Civil War books and authors

It’s All About the Marketing, Stupid. There are several reasons why I enjoy working with Ted Savas so much. First, Ted and I have been friends for a long time. Second, we share the same philosophies about what makes a good book, including the idea that there can never be too many maps or illustrations in a book. Most importantly, though, is that Ted gets marketing. Even though he’s a lawyer by training, Ted has a very strong entrepreneurial spirit, and he gets marketing. He’s been really successful with selling his books, with placing them with the book clubs, and even in selling the movie rights to one of his titles. What’s more, he encourages his authors to market, because everyone benefits from the sale of books. Ted’s marketing director, Sarah Keeney, maintains a blog on the topic of marketing and selling books, which I commend to you.

Bruce Franklin, the owner of Westholme Publishing, is also adept at marketing. Bruce has been tremendously successful in getting his titles, including Russ Bonds’ Stealing the General, reviewed in The Wall Street Journal, which really spurs sales. Dan Hoisington, of Edinborough Press, who will be publishing my Dahlgren bio, is also astute at marketing; he provides each of his authors with their own web site to hawk their books.

These three, however, are the exception and not the rule. Most publishers are abysmal at marketing. Thomas Publications, which published my first book, is terrible at it. At least when I was doing business with them, they were not affiliated with a distributor, meaning that unless the book was sold in Gettysburg or on Amazon, forget it. Your book will never, ever stand a chance of getting into the big box bookstores. As I mentioned in yesterday’s update to the first post in this series, Potomac Books is absolutely horrible at marketing. I can’t tell you how many times I complained about the wretched job of marketing was being done by them, and nothing helped.

My biggest gripe is with the university presses. Since they really don’t have to worry about making a profit for the most part, they don’t do much marketing at all. As I said in the first post in this series, LSU sold 5 copies of my book last year. Kent State, which has also published three of my books, also does not do an especially good job of marketing, although Susan Cash, the marketing director, tries. Maybe it’s that they tend to price their books at outrageous prices. I don’t know. I just know that the titles that they have published haven’t sold at all.

And then there’s McFarland, in a league all of its own for abysmal marketing and for ridiculously expensive pricing. At least they’re honest about it. They don’t even attempt to sell their books to the big box retailers.

So, it falls upon the author to sell his or her own book. You’ve got to get out there and sell it. For me, it’s a trade-off. I’m self-employed, and if I don’t work, I don’t get paid. Consequently, I’ve got to do a careful balancing between what’s the best use of my time. I do as many appearances as I can, but certainly not as many as I could simply because I cannot afford to be away from the office any longer than I already am. I try to maintain a fairly high profile for my work, and I’m getting ready to launch a website for the sole purpose of selling my books (the design is nearly finished; I will announce its launch here when it’s ready).

J.D. and I put up a website to sell Plenty of Blame to Go Around: Jeb Stuart’s Controversial Ride to Gettysburg, and it’s been successful. Its companion site, for One Continuous Fight: The Retreat from Gettysburg and the Pursuit of Lee’s Army of Norther Virginia, July 4-14, 1863, is being finalized as I write this.

Don’t expect your publisher to sell your books. Be grateful when it does. Otherwise, you’ve got to do it yourself. That’s an important piece of information that I really wish I had known ten years ago.

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Be Careful What You Wish For. You Just Might Get It. I’ve learned that having someone review my work for accuracy and readability is imperative. When he was still alive and well enough to do so, Brian Pohanka read just about everything that I wrote, and often gave excellent feedback. I still have a network of people that I turn to to provide this invaluable service, including, but not limited to, J. D. Petruzzi, Scott Patchan, Horace Mewborn, Bob O’Neill, Teej Smith, and one or two others. Their feedback is critical. They point out mistakes. They point out bad writing. And most of all, they give me their honest, unblinking assessment of my work, whether it’s what I want to hear or not. Inevitably, the work is ALWAYS better as a result of the feedback that I get from them, and I value the fact that they feel comfortable enough with our relationships to do that for me, knowing that I will set my ego aside and not get offended by whatever they might have to say about what I’ve asked them to read for me.

It can be difficult to hear somebody say “this sucks,” especially when you’ve poured your heart and soul into the work. But, you have to hear that feedback, take it to heart, and make the changes that they suggest. And you have to do so with no ego. You can’t get all offended by it and get all huffy and sulky over it. Otherwise, you can jeopardize your relationships, and your ego can get in the way of producing your best product.

