Interview with Nathan Everett

I met Nathan Everett via National Novel Writing Month and then again through Longtale Press. It took me a little while to put together the connection, but when I did I realized the potential store of information he held after years of working in the publishing industry. This was one of the most informative and interesting interviews I’ve conducted, and I have to thank Nathan again for taking the time out to participate. I can’t wait to see him, and his business partner Novel Doctor, Blogger, Editor Jason Black, speak at the PNWA Writer’s Conference in July.

[Renda Dodge] Thank you for taking time out to do this interview Nathan, let’s start with a little information about you. How long have you been writing?

[Nathan Everett] I remember writing my first space opera story in fifth grade. I tried to write a fantasy novel the year before, but got bogged down trying to distinguish the spelling between princes and princesses.

[RD] What genre do you usually write in?

[NE] I try to stretch myself with a pretty wide variety. My first endeavors at full length novel (30 years ago) were all what I called occult fantasy. But when I seriously started to develop my craft about ten years ago, I noticed a strong tendency toward both literary and mystery/thriller. Currently I’m working on an intellectual thriller and on a literary piece.

[RD] Where do you get your creative inspiration?

[NE] Somehow, inspiration never seems to be lacking. I always have three or four ideas for stories that I’d like to develop brewing in the back of my head. A lot of times I will write a chapter of a story and then put it aside so that I’ll remember the concept when I’m ready to actually write it. I’ve got a lot of first chapters lying around. Inspiration comes from a lot of sources, but the best ideas seem to just pop into my head when I actually sit down to write. “Hey, what if a guy was sent out to slay a dragon, but didn’t know what it was, where it was, or how to kill it. He finds his way by exchanging stories with everyone he meets and discovering a little more each time.” (Steven George & The Dragon) All of a sudden I’ve got twenty interconnected fairy tales that lead the hero to a surprise when he discovers his dragon.

[RD] Do you have a support system?

[NE] I’m an active member of the Pacific Northwest Writers Association, which provides monthly and annual inspiration in the way of speakers and conferences. I’m also active in the NaNoWriMo community and have a lot of support and encouragement through that, especially the Microsoft NaNoWriMo group (even though I’m not at Microsoft anymore). Of course my best support are through those who are closest to me, my business partners and my family. Jason and I read most of what each other writes. My wife and daughter are both writers and we exchange and comment on our stories a lot.

[RD] Tell me about Longtale Press, what inspired you to start it and what is its mission?

[NE] My partners at Long Tale Press are Jason Black and Gary Syck. We worked together at Microsoft for about four years. I have to give a lot of the credit for the creation of Long Tale Press to Jason. I got him re-involved in following his writing path with NaNoWriMo in 2005 (the first year we worked together). He immediately pressed me to say that he’d participate if we could do something good with our work—have a charitable cause that we could donate toward. The result was that after a couple of rewrites, he and Nina Tang and I produced an anthology of our NaNoWriMo novels that we called “After Hours,” and then we offered them as incentives to collect $25 donations for the Office of Letters and Light, part of which went to Room to Read. We raised over $5,000 that year. I think the idea of being publishers started to set in at that time.

The mission is simple. To find and publish great stories that are well-told (regardless of commercial potential).

Jason put it best when he looked at all the work being turned out during NaNoWriMo and said that there were a lot of good stories being told that would never be published, simply because of the way the industry is structured. It’s expensive to produce paper books. But we could use eBook technology which was definitely going to be making a big hit soon. So we set about creating a way for people to streamline the publishing process as an alternative to the traditional agent/editor/publisher routine that was still qualified and “traditional” in its publishing process, if perhaps more author/reader centric.

[RD] What is the selection process like?

[NE] It’s really very simple. Any writer can submit up to the first 5,000 words of her finished novel. They upload it to http://longtalepress.com and complete a profile and summary info. Then readers take a look at the work, read it, review it, rate it, and even discuss it. We have an internal computation engine that tracks the ratings for the excerpt and when they pass our threshold we make an offer to the writer to review the complete manuscript. The full manuscript is reviewed by an editorial pool of not less than three nor more than six writer/reader/editors. The highest criteria on our list is to ascertain that the rest of the book maintains the quality of those first 5,000 words. But the writer receives a full written review critique and inline edits from each of the reviewers. There are three options at this point. We say “everything is fine, here’s a contract.” We say, “we’d like to publish this, but it needs a manageable amount of rewriting.” We say, “This just doesn’t live up to the standard set by the first 5,000 words and we can’t publish it.” The most likely is the second option.

[RD] Have you had to reject anyone’s work?

[NE] We have, sadly. It is not just an automatic process. If a manuscript simply starts well and then progressively gets worse to the point that we think or the author thinks it would be too much effort to rewrite, we wish them luck in the future and go our separate ways. Our overall acceptance rate for manuscripts to turn into books is about the same as any large-scale publisher. The people who read are not easily impressed and rate only about one out of fifty highly enough to get to the second stage.

[RD] What feedback do you have for writers currently trying to submit manuscripts?

[NE] First and foremost, finish the book. Like most publishers, we expect that when you submit a manuscript to Long Tale Press, you are submitting what you believe is your best work, complete and polished and ready to publish. So use available resources to make sure the book is publication ready. While paying a professional editor is not a requirement, many people find that kind of service or that quality of review from a writing group that is committed to making the writer’s work the best possible, to be a vital part of the process. You will get helpful comments, even be able to engage in critical discussion of your work with readers, at Long Tale Press. But the readers are primarily concerned with finding publishable work, not developing a writer. Put your best foot forward, and then let all your friends and your “platform” know that the excerpt is up and they should go review it.

[RD] What are common trouble areas that new writers face, and what advice would you give to writers who are struggling with some of the common issues?

