Photos courtesy of Dan Wonderly [WonderlyImaging]

In my last column, I featured a group of poets trying to kickstart their way to literary benevolence by way of crowd-funding platform Kickstarter.

No sooner had I published my column than I heard of a local poet and all-around artistic sensation hoping to publish his first book by the same means. “Kickstarter fatigue?” I posited in my last column. On the contrary—Alexander Norelli says Kickstarter is really just beginning to blossom, particularly for literature lovers like himself.

For Norelli, there’s no shame in self—or group—publishing. Not to mention the end result is so much more than just a book—there is also an incredible sense of ongoing community and support.

“I’ve never really tried very hard to get published, mainly because I never wanted to write anything but my own poems,” says Norelli. “I never had much luck getting them published. Now I feel is the time to make a book of it—it’s an intuitive feeling.”

He adds: “2013 sounds like a good year to start out on an adventure.” (We hear you, Norelli.)

Those entrenched in the literary world know there’s a certain stigma surrounding self-publishing, but Norelli is quick to dismiss that.

“My great grandfather did a lot of self-publishing so I never saw it as being a low-brow thing, it was more a way to get your ideas into the world,” he says.

“There is talk about self-published books not having the same editorial process and so the work can’t possibly be as ‘good.’  This is a myth, it’s my belief that good vs. bad in poetry is the wrong question, I think it should be interesting vs. dull.”

A major part of the process for Norelli has been learning the logistical aspects of publishing beyond putting pen to paper (or finger to keyboard).

“The tools that exist today are amazing and make the process accessible to anyone willing to take on a little debt to learn a new skill,” he explains. “Some elitists might fret ‘now everyone can write a book’ but I don’t see any harm in self-publishing, it’s a liberating challenge–like running a marathon.”

Prior to launching his campaign, Norelli did briefly toy with the idea of funding the project himself.

“I remember hearing a story about Spike Lee funding Do the Right Thing with 26 credit cards and was inspired to just take the risk and go for it. I was thinking I would just put it all on a credit card with the hope it paid off somehow.”

But he kept going back to Kickstarter, and what the platform represented to him.

“I just didn’t see much poetry being done through it, and most that I did see was journals and group projects. I didn’t really see any poets trying to get their own books published– though it took me a while to realize that was in fact an opportunity and not an impediment.”

He adds: “I really like the inclusive aspect of it.”

“Doing a Kickstarter helps get people to believe in you, because you really do have to put yourself out there. Making a video made me really nervous, but in the end I just laid it all out there. We are still very early in the age of Kickstarter—few technologies are as empowering to people wanting to realize their dreams.”

Norelli draws inspiration from many sources, but, while times have certainly changed in the publishing world,  he was encouraged to learn Leaves of Grass was initially self-published by Whitman.

“Leaves of Grass wasn’t published by some big publishing house pre-vetted by the greatest poets of his time,” explains Norelli. “It was a risk, a huge one…not only was he a poet he was an entrepreneur, shamelessly so, which I think is truly venerable.”

Some writers have luck with publishing houses, he explains, but Norelli has never been fond of the process.

“I never really liked the set-up of sending your work out for approval and resting all your hopes and dreams on someone else’s judgment—months of anticipation to have some young reader go, ‘boy does this suck!’”

“While a complex editorial process might heighten what is already there, half obscured, it won’t ever put into something what isn’t there in quality to start.”

If anything, Norelli points out, self-published books occasionally suffer from poor design choices. He hopes with his newfound skills he will be able to create “the whole package.”

His advice? “The more you learn to do yourself, the more empowered you will be, and the less expensive the process.”

If his book gets funded, Norelli plans to distribute them himself as “[he’s] always had a thing for the mail.”

“Distributing the books is something I really am looking forward to, not only because I like the mail, but because I look forward to sending the book out to people who are interested in what I am doing,” he says.

And New York City has certainly played a role in shaping the local poet’s process as well: “The loneliness you find here is unlike any other place. Here, loneliness is just another color in your palette. Writing requires more than a bit of solitariness to get done, at least in New York you don’t seem like a recluse because you are holed up in your studio for weeks or months.”

“New York normalizes the habits of the artist and allows them to get work done,” he adds. “Here it seems you are in the thick of the ferment.”

Ultimately, Norelli hopes and believes Kickstarter, and whatever similarly positive, artist-friendly platforms crop up in its wake, will help push the boundaries of what is currently being done in literature.

“Kickstarter is just a means, it is not an end in itself,” he says. “While the many editorial levels in traditional publishing houses can help bring out the best of a work, I would not say they are conducive to trying new things, or testing anything established to make sure what is taken for granted deserves to be.”

