Publishing Field Report 8 – Featherproof (Part 1)

How I ended up with 2 offers for my second book after 20+ rejections, how I made the right choice, and what I learned about what I even wanted out of publishing

Around the same time that I found a publisher for my first book, Ever, I also began making headway with the story collection I’d started sending around myself even before that, Scorch Atlas. After cutting ties with my agent, I’d managed to collect somewhere between 20-30 rejections from a variety of independent presses all on my own, keeping a growing list of near misses and total airballs that had begun to make the prospect appear bleak. I’d pretty much already combed all the open calls I could find in publisher listings and blind queried small presses I liked without making it past the “personal rejection – favorable” tag and was gearing up to trying writing another novel instead when from what seemed out of nowhere—despite the year I’d spent searching—two different publishers approached me with serious interest.

One was a very small press (run by one person) with almost no distribution outside its own ability, but that had a long record of more than two decades of publishing independent work, including a couple of titles by people I’d heard of, even if they weren’t 100% my bag. To be honest, I wasn’t enormously excited by the prospect, realizing that it was a much lower profile venue than I’d have dreamed of, but still, it was a start, and I seriously considered going with them just to have my foot in the door somewhere.

The other, Featherproof, was a newer venture out of Chicago, who’d put out a handful of beautifully designed and conceived books, including some that had even gotten buzz and seemed akin in range of tone even if the content of my work was rather different than what they’d already done. I found out they were interested in publishing me when I met Zach Dodson, one of the duo, at their table in AWP in New York that year, which I attended on a whim. When he realized who I was he excitedly shook my hand and told me that he and copublisher Jonathan Messinger—whose own book they’d recently published to acclaim—been discussing my manuscript for a while now, which I’d blind submitted to them through their website during an open call, and really wanted to talk to me about it—a shock to me, given that I’d assumed the radio silence I’d encountered up till then meant the door was already closed.

[ an early profile of Featherproof by Laura van den Berg ]

Despite being a young press, Featherproof stood out to me immediately in that they seemed very hands on with what they did—not just putting books out and letting the void surrounding most indie ventures swallow them, but doing their best to package and market the work in a way that truly suited it. This was an experimental process, Zach explained, and different for each title, but something that they took very seriously and with a passion that was palpable from the jump.

I got to know Zach more when he came to Atlanta to hang out and do a reading I helped set up in town. Zach slept on my loft’s floor and we hung out over that weekend talking about what it would look like to put my book out, and what would be expected of me in the deal. Featherproof wanted to work hands on with each of their authors, expecting that the process didn’t end with publication, but that we’d collaborate to make the book a success on the terms dictated by the project. This was intended to be a relationship, as Zach described it, not a transaction. Featherproof put everything they had into each of their books and they expected the author to take part in that, so they wanted to make sure I was prepared to do so before they offered me a deal.

Additionally, Zach already had wild ideas about how the book would look—an intuitive and immersive approach that showed he’d thought long and hard about what the book might even be, and in a way that gave the project a whole new aura—alive in a way that words on paper rarely seemed. He wanted me feedback, too, and listened when I offered comps and concepts of the style I had in mind, while bringing his own taste to the table, widening the scope.

Of course I was thrilled—this was precisely what I’d always imagined publishing should feel like, even if I didn’t know exactly what it meant at the time, nor how this in fact was not industry standard by any means. In some ways, my experience with Featherproof being so hands on would turn out to color my vision in a way that assumed everyone in publishing should come to the table with the same level of enthusiasm and vision for each book, which as I think you might already knew, is hardly the case. With lesser like-minded enterprises, this could go poorly, allowing someone else to render their influence on a creation I’d designed precisely to my own terms. For me and Featherproof, however, it would turn out to be a perfect match, and exactly what I needed to move forward from knocking on doors to actually feeling like I had some control in my own desire to write and publish books.

Featherproof was relatively new, though, having only existed a few years at the time—and therefore, I didn’t quite understand yet, full of a certain kind of energy that we often see stamped out of independently run ventures over time—but also therefore had less experience and proof of staying power than other places, as I saw it, which made me wonder if they were truly right for me. I wasn’t sure what it meant to gamble on the prospect of a press that might be more likely to eventually fold, unlike the larger venues that had real momentum already behind them, and I wondered what would happen to my book in that case—would it be a waste? What if I signed the book to them and things went shitty? They seemed trustworthy and truly passionate, but was I giving something up in going with a venture so young?

Either way, suddenly I’d gone from being told no 30 times in a row to having two different places wanting my book, and so I had to make a choice. I discussed the pluses and minuses aloud with several friends, trying for once to slow down and make exactly the right decision in a place that I realized I was all but blind besides the thrill.

Neither of the presses had major distribution—a factor I’d had at the top of my list since the beginning, wanting to see my work in stores—but Featherproof was working on that, Zach explained. They’d been told they had to release and schedule a certain number of titles (8-10) before a major distributor would consider them, but they were right at the precipice of that and hustling hard to fit the bill.

Featherproof’s books were also exquisitely designed in house, thanks to Zach’s sick chops and attention to detail, as was very apparent in looking at their catalog. With each release they’d done, they created advertising materials that fit their own style but also looked professional—stylish one-sheets and custom merch that seemed design to expand the reach of a book on its own terms, a kind of DIY approach to marketing that made me feel like the belief they attested to about the book had real legs, and even if it wasn’t the same as a moneyed major house, having people behind me who wanted to sell my book as much I did felt really good. The other press couldn’t offer much in that direction, I understood—they put out books they believed in, too, but didn’t have the same in-house resources and youthful ingenuity as Zach and Jonathan.

