I decide to publish a book (going down to Wheatmark)

"Night in Greenwich Village" painted by Ronnie De Nota 1998
Sunday March 11, 2007

Of course all the dramas in my life now are about my book. It didn’t begin till last week-end when I decided I wanted to call Wheatmark to ask them a question. I no longer remember my question, maybe I was going to ask them if we could drive down there to see their books.

But when I googled Wheatmark to find their phone number, what I got was the link to their website. And when I clicked that there was tremendous information about Wheatmark on it, none of which I knew. I found out it cost $800, which is about $100 more than I thought it would be. I found out it is print-on-demand. I found out they only give me 5 copies, any more I want I have to order. But all the work of turning it into a book they do. They do ISBN number, whatever that is, and Library of Congress, whatever that is. They list it on Amazon which is very nice. They give you a glossy front cover, that is a treat. And for the back cover they want you to write your teaser, something which will make people want to read your book.

I was very interested in everything I learned about Wheatmark on the web. And before I went into the sunshine on my outside couch to think about it all, I emailed the link to my mom. I thought she would be interested to learn about Wheatmark.

When I had first mentioned to her on email I had made the decision to do it, she had been enthusiastic about the idea, but that was before. Neither her nor me knew anything about Wheatmark, so everything I told her came from my imagination, and of course what I pictured was very different from what was. I thought my mom would enjoy sharing in this enterprise with me, that I would email her all the steps along the way.

When I first lied in the sunshine and thought about what I learned from reading their site, I was daunted. I thought “is this a good deal?” I had assumed when you self-publish you pay them money, but then you get books galore, as many as you could possibly want. I had no idea after 5 free copies I have to pay same price as anyone else.

But as confused indecisive and daunted as I was, my Higher Self was completely decisive. Each time I thought “I don’t know if I want Wheatmark,” my Higher Self said “you want Wheatmark.” Each time I thought “maybe I should look into something else,” my Higher Self said “we're not going to look into anything else, we are doing Wheatmark.” Altho I could not make up my mind, my Higher Self had made up her mind, “we are doing Wheatmark.” And at this time in my life I simply do whatever my Higher Self says to do.

Eventually most of the doubts began to dissipate. I still had no idea why Wheatmark was such a good idea, but I stopped questioning it. Oddly enough, what my mind moved on to was the teaser for the back cover. And her two ideas for my teaser on back cover made me laugh out loud so hard that for first time I thought this enterprise might be fun.

My first idea for back cover when I was still lying on sun couch were not the fun ideas which came to me at table. I thought I would have to put in a blurb saying why I was such a good writer. That was what I remembered on backs of other people’s books, some famous author would write “this book is wonderful and fun and fresh and funny,” or whatever. So I thought I would just write that. That I would get 4 adjectives from my Higher Self, and write that and credit it to "Anne's editor."

It wasn’t till I got up and sat at the sun table and lit a cigarette that I remembered the 3 way conversation I had been in in swim pool a few months after I had given Sue and Sally a booklet of the stories I had written back in NYC. And the 3 of us treaded water and Sally said to Sue “her writing is a big nothing,” and Sue said “no it’s not, it’s genre writing, for a small and limited audience who likes that kind of writing.” I had giggled inwardly at the time and put it in a tiny short story I wrote the next morning.

So even tho I had planned to write a praiseworthy blurb about my writing from an imaginary person, I thought, Of course I will use that teeny paragraph where Sally called my writing “a big nothing.”

And from that moment on I was into my book, I thought this could be a lot of fun.

Sunday evening my mom emailed, don’t spent $800 to self publish. You have very little money. Save it for a rainy day. She said “we in the family enjoy your stories, but do you think people will be enticed to buy your book?” She was worried no one would buy it and I was just throwing 800 in the garbage can. But I misread her email and thought she was saying no one would enjoy my stories. And I began to wonder if they would.