The first time I had someone review my work and it got shredded, it stung. My feelings were hurt, and I sulked about it for a few days. Susan reminded me that I’d asked for an honest assessment, so I had no right to sulk over it. The gist of her comment was, “be careful what you wish for. You just might get it.” And she was right.

The simple truth is that you’ve just got to suck it up, say thank you, and do what needs to be done to make your product what you want it to be. You can’t sulk over it, and you most assuredly cannot be offended by it.

I try to do the same thing when I’m asked to review things. First, I appreciate the effort that others have given on my behalf, and I try to return the favor whenever possible. But I will not ever sugarcoat things. I tell people that they’re going to get an honest and unblinking assessment of their work and that if they think that can’t take that, then they’re better off not asking me to review their stuff for them. Ultimately, it’s not worth losing a friendship over. At the same time, I’m not doing them any favors if I don’t tell them the God’s honest truth about their work. And if they get all huffy about it after being warned, then it’s on them and not on me.

The bottom line is: be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it. If you don’t want an honest and unblinking assessment of your work, then please don’t waste my time or yours by asking me to review it for you. In return, I will do exactly the same thing.

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Not Every Book Is Worthy of Publication. Writers write. That’s what we do. Some of us do it better than others. That’s not a criticism, it’s a statement of fact. I was blessed with some natural ability that has been honed from years of hard work. My writing has improved greatly from the early days simply because I’ve done so much of it. I still cringe when I read some of my early historical writings because they’re that bad.

On one hand, I’m very fortunate that I have never written anything that was intended for publication which was not accepted for publication. I know for a fact that there are very few people who can say that they’re batting 1.000 when it comes to having everything they’ve ever written published. Some of it is skill. Some of it is good luck in picking the right topic at the right time. Some of it is knowing the right people. I’ve never known the pain of a rejection letter for any of my work, but I know plenty of writers who claim it as a right of passage, sort of like fraternity hazing.

On the other hand, there are lots of people out there who think that they can write but have no business doing so. In my role as a publisher, I’ve had some God-awful manuscripts submitted to me. I can appreciate the effort and dedication that went into them, but it sometimes takes all of my willpower not to want to bash these people over the head and tell them the honest truth about just how terrible their work is. I remember one incident where a guy submitted an unsolicited manuscript of a Civil War novel that was, without doubt, the worst thing I have ever read. His main character was a Union soldier who somehow managed to fight in every single major battle of the war. That’s an interesting trick, swinging from theater to theater. Now, if that wasn’t bad enough, his best friend was a runaway slave who had enlisted in a regiment with the outbreak of the war in 1861. Never mind that blacks weren’t enlisted until the formation of the 54th Massachusetts in 1862. Mix in the fact that the writing was terrible, and you have a recipe for horridness that words almost cannot describe. I spent a week composing a rejection letter that was gentle but honest.

I am often asked to review things for people. Whenever my schedule permits, I try to accommodate those requests in an effort to return the many favors done for me over the years, although I often don’t get to things as quickly as they or I might like. Some of the things I read are quite good, and when that happens, I try to assist in placing it with a publisher. The best example of that I can think of was Russ Bonds’ very excellent Stealing the General. Within a few pages, I knew I was reading something special, and by the time I had finished it, I was determined to see it published. I’m the one who introduced Russ to Bruce Franklin, the publisher at Westholme Publishing, and Bruce saw the same merit in the book that I saw. Russ has hit the motherlode as a result: he’s sold a LOT of books, and he’s even optioned the movie rights. It doesn’t get much better than that. I’ve introduced a few others to Ted Savas in particular when I’ve thought there was merit in the work.

Some of the stuff I read is atrocious. Just a couple of weeks ago, I reviewed a chapter of a regimental history dealing with the 1864 Overland Campaign. It was so full of errors that I ended up largely rewriting it. But for what I did, the book would have been dead wrong, and would have been savaged by reviewers. That goes beyond what I’m normally willing to do, but I like the fellow who sent the chapter, and I wanted it to be correct, so I invested the better part of a day and a half into rewriting his chapter for him.

Here’s another story, and then I will come to my point. Several years ago, I was paid to ghostwrite a book for someone. Even after I did all I could for it short of doing additional research, which was not part of my contract, it’s still a bad book. The author self-published it because the original publisher elected to wash its hands of a bad book after I reported back on just how bad it was. The truth is that it was such a bad book that I didn’t want my name to appear on it, and I’m pleased to say that it doesn’t.

