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Baltimore Sun
March 15 2005
Writers' Block
Ramsey Flynn's struggles are a textbook case of how many authors fare
after their work is published.
By Annie Linskey
Sun Staff
Ramsey Flynn had every reason to think his book about the ill-fated
Kursk would be a hit or at least that it would make some headlines.
When the Russian nuclear sub sank in the cold waters north of Finland
in August 2000, world media outlets kept vigil. CNN, Fox News and
MSNBC reported blow-by-blow accounts of futile attempts to reach the
sailors trapped inside the buckling hull.
Flynn intended his Cry From the Deep to be the definitive account of
what really happened to the submarine. Was a U.S. sub involved in the
accident? Why did Russia wait so long to seek international help?
When did Russian President Vladimir Putin even know the sub was lost?
And, most disturbingly, why didn't the United States send help
earlier?
Cry From the Deep provides answers to all those questions.
Nevertheless, since its December publication, the book has been
taking on water. Sales have been anemic and the chances the book will
find an audience are rapidly dwindling.
For most authors, Flynn's disappointing experience is the norm. They
make massive financial investments and toil, often for years, on a
manuscript that in the end may only be read by a few faithful souls.
For every successful nonfiction author such as Jon Krakauer and Laura
Hillenbrand there are thousands of other writers whose books come and
go with hardly a ripple of attention - no sales, no reviews, no
profits. The harsh truth is that new writers face overwhelming odds
against achieving money-making heights.
It is hardly a comfort to many of those writers that success didn't
elude them because of a lack of hard work, good ideas, solid
reporting or colorful writing.
Flynn is beginning to learn this difficult reality. His book has
failed to capture even a sliver of the attention he thought it would.
"It is a very slow launch," said Flynn, 48, who lives in Timonium
with his wife and two young sons. "I'm frustrated."
Only 1,500 people have cracked open their wallets for a copy of Cry
>From the Deep, according to Nielsen BookScan, which keeps track of
book sales at many major bookstores, including Barnes & Noble,
Borders and Amazon.com. (Nielsen does not track sales from
independent bookstores.) That is hardly enough to make back the money
Flynn owes. More people may have read the Men's Journal article he
wrote earlier on the same topic, although that particular issue of
the magazine hit the newsstands on Sept. 11, 2001.
The frustration has a considerable financial dimension as well. In
the three years Flynn worked on the book he spent all of his $100,000
advance and the $100,000 he borrowed from his parents.
"It is sort of embarrassing to rely on family money," said Flynn.
The landscape is only becoming harsher for authors. The percentage of
Americans who read books has declined 7 percent from 1992, according
to the National Endowment for the Arts. The numbers are even worse
for serious literary books.
More books in print
Counterintuitively, more books are being published than ever. In
2004, more than 185,000 books went to press in this country,
according to R.R. Bowker, the organization that assigns bar code
numbers to books. That is an increase of 26 percent from 2002.
"The competition for time is almost overwhelming," said Jim Milliot,
an editor with Publishers Weekly, a trade magazine.
So how can an author get noticed if the demand is decreasing while
the supply is rocketing?
"More and more publishers are trying to get authors to take a lot of
the initiative for promotion," said Milliot. Most authors have no
background in publicity or ever thought they'd need one. Some end up
hiring their own publicists.
Hired guns cost money - so marketing-savvy authors often maintain
their own Web sites, build mailing lists or find other ways to find
an audience on their own.
One example of author initiative was Samantha Power, author of A
Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide. Her publisher
sent her to a few large cities but Power spent months drawing up and
implementing her own marketing strategy.
"I bought this blackboard-sized legal pad," she said. "I had all the
cities and states listed on one axis and all possible events to do in
each city on the other." She would call on editorial boards of local
newspapers and seek interviews on local radio. Power aggressively
sought out ethnic communities in the United States - the Armenians
for example - whose forebears had been subject to genocide.
For Power, the work paid off. She attracted critical attention, and
ultimately won a Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle
Award. Even so, the book hasn't made her rich.
"I wouldn't say I can retire on my genocide largess," she jokes.
Flynn, a National Magazine Award winner and former editor of
Baltimore Magazine, never imagined he had to become a sales agent
himself, believing his energetic reporting would earn success.
Unemployed at the time of the Kursk disaster, Flynn saw the tragedy
as the perfect opportunity to launch a book career using his
reporting skills. Throughout his career in journalism he was drawn to
the "what really happened story" - the reconstruction of an event.
Such stories, he says, require massive amounts of reporting to get
inside the minds of each character.