Neither of the presses had actual money for an advance—something I’d already basically stopped expecting—and had similar royalty structures that would pay me in author copies I could sell on my own as well as a slightly higher percentage of sales than I would get at a big house who did pay advances.

Usually what you’re getting when you sign a deal that pays up front, I learned right then, was that in most cases the advance is all the money you’ll ever see; especially since those larger venues tend to attempt to sell your book only for the short term that it feels fresh and potentially able to strike it big through review media. Selling enough to pay back that advance was a part of the gamble that gets abandoned pretty early on when a book fails to blow out immediately—therefore, an advance is more like a bet on the part of the publisher that it might pay off in spades.

What I didn’t know then is that having a higher royalty and a longer shelf life, though not life-sustaining on its own, might turn out to pay me more in time than a one-off lump sum could; and to boot, these smaller sized publishers who are working from passion tend to stay committed to selling the book much longer, since they’re essentially on the same boat as you are: in that their belief in the book is why they do it, and really they’re just trying to break even so they can fund the next one.

Everyone likes money, duh, but I hadn’t really gotten into writing books for money—that had been made abundantly clear already, given the struggle to find my way in through any door. More than a decade later, however, it makes all the difference in the world to me that Scorch Atlas and Ever are both still being sold more than a decade later as if they’re as much a part of the press as any book since—they have a life that extends beyond the market. They have people behind them who still believe in the reason they exist—not always true in venues where the bottom line is sink or swim.

This point is a good reason to be skeptical of a more recent shift in big house publishing where they attempt to convince the author that the same will be true for them—take a small advance with a larger royalty to defray risk on the part of the publisher, with a potentially larger return promised down the line. The difference is, though, that an independent publisher had a real incentive to make good on that for you over time, while a mega publisher, while conceptually more equipped with access and ability to get you press and visibility, moves on much more quickly—the bet gets chalked up as a loss, and they move on. It’s simply not the same thing to take a small advance from a major as it is from an indie you see as having staying power—long game math versus flash in the pan.

Featherproof in particular would turn out to have real ingenuity when it came to generating ways to build interest in their books that brought new life to the whole, too, though all I had to go on to believe that was trust. To that end, my gut told me that it felt right, feeling like I’d earned new friends who believed in what I was doing rather than just a paper trail relationship that could be overridden at any time by larger powers that be. I could tell that Zach and Jonathan both felt that too—having connected with my writing first, and then finding that we seemed to be on the same page when it came to production.

I also got the sense that Featherproof was more connected to the actual vibe of what was going on in writing, looking for young, active writers who stood out as a factor alongside the quality of the work. I liked the idea of that cache, a sort of payment all its own in what it brings to you as a creator, rather than simply relying on the book as a cultural object that should command attention solely from its work. This was a weird shift in the idea of meritocracy, in that not only did you need to write something compelling, but you also needed to be that book’s representative of sorts—a prospect I imagined I was capable of, by putting another kind of hat on for, even if ultimately all I really wanted was to write. It simultaneously seemed shitty that an artist needed to be able to do that, and also common sense in an industry flooded with options for readers that sometimes it did matter who lived the life behind the book. Of course I wanted to show up for that, I realized—perhaps much to the chagrin to the tyrant in me who wanted to believe sometimes you could just be so brilliant that all that mattered was the page. Both were true, and both were not true; what I really needed to do was take a jump.

So in the end my decision felt pretty clear. I thanked the other publisher for their interest but told them I’d taken another opportunity, and then I signed my contract with Featherproof without an agent. I asked my Dad to look over the deal on paper, just to make sure it wasn’t totally insane, while simultaneously already knowing that I was going to sign.

Though the contract didn’t turn out to cause me any trouble, since Zach and Jonathan were truly playing fair and doing right for themselves and the artist both, I now wish that I understood more about how contracts worked and what it meant to commit to something you want more than you think money could ever matter about. I’d essentially gotten lucky to not end up tied up in a deal that would take away my rights in the long run—a pitfall that I’ve seen countless young writers fall into over the years, so eager to sign that they end up getting fucked.

In the future, having an agent to protect me from mishandling in that way would turn out to be as vital as any other cog in the process, but for the time being, it hardly mattered to me at all. I was already over the moon, ready to finally rip on a book that seemed already to have even more potential reach than what I’d agreed to with Calamari, given Featherproof’s enthusiasm for DIY publicity and marketing versus Derek’s model of publishing whatever he wanted without a care in the world for capitalistic practices.

Today, I feel lucky to have had early access to both sorts of experiences, proving that every book has its own life, and there’s no one way to reach a goal; rather, it’s more a matter of putting your blood into the water, being open-minded about what comes back, and being honest with what you want. Not every book belongs on a shelf at B&N with the expectation that any reader could engage, and not every weird book belongs in the back shadows, assuming it can never reach anyone but those who already know.

The whole pursuit of publishing is an experiment, one quite separate and distinct from the work of writing, but also worthwhile in trying to be both realistic and ambitious about in the same breath. You never really know what you’re getting into until you’re getting into it, and the longer your stick around, the more you learn. You might even begin to realize that how you play the game matters as much as the results, and that even in what feels like relative silence, people can see you, and some of them might even come to know you not only through your work, but by the artist you are who represents that work to whatever degree.

I believe I’ve covered the basics of how I finally found the publisher for what for me would be a landmark and direction-defining book, even after having reached what felt like the end of a rope. In my next post, I’ll explore a bit more about what making and promoting the book independently with Featherpoof looked like, where it took me and how it changed me, and where that led.

Thanks for reading.