First Bookstore Launch!

Although The Steiny Road to Operadom is not yet available to bookstores, the author has decided to go ahead with a first bookstore launch. She carefully selected a Georgetown bookstore where the manager Rod Smith is a champion of Gertrude Stein and language poetry.

Save the date:

Tuesday, January 8, 2008 from 7 pm to 9 pm

Bridge Street Books
2814 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20007

There will be wine and cheese. There will be brownies.
(Ask Alice B. Toklas for the recipe!)

The author will offer some sound bytes from the book and from her opera
Gertrude Stein Invents a Jump Early On. Be there with your beaux, your kings and queens, your Aunt Millie. The joint will be juking, uh, jumping!

Creating an Online Press Kit

After noodling around on the Internet to see what other authors do to promote their books, I realized before I invest the time to create a book trailer for The Steiny Road to Operadom. I should first assemble an online press kit. See Press Kit for Karren Alenier.

What should be in an online press kit at minimum is:

(1) A press release that shows at-a-glance at the top of the release information about who to contact by phone or email, publication date, ISBN, Library of Congress number, number of pages in the book, the publisher’s name. It’s best to keep these at one page but two if you must. In the text of the press release be sure to define close to the top what kind of book this is and what it contains. Quoting one or two of your book’s cover blurbs can be useful. Ending with how to buy the book is pro forma.

(2) The author’s photo, perhaps in high and low-resolution jpegs. Use headshots and not full body snapshots.

(3) A narrative biography, possibly two—one that is a paragraph or two and another that is a full page. Start with publication credentials and end with education, other pursuits that are not literary, and family.

Other items that are useful:

(4) Your book cover image in jpeg format.

(5) A sample book chapter.

(6) Comments made by appropriately expert people that could include your cover blurbs and excerpts from a published review.

(7) Interviews of you published on the Internet.

Make this press kit one web page on a site that you have access to or that belong to you. Book blogs are important, but I am not sure if you can create other pages on the blog website. Does anyone know about this?

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Book Trailers on The Steiny Road to Publication

One of my favorite websites that lists links to other websites focused on Gertrude Stein is maintained by Duane Simolke at
http://www.geocities.com:0080/WestHollywood/Heights/7439/Stein.html.

So I tracked him down through AuthorsDen.com and asked him if he could list The Steiny Road publishing blog. He did and called the link The Steiny Road to Publication, which put a smile on my face, given how hard this publication process has been.

He also pointed out his blog http://tagnews.blogspot.com/ where he is promoting a book uniting writers against cancer. Simolke is asking for help in creating a book trailer for The Acorn Gathering: Writers Uniting Against Cancer .

So what is a book trailer? According to Kevin Lucia (Simolke has a link to an article written by Lucia on his post) a "’book trailer’ is like a movie trailer before a feature presentation, a video that acts as a ‘teaser.’" The idea is to attract attention on your web page with moving images and text. Book trailers are hot on myspace.com. OMG, now I really need to get going learning how to use all the new software I have on my IMac.

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The Author’s Book Promotion Strategy

Given that The Steiny Road to Operadom is now published in a limited release and not yet in bookstores, the publisher is encouraging the author to decide what strategies to use in promoting the book. Beyond the obvious strategy of announcing the publication to individuals known by the author is identifying groups of people who are interested in the subject matter of the book. Such groups might include speaking opportunities in an educational setting. For example, I spoke to a college class studying women’s literature recently. Visit professor Joanna Howard's blog to see her assignment to the students who heard me speak. Although this is a satisfying experience and one that ripples out into the future as your book is usually purchased for the college library, one has to do a lot of work for this kind of book promotion and realistically few books are sold.

What seems like a better idea is to find Internet List Servers where you can manage to let subscribers know about you and your new publication. Since most List Servers have rules of etiquette, one has to be cautious about promoting new books. Each List Server culture has accepted ways of letting others know but you have spend time finding out how to do this. Books with multiple subject areas, which by the way are hard to get published by big publishing houses, lend themselves well to Internet promotion. In the case The Steiny Road to Operadom, subjects include opera, classical music, Gertrude Stein, feminist literature, poetry

Another idea is to get someone to help you promote your work to reviewers. Most authors cannot afford to pay a publicist but that is the kind of help that is needed. One professional in this field told me that this kind of work is hard to monitor and so you are better off devising your own plan for promoting your book and getting a friend to help you do it. Sounds like a Catch-22!

