Margaret J. Anderson on publishing out of print books as e-books

It’s a delight to visit with Margaret J Anderson today! It is really cool to talk with one of my favorite childhood authors! I discovered her books when I was in middle school, and I loved reading them over and over again. Her historical fiction books swept me away on adventures to foreign lands and earlier times. (Searching for Shona is a book I still vividly remember today.) I particularly loved her fantasy time travel books.

[This interview is also simultaneously posted on Through the Tollbooth, a group blog by VCFA alumni.]

Margaret J Anderson has been writing for publication for over thirty-five years and has published 12 novels. Her nonfiction books include biographies and science books. Her most recent books are Carl Linnaeus: Father of Classification and Bugged-Out Insects (2011).

Her out-of-print novel, In the Keep of Time, was recently released as an e-book.

[Sarah] Did your rights revert back to you or did you work with your publisher to regain your rights to your books?

[Margaret] Years ago, after my early fiction books had been out of print for a while, I asked my publisher (Knopf) for the rights back. I had the idea of getting a regional press interested in publishing some of them as paperbacks that I could sell when I was giving school presentations, but I was too involved with new projects to follow through. This was before the era of Nooks and Kindles, so I had no thought of issuing electronic versions of the books – and neither did Knopf. I’ve heard that publishers aren’t so quick to relinquish rights these days.

[Sarah] Could you explain the process you went through as you prepared In the Keep of Time to be published as an e-book?

[Margaret] Six years ago, I wrote a historical novel called Olla Piska about the botanist David Douglas (of the Douglas fir). A couple of months after it was published by the Oregon Historical Society, they went out of the publishing business, leaving Olla-Piska as an orphan child. They returned all the rights, so with the help of Ellen Beier, who had done the cover, I began to look into publishing it as an e-book. We learned the names of companies like Smashwords and BookBaby, but the big question of how you let people know the book is out there hung over us. In the end, I decided to get my feet wet by publishing a book that already had potential readers. I get quite a number of e-mails from people who read In the Keep of Time and my other early books as children and are sad that they can’t find copies to read to their children.

When I decided to start with In the Keep of Time, I was faced with a problem. The book was published in 1977 before I owned a computer, so I had no digital version. I would have to retype the entire book into Microsoft Word. Somewhere I’d read that scanning the pages could introduce mistakes that are hard to fix. Besides, I’d have to tear one of my few copies apart to scan it and I wasn’t sure my scanner was up to the task. On the upside, retyping meant I could avoid the five most common formatting mistakes cited in the Smashwords style guide. (Don’t use the tab key to indent a new paragraph, etc.) By the time I was finished, I had a new admiration for my younger self – hammering out all those long-ago books on a typewriter and correcting mistakes with whiteout!

[Sarah] Which e-books formats did you choose? Why?

[Margaret] I chose to go with BookBaby, though I can’t claim this was the result of extensive research. It was mostly based on their response to an email I sent them asking (among other things) what was the advantage of using BookBaby rather than one of the other companies out there. Someone named Meghan wrote back saying, “I believe that the best part about using BookBaby is that if you need help, you can pick up the phone and dial us and a real live human being will answer you!”  That’s very reassuring when you’re dealing with all this uncanny stuff like an entire book arriving on your Kindle with the click of a mouse! I’ve already talked to Meghan a couple of times. Also, BookBaby is located in Portland, so it feels local. As well as formatting the manuscript for all the popular reading devices: Kindle, i-Pad, Nook, Kobo, etc., they handle the financial dealings, collecting royalties and sending them on to the author.

[Sarah] Why did you choose to release In the Keep of Time first?

[Margaret] As I mentioned earlier, In the Keep of Time has loyal followers—if  I can find a way to reach them. Although the book was written years ago I think it will connect with today’s children.  It is a time-slip adventure in which the key to Smailholm Tower unlocks the past, taking four children back to 15th century Scotland, where border raiding was a common practice. The next time they use the key, the children find themselves in the 22nd century in a post climate-change world—a world without technology. Today’s kids are aware of climate change, but it wasn’t on many people’s radar back when the book was published 35 years ago.