My point is that there are plenty of books in print that shouldn’t be. Self-publishing through venues like Xlibris, Lulu, or IUniverse makes it possible for things that never should/would have been published to find their way into print. There are, of course, exceptions to the rule; Fred Ray’s excellent Shock Troops of the Confederacy and Eric Jacobson’s For Cause & For Country come to mind immediately as self-published works that are quite good and worthwhile. Both had legitimate reasons for going the self-publication route, and I appreciate those reasons.

Don’t get me wrong: the self-publishing venue has some merits, such as providing a means for bringing out of print works back into print. However, it also lends a lot of credibility to works that don’t deserve that credibility. Some argue that self-publishing democratizes the practice, but it also means that a lot of trees get killed to publish awful books that never should have been published in the first place.

My point is that not everything that gets written deserves to be published. If a legitimate publisher tells you that, accept it and move on. Don’t subject the world to an atrocious book that adds nothing to the body of knowledge just to massage your ego.

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June will mark the tenth anniversary of the publication of my first book, Gettysburg’s Forgotten Cavalry Actions. Over the course of those ten years, I’ve published a total of 13 books, and the 14th is due out at the end of May. Consequently, I’ve learned a few things over the course of that decade. Many of them are things that I wish that I knew ten years ago, but didn’t. In the hope that some of you might be able to benefit from my mistakes, or my learning curve, I’ve decided to celebrate the tenth anniversary of Gettysburg’s Forgotten Cavalry Actions by sharing some of those hard lessons in a series of posts that will follow. Each post will deal with a different lesson.

I know that there are a number of my readers who are published authors, including some who have been published more than once. I would like to invite you to pitch in, including guest posts, if any of you would like to volunteer to write a guest post for inclusion in the series.

So, with no further ado, here’s the first entry in the list, which will be presented in no particular order…..

Don’t Give Up Your Day Job. Like it or not, I’m a lawyer first and a historian second. There’s a reason for that. Unless you’re a college professor, the likelihood of your making much money as a consequence of your studies of the Civil War is quite small. Further, the odds of making much money from publishing a Civil War book are even smaller. Only a tiny handful of Civil War books ever hit it big, and unless your name is Doris Kearns Goodwin or James McPherson, you probably should not expect to make much money. Further, only a handful of Civil War publishers pay advances, and most don’t. Academic presses definitely don’t. The largest advance I’ve ever been paid was $4,000 for Little Phil: A Reassessment of the Civil War Generalship of Philip H. Sheridan, paid in two installments. One of those installments went to purchase a new laptop computer that I wrote a couple of books on.

Ted Savas recently had a post on his blog that indicated that a new imprint being launched by HarperCollins will not pay any advances at all to authors, so it doesn’t sound like advances will be much of an option at all moving forward. Your only means of making money will be from sales of your book, either royalties or copies that you sell yourself.

In order to illustrate my point, the most copies of any one of my titles I have ever sold is about 4500. Ted Savas told me last week that the average Civil War book sells about 1500 copies. Nobody ever got rich on selling 1500 copies of a book. The most money I have ever made in a single year on my historical work has been approximately $10,000. That includes an advance on a book, profits from my own book sales, royalties, and payment for leading tours. Clearly, nobody’s living large on that kind of money.

I got my royalty statement from the LSU Press a couple of weeks ago. LSU published my With Sheridan in the Last Campaign Against Lee in 2002. In 2007, they sold 4 copies of the book. My royalty check was for $5.15. Woo hoo!

It’s worth noting that I spend a lot of money each year on researching these books. I use the services of a professional researcher, and I buy a lot of books. I also firmly believe in seeing and learning the terrain, which also costs money. So, the net is much less.

Unless you manage to pen one of those very rare Civil War books that breaks through and reaches the New York Times bestseller list, don’t give up your day job, because you’re going to need it. That is, you’re going to need it if you’re one of those people who enjoys living indoors and eating.

UPDATE, MAY 1, 2008:

I got my royalty statement from Potomac Books today. Not surprisingly, there was no check in there. And it would take a CPA to figure out their accounting. I’m no CPA, and I don’t believe their numbers as far as I can throw the Washington Monument. However, it’s not worth the expenditure to pay for an audit of their books.

Potomac has published four of my books. Two of them have been fully remaindered and are out of print. In another one, they remaindered the hardcover out, although the softcover remains in print. The fourth has an edition still in print.

In employing the same sort of fuzzy math that Congress seems to use, the numbers of the deficits of what needs to be sold in order for me to make up the remaining balances of the advances and actually receive royalty payments are actually INCREASING, not getting smaller, even with the books that are out of print. It is now painfully clear that the advances that I was paid are all that I will ever be paid by this publisher.

