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Interview by Kd McIntosh, editor of AuthorsDigest.com
September 11, 1999
Kd – Question 1. Is Sizzling Spells your first self-published book, and what made you decide to do it yourself? What is it about Spells that makes you believe in it so much you’d rather do it yourself? What is it about you?
Chas: Whew! This answer could be a book in itself!
First, so people will know what we’re talking about, the book is called Sizzling Spells: How to Make Any Man Want to Talk to You. I had a wonderful time writing it, and it’s great fun to promote because everybody who sees the title smiles. I love hanging out with smiling people.
Sizzling Spells is not my first self-published book.
The first was a booklet on how to keep baby tropical fish alive. My girlfriend Susan and I, in seventh grade, made extra money selling some of the babies we didn’t have room to keep, but people let them die. It broke our hearts. My career as a self-publisher grew out of those five-cent booklets printed by hand.
I seriously considered running Spells through the agent who has long given me advice and encouragement as a writer. I think it has the potential to be a bestseller in any venue, and almost sent it off to him to submit to big publishers. Then I remembered how long it takes to get a book out that way. I wanted people to read it now. This week. This afternoon. I didn’t want to wait a year or two or three to see it in print.
I was also exhausted from promoting my previous book – Black Hole: unexpected tool for joyous living – and ready for a change. I wanted to get out and play with happy people instead of sad ones. So the first copies of Spells came from my living room. After I was satisfied the book worked, I took what felt like a huge next step and had it printed in quantity, with a spine, to the specifications a Barnes and Noble buyer told me would allow it into any chain bookstore in the country.
While the book was at the printer’s, I was derailed – for almost two years – by injuries from surviving a crash that killed my car. Now, at last, I’m beginning to market the book.
I know every word in this book is real. I’ve lived everything in there. I love talking, and I love hearing other people tell their stories. I’ve said the next book ought to be Shushing Spells: How to Make Any Man Go Away and Leave Me Alone, but I haven’t lived every word that would be in that one.
I like doing it myself, whatever ‘it’ may be – except changing tires and cooking. I like being able to say I have the books in my purse or my backpack, not having to send a person to the nearest bookstore to special-order the book. I like learning how to sell books on the internet, building a Web site. I like hearing from my readers, meeting them at seminars, getting e-mails that tell me what they did with the book and how it worked for them. It’s a very personal process.
I’m gathering energy again. Peddling books is hard work, but it’s what I want to do. Writing is much more fun when I know people are reading the best of my words. I believe in work. I believe in play. This book, a fluff presentation of truly useful tools, combines both for me.
Kd – Question 2. Do you believe those who self-publish need to promote via the Net?
Chas: I’ve always hated telling people what to do. So ‘need’ is an awkward word for me to use about other people.
I see promotion on the Net as a fabulous tool for me as a self-publisher. I think anyone who bypasses the Net is missing a large marketplace.
For me, being part hermit and part social butterfly, the Net is a good fit. I can be a social butterfly in the middle of the night when I’m awake and alert. I can sit with my dog curled up on top of my bare feet, typing answers to readers, sending out ads, reading about other writers and books, finding new places to peddle my book, and not have to cope with another person in the kitchen with me. Not have to put on shoes. I can stop whenever I feel the need to write stories instead of having conversation. I have been sporadic in some ways, though I’m sure working the Net every day would pay off better.
I’ve had a Web site almost three years and been online a while before that, learning something about the territory. I plan to keep showing up, keep learning, keep sending my words out via the Net.
Kd – Question 3. What have been your most successful online and offline promotions?
Chas: Online, my most successful promotion was a contest on the Web site that offered the winner’s choice of my books and illustrated poems for the best brief story of how they used something I wrote in their personal life.
I was surprised at the number of responses we had to that contest. It was interesting to see how far some of the books had gone. We sold quite a few books to people who then entered their stories. What’s more, tons of new people signed up for my two weekly newsletters, and most of them have stuck around. Some of them send me notes every week. They’re part of my support system as a writer. If I were to write dreck, I know absolutely they’d tell me so. When something I do touches them, some of them tell me that, too.
