Kip: Hello Robert, I understand you’re having a book published. Can you tell me a little about it?
Robert: First, Kip, thanks for having me. The book is a supernatural thriller in the vein of Peter Straub and Dean Koontz about a young man whose parents have just been murdered. The police think the murderer has marked him as the next victim, so he travels away with his estranged grandmother and uncle to a small town to hide out. But it’s in this town that he stumbles across a dark secret and begins to suspect that his parents’ murder might not have been an accident after all, and that he was brought there by powers beyond his control.
Kip: That sounds exciting, but I thought you wrote zombie books?
Robert: Not exclusively, no. I did write a nontraditional zombie story once, and I do have a nontraditional zombie novel that I’m actually planning to release very soon. I say “nontraditional” because while most of the characters are the walking dead, they don’t go around eating people. Instead they, much like the world in general, have simply begun to decay.
Kip: Yeah, but … I wanted to talk about zombies
Robert: We can talk about zombies, sure.
Kip: Great, so what is your fascination with zombies? You don’t know any personally, do you?
Robert: I don’t want to disappoint, but I don’t have a huge fascination with zombies, not like most people. But a long time ago this first line had crept itself way into my mind:
“Like everyone else he knew, Steven’s heart did not beat.”
That first line grew into my story “In the Land of the Blind,” which later became the inspiration for my novel The Dishonored Dead. What intrigued me about the story and novel as the actual writer was that these weren’t your normal zombies. They were something new and that, I felt, was exciting.
Kip: Okay, it’s good to hear you don’t have a bunch of zombie friends, or host any zombie parties. So can you tell me something about the publication process? It seems you took a fairly non-traditional path to publication.
Robert: I tried a traditional approach for this novel (as all my novels) first. I found an agent who really loved it and who sent it out into the world, and while there were a few nibbles, ultimately there were no bites. Publishers’ basic problem: it’s not your typical zombie novel (i.e., no flesh eating going on). Zombie are hot right now, but it’s a common type of zombie. So the novel, as many others, was destined to sit on my hard drive until the day I finally sold a novel. It’s always been an unspoken thing that you could always come back to unsold novels when you finally broke into the market. But right now I figure why wait? I can do it myself.
Kip: Can you tell us something about the self-publishing experience? What to watch out for, book distribution, upfront costs, your expectations, etc.?
Robert: Well, distribution is the one thing that the “e-book revolution” has done right for writers. Before self-publishing never made good sense because there wasn’t a way to really distribute your work. Most chain bookstores would shy away from self-published works. Now anyone can upload an e-book to Amazon or Barnes & Noble or Smashwords and make their work available to anyone who has an e-reader — and the fact is more and more people today have access to those readers. Oftentimes, there isn’t even a fee to upload the work.
Cover art, however, is a mixed bag. They say you can’t judge a book by its cover, but that’s BS. EVERYONE judges a book by its cover. The thing is, though, some books with hideous covers do very well, while some books with great covers don’t do well at all. So it’s not an exact science, but it definitely helps to have a good presentation. Of course, this means it could cost you anywhere from zero dollars to more than a thousand, but that’s completely up to you.
Formatting is also very important. Because I’ve begun reading a lot of e-books, I’ve become very particular in the formatting. Some of the formatting I see (even by major publishers) is poor. Right now there isn’t a standard. I’ve done a few e-books so far and have come up with a format that I think looks very professional. Or so I hope.
In terms of expectations, everyone wants to be successful, but the simple fact is that’s just not possible. Some will be more successful than others. Some won’t be successful at all. That’s just the reality of the situation. All a writer can do is write another book and hope for the best. If that one isn’t successful, they just need to write another book. Again and again.
Kip: Do you feel self-publishing and the increase of e-books signify the end of traditional publishing houses, and possibly the end of print books?
Robert: Not at all. Publishing is changing, yes, but major publishers won’t disappear, at least not any time soon. Look at the record industry; a lot of what’s happening now in publishing took place there awhile ago, and those record companies are still around. They are needed, to an extent, but some artists are doing just fine without them.
And print will always be around, in some form or another. At least as long as we’re all still living.
Kip: One more question: Do zombies read? If so, you’ll have great success, because we all know there are zombies … everywhere.
Robert: I guess it depends on what kind of zombies they are. If they are the kinds of zombies in my novel, then sure, they can read (the “zombies” in my novel are really the living, after all …)
Actually, I have a question for you: what is YOUR fascination with zombies?
Kip: Well … aside from the one under my bed, I don’t know any zombies, but maybe that will change now. I’ll be sure to check out your new book, Robert. Good luck to you, and thanks for all the information you’ve provided here — perhaps someday I’ll make use of it.
Robert: Thanks for having me, Kip!
Robert Swartwood’s work has appeared in The Los Angeles Review, The Daily Beast, Postscripts, ChiZine, Space and Time, and PANK. He is the editor of Hint Fiction: An Anthology of Stories in 25 Words or Fewer. Visit him at www.robertswartwood.com.
The Calling: A Supernatural Thriller is available for an introductory price of 99 cents at the following places:
- Kindle (US)
- Kindle (UK)
- Nook
- Smashwords
Robert invites you to join him on Monday, April 18, at 7 pm EST, where he will be doing a live reading at his website.