Their marketing has always been abysmal–I have complained about it numerous times–and I haven’t agreed with their business decisions about remaindering my work, particularly with Glory Enough for All: Sheridan’s Second Raid and the Battle of Trevilian Station. I cannot imagine ever doing business with them again.

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Fred Ray was kind enough to send along a review copy of his excellent book Shock Troops of the Confederacy: The Sharpshooter Battalions of the Army of Northern Virginia. Fred is the descendant of one of those sharpshooters, which is what got him interested in the subject.

To be candid, before Fred’s book was published, I was not aware that such special duty battalions even existed in Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, other than references to Eugene Blackford’s sharpshooters in the first day’s fighting at Gettysburg. The book has changed that misperception of mine.

Fred Ray has written an exceptional book. It’s a comprehensive tour de force of its subject, and one that should probably stand as the definitive word on its subject for a very long time. It’s an extremely valuable and useful addition to the existing body of knowledge about the Civil War that was probably long overdue. The book is thoroughly researched and well-written. From my perspective one of the book’s best features is the abundance of detailed, useful, and quality maps. Those maps address actions that have not been previously mapped. Fred drew the maps himself, and he did an excellent job it.

Of most value to the book for is its emphasis on the critical role played by the Confederate sharpshooters on many battlefields of the Eastern Theatre of the Civil War. Of particular value to me was the focus on the role played by the Confederate sharpshooters during the fighting for the Jug Bridge during the July 9, 1864 Battle of Monocacy. Before reading Fred’s work on the subject, I had never seen any discussion of the role played by the sharpshooters in the fighting for the stone bridge on the National Road. Fred’s analysis is detailed and comprehensive, and helps us to fill a big hole in our study of Jubal Early’s raid on Washington.

I can’t say enough good things about Fred Ray’s book and can highly recommend it to anyone with even a passing interest in the subject. I guarantee you that you will learn something new. I certainly did.

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My first book, Gettysburg’s Forgotten Cavalry Actions, was published in 1998 by Thomas Publications. It won the third Bachelder-Coddington Literary Award as the best new work interpreting the Battle of Gettysburg of 1998, and, to this day, remains the only book-length treatment of the events it covers. Although never a spectacular seller, it always had steady sales and continues to be in demand. Nevertheless, Dean Thomas, in his infinite wisdom, decided to let the book go out of print, and upon my request, Dean reverted the publication rights to me.

Some of you may recall that I wrestled with the question of what to do with the book on this blog last spring. I opened it up to you readers to tell me what you thought I should do, and I never did make a decision other than that I wanted to find a way to keep it in print. Fortunately, I’ve now resolved that dilemma.

I’m pleased to inform you that I’ve found way to bring the book back into print without having to incur huge cost or to maintain a large inventory to do so. Ingram Books has a division called Lightning Source that does print-on-demand work, and will print as few as a single copy if that’s all that’s ordered. The best part is that the book will be available in the Ingram catalog and should be back on Amazon, although it will have a new ISBN. We need to design a new title page and to change the cover, in part to reflect the new ISBN, and then the book will once again be available for order.

In addition, I’m in the process of having a web site developed and designed to sell my books, and it will be available for sale there for sure.

I’m just pleased as punch that the book will be back in print after being unavailable for more than a year. There’s just no way that a ten-year-old 150 page book should be so rare and should be selling for more than $45 per copy on the secondary market, but it you check Amazon’s listing for it, that’s all that there is available. I will let everyone know when the book will be back in print and is available for order.

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Rea Andrew Redd gave our One Continuous Fight: The Retreat from Gettysburg and the Pursuit of Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, July 4-14, 1863 a great plug on his blog yesterday, which we really appreciate. Thanks, Rea.

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There have literally been thousands of books written and published about the Civil War, perhaps even tens of thousands. Thus, the field is quite full when trying to determine which are the 50 greatest Civil War books ever written. To make such a list is quite an honor indeed. It means that a book is in the 99th percentile of all published books on the Civil War.

The good folks at Civil War Interactive polled their readers to determine the 50 best books on the Civil War. 621 people cast 1863 votes to create the list. The results of that poll can be found here.

