The Sag Harbor Reader
July, 2006

Finding Your Niche
Writers explore the challenging world of narrow-market books

Tom Clavin	Bob Drury	Danny Peary	Stacy Quarty

The Sag Harbor Reader sat down with four authors who have all, some time in their careers, written books of non-fiction for specific, narrow markets. We wanted to explore the genesis of these books, where the stories come from, how they are proposed to publishers and ultimately how they are marketed.

Danny Peary’s last book was “Great Golf.” Tom Clavin published two books last year, “Dark Noon” and a biography of the golfer Walter Hagen. Stacy Quarty’s first book “Frankly Pregnant” was released earlier this year. And Bob Drury’s most recent was “The Rescue Season.” The panel was moderated by Reader editor Bryan Boyhan.

BOYHAN: Where do the stories come from? At what point do you say this is an idea worth writing and publishing?

PEARY: I guess what everybody tries to do is come up with an idea that you want to write about and that is also commercial. You start with that premise in your head, and then you try to convince your agent that this book is commercially good. Usually you go with about ten ideas and they just start crossing them off. They’ll say ‘I don’t want to sell this because I’m not going top make any money on it.’ Then it’s up to the agent to go to the publisher and convince them that that idea is commercial, and, plus, you can write.

I prefer to write about things that aren’t commercial, so the idea is to find something that is not commercial that sort of can be commercial and you hope that your agent gets behind you and has enough power to convince an editor that this book can be pulled off. And it will be the one book on that subject that will sell.

I used to be known, in the 1980s, for a series on cult movies. Part of the process was that nobody had actually done that before. What I did that was different from anybody else was that I included films that hadn’t been considered cult movies. So I changed the definition. And it was an editor that said: ‘This is a good idea. The time is right.’

CLAVIN: In some cases, ideas come from doing magazine proposals that were accepted, and after doing the basic job you start to think, hey, this might have an afterlife as a book. Another way, frankly, somebody might come to me, because somebody needs a writer. It’s not a work for hire, in the sense that you get paid a fee and walk away, but sometimes it’s to make a buck. The luxury is that we get a topic to write about that we care about. Because that’s connected to your passion.

BOYHAN: Stacy, where did the idea for “Frankly Pregnant” come from?

QUARTY: I knew I wanted to write a book. I found being a full time mom rewarding, but I needed something more.

I didn’t have a clue about the subject matter until I became pregnant again, and then I remembered the first time I was pregnant no one ever told me everything I wanted to know. There were many details that were left out by my doctor, by my sister, by my friends that I really thought needed to be talked about.

I had some friends who are editors and I questioned them about it. What do I do now? How do I write a book?

One got a freelance editor to work with me with the manuscript, before I even shopped it to agents. The way I finally got attention for my manuscript was through the website.

I started a Q&A bulletin board for people to submit their most embarrassing pregnancy questions, and I would try to answer them the best way I could.

BOYHAN: So this is all before you had a publisher or an agent? You had a website that was marketing a book that, while written, had not been published?

QUARTY: Right. And fortunately for me, part of what I do is specialize in website design, promotion and publicity. It just started to grow like a virus. It’s got over a thousand Q&As on there now and gets about 150,000 hits a day.

BOYHAN: How did the website help you find an agent and get your book published?

QUARTY: I was sending out query letters, and was sending out a bunch, and finally when I showed the statistics of the site and what was going on there, it really caught the attention of agents.

DRURY: These days it’s all marketing. If somebody walks in who is not TV-able… forget it. I have a face made for radio. You have to, now, include a marketing kind of part to your book proposal. ‘Here’s what I’ve done in the past year, and here are the organizations I can contact. Here are the radio stations I’ve done in the past.

BOYHAN: Bob I presume a number of your books have come out of your own experiences as a journalist, for example…

DRURY: “The Rescue Season,” my last book. I was in the boot of Italy when this kind of SWAT team of Navy Seals, Air Force PJs and Army Green Berets were going to Sarajevo, and I went in with them. So there were two of them I got talking to and one of them said they were based in Anchorage, Alaska. When I got back, I wrote my magazine story for Men’s Journal. And then got in touch with them and said, what do you guys do up there? I went up there, did a magazine story on them after the Sarajevo piece, and my agent just took the magazine piece, put a cover letter on it and sold it to Simon & Schuster.

PEARY: One thing very interesting Stacy talked about was promotion, and that ties in to why writers leave their publishers. One of the things you’ll get into is fights with publishers because you feel they’re not promoting your book properly.

QUARTY: Or at all.

PEARY: They’ll say, ‘we went to a second printing, and that was our goal.’ As authors our goal is third printing, fourth printing, fifth printing. So, you either get a reputation as a disgruntled author, or you move on. In many cases, publishers have other books that are more key to their season, so they will promote those books at the expense of your book.

BOYHAN: Danny, what does that mean to average writers who have to then promote themselves?