On Monday morning when I went to my machine to work on my book I had lost heart for it. I sat there in emptiness till Bill came back from bringing the car to the mechanic and wasn’t exactly sure what he was going to do next. And then a miracle happened. When I had found the phone number for Wheatmark on Saturday I had actually called and left a message saying “I want to publish my book with Wheatmark, I have some questions to ask.”

And just when Bill returned from mechanic, the guy from Wheatmark called. My Higher Self said “tell him you want to look at the books, that you want to come down and see them, that you have decided you want to publish your book with Wheatmark.” The man’s name was Grael and because of the emptiness I had been in, the release from it was euphoria.

It turned out he had lived in the East Village for 7 years before he left NYC in 2002. He had lived on 9th Street between First and Second. He asked where I had lived. And we each said to each other “I know your block.” Then he had moved to Rivington Street. And I said “girl at pool said Delancy Street is now fancy-shmancy, I can’t believe it, it used to be a slum.” And he said “it has all changed since you lived there Anne, it is now expensive.” I said “where do regular people live now?” And he said “far out in Queens.” I said “you mean Flushing, like where I grew up?”

He said Katz's used to be his favorite restaurant. And I said “the 2nd Avenue Deli closed.” And he was shocked. He said “I never heard that from my friends back in the East Village.” And I said “I didn’t either, but the article about it was posted on my news forum.” I said “I practically fell over because who would imagine learning that on a news forum where most of the posters live in Texas, that an article about the 2nd Avenue Deli would go up.”

The reason I was so excited and enthusiastic and even a bit wild in my conversation with Grael, was because his first words to me were so encouraging that I confided about my mother’s email to him and its effect on me. When I met Grael in person one hour later, I now understand he was too young to realize any mother would email “save your money for a rainy day.” It made him 100 per cent on my side. If my mother was going to discourage me from doing the book, then Grael was going to encourage me, and he set about making every single word in his phone call and later on when we met, completely encouraging. And he succeeded to the skies. He was an angel when I needed an angel.

We had a long talk about the East Village because Grael liked talking about it, and I was thrilled that my editor knew the East Village. If he knew Tucson and he knew the East Village then he knew where my stories were coming from. I couldn’t believe my luck finding an editor who understood me so well. It turns out that Grael isn’t my editor. I found out when I arrived there is no editor, no one reads your book. You send it to them electronically, they don’t even want you to bother printing it up for them on your printer. They print it up from what you send them electronically. They format it for you, but no one reads it.

But I didn’t know that when I was talking to Grael, I assumed he was my editor. We had a wonderful conversation, and I thought “O boy, have I lucked out, I found the perfect editor for me.” And I still thought that way during most of the conversation with Grael in person, when Bill and I went down to Wheatmark. It wasn’t till the end of the conversation that I discovered no one reads my book. Altho by the end of it I think Grael was curious to read it when it comes out. I told him I wrote a very lovely story about the Lower East Side in it and he will like it. He was so clearly more interested in my stories about our old neighborhood than about Tucson.

Altho we both said on phone how much we love Tucson. And he said after he left New York, he lived in Chicago and Washington DC. And I said “I heard Chicago is wonderful.” And he said “O it is.” And he told me all the wonderful things about Chicago. I said “if I knew how wonderful Chicago was back then, I would have moved there, but now I don’t want to live in a big city again, my experience in New York was too relentless, we had no car, we had the dog, we never got out to refresh ourselves in nature.” And he said that is what happened to him too.

Our conversation was so wonderful and made me so enthusiastic about doing the book, that when he said “when do you want to come down Anne, why don’t you come down now.” My Higher Self said “yes, go for it.” So I said “my husband just got back from car mechanic, he is at loose ends, it is the perfect time for him to drive me, when do you go on your lunch hour?” He said “it doesn’t matter, I will wait for you.” I said “I live at Fifth and Swan.” He said “then it will take you no time to get here.” So my Higher Self said “tell him you will leave in 20 minutes.” So we both said “great!” I was so uninhibited by that time I said “I am just in bulky sweater now from the cold.” He said “it is warming up.” I said “I will put on a bra.”

