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Del Viento with a bone in her teeth,
heading south last week on a two-
night passage from Punta Chivato to La Paz. |
I’ve
always wanted to be an author. In kindergarten I made a shoebox diorama that
made this clear. Displayed among the other dioramas that featured pilots and
astronauts and veterinarians and movie stars, mine depicted a lonely
construction paper man seated at a tiny cardboard table on which sat a tiny
cardboard typewriter. A sheaf of tiny blank pages was stacked neatly beside the
tiny cardboard typewriter.
Well,
more than forty years have passed since kindergarten and my dream job is
finally a reality (though I no longer own a typewriter). As already announced
elsewhere (like at the
end of this blog post, or in the
second paragraph of this blog post),
Behan Gifford, Sara Johnson, and I signed a book contract with the publisher
L&L Pardey Books!
The
three of us are collaborating to write a non-fiction book to be called Voyaging with Kids: A
Guide to Family Life Afloat. It’s scheduled for release in 2015.
For
the benefit of other writers and aspiring authors, I’ll share with you how this
came to be and then, in later posts, how things are going. I eat up this kind
of info when I find it online, so sharing my story is a chance to give back.
An
Idea
Cruisers
depend on cruising guides, to orient them to the places they visit. These
guides include aerial photography and hand-drawn chartlets to show how best to
enter an anchorage and where the underwater hazards are. Small maps often mark
the locations of customs or immigration buildings, supermarkets, and laundry
services. They’re practically indispensable.
When
we moved aboard Del
Viento,
I brought with me the Baja cruising guides that Windy and I used 15 years
before. There was another, newer guide on the scene, but I’d once thumbed
through it at a boat show and discounted it. It was a pretty book, the pages
filled with gorgeous, unhelpful photographs like you’d find in a tourist
brochure. Shawn Breeding and Heather Bansmer’s pretty book belonged on a coffee
table. I valued the dense, no-nonsense guides of yesteryear; Jack Williams and
Gerry Cunningham and Charles Wood knew how to write cruising guides. And though
those books were old, the anchorages haven’t moved, how much could have
changed? The last thing the world needed was another Baja cruising guide.
But
everyone has a copy of Shawn and Heather’s pretty book, it’s all anyone uses
down here. I secretly pitied this new generation of Baja cruisers with their
colorful, but inferior, guide.
Then
Windy bought a copy of the pretty book. For the next several months, for every
anchorage we approached, I’d open up all the other guides and compare their
information to Shawn & Heather’s guide. Rarely did I find the pretty book
lacking. It was usually better. Today, I can’t tell you where the other guides
are stowed.
What
stuck with me from this experience was that I was wrong, the world did need a
new Baja cruising guide. Shortly after this realization, I found myself on a
warm, clear, tropical night watch. Amped up on dark chocolate espresso beans and
This
American Life,
my mind wandered all over the place until an epiphany dawned: the world
needs another guide to cruising with kids! There are more and more families
out here each year and the only informative books available to them are more
than a decade old and recount lessons learned by families out there two decades
ago. Things have changed!
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A pleased Eleanor at the summit
of a hike she led on Isla
San Marcos. |
The
Approach
The
next book on this topic had to be good, it had to bring something new to the
table. I knew there are as many different ways to go voyaging with your kids as
there are families out there doing it. I knew my perspective, gained over the
previous three years cruising Mexico to Alaska to Mexico was relatively narrow.
We didn’t have infants or toddlers or teenagers aboard. We’d not crossed an ocean
with our kids. I didn’t want to write a shallow, dogmatic book. I needed the
perspectives of co-authors.
Within
days of my idea occurring to me, I sent a manic email to Behan and Sara asking
if they wanted to join me in this project. I made a few things clear. I didn’t
want to write with just one other person because how would disagreements then be
settled? I wanted this to be our project, not something they’re helping me
with. From the start, we would all own this book, 33.3%, 33.3%, 33.3%.
They
each responded with enthusiasm that inspired.
The
Method
The
three of us were on the fence for a while about whether to self-publish or
pursue a traditional publisher.
Self-publishing
is easy these days. You write your book and then you either pay others to get
it print-ready, or do some or all of it yourself. But every manuscript must be
edited, every cover must be designed, every book must be designed, text must be
indexed, the eBook must be designed, rights must be secured, and an ISBN must
be obtained. When ready, a printer must be paid and books must be warehoused
and distributed (or printed on demand, at a much higher cost). Then the book
has to be marketed, at book shows, at librarian’s conventions, to West Marine
book buyers. In short, there is a lot of time, expertise, and money required to
get a manuscript turned into a quality book and then put before potential book buyers.
The primary advantage of self-publishing is that the author(s) makes more money
for each book sold (assuming the publisher offers no advantage in terms of
increasing sales, perhaps a bad assumption).
Ultimately,
given our fiscal, time, and geographic constraints as cruising parents, we
decided to seek a traditional publisher.
Non-fiction
books are sold to publishers before they’re written, by way of a proposal.
Weird, huh? But in the non-fiction world, what matters is whether there is a
market for the book you propose and whether you have the ability to deliver the
manuscript (in terms of writing chops) and the subject matter
knowledge/credentials/authority to have your name on the cover. (Contrast this
with the fiction world where there is always a market for a good book, but can
you write a good book? The only way to answer that question is by having a
completed manuscript to show a prospective publisher.)
So
we wrote a proposal. This was a lot of work. In 87 pages (23,000 words), we
presented a case for our book idea. In a nutshell, we delivered an intro to our
book, a market analysis of competing titles, biographies to highlight our
credentials, a marketing plan we could execute to help the publisher sell our
book (we secured commitments from reviewers, we highlighted our own reach via
our blogs and social media, we pointed out our relationships with magazine
editors to whom we’d each sold articles), and we wrote and included two sample
chapters.
Then
we wrote a cover letter and sent our baby out to nearly a dozen publishers that
specialize in the nautical book market. We considered the responses of several
and in the end, we decided without reservation to accept the offer of L&L
Pardey Books. Lin Pardey struck us all as a savvy, capable, and connected
businesswoman. She has a team of expert designers and editors she works with
and she uses Paradise Cay for book distribution (the largest distributor of
nautical titles in the world). Lin Pardey is really nice too.
The
Next Step
So
we contracted with L&L Pardey Books back in May. We were given nine months
to complete and deliver our manuscript. We’re all putting the final touches on
our first draft now so that we can start the our internal editing process and
polish it right up before delivering all our words and pictures to Lin in
February.
It’s
a lot of work, much more than any of us anticipated. But it’s also been a lot
of fun. I’ve met fascinating people through working on this project and have
strengthened two life-long friendships in Behan and Sara. We’re all eager,
committed writers soon to be eager, published authors. It doesn’t get much
better than this.
--MR
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Eleanor surveying part of a blue whale skull on the beach
on the southern side of Bahia de las Animas, in the Northern Sea. |