First Review!

Composer Michael Kaulkin of San Francisco has written what this nail-biting author of The Steiny Road to Operadom
considers an intelligent review.

HIs essay, which he prefaces by saying he is not a critic, contains six short paragraphs that lay out why the Steiny Road book interested him and why he thinks "any composer or writer who is not already intimate with the vagaries of of the American opera world would surely learn something from this book." He goes on to say given that the "tone of the book is light and sharp," he thinks the book would be "enjoyable for anyone who is peripherally interested in the topic." Moreover, Kaulkin observes that the format of the book is cubist in the way the author has woven together her story in the world of contemporary opera with that of the whole American opera scene. The author had not realized that the format was cubist, but agrees that what Kaulkin states makes absolute sense. Now that she thinks about this, there is also the third layer which is the story of Gertrude Stein's collaboration with Virgil Thomson.

Read the review on Michael Kaulkin's blog at http://www.aboutthecomposer.com/blog/archives/227.

Be sure to have a look at Kaulkin's website. This author was impressed to see he studied with Conrad Susa who composed the opera Transformations based on the poetry of Anne Sexton. One of Kaulkin's current projects is a musical based on Robertson Davies on-act play Eros at Breakfast.

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THE STEINY ROAD has arrived!

The Steiny Road to Operadom: The Making of American Operas is now available from Unlimited Publishing in limited advance release with a temporary cover and modest index.

The author needs your help now as audience to move this book into the final release and official publication phase. Please visit the publisher's website and buy the book which is now modestly priced at $21.99.

The author stands ready to answer questions.

She is scheduled to give a workshop on Gertrude Stein and her opera (this to a large degree is what The Steiny Road to Operadom is about) at Montgomery College of Rockville, Maryland, this month. She looks foward to more speaking engagements like this one where she will get an opportunity to promote this book. Authors are nothing without readers.

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Indexing Your Book

Indexing—that is, creating an alphabetic list of names, terms, facts, topics, concepts, and other indicators of what is in a book that is worth knowing about—is an art, not a science. Although a concordance—merely a list of words— can be created by computer software, an intelligent index cannot. A human being who is familiar with the subject and the particular book must go through every page and painstakingly create the index. There is software to assist in creating an index, but most authors do not own this costly aid.

Although an author may know his or her book better than anyone else, the author may not be the best person to index his or her book.

Because a good index helps sell your book, it may be worthwhile to hire a professional indexer to create your index. And, by the way, indexing is a rare skill. In the United States, there are only one thousand or so indexers who put up with all sorts of obstacles. Suffice it to say that no one should consider applying page numbers to an index when the book is not in a stable layout. Authors, editors, and publishers who are still moving chapters, pages, and text around are trouble.

The main point to remember about indexing is that you cannot finish an index until you have final page numbers.

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Permissions: Step 3

Most writers are poor and don’t have a budget to obtain permissions from the estates of famous dead writers. What to do?

Avoid quotes or, if you must quote, keep it short. That is, provided you are writing what can be deemed an academic or scholarly book. And yes, you must inform the executor/legal counsel/representative of the writer’s estate that you intend to quote the famous dead author.

Here’s how you might open such a letter of notification:

Dear Ms. Gatekeeper,

As professional courtesy and under Fair Use guidelines, I am notifying you of my plan to quote the following passage from Famous Dead Author’s novel A Night of Hairpin Turns:

To be taken seriously, you should be giving the estate rep an idea of what the publishing plan might look like. How many copies will be in the first printing—scholarly books can be fairly limited run (anywhere from 500-1500 copies). What price? Paperback or hard cover? If you stick to a limited run with limited distribution, the estate rep will probably not bother you. Just remember to exercise the professional courtesy you are asking for. It might help to ask for this permission before you have signed a book contract. Also don’t count on the publisher of your book to give you a budget for gaining permissions.

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Permissions: Step 2

After I read many kinds of advice and asked knowledgeable people on the subject of what the permission request form should contain, I settled on the following:

PERMISSION REQUEST FORM

DATE: May 1, 2006

FROM: Karren LaLonde Alenier
Street
City, State, zip

TO: Person you want permission from
Street
City, State, zip


Request permission to reprint the following selections(s):

[Here you can either put a short passage of text or saying something like this:]
See the attached interview.