By Ben Crompton

A gangster is shot down by his best friend, bullets fly, and liters of animated blood spill on the pavement. Movie trailer? Nope. Video game? Guess again. At the end of the clip, when the solitary gunman has his revenge, all is revealed: the trailer is for Daaku, a novel about South Asian gangsters.

When considering marketing options for Ranj Dhaliwal’s sprawling gangster saga, publisher Rolf Maurer of New Star Books opted to commission a book trailer.

“The industry is changing,” said Maurer. “Books have been migrating on-line and we wanted marketing for Daaku to reflect this change.”

Alan Cooke, ‘The Wild Irish Poet” chose the book trailer route as well for his recent Naked in New York— a love letter to the city that speaks in terms of love as well as lust. Cooke’s video is grainy, and his words are gritty and beautiful: “…my immigrant brothers and I, humbled here amongst the multitudes; scarred but so alive, their eyes full of light in my New York, our New York…The World’s New York.”

A quick and dirty survey of online trailers reveals a loose collection of experiments, dreck, and nice tries, with a few gems mixed in. One such gem is the three-minute trailer for Ben Winters’ — and Jane Austen’s — Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters.

A slick short with an arc of its own, the video tells the tale of an amorous young man in the process of wooing his beloved when he is rudely interrupted (and then devoured) by a sea monster. The publisher, Quirk Books, hired a real live filmmaker for the project and was rewarded with an Amazon Books Editor’s Choice Award for best book video.

Each of publishing’s “Big Six” — Simon & Schuster, Random House, etc. — has a Youtube channel and all commission book trailers. Even among these giants, many trailers look like an intern’s uncle made them with MS Movie Maker and then got his grandma to do the voice-over. Pro bono.

“It’s still a bit of an experiment,” said Rolf Maurer, publisher of the gangster novel Daaku. “I think we’re early adopters. Within five years you won’t be able to click on a book title or cover art without being linked to a trailer.” Maurer also sees a bump in quality as publishers begin to appreciate the value of a trailer going viral — the holy grail for any video.

“Soon you’re going to see production values rivaling movie trailers. Book publishers don’t just want to sell books, we want to attract the attention of the movie industry as well. What better way to do this than through a trailer?”

–Arnold Schwarzenegger has a memoir titled Total Recall

–There is legitimately a magazine called “Modern Drunkard”

–Cormac McCarthy has appeared on “Oprah”

– “The Oprah Effect” refers to skyrocketing sales of books which have been featured by Oprah, leaving some publishers in serious distress over the now-defunct show

–The Strand bookstore near Union Square allegedly has 18 miles of books

–The number of American adults reading literature is the highest it’s been since 2002 

–J.K Rowling is wealthier than the Queen of England (OK–not really a surprise to anyone)

–According to scholars, Walt Whitman rarely left his room 

–Tom Wolfe is notoriously bad at writing sex scenes (read — and shudder — at your own risk)

–This letter from Kurt Vonnegut to a friend about to start teaching at the University of Iowa

–Political speech-writing is shockingly literary (shades of Chekhov anyone?) 

–The average American audience averages about a seventh-grade reading level

–Dissection on Display: Cadavers, Anatomists, and Public Spectacle by Christine Quigley is a book devoted to dissection as entertainment

After thirteen years teaching at the New School, Luis Jaramillo has helped his fair share of students get book deals. Now, with The Doctor’s Wife (Dzank), the Fort Greene, Brooklyn resident, who lives with his boyfriend of eleven years, has released his own. During an interview at his Greenwich Village office, Jaramillo, 37, explained why being in the heart of New York’s publishing community can sometimes be depressing.

JV: Has there been an advantage to being at the center the writing world with your job at the New School?

LJ: Going to publishing events always makes me really depressed because the way the editors talk about books is different than the way the writers talk about books. Editors and agents talk about books purely about how something can be sold. That’s the opposite of how many writers view books. To spend all your time writing something, you have to really like what you’re doing.

The poetic novel is set in the Pacific North-West.  Although it recently became a book of the week on Oprah’s Book Club, it’s not exactly John Grisham or Tom Clancy territory. How did you get it published?

When I first showed the book to my agent he said, “Sometimes writers write things that they only write for themselves.” Of course we want to sell the things we write but it’s hard to write a something that you’re not emotionally vested in. I put this book aside for year. Then my grandmother died and I thought, “Screw it, I’m just going to send this thing out. What’s the difference, who cares?” Basically I sent this book out as a manuscript for the Dzank literary contest in 2010 and totally forgot about it and got a call three months later from Dan Wicket, the editor of Dzank Books. I’d won and they wanted to publish my book. They are a small publisher from Ann Arbor, Michigan known for their experimental fiction.

