yarn. In conclusion I would definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in some light reading.
(4/5 Stars)
Young adult novel set during the Bronze Age. Two teenage boys leave their homes, and find different adventures; both growing up along the way. There’s plenty of action, and a bit of romance thrown in as well. I was actually surprised how much I enjoyed it considering the YA genre isn’t usually my thing. Once I started it though I found it hard to put down and zipped through it in a few hours (it’s very short). I would recommend for fans of historical fiction, or readers of YA fiction.
(4/5 Stars)
Incredibly entertaining, and a very quick read. Action scenes are spectacular, historical detail spot-on, and characters interesting. This work is as pure an example of fairy-tale as there is; it teaches without being moralistic, is about juveniles but is never sophomoric. Because the four protagonists must deal with adult issues–how to “leave the nest” and become autonomous, how to negotiate corruption without losing purity, how, in short, to be both child and adult simultaneously–Son of the Great River is perfect for the young-adult who, by virtue of that transitional state, is struggling (without necessarily knowing it) to integrate multiple, oftentimes conflicting selves. Some of the characters succeed, some don’t. According to Meeks not all of us make it. But because of the familiarity of the characters, any modern young adult who reads will have no trouble recognizing him or her self in one of the protagonists, and so be able to relate. The illustrations by Hajra Meeks are subtle and beautifully sketched, providing template for young readers and their imaginations without imposing scenario or how characters are supposed to be seen. A fantastic, must-read book for all, most especially for boys who claim they hate reading.
(5/5 Stars)
Slow to start, and full of mystery but a nice and slow way to pass time, just like the mountains and the river.
Not for those who like conflict through and through.
But the ending (especially the last twenty pages) really came alive and every new page seemed to offer something different.(3/5 Stars)
This last one was actually one of my favorites, even though it was the lowest rating numerically. It’s one of the vicissitudes of grading that we begin to expect grade inflation, but a first time author should be happy to receive 3/5 stars by an impartial reviewer, and the meat of the review is quite positive. Now, go out and buy a copy so I’ll have something to quote the next time I do this!
I got to put on my Author Hat and meet with a bunch of 4th, 5th and 6th-graders and discuss the process of writing, the story in Son of the Great River, and numerous other topics, not least of which was Edward Cullen and Stephanie Meyer. When I was told that Son of the Great River was best suited for intermediate audiences, I blanched at the prospect, because I thought it meant the book was overly simplistic. After visiting a class full of small, precocious people, and the brave souls who teach them, I realized that I couldn’t think of better company. I think if we play our cards right, these kids might end up saving the world (Unlike their facebook and twitter-addled older siblings that I teach at university).
It’s remarkable how young people resemble and diverge from their cynical, gimmicky elders. There’s such a sharpened idealism and awareness that you feel the weight of responsibility on you with every topic you address, so I took full advantage of it. I spoke about my book, of course, but just like any audience, they didn’t just want to buy a book, but also an author, and I was happy to play that role, too. I got to explain in gory detail how the editing process works (With pantomimed slaps and imaginary editors shaking their heads in disdain for my over-exuberant comma use) and why my earlier books weren’t published (“Because they weren’t any good.” a 5th-grader said under his breath, to which I smiled and pointed and exclaimed “Exactly!” and after that simple act, he watched me with rapt attention) but also how they’d be growing up in a completely different world of content delivery. Now, I didn’t use those words, instead I talked about the Espresso Book Machine and amateur actors, directors and cartoonists using YouTube to build their audiences. And they’re not just content creators but fans, critics and reviewers, like Grady Harp, whose voices can outweigh their local paper or television station.
It was amazingly fun, enlightening and, as if that wasn’t enough, I got to check my mail later and receive dozens of notes like these:
Dear Mr. Meeks, thank you for coming. I thought your speech was really good. You have inspired me to make my own story. And I would be glad to read yours.
Sincerely, Nova
Dear Mr. Meeks,
Thank you for coming to our classroom. You inspired me to write a book of my own. I am not going to put pictures in it though. When I am done with it I am going to make copies of it and give it to my friends and family. When I go to my father’s house I am going to go online and go to your site. Tell your wife she draws very well. And I think it would be cool if she could come and talk about art. From, Gage
Dear Mr. Meeks,
My class and I loved hearing about your book you wrote and about publishing. It made makes me really want to write a book! We would all love to have your wife come and show us her art. I can’t wait to read your book!! Thank you for coming!
From, Lydia
Thanks for introducing your book!
Over the summer I hope to make a short film about your book. I would also like to draw some pictures to. I truly hope to read your book.