[NE] Each of the partners have different expertise, so would answer this question differently. From my perspective, voice is probably the top issue most new writers face. Developing a strong and consistent voice is really critical to involving readers in your story. That’s a subject for an entire college class, so I’m not going deeper into it at the moment. The second area is character development. I see two extremes on this. First, I never know enough about the character to care about him. The second is that the writer tells me everything she knows about the character to the extent that I’m bored with him. These are kind of opposite extremes. I believe the writer should know the character intimately so that every decision and action that the character takes is consistent and believable with who that character is. But as a reader I don’t need to know everything the writer knows. I just need to see that the rendition is honest. Interestingly, plot is less an issue for most writers. They understand the story they want to tell. They get bogged down in the voice and character development.

[RD] What are the newest releases from Longtale, can you tell me a little bit about them and their authors?

[NE] We are currently working on a new release, but until we’ve finalized things we can’t really talk about them. So, last year we published “This Side of Normal,” a young adult literary fiction about a boy who develops type 1 diabetes. Author Eric Devine drew from his own experience as a teenaged diabetic for story. But the story is not about Eric, nor is it about diabetes. It is about a 15-year-old who faces all the challenges of any high school sophomore (“I’m in  tenth grade, so it suffices to say I hate school.”)  What Ed Devlin has to face, however, is the complication dealing with a dysfunctional family, friends who betray him, and a new disease that makes him an outcast and could kill him.

[RD] What struggles do you see Independent Authors facing in the coming years, and subsequently with the rise of the internet and social technology how do you think they will prosper?

[NE] Garrison Keillor made a well-publicized statement recently that “that is the future of publishing: 18 million authors in America, each with an average of 14 readers, eight of whom are blood relatives. Average annual earnings: $1.75.”  I think he’s pretty optimistic. When they discover how hard it is to get a book out (even an eBook), there won’t be nearly that many authors.

But the truth of the matter is that when independent authors take one of the many alternative routes into publication, the biggest challenge they will have is adjusting their dreams accordingly. We came of age believing that we can be a J.K. Rowling or Dan Brown and will never have to “work” again. It just isn’t true. Unfortunately we see the success stories of people who sell their self-published books on the Internet for $2 each and make $100,000 a year. But those stories are just as rare as the Rowlings and Browns.

When I started my first publishing business in 1985 and specialized in trade journals and company “voices”, I quickly adopted computer technology to make it possible to meet monthly deadlines. Suddenly, all my clients began to believe that if they had a Macintosh and PageMaker, they could do all their own publishing. I saw prolific writers among my colleagues who couldn’t finish anything because they became so tied up in the technology, design, layout of their works. We are facing the same thing today. No matter how many reading platforms there are, no matter how easy and inexpensive it is to get 100 copies of your book printed, no matter how much time you spend on Twitter and Facebook—when you decide to become a publisher your job changes from being a writer. As with any self-employment opportunity, you not only get to be the captain of your own destiny, but also the crew, the shipbuilder, the dockhand, and the first one to come upon the wreckage on the beach.

I believe that Long Tale Press is just one of an increasing number of alternatives that will help authors to use alternative methods, but that will provide the badly needed support they need to handle being a publisher as well as a writer.

[RD] How do you face down the stigma often associated with self-publishing/Independent publishing? (IE, “He only self-published because he wasn’t good enough to be picked up by a major house.”)

[NE] I think the so-called stigma of self-publishing is largely disappearing. Part of that is because the glamour of being published by a big house is pretty-well tarnished. That has to do with everything from the tightened belt in the publishing industry to the various rights battles being waged over eBooks (Amazon vs. Apple Agency pricing structure, who owns the rights of books published before the electronic era, Google books take over the world, etc.)

It is also part of a well-recognized movement toward niche publishing, or publishing for a specific limited audience. At Long Tale Press, we are always interested in whether the reviews reflect a real audience for the book. If all the reviews are from people who are friends of the author (and since we read every review, it is pretty obvious to tell) we are less inclined to make a big investment in publishing than if the reviews come from a population segment that is topical or genre-based. Getting published, by whatever means, no longer equates with being “good enough.” Certainly by the time the market was flooded with young wizard books and vampire books people realized that it was less about quality and more about the reader-market.

[RD] What is in the future for you and Longtale?

[NE] We have a couple of fun things we are doing at Long Tale Press. First, we have more books in print as well as eBook and are making a stronger commitment to having at least some print presence for most books. New print books that we had in eBook previously include “For Blood or Money” an “Bread for the Pharaoh.”

Second, we’ve recognized that one of the stigmas facing eBooks is the concept that you don’t own the book, but—like software—you get a license to use it on a particular device. A well-publicized case of Amazon removing books from people’s Kindles after they were purchased opened the eyes of the consuming public. The fact that I can’t use an Apple iBook on my Nook or a Kindle eBook on my Sony Reader points to people believing that their license to view content that they bought only extends to one device. At Long Tale Press, we sell books, not licenses. To emphasize that fact, we have begun releasing all our eBooks on CD-ROM in both PDF and industry-standard ePUB format, with no DRM so people can load the book on whatever device they want to, put the CD on their bookshelf (case is large enough to look like a book, with a spine), and even put it in their garage sale if they want to. It’s all about having molecules instead of just electrons.

Third, we’ve begun looking at books that have been independently published or published by small presses that have shown some sales potential and acquiring the eBook rights for them. We believe that our multi-format eBook publication will become very popular in the future.

[RD] What are you currently reading?

[NE] I’m a multi-book reader, so it takes me quite a while to finish a book at times. Currently I’m reading “American Gods” by Neil Gaiman and “Positive Discipline for Teenagers” by Jane Nelson. I’m also reading a new manuscript that we are considering for publication at Long Tale Press.

[RD] Thanks for your time Nathan, I really appreciate it!