Offline, when I was self-publishing before the Internet was a part of my life, I used postcards to peddle books. It worked well for me. I’d send postcards for specials or announcing new books. I didn’t buy lists but used only people I knew and my prior customers. I kept notes when people said, "When you write that one, let me know."
The most successful single postcard promotion was for Black Hole. Two or three days after my son died, people started telling me they wanted the book I was sure to write about it. Even in the midst of that worst turmoil my world has ever been in, I put their names on a list. A year and a half later, when I had the book ready, several hundred people wanted it.
Kd – Question 4. Do you have advice for others thinking of self-publishing?
Chas: Eat well.
Do your exercises.
Keep up your energy.
Do it your way.
Learn the accepted rules and modify them to fit your style.
Give away lots of books to people who talk.
Carry books with you everywhere.
Keep good records.
Use the tools you’re comfortable with --
the Internet
book signings
book parties
ads in local papers
ads in publications you read
reviews
radio and television
Tell me what works for you. (-:
Okay, so that last may sound silly and off-topic, but I’m still learning what works for me. If something works for someone else and I haven’t tried it, I’m game. Why not? I jumped off the barn roof as a kid to see what it felt like. My sense of adventure is still intact, but sometimes I like to have a clue beforehand of what’s ahead. So tell me your stories and I’ll tell you mine.
My other advice to self-publishers is to recognize that there are several styles of self-publishing. Some produce books identical in look and feel to those put out by the big houses. Others put out copy-shop sheets stapled or comb-bound together with colored covers. I’ve chosen a route between those two.
There are good books out there for guidance. Dan Poynter has long been considered a dean of self-publishing, with good reason. Marilyn and Tom Ross have been doing it a long time, and always made sense to me. Mark Ortman and John Kremer are newer names to me, also worth reading. People who are in the business are often glad to share what works with beginners and old-timers looking for another new idea.
Writers are some of the most generous people I’ve ever met. They share ideas and markets, agents and books, time and energy. They cheer each other on relentlessly. Hurray for writers!
Kd – Question 5. What other books have you written?
Chas: The other books still in print, available from my Web site, are:
Lessons to Share: Workbook for a Healthy Family – People wanted a book telling them how to raise children like mine. Of course they were wonderful – what mom doesn’t adore her children? – but would you really want them? I don't think so. I wrote a short introduction, then asked 100-plus questions that the kids and I all answered. The idea is that readers answer the questions with their families and friends, learning about themselves and each other as they go.
Black Hole: unexpected tool for joyous living – After John died, I discovered that I only know how to write about life, so that’s what I did. It’s part celebration of John, part exploration of the life I was only beginning to live after my old one was shattered. It cries out for a workbook that I’m planning to write next year.
On Shifting Sands and Other Poems of Transition – Some of these are serious, some are total frivolity, all of them point out truths in transitions – birth, death, radiation therapy, learning to swim, broken hearts, giving up glasses....
Limitless Networking: How to Use ALL Your Networking Contacts – The title tells all. If you’re reading this interview and want an e-copy of this book, let me know and I’ll send it to you free. [2005 Note: You might want to check out Limitless Internetworking – One Person at a Time since Limitless Networking is no longer in print.]
I have books available as e-books and also in print. I’m new at the e-book part of the business, but I see great value in it. No need for a big bookcase, and no shipping expenses for either buyer or seller. No long waits even for readers on a different continent.
Kd – Question 6. What projects are you working on now?
Chas: A book tentatively called Rocks Flying that I see as a workbook for modern- day gypsies.
Sizzling Spells II: How to Make Any Woman Want to Talk to You – by request of many readers who feel there are differences between what men and women see in each other. I’m gathering stories to teach me those differences so I can produce a meaningful, helpful book.
A novel, Wicked Witch of Where? – story of a woman redefining herself.
About a dozen others in second or third draft stages, but these are the three that excite me most today.
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