Elinor
Suffice to say, I’m bringing Hajra the next time, and I could care less if I ever sell another copy of Son of the Great River as long as I can have an effect like that.
I keep meaning to write something about poor Jared Diamond’s woes and the shadenfreude that the entire discipline of anthropology is currently feeling. Other topics that should have already been thrown into the giant hopper but haven’t:
I’ve started racking up good reviews for Son of the Great River, including librarians and middle-schoolers. I doubt I’ll be quitting my day job any time soon, but it’s nice to know that it wasn’t terrible. Interestingly, when you speak to modern 4th-6th graders these days, it does restore a bit of your confidence in humanity. If you think this blog is a rambling, off-topic bit of lunacy, you should see me linking deforestation to video games to YouTube to writing (And while you may not follow along with all the connections, I assure you they’re very brightly lit for 4th graders). Web 3.0 is the 4th Grade and I’m glad to be a part of it.
I need to review books like I promised. There’s a particularly rivetting review of Civic Agriculture that only exists in my head (And, as an environmental historian, I should be making some comment about Nature-Society interactions–can you believe I said nothing about the situation in Punjab??). Confound the bonds of customary target audience hucksterism, I will review books at random times, especially when they have nothing to do with my PhD.
Art and Social Computing. I want to join DeviantArt and show off my unit icons for Bughunter and my obscure flash games, but the wife won’t let me on account of it diluting her brand.
Then there’s all the review’s trickling in of Lih’s book on Wikipedia. It sounds terribly superficial, I can’t wait…
But, really, I’m in the middle of trying to churn out dissertation- and conference-think, so the only bit of thoughtfulness I can give is a quote from someone else about digital map-based geographic locationally spatial media:
The rapid developments occurring at the intersection of geographic computing and web-based information technology cannot be identified with any single label, nor are they effectively described by any single body of academic literature. A variety of terms are in use for one or another aspect of this domain, including “web mapping”, “neogeography”, “social cartography”, “the geoweb”, “webGIS” and “volunteered geographic information”.
Now if you don’t mind, I need to call some 4th graders and find out about this Semantic Web thing.
Princess Naganawae from Son of the Great River
Rheem from Son of the Great River
Both of these posters are available through the Seven Lions Store, and complementary posters are available for bookstores carrying Son of the Great River.
We’re just putting the finishing touches on the first series of posters for Son of the Great River. These glossy posters are based on original watercolors like the one above (Based on the pen-and-ink illustration of Rheem from the book) and are designed for display in bookstores carrying Son of the Great River. If you’re a fan of the book and would like a poster, drop me a line and I’ll get one out to you.
I’ve been reading Ricoeur’s From Text to Action, and I think I’m starting to see the link now between the creation of media (either text or digital) and the creation of literature (here I’ll flatter myself and claim that Son of the Great River is literature) and the continuing tribulations of the publishing industry. Ricour makes the point that writing, and here I’d assume also any other form of knowledge representation, such as animated explanations of the Creative Commons license, is structured work, and as such falls under the auspices of techne and praxis rather than poiesis. As any aspiring author can tell you, convincing bookstores to carry your book has little to do with the quality of a book (Whether in its production or in its writing) and everything to do with your book as a product. And it’s not just the chain bookstores. Independent bookstore owners, what few of them remain, are just as likely to make their decision based on your distribution capacity without opening the cover as any Borders manager.
Part of this stems from the destruction of the old means of discovering, marketing and releasing books that results from the continued ability of the Internet to cut out the intermediaries, but a large portion comes from the unwillingness of the writer to acknowledge that they are creating a work. When someone refers to a labor of love, the emphasis is on the love, not the labor. As Ricouer points out, the creation of a work is an event, but it’s an event that begins “the temporal phenomenon of exhange, the establishment of a dialogue that can be started, continued or interrupted.” There’s a certain sense of this, but it’s currently wrapped up in the rubric of marketing. Writers create websites and post blogs and engage with their audience because it’s good business, but really it’s this dialogue that’s the poietic aspect of media creation. This is why peer production like Wikipedia works. It’s not that a bunch of writers get together to write about Slavery in Ancient Rome, it’s that one writer works on relaying knowledge of ancient Roman slavery and another writer sees this, is intrigued or bothered by the claims of the first, and adds to or amends it. This is the dialectic, and it exists even with static works, because the reading and criticism of the work grows far beyond that work. Ownership supports techne, but it damages poiesis, which is to say that it promotes the creation of a work through mechanisms to reward the worker (Be it money or acclaim) but it damages the establishment of a dialogue because the dialogue wants to be free.