Selections(s) will appear in the following publication:
Title: The Steiny Road to Operadom: The Making of American Operas
Author: Karren LaLonde Alenier

I am requesting worldwide rights for all editions in perpetuity free of fee.

-------------------------------------------------
This request is approved on the conditions specified below and on the understanding that full credit will be given to the source.


Approved by: _________________________________

Date: _________________________________

Credit line in the bibliography:

Author’s Interviews
Name of Person from whom you quoted, date, by what method (in person, by phone, by email)

With this permission form, I included a cover letter.

Karren L. Alenier
Street
City, State, zip
May 1, 2006

Joe Smith
Street
City, State, zip

Dear Joe,

As you know, I am developing a book based on my essays and interviews published on Scene4.com and would appreciate if you would grant me permission to use the interview I did with you in 2005.

My purpose in trying to get this book published is to share my experience as poet-librettist in learning about contemporary American opera. I appreciate the part you played in helping me understand the theater of Gertrude Stein. Given the state of publishing today, there is little to no money to be made and so I hope you will understand that I am a struggling writer trying to support an art form I have grown to love.

The permission form is enclosed in duplicate. Please send back one signed and dated copy in the stamped envelope provided.

Thank you,

This letter and form are what I used for most of the permissions I needed, but when you deal with well known writers, and possibly deceased authors, you might have to rethink how much you quote. Permission fees may be too costly for your budget. I'll talk about this in the next post.

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Permissions: Step 1

Obtaining permissions from artists and authors quoted in your book manuscript can be difficult. To minimize problems, you need to make sure you identify every quote in your manuscript and gather the contact information required to find the person who needs to grant permission before you start asking for permission.

What I did was create an Excel spreadsheet that contained the following items of information:

Contact Date

Deceased Author Name (complete name first and last)
Representative Name of Deceased Author (first and last)

or Live Contact First Name
and Live Contact Last Name

Street
City
State
Zip Code
Phone Number
Email address

Chapter of your manuscript where quoted material occurs
Page(s)
Source of the quote (book, interview, other?)
Description of the quoted material (what is it? Text? A list? Something else?)

Date Permission was signed/Date permission denied

Notes/Issues (if permission is denied, note that in this column.)


I’ll say this again—it’s important to identify all the quoted material before you start asking for permissions. By doing this, you are more likely to include everything you need to ask permission for and you will understand the entire scope of your permission requests. What you don’t want to do is make mistakes and/or omissions. Worse, you don’t want to send multiple letters to the same individual because he or she is less likely to cooperate with someone who is sloppy and unorganized.

The spreadsheet helps you get organized and stay organized as long as you make it your working guide.

In the next blog entries, I will talk about what your permission form should contain, how you should present the permission request, what quotes may not need permission but only notification to the author or his/her agent, and how long this process might take.

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The Importance of Flesh and Blood Reviewers

If you think the hard work is over once you send your thoroughly edited and corrected manuscript to your publisher, brace yourself. Finding reviewers who will respond affirmatively, meaning they want a copy of your advance release book, requires intensive sleuthing and luck. It also helps to contact people you know in the field who might be able to refer you.

In the best possible scenario, your book will go to an interested reviewer at one of the Big Guns review publications such as Booklist, Library Journal, Choice, Kirkus Reviews, and Publishers Weekly. If an author is lucky, his or her publisher already has working relationships with reviewers concerned with the appropriate subject area and employed by these review publications.

Possibly this was the scenario with C.M. Mayo’s book Miraculous Air: Journey Of A Thousand Miles Through Baja California, The Other Mexico. Here’s what Library Journal said about Miraculous Air, "With elegant prose and an artist's eye for detail, Mayo may just have written one of the best books ever about Baja California. Highly recommended." Because libraries depend on the reviews of Library Journal and the other library-oriented review publications to decide what they will purchase, this particular comment is about the best an author can hope for. In fact for Madam Mayo (as she calls herself on her book blog), she has had both hardback and paperback releases of this book.