You started off as a student at the New School and are now the Associate Chair of the writing program. Did you get free tuition?

In a way. While I was doing my MFA at the New School I started working as a receptionist. After the MFA I worked as a secretary and did some teaching. When the Creative Director of the writing program left, I was offered the job which was around 7 years ago.

Name some of the authors who have changed your life.

Abigail Thomas,  Mark Twain, Graham Greene, Tolstoy. Hilton Als and Abigail Thomas were great teachers. I got to know them well. Abi’s advice to me was “Everything can be used” which is a nice way of living in the world as a writer. Hilton’s advice was “write everyday.”

I heard you are also a yoga instructor?

Yes it’s something that runs alongside everything else I do. It helps you live in the world in a mindful way.

What’s your advice to aspiring writers?

Write a book. I teach a novel class and I meet lots of people who want to write a book and a lot of times they think that an idea is all that they need. You really have to put the time and effort into it and then, good luck. Persistence can never be under estimated. My advice is “keep on trying.”

Photo of Jerry Finkelstein by Jake Price

The last of the old-style publishing and political power brokers in New York City left us for the great cigar bar in the sky this week.

Jerry Finkelstein, a legendary newspaper publisher and political kingmaker, was my boss and mentor for 15 years. I am among many in New York who will mourn his death and will try to celebrate his colorful, charismatic life with fond reminiscences of a man who could have leapt off the pages of a Damon Runyan novel.

Everybody in New York’s local political world in the late 20th century had a favorite Jerry Finkelstein story.

One of mine is the tale of how he launched Barbara Walter’s television career back in the 1950s.

At the time, Finkelstein owned a public relations firm with the late political guru, Tex McReary. Two of their employees were young hotshots, William Safire (who later went onto fame as a New York Times columnist) and a young woman named Barbara Walters.

After two years toiling at the firm, Walters went into to see her boss, Mr. Finkelstein, to ask for a raise.

“Not yet, sweetheart,” Finkelstein said, with a cigar dangling from one side of his mouth.

And with that, Walters turned around, quit and sought her fame and fortune in television.

Safire, one of the great political columnists and linguists of his time, once inscribed in one of his books he gave to Finkelstein: “To Jerry: Who taught me all I know, but not all he knows.”

That summed up Jerry Finkelstein’s genius. He was always two chess moves ahead of you and you had to listen closely to his quiet instructions to glean a lesson. If you weren’t on your toes, you’d miss a thing or two.

In his younger years, he was a political reformer, who was a major player in Robert Caro’s famous New York City tome, “The Power Broker,” which was about the life and times of Robert Moses. Jerry was proud that he was one of the few people who stood up to the all-poweful master builder, Moses, and he learned a lot about how to pull the levers of power from those early political wars.

Finkelstein was also a pioneer in publishing — building a mini-empire in legal  newspapers  (The New York Law Journal and National Law Journal), in weekly community newspapers (a chain of 23 weeklies in the metropolitan area in the 1990s) and helping to to build a powerful resort newspaper in the Hamptons (Dan’s Papers). (He was the owner of Manhattan Media papers Our Town, the West Side Spirit, Chelsea Clinton News and the Westsider from 1986 – 2001.) He also started The Hill, D.C.’s powerful political newspaper that covers Congress and the White House.

I’ll never forget his wise advice to Dan Rattiner, whose 28-page weekly newspaper was struggling in the Hamptons in the late 1980′s until Finkelstein bought it: “Dan, there are three things you have to do to grow your newspaper. First, put a glossy wrap on it each week so you can get luxury advertisers like Revlon. Two, hire 10 kids every Saturday to throw the newspaper on every mansion lawn in Southampton and East Hampton. And three, stop being a schmuck who writes about the fishermen and start writing about the moguls who come  to  the Hamptons.”

Dan, wisely, followed these instructions to a tee. Within two summers under Jerry Finkelstein’s tutelage, Dan’s Papers went from 28 pages to 324 pages some summer weeks. Dan called me in a panic one late June day and said: “I have a crisis. I just called the printing plant and they can only print 324 pages and I have advertisers that we can’t fit into our July 4th edition. What should I do?”

I said: “What should you do? Thank whatever g-d you pray to that you met Jerry Finkelstein.”