The likes of Douglas Southall Freeman, Shelby Foote, Stephen W. Sears, and Bruce Catton appear often on this list. Some appear more than once. Great classics like Battles and Leaders of the Civil War and the Official Records also understandably appear on the list. I was genuinely shocked not to find any of the four volumes of Gordon Rhea’s epic, groundbreaking study of the 1864 Overland Campaign–some of the finest campaign studies ever written, in my humble opinion–on that list. Thus, I was flabbergasted to find J.D.’s and my Plenty of Blame to Go Around: Jeb Stuart’s Controversial Ride to Gettysburg sitting at number 50 on that list. It seems we’re in some very, very good company here.

I don’t especially enjoy tooting my own horn, and I never think of my work as being of that caliber. Given that the quality of research and writing found in Gordon Rhea’s work is that standard that I strive to match, I just don’t, look at my work that way as that’s a high standard to meet indeed. Consequently, I am always amazed when my work gets that sort of recognition because I just don’t think of it that way. Accordingly, when I found our work in such esteemed company, I was stunned, flattered, and humbled all at the same time.

All I can say is thank you for the honor bestowed upon our work, and can also say that I can only hope that I continue to live up to your expectations with my future work. Thank you.

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Last week, I received an e-mail from one of the editorial assistants at the Syracuse University Press, asking me if I would be interested in doing a review of a book manuscript for them. The e-mail was addressed to “Professor Wittenberg”, so I had to let them know that I am but a humble lawyer and not a professional historian, and I offered to step aside if that was a problem.

They wrote back quickly, letting me know that they wanted me to proceed with the review. I don’t want to say what the book is about, as the review process is supposed to be confidential. It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these, but they always prove to be interesting exercises. It’s actually rather flattering to think that a university press thinks enough of my opinion to not only ask me to review the manuscript, but to pay me $100 for doing so. I will start on it on the plane on Thursday, and will get through it just as quickly as I can.

It’s going to be an interesting exercise, and I’m looking forward to reading it. At the same time, Syracuse is not exactly known for prodigious output of books on the Civil War; a review of the Press’ on-line catalogue didn’t turn up a single Civil War book, although I will acknowledge that I didn’t do a greatly detailed review of the available titles. I guess I’m not sure why someone would submit a manuscript to a press that’s not known for expertise in the area covered by the manuscript, but, as Alfred, Lord Tennyson, said, “ours is not to wonder why, ours but to do or die.” And so I shall.

I will let everyone know what I think of it once I’ve had an opportunity to read the thing.

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We have five or six Barnes & Noble stores in Columbus. A couple of them are rather small and occupy spots in strip shopping centers. One of them is quite large indeed. It’s right across the driveway from a favorite restaurant of ours for Sunday brunch. We went there for brunch today, and after eating, went across the street to the Barnes & Noble store. I wandered back to see if there was anything new in the world of Civil War history books, and was horrified to see that the Civil War section had shrunk once more, down to three shelves. It used to be an entire section of shelves and one or two in the next section, but now, it’s not half a section.

I live about six miles from this store, and they didn’t have a single copy of any of my titles there. Never mind that I’m a local author who regularly visits their store. I know it’s all about business and all, but I just can’t help being terribly offended by it. There have been times in the past–when the store had a meaningful Civil War section–when they had several of my titles in stock, and even had multiple copies of a couple of them. Today, nothing.

By comparison, we have two Borders stores in Columbus. One is a free-standing store that’s quite large, and the other is in a strip shopping center. The last time we visited one of them (a couple of weeks ago), there was about a section and a half of Civil War books, even including some obscure titles. They had three of my titles in stock, and two of them had multiple copies. What’s interesting is that the Borders store is about the same size as the Barnes & Noble store in terms of square footage, so they have similar quantities of shelf space for inventory.

It makes for a fascinating contrast in marketing strategies. Borders is, I think, much more interested in serving the interests/needs of their customers, while Barnes & Noble is very much a “what have you done for me lately” kind of place. I’ve always tended to lean toward Borders over Barnes & Noble, and the persistent shrinking of the Civil War section has pretty much clinched it for me. From now on, while I may periodically visit the Barnes & Noble store when we’re in the area, I will reserve my book buying for my visits to Borders. Barnes & Noble probably wouldn’t care even if they knew, but refusing to buy anything there is my little way of protesting the fact that Civil War literature doesn’t even get as much consideration as books on conflicts in foreign lands that never involved the U. S, or vital American interests.

And that’s just plain wrong.

We used to have a really cool little independent book store here in town, but it got driven out by the combination of the big boys and rent that was too high to sustain the operation. That store ALWAYS maintained a good inventory of Civil War books, and its passing was much mourned by me. If it was still around, I would do all of my buying there, as I did during the short time that the store operated, which was less than a year.

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