The publisher of The Steiny Road to Operadom said he has been in the New York mailroom of Publisher’s Weekly and it’s an experience that has made an indelible impression on him. The room is cavernous with mountains of packages containing review copies, most of which are never removed from their shipping package and which are sent directly to recycling. Trashed before anyone looks at your much labored over book!

Therefore Unlimited Publishing president Dan Snow asks the author to create a list of reviewers who potentially would be interested in the author’s book. He suggests going to the library and spending the day browsing through Literary Market Place. There is also a shorter version of the book online at literarymarketplace.com. The list you make must include the reviewer’s email address, phone and fax numbers as well as the address annotated with proper mail stop identification if applicable. What Unlimited expects are publications with a circulation between 10,000 and 50,000 readers. After you make your list, you need to call these reviewers and make sure they are alive and still in place at that publication. Better is to talk with each one to find out if he or she is the right person and if not, who and, moreover, does anyone have interest in your subject area? What a new book needs is for someone within the review organization to hand carry the book to the person most likely to open its pages. It is music to the publisher’s ear when someone at the other end of the phone tells him to address the package to so and so’s attention and mark it “Requested Material.”

Once Snow and his staff get the author’s list of flesh and blood reviewers, Unlimited creates a news release that contains the pertinent facts. If the reviewer has time and interest, he or she contacts Unlimited and says send me the book. This is the stage The Steiny Road to Operadom is in now. So far none of the Big Guns reviewers have requested the book, but two prominent magazines that deal with the subject of music and opera have. So things are progressing apace and hearteningly.

Behind the scenes, The Steiny Road author pinged a reviewer she knows to ask him what the correspondence from her publisher contained. He said that Unlimited made it clear that they wanted to send copies only when a review was certain. Since this reviewer was working on a scholarly paper and then would be leaving the country for a six-week seminar, he would have to wait to read the book until after the review period. Of course, as Dan Snow pointed out to The Steiny Road author, sometimes reviews come well after the review period.

Madam Mayo said that she asked her publisher how many reviewers he/she wanted and then “politely” negotiated the number up to 100 including “mostly academics specializing in Mexico and some Mexico-specific English language publications (such as Inside Mexico, Mexico Connect, MexicoFile.com, and El Calendario)." Many of the names on her list of 100 were people she knew, the rest came from the Internet. Mayo also sent out some review copies at her own expense.

So potential book authors start squirreling away the names and contact information of potential reviewers who can reach large audiences. Reviews are rare nuts to come by and even a bad review is better than the one that went down the recycle chute with the unlooked-at book.

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Publisher's Fact Sheet

Here's the message the Publisher is sending out to the review community.

Opera by Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson
Compared with Work by Alenier and Banfield


How does a current day artist begin, sustain, and complete an opera project?


The Steiny Road to Operadom: The Making of American Operas is an upcoming collection of essays, interviews, reviews, and a working libretto that explores the intersection between poetry and music that proceeds to contemporary opera — the most complex genre of the performing arts. The collaboration of Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson as well as the more contemporary collaboration between poet Karren LaLonde Alenier and composer William Banfield are the context for this study in process.


This book is written in a style that anyone can read, and explains how a current day artist can begin, sustain, and complete an opera project. It answers many questions about creating an American opera: what resources are needed, who is involved or should be involved, what are the obstacles? It discusses commissions, collaborations, community, critics.


A chronology of events that led to the premiere of Gertrude Stein Invents a Jump Early On by Alenier and Banfield provides an inside look at the historical development of one American opera. The book provides a road map for creative collaborators and performing arts educators as well as a current day history of American opera and Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson’s contribution to that art form. The book will also appeal to opera enthusiasts curious about the behind-the-scenes story of contemporary opera, aficionados of Gertrude Stein, and students of feminist studies.


Without pretension, the author reveals a learning process that included becoming a successful first-time librettist and critic. Included in the appendices of The Steiny Road to Operadom are the libretto of her opera, seven reviews of contemporary opera and music theater works, and a list of American opera and music theater recordings. For more detailed information, please visit:


http://alenier.blogspot.com


Preview copies, artwork and interviews are available to members of the working press upon request. Kindly contact the publisher with requests: news@unlimitedpublishing.com

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Book Proposal: Content & Format

Question: How does an author convince a publisher to publish his or her book?