Jerry was a political mastermind who was able to convince Robert Kennedy to run for Senator in New York in 1964. Jerry knew how to play both sides of the political aisle and became close to not just Kennedy but also to Republicans like New York Governor and later U.S. Vice President Nelson Rockefeller and Senator Alfonse D’Amato. Jerry was even able to maneuver and spend a small fortune to get his own son, Andy Stein, to be elected City Council President, a heartbeat away from being New York City Mayor in the late 1980s.

Jerry Finkelstein was all about family — he had a wonderful, loving wife of more than six decades, Shirley, two sons who revered him, eight grandchildren who he doted on and who loved him dearly and many loyal friends who stayed with him until his last days at America’s most expensive nursing home, The Carlyle Hotel.

With his passing, an era in New York City history goes with him.

I am one of the many New Yorkers, who, like William Safire, can say that Jerry taught me all that I know about publishing and politics.

But not all that he knew.

Jerry Finkelstein, a great New Yorker, RIP.

Tom Allon is the President of Manhattan Media and a 2013 candidate for Mayor of New York City.

Waclawiak, who was born in Poland but had been living in Los Angeles, decided she needed to “work out [her] issues in an immigrant novel.”

She began querying agents at the end of her MFA program, but after 25 unsuccessful queries, thought she might be going about it the wrong way.

The agents who did respond told her the protagonist of her novel, How to Get Into the Twin Palms, was “too unlikeable.”

“You have to do something to make this character likable,” they said. “Make it a murder mystery.” But Waclawiak was determined to find someone who would publish her book for what it was.

Waclawiak figured it was time to go straight to the publishers instead. She began looking at small presses, particularly those that published books she already loved. Waclawiak drew up what she considered a pretty good query letter and again began the waiting process.

Small, Ohio-based publishing house Two Dollar Radio finally reached out to Waclawiak — they wanted to publish her debut novel. Two Dollar Radio runs on an open manuscript submission process and you don’t need a literary agent to publish with them. Their motto is “Books Too Loud to Ignore.”

Emily Pullen, who works for Two Dollar Radio, said one thing they look for is writers with authority over the worlds they create. When working with writers on edits, Pullen said she’s more inclined to ask questions to get the author thinking than make suggestions. The whole process works a little bit like a drawn-out psychoanalysis session. Small presses tend to “do more interesting things,” according to Pullen and Waclawiak.

Once Two Dollar Radio decided to publish Waclawiak’s book, the agents began calling.

Waclawiak’s advice for other first-time novelists — or writers of any genre — can be distilled into a couple key points.

• If you’re in love with your book the way it is, consider bypassing the agent process. Agents can be helpful, but they also look for very specific things and may request changes you feel compromise the integrity and authenticity of your work.
• Be confident and creative about getting your manuscript out there. Look for small presses with open submission policies and contact publishers directly. Large publishers might not take unsolicited manuscripts, so look to small presses if you’re not getting anywhere with literary agents.
• Even if agents tear your book apart, that doesn’t mean it’s terrible. It’s still possible others will love it, and, furthermore, it’s still possible to be entertained by unlikeable characters. Think about your audience and realize it’s not going to be everyone. Don’t write for anyone specifically (other than yourself). 
• Have patience. The timeframe between acquiring a book and publishing for a small press can be up to two years, but the timeframe is even longer at a major publishing house.
• Consider your book cover carefully. Even if you think it’s too off-the-wall, for instance, it might be just the draw reviewers need to pick up your book and review it. (Even small publishers get great review attention.)
• Again, get creative. Reach out to sellers directly to extend your exposure. Use Twitter to your advantage, but be a person with an organic approach, and not a sleazy, self-promoting robot. Talk to authors, bookstores and bloggers. Develop relationships. Look to online communities of book-lovers, like Goodreads. Get involved with reading series and book clubs.
• Be a real person. Publishers recommend books when they have positive associations with the author, not just when they like the book.
• Self-publishing is an option, but publishers provide an often much-needed outside perspective. You may be too close to your own work and can get more with someone else’s expertise — from within the industry — or editorial eye.
• Small publishers don’t tend to feel betrayed when an author moves on — they know that’s the name of the game. Small presses have limitations. Small presses also come in all different shapes and sizes, with varying rates of distribution. Look to a resource like Poets & Writers to find publishers.
• Keep at it. Be open to suggestions. Kill your darlings, but don’t go too extreme. Know yourself and your limits. It’s okay to not be universally awesome, and sometimes it’s better to experience the love-hate extremes. According to Waclawiak, many of her MFA peers hated her manuscript. If you want it badly enough, you’ll figure it out.
• Keep your day job…for now.

—Alissa Fleck