There’s another exciting aspet to Ricouer’s claims that needs to be pointed out. A work itself is not just the document, but also the means with which the document is presented to an audience. Ricouer uses the example of ordering someone to give you a cup of water. It’s not just the substance of the language, but the forcefulness of the demand. In the same way, when I released my different animated mockups of an animated clearinghouse for verbs and processes, it wasn’t just the concept of the clearinghouse, but also the fact that one was frame-by-frame and linear, for which I felt I had to add notations in the Youtube video to explain as it ran, whereas the other was interactive and, due to the interactivity, I felt that the user would more readily understand the concept. By the same vein, releasing Son of the Great River had elements beyond the storyline to signal to the audience the type of work. The obvious aspects are its cover and illustrations, which indicate a direction toward a more idealistic audience, but also the method that it was released, print-on-demand, is part of the dialog. Print-on-demand is still seen as a last resort of the desperate author, though this is starting to change, but if, like me, you’ve consciously chosen this over pursuing traditional publishing, then it becomes the “perlocutionary act” of Ricouer, where the statement I’m trying to make is one of hopefulness and in contention with the current publishing industry’s focus on selling widgets. Regardless of whether you decide to buy my book, I think it’s time to recognize that some authors are making a statement with their distribution choices, and that it’s as much a part of their work as their writing or their art. Hopefully, this claim can be taken at face value, and not as a marketing ploy.
Rheem would have self-published
I can finally announce that my new novel, Son of the Great River, is available on Amazon. If you’d prefer it in eBook form, you can buy it direct from the publisher. But wait, you say, this book is published through some whacko outfit called Booklocker and so it can’t be any good! You’re not alone in worrying about the quality of print-on-demand books, but before you scoff and run away, let’s take a look at what you really mean when you think of print-on-demand or vanity press books.
You had to pay to have your book published!!
Yes, that’s true. I plunked down the cost of a new iPhone 3G with 16GB of memory to put my book out. I didn’t have to. I could have taken it to a POD shop that actually pays you to publish their book or I could have published it through one of a host of small publishing houses that might do a run of 1500 or even 2500 books. But then I give up the contract rights for my book, because both these avenues make their money not just off a major cut of the book but in selling the rights to a book to a larger publisher if it proves successful. Why do that when I can sell my book through bn.com and Amazon to a wider audience than I would find in a bookstore industry that continues to suffer and decline? I love bookstores, but then we all loved newspapers, too, and the Internet is putting the squeeze on both. Part of my motivation to go POD has to do with my experience with the digital humanities, and the recognition that we now live in a society that allows an author to reach an audience by circumventing many of the traditional gatekeepers.
It’s POD, so it can’t be a quality book
It’s true that there are horrendously bad POD books out there, which traditionally published writers have noted with disturbing glee. But anyone who looks closely at the binding and cover quality of books on the shelves today will tell you that bad Photoshop covers are no longer limited to inhabitants of Something Awful. And it’s not just the reprinted classics on your Borders bookshelves. I’d put Son of the Great River‘s cover and illustrations up against any of the intermediate fiction that’s out on a bookstore shelf today.
That’s not the kind of quality I meant!!
Yes, many POD publishers don’t seem to care if they’re putting out a book by an author that doesn’t understand gerunds and commas. But Son of the Great river was professionally edited (Even though, like most first editions, I’m sure there’s typos). Take a look at the free excerpt (PDF) if you don’t believe me. Traditionally published authors have already begun to notice that there are quality POD books out there. And, really, take a look at what passes for quality fiction being published by the largest publishers in the industry. Look at the titles, look at the back covers, wade through the stilted prose.
But if it really is a good book, why didn’t you pursue a major publisher?
There’s the theoretical reason I’d hit on above, that really the new means of distribution allow authors to market and sell their books to a wide audience, and that is important. But there’s also the love of writing. I wanted to write a book and have people read it, I didn’t want to go through the dehumanizing process of harassing publishing houses and agents and all the gatekeepers just so I could claim to be part of a special club, which is how too many traditionally published authors feel. It’s like the Screen Actors Guild, nowadays, with people who don’t actually make money doing what they do but at least they can point to some kind of external symbol of approval for their hopes and dreams. After all, what’s a $25,000 dollar advance going to buy me, anyway? A base model Ford Taurus, I suppose? I just love to write, and I’ve been told that the book I wrote was pretty good and ultimately, if a few folks read it and it brings them some happiness and thoughtfulness, then that’s enough for me.