Answer: Write a compelling book proposal.

Question: What is included in a nonfiction book proposal? How should it be formatted?

BOOK PROPOSAL

Author:
Column 1
Author name
Author Street address
Author City, State, Zip

Column 2
Author voice phone number
Author voice fax number
Author email address

Manuscript Title:
Title of your book including subtitle

Number of Manuscript Pages: This is not an estimate; you should know how many pages on 8.5 X 11 inch paper you have in your book.

Subject Matter, Scope, Intended Purpose:
Start the first sentence by characterizing what makes up your book. Is it essays, interviews, reviews, chronologies, specialized lists? What makes your book unique and valuable to a potential reader? In what style is your book written? Can anyone read it or must that person be specially trained in a particular field? This is crucial information because it is in this section that you are trying to persuade the publisher that you have something worth the time and money required to make this manuscript into a book. The other challenge is that you must state your case succinctly (around 100 words) and the words must be the critical words, the key words, that convey the essence of your subject matter, scope, and purpose.

Here is how The Steiny Road to Operadom entry read for Subject Matter, Scope, Intended Purpose:

The Steiny Road To Operadom is a collection of essays, interviews, reviews, and a working libretto that explores the intersection between poetry and music that proceeds to contemporary opera, the most complex genre of the performing arts. The collaboration of Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson are the context for this study in process.

This book written in a style anyone can read, uniquely answers the question, how does a current day artist begin, sustain, and complete an opera project. This work is the close examination of creating an American opera — what resources are needed, who is involved or should be involved, what are the obstacles, what does workshopping mean to the overall success and opening night, and much more on commissions, collaborations, community, critics. The book provides a road map for creative collaborators and performing arts educators as well as a current day history of American opera and Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson’s contribution to that art form.


Audience:
Who is your audience? Think this through carefully so you don’t forget any groups. What have you done in your book to reach out to these groups? Can your book be used in teaching situations? Does it provide some kind of reference? The publisher needs to know the use of your book and the audience in order to evaluate whether he or she thinks the book can sell.

The Audience for The Steiny Road To Operadom:
Arts educators, theater managers (artistic directors, producers, dramaturgs), theater critics, composers, librettists, poets, opera aficionados, Gertrude Stein fans, feminist studies students, general audiences. This one-of-kind book is recommended as a case study reference for performing arts programs and studies

Competing Books:
This requires going to a bookstore usually to see what books you are competing with in the current market. If you book is unique that’s fine but often publishers have a hard time placing your book in their collection if it crosses a lot of lines. For example my book The Steiny Road to Operadom is part memoir, how to (develop an opera project), American opera history, and literary. For books like this, independent publishers are probably best.

Research Methods:
What methods did you use to develop the content of your book—interviews, book or Internet research? Do you have a bibliography?

Quotations Used in this Manuscript:
If you quote people, have you gotten signed permissions to use these quotes? Until permissions are acquired, a smart publisher will not sign a book deal with an author. This section is not a list of quotation, just a statement about whether you use quotes and have gotten permissions.

Sections Previously Published:
This is a general statement about whether any portion of the book has been published before and whether you hold the copyright and have permission to reprint. Authors who have had some of the work previously published, possibly in different versions demonstrate the marketability of their work. In other word, you have had some visibility for this work already and that is good. It makes you a credible author. You should also state whether this work is a doctoral dissertation. Some publishers may not want doctoral dissertations. It’s important to know what the publisher is interested in before you send that publisher a book proposal.

Photographs:
If you have images for your book, how many? Do you have permission to use these images? Do you have print-ready images that have enough resolution to merit publishing them?

Cover Blurbs:
These are short comments from notable people in your field talking about your book. Be sure to include their titles or attribute them as authors of books that show they are experts in your field of interest. Three comments from three different experts are sufficient.

If you are going to take the time and trouble to write a book, write a well stated book proposal that shows a publisher you have done your homework and have people backing you. Let me know how you did!

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Hear Ye! Hear Ye!

The Poet spreads news of The Steiny Road to Operadom: The Making of American Operas first in New York City.

March 16 - At the Mercantile Library, Karren Alenier speaks with Ted Sod about putting Gertrude Stein & Alice B. Toklas on stage. Sod is the book writer of 27 rue de Fleurus, Paris, a new musical told from Alice Toklas's perspective about her "marriage" to Gertrude Stein.