[Sarah] You chose a photograph you took of the tower for your new cover. Where did you take the photo? Did the photo require any editing or photoshopping?


[Margaret] The photograph on the cover is of Smailholm Tower, a Scottish border keep near Kelso where my parents lived after I’d emigrated to Oregon. It’s the setting that inspired my story, and I worked in some legends associated with the tower. We always visited the tower when we went back to see my parents, and I’ve taken dozens of pictures over the years. Laszlo Kubinyi, who did the original cover, based his artwork on a photo I sent him. I couldn’t use his cover for the e-book edition because of copyright restrictions, but I did choose a similar view of the tower.

Ellen Beier helped me design the cover.  Yes, we did do some photoshopping. The first step was to straighten the tower. Ellen pointed out that my photo had a slight leaning-tower-of-Pisa slant to it that I hadn’t noticed! Then we changed the background colors to give the picture a more interesting science-fiction look. Finally we picked the font for the title, which was hard because there are so many choices.  I’m excited about what finally emerged.

[Sarah] What other books do you plan to release as e-books? When?

[Margaret] That depends on how long my enthusiasm for typing lasts! And also how the current project fares. I feel as if I’m climbing a fairly steep learning curve! But I’m already more than halfway  through typing In the Circle of Time, a sequel to In the Keep of Time, which focuses on the future people.  There’s a third book, The Mists of Time, but before I do that one I want to do my earliest novel, To Nowhere and Back. It has also generated a lot of letters and was a New York Times Outstanding Book of the Year in 1975.  After that, I may do Journey of the Shadow Bairns, which is based on my husband’s family history in northern Saskatchewan. Next in line is Searching for Shona, a World War II story that draws heavily on my own background.  And somewhere in between I’ll do Olla-Piska.

[Sarah] What advantages do you see with using e-books?

[Margaret] It will be interesting to see how this technology evolves, but I do think it’s a great way to make books that might have a limited audience available to readers. It’s hard for publishers to justify the production and storage costs for a physical book that isn’t going to jump off the shelves. E-books don’t take up space in warehouses or on bookshelves. They can also be sold at a much lower price. I’ll receive a 70% royalty for In the Keep of  Time from most reading devices, so I can price it as low as $2.99, which will give me $2.00 per book, the equivalent of a 10% royalty on a $20 book. The buyer benefits from the cheaper price as well.

Like most authors, I’ve always been in love with books and have a whole wall of them behind me as I write. But when I look at my grandchildren I see the writing on that wall! They like their electronic devices!  It used to be that the paperback edition was the poor relative of the hardbound book. Then readers wanted the lighter, cheaper paperbacks. Pretty soon they’ll all be turning pages on their Nooks and Kindles with their busy thumbs.  Personally, I still love the look and feel of a book, but I do like being able to adjust the font size on my Kindle!

[Sarah] Do any of the e-book formats allow a reader to order a print copy of the book? In other words, is there a way for a reader to buy a paper copy of the book?

[Margaret] There are ways to publish your book in a format that allows the reader to buy a print copy, but I didn’t go that route, partly because there still are a few physical copies of my early books out there through Amazon etc. Though the prices can be crazy! I just checked Amazon and a used hardback edition of To Nowhere and Back sells for anywhere from $39-$319! In 1975 it sold for $5.50.

[Sarah] When you were retyping the story, did you ever have the urge to change anything?

[Margaret] I have found myself doing some tweaking and editing! I’ve had 35 years of writing experience since I wrote In the Keep of Time.  I was a bit too fond of run-on sentences in those days, so I have eliminated some “ands.” I’m making a few bigger changes while re-typing In the Circle of Time, where Robert and Jennifer find themselves two hundred years in the future. The present time in the book is around 1979, the year I wrote the book, and I haven’t changed that. There is, however, mention of something that happened in 2010, which must have seemed quite far into the future back then. Seeing it didn’t happen in 2010, I’m jumping the event forward to 2050!