PEARY: There was actually an article in the Daily News a few weeks ago by Jeff Perlman who wrote a book on Barry Bonds and I thought his book was doing really well. He just talked about himself and his core of friends, all authors, and they all have to call up everybody they know — and everybody they don’t know — and just try to get events for themselves. Try to find stores that will have them come in and sign books.

It’s a humbling experience trying to get people to know about your books, and trying to get reviews.

QUARTY: Is that something new in the publishing business?

PEARY: Yes.

QUARTY: I had a similar experience myself. I have had a lot of trouble getting publicity and I’ve had to take it all on myself.

PEARY: The real shock of the business is that publishers don’t seem to care that they gave you an OK advance. They don’t care if your book loses money, because only about 10 percent make money. They put out a lot of money and we expect them to get behind it, and they don’t. It’s the most baffling thing in the world.

DRURY: I think you have to go in with a marketing plan of your own. My last three books, I have just had no faith in my publisher. And frankly, as great as Grove Atlantic is being with our new book, I have no faith in them either.

BOYHAN: Is it easier or more difficult to market narrow- or niche market books?

QUARTY: [Speaking to Drury] I would think it’s easier to find the market for that narrow niche that you have. You know where those readers are. You know their habits, you know what they do. Mine, I was looking for the women who are newly married, newly pregnant. When you’re pregnant you go online and you research, research research. There are tons of sites and blogs. Mommy blogs. So I tapped into that community, I sent a lot of advanced copies to those women who had very active blogs to read my book, post a comment and just spread the word that way.

DRURY: When Tom [Clavin] and I came up with our proposal for “Halsey’s Typhoon,” he has 300 websites — ex-navy men, military guys. Sure we want to tap into the same market that bought “Perfect Storm” and “Blackhawk Down” and “The Rescue Season.” But we also want to pound and pound and pound it in those military websites. I’m setting up readings on the aircraft carrier Manhattan. I’ll go down to Virginia Beach, a big navy town.

BOYHAN: You’re doing this all on your own, with no help from the publisher?

DRURY: Well, not yet. At some point we’re going to sit down with their marketing people.

QUARTY: And what are you going to say: ‘You pay for this and I’ll pay for that?’

CLAVIN: We don’t know what their attitude is going to be.

DRURY: We’ll see if it’s not just some 19-year-old girl from Vassar. It seems like every publicist I’ve had is smart and a go-getter, and I like them, but… They just don’t know what they’re doing.

CLAVIN: Authors have a short shelf life as far as the publicity department is concerned.

When the Walter Hagen book was coming out, and that was with Simon & Schuster, I was assigned to the woman who was the head of publicity, and she was not 19. She was doing a great job; but, a big company like that, they’re doing 400 books a year, so if your book is not on the Best Seller list in two weeks, the publicist gives you to her assistant.

PEARY: I had a lot more faith in publicists before than I do now. When I do a book with Tim McCarver or Ralph Kiner, there’s a big name involved. But when I do it myself, there’s less interest, just because I’m less marketable. The subject matter has to carry it.

“Great Golf” was put out by Stewart, Tbhori, Chang, one of the two big golf books of the season, and the other was something like “A Thousand-And-One Places to Play Golf Before You Die.” And that book took off. And what happened, because all publicity departments are limited by their budget, they moved all their money to that book, and what my book got, publicity-wise, was coattail stuff. That’s very common.

The one thing I can say about my film books is they were obviously geared to film people. And I think the sports books are more gift books, gift oriented. Books for their fathers for Father’s Day, for Christmas.

CLAVIN: My third book, that I did with Darlene and Derek Hopson, was “The Power of Soul,” about African-American spirituality. It was something of a narrow topic, and they gave us a nice advance. And actually because it was a narrow market it really helped us with publicity, because you’re not worried about the expense or time casting a wide net. The general population is not going to buy this book. When they were getting their marketing plan ready they said, ‘All right there’s Black Entertainment Television, there’s Essence, there’s this magazine or that which target the African-American readers. So it was like a short cut to their audience that they didn’t have to worry about it. Part of our proposal to do this book was doing some research and showing that we knew where the media outlets were.

PEARY: In terms of my film books, there weren’t that many books published. It was more of a special field, it still is today. If there were round-ups of film books I’d always be in there. But what happens with sports books is there’s zillions of them and often you’ll get the Publisher’s Weekly that has all the sports books, and you’re book will not be there. There’s so many of them they don’t need yours for a roundup.

QUARTY: I know the publishing industry is a lot different than it was five or ten years ago. Has this been a slow change, or drastic?

DRURY: Drastic, I’d say around 2002. It’s like day and night. There was an article in last week’s New York Observer about how unknown authors need a platform, something to elevate them. Do you write for a magazine? And that is not only selling books, that is selling your proposal to a publishing house. It’s like a chicken or the egg thing.

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