March 18 - At the Manhattan School of Music, Gordon Ostrowsk (Director of Opera Programs at the Manhattan School)
and Midge Woolsey (program host at WQXR) mention The Steiny Road book as they introduce and moderate the proceedings of the sixth annual New American Opera Previews From Page to Stage program. A segment of Alenier's opera with Bill Banfield Gertrude Stein Invents a Jump Early On was previewed in the second New American Opera Previews From Page to Stage program.

March 19 - At the Brooklyn office of Encompass New Opera Theatre and at the Mercantile Library for the concert reading of 27 rue de Fleurus, Paris.

During these four occasions, the Poet distributed flyers about the advance release copy of The Steiny Road book. Grassroots promotion of an advance release book is like watching a stalagtite form. It takes patience but the Poet is pleased to announce that she has some orders in hand!

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What about The Steiny Road to Operadom?

Anyone who knows poetry knows that poets are trouble. They either want to be left alone to write or they want a stage for their work. The Steiny Road to Operadom: The Making of American Operas is a unique stage where the Poet, that’s me Karren Alenier, takes the reader on a wild ride through the world of opera.


Here’s the jacket blurb:
“Travel The Steiny Road to Operadom with the brave, naive Steiny Road Poet, who like Voltaire’s Candide or Carroll’s Alice, dauntlessly ventures into the best of all possible worlds or down dark rabbit holes in a journey of discovery. What this cubist education tracks is a parallel of the collaboration between opera modernists Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson with current day collaborators, poet Karren LaLonde Alenier and composer William Banfield of Gertrude Stein Invents a Jump Early On, a classical and jazz opera that premiered in 2005 in collaboration with director-dramaturg Nancy Rhodes and Encompass New Opera Theatre. Interwoven interviews with such artists as director Plácido Domingo, composer Ned Rorem, and poet J. D. McClatchy complete the story of how modern day operas are created. Stay alert. The roses encountered along the Steiny Road bear thorns, sharp thorns.”

What the Poet did was she wrote the words to an opera, enlisted a composer and theater director to develop the work with her, and simultaneously she began writing essays and interviewing artists in the field of opera to learn about it. She was lucky enough to get her essays and articles published on the Internet in Scene4 Magazine.

In this blog, the Poet will track the progress of this book, which will start circulating to reviewers in March 2007. Everything about book publishing is hard these days. It might be a close second to getting an opera stage. This reminds me that book publishing is a collaborative activity. Without help from generous friends and colleagues who read and re-read my words and then gave me feedback and corrections, the book probably would not have happened.

Here is what academics in the field of opera have said about The Steiny Road book:

“Karren Alenier’s peripatetic The Steiny Road To Operadom is a must read for any librettist, composer, or opera aficionado in search of an inside look at the creation and performance of a contemporary opera.”

Gordon Ostrowski
Director of Opera Studies
Manhattan School of Music


“The Steiny Road to Operadom is a fascinating look into the mind of American poet and librettist Karren Alenier. A must-read for anyone aspiring to write for contemporary American opera. A truly Stein’ian landscape of reflections, advice, interviews and objets trouvés from her creative journey starting in Tangier with Paul Bowles in 1982 until the complete production of Gertrude Stein Invents a Jump Early On in New York in 2005. Full of surprises and fun to read.”

Dr. Frank Hentschker
Director of Programs,
The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center,
The Graduate Center, CUNY


“Karren Alenier gives us a fresh view into the world of perhaps the most important writer of our time. She shows the rocky and fruitful collaboration of Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson through a wide range of scholarly sources and through her own process with composer William Banfield. The romantic myth of the artist alone crumbles in the glow of a community of artists, as does the myth of the blissful communion of collaborators, whether in 1930’s Paris or New York in the twenty-first century. We see the awkward beauty of two operas conceived, born, and bred, and through the eyes and ears of the Steiny Poet, we can hear the music of language, and the language of music, all the more clearly.”

Juanita Rockwell
librettist for James Sellars’ opera, The World is Round

The Poet would like to share what she has learned and so in other blog entries to come, she will talk about how to find a publisher, getting permissions, the importance of identifying flesh-and-blood critics and more.

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