Growing up without much ‘life friction’ in Pittsfield, Massachusetts gave me an attenuated sense of self. I was, truth be told, a bundle of unexpressed and conflicted desires, an amalgam of yearning for degradation and transcendence all at once. And so my freshman and sophomore years at the University of Vermont were experience-seeking years, a restless quest for the fruit of the Tree of Good and Evil, years of trying to figure out how to think, how to read, how to enjoy, the limits and delineations of my mind, personality, an attempt to create stability and yet excitement, a search for how to live, the greater quest for self. Which included hours and hours of ping pong playing with Ellis Burwick (believe it or not, I was eventually the Vermont state ping pong champion), wandering cafes in Burlington, shooting pool, chasing girls, reading Hemingway and Fitzgerald again and again, listening to John Coltrane, Miles Davis, even Sun Ra, growing my hair, hitchhiking up and down Route 7, constantly rearranging the furniture in my small dormitory room.

And then amidst this chaos of a life, I met a writing teacher and a friend who was a girl. David Huddle was a southern gentleman, tall and good-looking, with a charming drawl and a gorgeous swirl of auburn hair. He’d been an intelligence officer in Viet Nam and then gotten an MFA at Columbia. He’d written with Peter Taylor, among others, and he would read Flannery O’Connor and Edna O’Brian out loud in class. He liked my writing and spent time talking books with me in his office. Wendy P. was from Concord, just outside Boston, and she had attended private schools. She was blond and pretty and well-educated and despite having a boyfriend, spent many hours educating me about college life, city life, art and art history, the pleasures of perfume, tea, dressing well, eating out, how relationships worked, even lectured me about what women want. We spent a lot of time together, her boyfriend didn’t seem to mind, and she pushed me to write and to read. She was an art history major with ambition and she applied to transfer to Vassar and was accepted.

This was a bombshell to me, losing this good friend, and it gave me the eerie feeling of being left behind, as if Nazis were chasing me and Wendy was racing away in the escape car while I was left on foot. This certainty of becoming once more friendless by losing my sole contact with what felt like higher life, of being consigned once again to what seemed a faceless lower middle class of northern Vermont, kindled within me the urgency to change, grow, escape, to have real ambition for once in my life. It was an urgency which made me imagine writing as something which could be sustaining, as a means for constituting self.

And so I reached further than I ever had, what felt like the edge of risk for me, and I decided that I would try and write for Bernard Malamud. To transfer to Bennington College was then my first real act of will, a first real act of individuation and I applied and, thankfully, was accepted. And it was at Bennington that I began to read and write seriously, to work really hard, where I first asked myself honestly what I thought about things. And it was where I met my future brother-in-law who would make my match with my wife, and where I began to to see through the fog of my too-benevolent upbringing and successive aimless existence to a certain heart of conflict, difficulty, disappointment, and possibility for joy, where I first glimpsed my way into life.

I left middle school for high school and never ran into a good writing teacher again until my second year in college—and maybe I’ll write about David Huddle next week. But many years later, many many in fact, after I graduated from Bennington College, enlisted in the Peace Corps, did my stint in yeshiva, in my father’s Kay-Bee business, after I was already married, had a couple of kids, and moved to Israel, I was lucky enough to get my first novel published—-and how can you call getting published anything but some name of Providence?—by Walker Company, now a division of Random House. And when that summer following the publication, my parents threw a signing party at the local book store in Lenox, Massachusetts, I looked up Mr. Benson’s number in the Pittsfield phone book. I called him up and invited him to the party. He showed up in golfing cap and clothes, Scottish-looking, like he’d just strode in from the links at St. Andrews. He was trimmer than I remembered him, with a cherubic pink on his cheeks. I autographed a copy of A Good, Protected Life and showed him in the Acknowledgments where I mentioned his name. He shook my hand enthusiastically as I said thanks for the great teaching those many years ago. And I heard from my mother via a friend of hers who was a guidance counselor at the middle school and witnessed this, that Mr. Benson took the book to the teacher’s room and held it up to everyone and said, “Sometimes it’s worth it.”

Books on a Shelf

So many book models exist today. From the traditional write-and-publish to the eBook, with everything in between, the variations are staggering. This post is about the basic book model. Once the book life cycle is described I can then talk about the variations on the model. By enumerating the book models I can have a better understanding of how to create a flexible, living model that works for French Creek Press.