[Sarah] How does it feel to work with this book again?

[Margaret] Re-reading a book I wrote all those years ago is a bit like a time-slip adventure! It takes me back! Some of the incidents in the story were triggered by real events. One evening, when we went into the tower with our four young children, a black bird fluttered down from somewhere up near the roof and fell dead at our feet. I used this incident in the opening chapter of In the Keep of Time. The characters in the book weren’t based on my own children, but they do bring back happy memories of those visits to Scotland. And the book also brings back memories of children’s eager questions in response to the many slideshow presentations I’ve given over the years.

I really am enjoying re-visiting these old books. It’s a dark day when you get word from your publisher that your precious book is going out of print. I started this project thinking that turning my books into e-books would confer some sort of immortality on them! It turns out that isn’t the case. I have to pay BookBaby $20 per year to keep a book alive!  And the real truth is that a book is only alive when someone reads it. So I hope my old titles will spring to life again when today’s kids reach for their Sony or iPad, their Copia, Kobo, Nook or Kindle.  I love those names!

[Sarah] Thank you, Margaret, for visiting with me today. Now I have a great reason to buy an e-reader.

You can find out more about Margaret and her book on her website.
In the Keep of Time is available on Kobo, Kindle, Nook and other ebook formats.

Doors--like the cover of a novel--are an invitation to look inside

 I always wonder what is behind closed doors—especially fascinating and unique doors.

Door in Bruges, Belgium

Art Nouveau entrance in Brussels, Belgium

This long cord makes me want to pull on it and hear what the doorbell sounds like.

Long cord, to left of door, is what one pulls to ring the bell.

Some places don't have doors, but only openings, such as this stick house in Keukenhof Gardens in Holland. It reminds me of the story of the Three Little Pigs.

Stick House--I'm in the photo so you can see the scale

This door leads directly to a canal.

 Photo taken in Bruges, Belgium.

Just like a great cover or opening page of the novel, a door is an invitation to peek inside.

Front of Art Nouveau house in Brussels, Belgium

Detail of door. I'm standing in front.

 Occasionally, we are invited inside when we don't expect the opportunity. The inside can be even more amazing than we could have imagined.

Stained glass windows from inside of house.

The owner of the Art Nouveau house (pictured in the 3 photos above) saw us and invited us into his home! The windows are so clear and almost glow when seen from inside! They are gorgeous!

I took these photos on a recent trip we took to the Netherlands and Belgium. (Neither country is that far of a drive from Frankfurt.)

Bologna Book Fair 2012- Awards and Interviews

I enjoy following the Bologna Book Fair each year.  Two years ago I attended the fair. It's a great way to get a pulse of what is going on in children's publishing. Plus, it's fun see all the international publisher's booths and displays.

The BolognaRagazzi Awards are given each year in several categories. New this year is the BolognaRagazzi digital award, which is given to apps.  Seeing the covers (and reading the descriptions) of the award and honor books give me a good glimpse into the most stunning books of the previous year.

Also new this year is the Children's Museum Award. It was announced by HRH Princess Sibille of Luxembourg. How cool is that? The short list of museums looks intriguing. I hope next year a museum from the U.S. is on the list.

SCBWI is also involved in the book fair and has a booth. Interviews with authors and illustrators and others involved in children's publishing can be found at the 2012 SCBWI Bologna series on Cynsations.

I interviewed Paul O. Zelinsky, Caldecott Medal winner, for this series. If you want to learn more about Zelinsky and his amazing work, you can read my interview at this link.

Greg Leitich Smith: Dinosaurs, Writing, and Research

Greg Leitich Smith's newest book, Chronal Engine, is an exciting time travel adventure back to the time of dinosaurs.

Greg Leitich Smith in the Houston Museum of Natural Science

Greg is also the author of the middle grade novels, Tofu and T Rex and Ninjas, Pirahnas and Galileo. Plus, he co-authored the picture book, Santa Knows, with his wife, Cynthia Leitich Smith.

