I had the great honor of working with author Andrew Kaufman on his debut bestselling novel, While The Savage Sleeps, and he has kindly consented to visit here with us a bit.
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My story was really no different from thousands of others.
I had a completed novel and knew that in order to get it published I had to get an agent. This was the way it was done, I’d been told, how it had been for years.
I spent more than a year looking for one, had quite a few requests, but in the end, no offers for representation. Several told me that although they found While the Savage Sleeps compelling, well-written, and solid, they didn’t think they could sell it. The reasons? There were many, but the biggest snag, according to them, was that it mixed two genres which had nothing to do with each other: forensic science and the paranormal. I remember one of them telling me that the idea was “just too unique,” that bookstores wouldn’t know what shelf to put it on. That frustrated me to no end. I mean, since when is having something different a bad thing? What I also began to see was an emerging theme, that the industry professionals didn’t seem to have a grasp on what the public wanted anymore. They’d developed this model of “what will sell” that seemed so rigid it defied logic.
After a slew of rejections (I stopped counting at a hundred), my dreams of finding an agent and becoming a published author appeared to be nothing more than that: a dream.
But I wasn’t willing to give up on my book—not yet, anyway. I believed in it, knew I had something worth reading, and that it would sell if given the chance. The question now was, how to give it that chance. It appeared the publishing gatekeepers held the key, and getting past them was nearly impossible.
But that was about to change.
E-books were a new emerging technology at the time, but from the start I saw enormous potential, knew it would not only change how we read; it would change what we read.
My first clue came at a writers conference in the Bay Area when one of the speakers got my attention. He told the group, “Do you know you can publish your book on Kindle? Right now? That you don’t even need an agent?”
I hadn’t, but the idea intrigued me.
I’d already owned my Kindle, had fallen in love with it for a variety of reasons, but seeing my own work in e-ink? For people to read? On Amazon, no less? The world’s largest bookseller? The possibilities seemed endless, and man, was I ever there.
I loved the roguish quality of it all. I mean, who doesn’t dream of bucking the system, of proving the Powers That Be wrong? But besides that, there was something else that appealed to me, something much more important: it was the idea of putting the decision back where it belonged–not with the New York agents, not with the big publishing houses, but instead in the hands of the people who mattered most. The readers.
In June of 2010, While the Savage Sleeps went live on Amazon Kindle. It was fun. It was exciting. It was … well, sort of a letdown. You see, in my wide-eyed and naïve optimism, I actually believed it would sell through some sort of osmosis process, that by simply “being up there” among all the other big names, people would find it, buy it, read it.
Clearly, I was delusional.
And I found that out rather quickly because for the first month, I saw a total of three sales. One was me, and the other was—bless her heart—Jeannette, my editor. Don’t know who the other was.
So much for bucking the system.
It took me a while to figure out that there was more to this game, that in order to sell a book, one actually has to get off his rear and promote it. So that’s what I did.
I went deep, talked to everyone I could, studied what they were doing. I Googled my little heart out and visited every online discussion group I could find: Kindle forums, paranormal groups, you name it, I was there getting to know people—the cyber-equivalent of shaking hands and kissing babies.
And it paid off in a big way.
One day in July, While the Savage Sleeps took off. At midnight it hit #98 in the top one-hundred. By the next morning it was #76, and through the day it just kept moving. By five p.m it was #4. A few weeks later it went to #1, passing heavy-hitters like Stephen King and Nora Roberts.
I kept wondering when I would wake up and realize it was all just a dream, but that never happened. My book was in fact a bestseller, and I was thrilled.
But more than that, I think it proved a very fundamental point. The e-reader is not only a force to be reckoned with—it’s also a harbinger of change, leveling what was once a very uneven playing field, fixing a system that for years had been broken. With more than one-hundred rejections under my belt I’d proven that. The agents didn’t think While the Savage Sleeps was sellable, but the reading public disagreed, and they spoke loudly and clearly.
And the most exciting thing of all? This is only the beginning. The Indie Movement is building momentum like never before. Authors who had previously fallen through the cracks are being read while others are not only breaking away from their publishers, they’re finding great success doing it.
Is the system perfect? Certainly not. Is poor-quality work being churned out? Absolutely. Is the reading public smart enough to know the difference?
You bet.
****
I’m very impressed with Andrew, who didn’t let rejections stand in his way. His publishing model may not be right for everyone, but it does prove that you can do what you set out to do. And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!