The basic model starts with the author. Ms. Author has an idea for a book. She has never published a book, nor has she published articles on the book subject. After carefully outlining the book, doing the research, writing the synopsis, and writing the first three chapters, she finds an agent. The agent then submits the book to a likely publisher. For the sake of our example the publisher accepts the book and pays a small advance to the author.

At this time the author retires to her little cubbyhole, chains herself to her desk, and writes the book. Since she is chained to the desk 8 hours a day, she actually finishes it according to schedule. The day finally comes when she writes, either literally or figuratively, “And they lived happily to the end of their days. The End”. She lovingly wraps the manuscript, after all, this is her six month in creation heart and soul, and ships the manuscript to the publisher.

When it gets to the publisher it is sent off to readers. The manuscript is ripped apart and put back together according to the publishers needs. Requests for change are drawn up, and everything is sent back to the author. Please fix. Maximum revision time? Four months.

While the author is revising the book, the publisher sets the publishing process in motion. The publishing schedule is set; the book cover is commissioned; the book layout is designed. When the book returns to the publisher, all revisions accepted, the book goes out to proof, offset printing is scheduled, then to the printer for pre-publication copies (ARC-advanced reading copies), and then to the pre-publication reviewers. Then the first print for publication is run.

In this basic model the publisher is established. The books are sent to the distributor, possibly accompanied by the pre-release reviews. Bookstores order the book, and the book is shipped and placed on the shelf in a brick&mortar bookstore.The book remains on the shelf for some period of time. The books not sold become “remaindered”.

That’s the simple life cycle. Next in the life of a book, I look into publishing variations for printed books.

The pictures displayed here are from two different public domain libraries:
Keyboard by Petr Kratochvil
http://www.public-domain-image.com/site_map.html

A group of tight-knit friends grow up together through high school in a world twisted inside out by a terrible war, accessible, affordable  drugs, great opportunities for education and tremendous drive to change. While all ages have some need to throw off authority, our group comes of age in a time when all authority must be destroyed because it is authority. What happens to someone young and unworldly as he or she steps out into that maelstrom? Who do they become if they survive?

Cosmo leaves the group first as he heads off to Viet Nam, burning with American patriotism. He returns wounded and broken, his best buddy dead, himself a user. Then Woodstock explodes on the scene amidst the rain. For many it is the identifiable point-time of change. College, not-college, travel, poverty and fame follow the young adults. It seems as though everyone is diving off a cliff into the unknown. Cosmo makes his first mistake when he goes AWOL from his hospital bed in search of oblivion from memories of his stay in Viet Nam. Joey’s life turns secretive. Frankie dreams of being Dr. Schweitzer. Dave dreams of the starting lineup on a professional football team and Nick makes his first irreparable mistake that forces him into years of global travel.

From Viet Nam, and terrorism through out the 70s and 80s, through Ireland, France, Asia, and the Middle East, Cosmo and Nick run from themselves and from each other. It ends in Jerusalem, to where all roads lead.

In my Junior year, at age 16, I decided to publish a literary magazine. Of course, I decided this after all funds were allocated to other extra curricular activities, so there was no money even to seed this venture. Over five months I learned how to put together a team of editors, con teachers into sitting on an advisory panel, and how to judge poetry, short fiction, and artwork. I also learned how to beg, I mean, raise the money needed to print the book. I had many encounters with printers and learned a great deal about paper, ink, and size of books.

By May of that year our magazine, Ginko Lines, published its first edition. After I submitted the book to the printer I went back to the dormitory, collapsed on my bed and started to cry. One of the teachers came in to my room and explained the emotional upheaval I was experiencing. She even said, “It’s like having a baby. You just had a baby.” Well – that’s not a good thing to say to a teenage girl in an all girls school.

The next year, my senior year, I went through the process again. The difference in planning ahead financially and emotional was tremendous. I made it through the process to publishing and distribution without crying or breaking. That was the end of my budding publishing career – until now.

I have in front of me the proof copy of the first book published by French Creek Press Ltd. All my experience as a project manager, engineer, editor, book doctor, and layout artist came into play along with the extraordinary talents of the French Creek Press staff. This time I felt like jumping up and down, running down to the street and stopping everyone there to come and look at this baby, book. Excitement replaced tears of exhaustion. Age tells. Experience tells.