Bill was just starting to eat his lunch, that he had been preparing for himself while I had been on phone with Grael. “Will you drive me to Wheatmark?” He said “OK.” He said “but it’s probably way out in the boondocks.” But I looked it up on computer, and they had address and map. And Bill said “it is just two blocks from the swim club, it is not way out in the boondocks, it is close by.” He was relieved.

So I found my bra, and a little black blouse with capped sleeves that I had never worn, I forget now which skirt I chose to wear, and black patent leather high heels, where I had cut off the back strap and middle strap yesterday with scissors, because I discovered I never wore them when I had to go to that trouble of strapping them on. I hadn’t been able to do a perfect job with scissors so it looked a little trashy.

But the odd thing is, that now that Grael thought I was an East Villager, I discovered I wanted that East Village trashy look. I hadn’t realized how totally suburban my look had become in Tucson, till I put on the patent leather open-toed high heels with scissors marks showing, and realized “perfect! East Village trashy.” Black blouse, black bra, and black skirt completed the look. And I planned to put on red lipstick before I got out of the car (my lipstick was in the car).

And when I got out my new pocketbook, which I like, I thought “o no! this pocketbook is not trashy looking.” I had bought it because it was so pretty, with pinks and purples, but it made me look well-dressed, which is not the East Village trashy look at all. But I didn’t have time to look for a pocketbook which might work, and I didn’t think I owned any (I have gazillion pocketbooks but none are East Village trashy). And besides I wanted to plan the stuff to put in there so I would have what I needed. I wanted cigs, and a lighter, and a pen. I looked for my new cute notebook to write in but I couldn’t find it. And Bill said “take your swimming stuff, we can swim at Jimmy’s pool afterwards.”

So I wrote down the address, and Bill studied the map from Google so he knew just where it was, and we got into the car, and the trip took no time, and he found it right away. And Bill said “I’ll sit in the car.” And I said “come in, don’t you want to meet my editor.” And he said “OK.”

Grael turned out to be much younger than I pictured. I assumed he was my age, but he looked around 30. He told me he is a writer too, he writes screen plays. I said “I want my book to be very affordable, I thought $5.99 would be nice price.” And he brought out a list of what the prices are. And it looked like they would sell my book for $13.99 which seemed a lot to ask people to pay for it. He said “how long is your book?” And I said “it will be short, it is just my Tucson stories.” And Bill said “why not put in all your East Village stories too then, make it a bigger book.” Bill thought if I was paying $800, put all the stories in the book.

But that wasn’t my plan. My Higher Self had come up with a very interesting idea for me. She said “if you are putting all this momentum into publishing a book, keep up the momentum, after you publish this book, keep going, publish your two books of stories you wrote back in NYC.” And I planned to do that, even tho it would take big work on my part. Those manuscripts are up in my closet in a manuscript box. But Grael said if I am willing to pay for it, they can scan them for me.

I told Grael my East Village stories are hotter than my Tucson stories. For some reason Grael agreed with me, just put out the Tucson stories first. I said “they are not hot, altho there are a few cute ones in there.” Grael said “what you want Anne is to earn enough from your first book to pay for publishing your second book.” And I looked at him with face full of love.

By this time I was totally confused, but Grael was not, he understood everything. And I told him how I had tortured myself for 2 days after I read how they wanted it formatted, and he said “stop torturing yourself, none of that matters, just send it.”

And that was pretty much it. Grael said he wants to read a copy when it comes out, and he will pay for it. I said “don’t be silly, I’ll buy you a copy, you deserve it because you encouraged me.” He told me anyone can order a book from them and get it at the same discount rate I do, 40 per cent off. And a light bulb went off in my head, and I said “I think my mother should pay full price, because she tried to discourage me.” And he said “yes, she has to pay retail.” And I burst out laughing that my mom has to pay retail.