I'm excited to talk with Greg today about his writing process, research, and of course, dinosaurs.

[Sarah] Could you share your journey to becoming a writer? 
 
[Greg] I think everyone who is a writer starts out as a reader.  I can’t remember a time when I didn’t enjoy reading, and pretty much read everything I could get my hands on (and still do).  In general, I tend to read a lot of nonfiction and enjoy mysteries, humor, and science fiction and fantasy.

In high school, I thought it might be fun to write for a living, but recognized that planning on something like that without having a day job or trust fund was not the wisest career plan.  I eventually put the idea aside and pursued my interests in engineering and, later, law.

When Cynthia started writing, she learned the business and brought home tons of books, the new generation of children’s and YA books, and I started reading them.  And that’s when I decided to try my hand at writing again.  I went to a couple workshops, submitted the manuscript for NINJAS, PIRANHAS, AND GALILEO around, and got some nice personal rejections.  Eventually I revised and submitted to Cynthia’s agent, Ginger Knowlton, who was probably not overjoyed to receive the manuscript of a client’s spouse. :).  She did, however, agree to represent me.  I think she sold the manuscript on the first submission after that.
     
[Greg] How has your writing process changed with each of your novels?

Each novel has tended to be completely different.  My first, NINJAS, PIRANHAS, AND GALILEO, was written essentially straight through without any kind of outlining whatsoever.  I had an idea that I wanted to do the Galileo story as a comedy in junior high, so I had sort of the broad contours of the plot, but nothing beyond that.  There was a significant amount of backtracking, though, and trying to keep things organized when you couldn’t “see” everything was difficult.

With CHRONAL ENGINE and my more recent projects, I now generally try to come up with an interesting character and a plot beginning, middle, and end, and then will attempt a preliminary draft.  This usually is only about fifty to seventy five pages long, but it’s enough to give me a sense of what’s going on.  I’ll then do a next draft, which will still be on the short side.  At this point, I’ll put together a table outline.  Basically, it’s a word processing document with a five column table.  Each cell in the table is either a scene or a chapter and I’ll write a brief description.  I’ll also put the whole thing in 8 point type so I fit the whole outline on a single page.  That way, it’s easy to see the entire story and figure out what’s wrong with the flow and whether any scenes need to be inserted or moved.

After that, I’ll try to come up with what I call my first draft – a novel length manuscript with a compelling protagonist and internal and external arc.  Once I have that, I’ll revise.  Of course, it’s entirely possible that that first draft and all its story arcs will be thrown out.  With CHRONAL ENGINE, the only things that really remain from the first draft are the title, one of the early scenes when they get to the Cretaceous, and the name of the protagonist.

When I do a revision, I like to print out the manuscript as two pages per sheet – it makes it seem like a book, cuts down on the sheets of paper, and seems more manageable somehow.  If I need to insert scenes, I’ll either write on the back of the printed out manuscript or use a legal pad.  I think one draft of CHRONAL ENGINE I did completely by hand on about five legal pads.
       
[Sarah] In an article you wrote for the Association for Library Service you discussed how you used children’s and adult books when you did research about dinosaurs for Chronal Engine. What other types of research did you do?

[Greg] The research really ran the whole gamut of books from picture books to professional texts and papers.  My wife and I also watched a lot of dinosaur documentaries and pseudo-documentaries (of varying quality) on Discovery Channel and the like. The BBC series "Walking with Dinosaurs" was enormously helpful in getting a visual on the ecosystem, although they did take some liberties with the dinosaurs.

Most fun, of course, was that it gave us an excuse to go to every natural history museum in every city we happened to visit.  Some of the museums we've visited include the Texas Memorial Museum here in Austin; the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History in Norman;the University of Michigan Natural History Museum; the Field Museum of Natural History; and the National Museum of Natural History.  Here in Austin, we also have the Hartmann Prehistoric Garden, which features plants that are of types that were around in the Mesozoic.  And, we also went to the JURASSIC PARK area of Universal Studios Florida and DINOLAND USA at Disney World.  For research purposes only :-).