Keep looking in this space for the announcement of our newest book.

Chris very pointedly states, “This is the business value of this stuff, the blogging and the social media stuff. There’s a business value to understanding and building the relationships around the product. There’s a real business value in having people understand and have access and build affinity to people…[There is a] new currency in the world, currency of attention, currency of trust. And you need to worry about how you are going to get in front of people to actually care about your thing.”

This introduction to Social Media touched on many subjects which I won’t go into here such as understanding books as eco systems and book clubs as the new tribal system. What really caught my ear was when Chris began speaking about distribution and the Mafia. Books are a distribution problem. eBooks add to the problem even though they command a small piece of the market. Normal channels have a book traditionally marketed, carried by the brick and mortar places along with Online stores. The book is printed and distributed to outlets, bought by the customer, and then shipped. eBooks jump the queue. They are often sold directly from the publisher or even the author.

Just as the Mafia took over distribution systems to deliver basic services to the villages in the face of government corruption, albeit with their own interpretation of the law, the Mafia continued forays into society in other distribution channels. Their choice to distribute alcohol, drugs, slaves, and cigarettes may not be the distribution problem of a publisher, but today’s publisher needs to understand the basic common element. Publishers are not in the book business. Publishers are in the information distribution business. And anytime the distribution is bogged down by bureaucracy, “mafia-style” elements step in to ease the problem.

Social Media works like the Mafia – it sets up new paths, new mechanism to deliver information to the people who want it. And it’s not as complicated as drug traffic-ing. Information brokers need to do things in a “ridiculously different way”. Chris suggests mass customization based on shopping preferences and other information gathered about a customer. Product placement or settings in books can be used to draw people in, and it can be used to enlist outside forces in the marketing campaign. Social Media presents opportunities to work with potential routes that are not traditional marketing.

I choose to reorient my position in a “grassroots” movement instead of the Mafia. Social Media is not as coordinated or structured as the Mafia. It is, however, the perfect expression of the average person grouping together with other average people to effect change.

French Creek Press is starting a social media campaign September. I’ll be writing about this effort and any tips that I can pass along as a result. In the meantime, check out Chris Brogan. Who knows, maybe he’ll do a standup comedy routine to augment his salary.

Hawaii at the time of my birth was not yet a state in the Union, and the Japanese had not yet supplanted the white American as the major stockholder. Pearl Harbor was bombed and rebuilt. Schofield Barracks wouldn’t house my daughter for at least forty more years. Hawaii was in transition from old to new, from tearing itself apart over losing its identity to becoming part of a great nation.

Eventually my family made it to Pennsylvania, founded and governed by one of the true early innovators, William Penn. His governing principles served as an inspiration for the United States Constitution. As a friend of George Fox, the founder of the Quakers, William Penn created an environment of hospitality for people of all faiths. He implemented a democratic system with full freedom of religion, fair trials, elected representatives of the people in power, and a separation of powers – very innovative stuff in the time of kings.

A hundred or so years later, a man named Emmor Kimber settled in an area that served as a stopping point on stagecoach routes to Yellow Springs and Lancaster at the time of the Revolutionary War. Emmor Kimber was a Quaker teacher who established the French Creek Boarding School for Girls. It became known as a model for progressive education which drew students from great distances. Among his other concerns, and true to his nature, Kimber was an abolitionist, operating a stop on the underground railroad under the school.

I grew up in Kimberton; statehood, people’s freedom, and a love for innovative learning marked me at birth and followed me through my life. Now the world stands at another pinnacle of change – a revolution in communications. Just as the Industrial Revolution turned the world upside-down, technology today is transforming communication into something we can’t yet identify.

French Creek by David Christman 7547

French Creek Press Ltd., named after the creek that ran through William Penn’s land grant, through Kimber’s innovations in education and protection of people’s life and liberty, positions itself as a “press”, a mechanism to disseminate information. To do that we have three divisions:

Pixel/Point Press – operating on the edge of technology, creating solutions using cutting edge technology to reach all corners of the world.

Kenwood Academic Press – serving the student and faculty body as a print on-demand publishing house and personal writing coach service to ensure that all voices be heard.

French Creek Press – serving established and upcoming authors as a print on-demand and electronic book publishing house.