Five trips to Russia
To that end, Flynn traveled to Russia five times and secured
interviews with top Russian military officials. He won their
confidence despite their initial concerns that he was really a
Western spy.
Flynn became knowledgeable in submarines, weapons systems and
international protocol at sea. And, he spent hours hounding U.S.
government officials who were not much more cooperative than their
Russian counterparts. "The American style of obfuscation is to be
silent, the Russian style of obfuscation is to put a lot of squid's
ink into the conversation," said Flynn. Neither makes for easy
reporting.
Making the book more challenging, his chosen topic required him to
delve into a highly secretive world. "You are trying to find out what
the CIA or British Intelligence would pay millions of dollars to find
out," said Robert Moore, a journalist who wrote a similar book about
the Kursk published in January 2003. (Despite the nearly two-year gap
between when the two books came out, Flynn refers to Moore as his
"British rival.")
The only media interested in the work were papers such as The Rocky
Mountain News in Denver, the Norwalk Hour in Connecticut and obscure
military journals.
Flynn is considering hiring a freelance publicist to build interest
in the book - but he wants the publicist to work for a portion of
future royalties, which may not be enough of an inducement.
And, Flynn cannot count on his publisher to send him on a book tour.
He has started to consider sending himself.
Nobody showed up at a book-signing in Annapolis in January. But,
roughly 150 people turned out when he gave a talk at the University
of Baltimore. And he plans a trip to Groton, Conn., home of the
country's first submarine base, to speak at a submariners club.
After getting publicity for their books, authors still face another
hurdle - making sure the books are available in stores.
The local Barnes & Nobles and Borders stores still have copies of
Flynn's book - but both shelve it in the less-prominent military
history section.
It is true that these books can be ordered online - and this is
perhaps the one piece of good news for new authors. "Amazon.com is an
author's best friend," said Paul Aiken, of the Author's Guild.
Flynn's book ranks 78,689 on Amazon.com. Still, he hasn't given up.
He says that it will come out in paperback soon and thinks a new run
might present a fresh opportunity for reviews.
He still hopes to make back the money he spent to write the book. And
he hopes to have the chance to write another book - next time he's
hoping for an even larger advance.
In the meantime, he has taken a day job working in the publications
department for Johns Hopkins Hospital.
"I'm learning to be patient," he said, "but also to physiologically
divest."
March 15 2005
Writers' Block
Ramsey Flynn's struggles are a textbook case of how many authors fare
after their work is published.
By Annie Linskey
Sun Staff
Ramsey Flynn had every reason to think his book about the ill-fated
Kursk would be a hit or at least that it would make some headlines.
When the Russian nuclear sub sank in the cold waters north of Finland
in August 2000, world media outlets kept vigil. CNN, Fox News and
MSNBC reported blow-by-blow accounts of futile attempts to reach the
sailors trapped inside the buckling hull.
Flynn intended his Cry From the Deep to be the definitive account of
what really happened to the submarine. Was a U.S. sub involved in the
accident? Why did Russia wait so long to seek international help?
When did Russian President Vladimir Putin even know the sub was lost?
And, most disturbingly, why didn't the United States send help
earlier?
Cry From the Deep provides answers to all those questions.
Nevertheless, since its December publication, the book has been
taking on water. Sales have been anemic and the chances the book will
find an audience are rapidly dwindling.
For most authors, Flynn's disappointing experience is the norm. They
make massive financial investments and toil, often for years, on a
manuscript that in the end may only be read by a few faithful souls.
For every successful nonfiction author such as Jon Krakauer and Laura
Hillenbrand there are thousands of other writers whose books come and
go with hardly a ripple of attention - no sales, no reviews, no
profits. The harsh truth is that new writers face overwhelming odds
against achieving money-making heights.
It is hardly a comfort to many of those writers that success didn't
elude them because of a lack of hard work, good ideas, solid
reporting or colorful writing.
Flynn is beginning to learn this difficult reality. His book has
failed to capture even a sliver of the attention he thought it would.
"It is a very slow launch," said Flynn, 48, who lives in Timonium
with his wife and two young sons. "I'm frustrated."
Only 1,500 people have cracked open their wallets for a copy of Cry
>From the Deep, according to Nielsen BookScan, which keeps track of
book sales at many major bookstores, including Barnes & Noble,
Borders and Amazon.com. (Nielsen does not track sales from
independent bookstores.) That is hardly enough to make back the money
Flynn owes. More people may have read the Men's Journal article he
wrote earlier on the same topic, although that particular issue of
the magazine hit the newsstands on Sept. 11, 2001.