Of course, it wasn’t just the dinosaurs that needed to be researched.  I also had to figure out the whole wilderness survival business and time travel.   For the survival stuff, I read books like the US Army Survival Manual and the SAS Survival Guide, as well as the Boy Scout’s Handbook (I’ve never actually been a camper…).  In addition, I made Cynthia watch far too many episodes of Survivorman and Man vs. Wild – at least, the episodes that were set in tropical locales.

[Sarah] Do you do most of the research before you begin writing or do you research while writing your books?

[Greg] Research was pretty much an ongoing thing.  I did a bunch of preliminary research to get an overview of the environment that I wanted to use: generally based on the Late Cretaceous Aguja and Javelina Formations of the Big Bend area in southwest Texas.

Once I go that, I sort of had a handle on the basics (and having been to the museums, etc., gave me an idea for the size of creatures and sense of scale, etc.), but there was a lot along the way that I had to look up and had to make sure of.  Essentially, every time I wanted to reference a new plant or animal, I got compulsive to make sure there was evidence of it in the fossil record (as of the Late Cretaceous).

For example, when I first decided to put in, say, crayfish and earthworms, I had to find out if there had been crayfish and earthworms in the Late Cretaceous of Texas (I figured there were, but wanted to make sure there was something in the fossil record).  My first go-to was the dinosaur references that I had accumulated, but in many cases they weren’t quite as comprehensive or time and region specific as I was looking for, so I often went to original scientific papers, many of which are available online.

I also perused books like the US Army Survival Manual to get ideas on what Max and the gang would’ve needed to do to obtain food, shelter, water, etc., and not get themselves trampled or eaten.  In early drafts, too, there were a lot of Swiss Family Robinson type scenes, where I went on in detail about how they built shelter, fish traps, snares, etc.  Fortunately, for the flow of the story, most of that got edited out…
    
I did do the time travel research from the beginning, because I wanted to have an actual time machine and have that machine be an integral part of the story.  Also, I wanted to make sure everything I did was consistent with the “mode” I picked, but also leave it a bit ambiguous (which it would be for the characters, anyway).
    
[Sarah] Could you tell us more about your fascination with dinosaurs?

[Greg] Dinosaurs are intrinsically, of course, totally cool. :).  When I was a kid, I had the advantage of parents who bought me books and took me to the library, and also to the Field Museum of Natural History, one of the world’s great natural history museums.  There was just something completely amazing about these giant, awesome creatures, and the fact that they’re no longer around.

And I think that’s basically the thing that draws people to dinosaurs:  they were real.  Not monsters, not dragons, but real flesh-and-blood animals that walked the earth.  Even better, they’re a kind of science that’s easy for laypeople to participate in, at museums or even hunting for fossils on their own (There are some amazing specimens that were discovered by children and teens).
 
And today, I think we’re in kind of a golden age of dinosaur science – new areas of the globe are open for exploration and new techniques are being used to examine specimens.  New discoveries are being made every day, and many of them are reported (with varying degrees of accuracy) in the popular media.  There’s also a very accessible blogosphere of paleontologists and paleo-enthusiasts and paleo-artists who make for some interesting conversation. 

[Sarah] Austin has a strong writing community. What types of involvement have you had and how has this helped you grow as a writer?

[Greg] As a community, Austin got its start in the mid-nineties when Meredith Davis founded the Austin SCBWI chapter.  Kathi Appelt, who was at the time the Regional Advisor for the Brazos Valley chapter, also was an early supporter of the Austin community.  In fact, early on, the chapters did joint events together, one of which was a workshop where an early draft of my first novel got a gratifyingly good reception from an editor at Harcourt.

Since that time, Cynthia and I have been happy to be a part of a group that has seen many members make their first sales and, importantly, stay in the community afterwards.  There’s a sensibility that we’re all in it together and that, as we were mentored, so we should mentor others. 

Thank you, Greg, for joining me today!

You can learn more about Greg at his website.  Also, be sure to visit his blog.