The frustration has a considerable financial dimension as well. In
the three years Flynn worked on the book he spent all of his $100,000
advance and the $100,000 he borrowed from his parents.
"It is sort of embarrassing to rely on family money," said Flynn.
The landscape is only becoming harsher for authors. The percentage of
Americans who read books has declined 7 percent from 1992, according
to the National Endowment for the Arts. The numbers are even worse
for serious literary books.
More books in print
Counterintuitively, more books are being published than ever. In
2004, more than 185,000 books went to press in this country,
according to R.R. Bowker, the organization that assigns bar code
numbers to books. That is an increase of 26 percent from 2002.
"The competition for time is almost overwhelming," said Jim Milliot,
an editor with Publishers Weekly, a trade magazine.
So how can an author get noticed if the demand is decreasing while
the supply is rocketing?
"More and more publishers are trying to get authors to take a lot of
the initiative for promotion," said Milliot. Most authors have no
background in publicity or ever thought they'd need one. Some end up
hiring their own publicists.
Hired guns cost money - so marketing-savvy authors often maintain
their own Web sites, build mailing lists or find other ways to find
an audience on their own.
One example of author initiative was Samantha Power, author of A
Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide. Her publisher
sent her to a few large cities but Power spent months drawing up and
implementing her own marketing strategy.
"I bought this blackboard-sized legal pad," she said. "I had all the
cities and states listed on one axis and all possible events to do in
each city on the other." She would call on editorial boards of local
newspapers and seek interviews on local radio. Power aggressively
sought out ethnic communities in the United States - the Armenians
for example - whose forebears had been subject to genocide.
For Power, the work paid off. She attracted critical attention, and
ultimately won a Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle
Award. Even so, the book hasn't made her rich.
"I wouldn't say I can retire on my genocide largess," she jokes.
Flynn, a National Magazine Award winner and former editor of
Baltimore Magazine, never imagined he had to become a sales agent
himself, believing his energetic reporting would earn success.
Unemployed at the time of the Kursk disaster, Flynn saw the tragedy
as the perfect opportunity to launch a book career using his
reporting skills. Throughout his career in journalism he was drawn to
the "what really happened story" - the reconstruction of an event.
Such stories, he says, require massive amounts of reporting to get
inside the minds of each character.
Five trips to Russia
To that end, Flynn traveled to Russia five times and secured
interviews with top Russian military officials. He won their
confidence despite their initial concerns that he was really a
Western spy.
Flynn became knowledgeable in submarines, weapons systems and
international protocol at sea. And, he spent hours hounding U.S.
government officials who were not much more cooperative than their
Russian counterparts. "The American style of obfuscation is to be
silent, the Russian style of obfuscation is to put a lot of squid's
ink into the conversation," said Flynn. Neither makes for easy
reporting.
Making the book more challenging, his chosen topic required him to
delve into a highly secretive world. "You are trying to find out what
the CIA or British Intelligence would pay millions of dollars to find
out," said Robert Moore, a journalist who wrote a similar book about
the Kursk published in January 2003. (Despite the nearly two-year gap
between when the two books came out, Flynn refers to Moore as his
"British rival.")
The only media interested in the work were papers such as The Rocky
Mountain News in Denver, the Norwalk Hour in Connecticut and obscure
military journals.
Flynn is considering hiring a freelance publicist to build interest
in the book - but he wants the publicist to work for a portion of
future royalties, which may not be enough of an inducement.
And, Flynn cannot count on his publisher to send him on a book tour.
He has started to consider sending himself.
Nobody showed up at a book-signing in Annapolis in January. But,
roughly 150 people turned out when he gave a talk at the University
of Baltimore. And he plans a trip to Groton, Conn., home of the
country's first submarine base, to speak at a submariners club.
After getting publicity for their books, authors still face another
hurdle - making sure the books are available in stores.
The local Barnes & Nobles and Borders stores still have copies of
Flynn's book - but both shelve it in the less-prominent military
history section.
It is true that these books can be ordered online - and this is
perhaps the one piece of good news for new authors. "Amazon.com is an
author's best friend," said Paul Aiken, of the Author's Guild.
Flynn's book ranks 78,689 on Amazon.com. Still, he hasn't given up.
He says that it will come out in paperback soon and thinks a new run
might present a fresh opportunity for reviews.
He still hopes to make back the money he spent to write the book. And
he hopes to have the chance to write another book - next time he's
hoping for an even larger advance.
In the meantime, he has taken a day job working in the publications
department for Johns Hopkins Hospital.
"I'm learning to be patient," he said, "but also to physiologically
divest."