We were lucky to catch up with Jeff Vande Zande recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Jeff thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you recount a story of an unexpected problem you’ve faced along the way?
One thing I didn’t really think about while working on my first novel was the significance of marketing and promotion. I don’t know if I was naive, but I guess I assumed that either people would naturally find the book or the press would be responsible for marketing. In my mind, writing the book and finding a publisher would be the biggest challenge, but I soon learned that marketing was the biggest issue. I never was able to get an agent for any of my six novels and, as a result, all of my novels have come out from small presses. I’ve learned that it’s difficult enough to get big presses to spend marketing dollars, so marketing becomes an even bigger issue for small presses. Small presses are often run by passionate people who put out necessary books, but they have even less dollars for marketing. When my first book came out, I really expected that it would sell at least a couple thousand copies. Even doing my best landing readings and book signings, I was only able to sell 500 copies of the book after two years. Even though I keep writing and keep getting books published from small presses, I still don’t know if I have developed much further in my ability to market and promote my books. Some of what worked against me is the fact that I mainly wrote literary fiction, which has a fairly small reading audience. My most recent book, The Dance of Rotten Sticks, is a gothic horror novel…my first attempt at horror. I am finding that making marketing inroads is a little easier. Horror has an easier to find audience, and I already purchased myself a table at a Horror and Oddities Convention. I plan to keep looking for horror conventions as I continue to try to grow as a marketer and promoter.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I was born into a creative world. My father was a writer, so I remember on Saturday mornings hearing his typewriter keys clacking away in his den. Sometime my mom would come into the living room and tell me to turn my cartoons down. She offered as explanation: “Because your father is writing.” Being creative was revered in our household, so it makes sense that I’m always looking for a creative outlet. I started off writing poetry (probably to rebel against my father who wrote fiction) but I guess fiction was in the blood because I turned to writing the short story and have even written and published six novels, all from small presses. In many ways, my father set my course in life. He was an English professor, and I ended up falling into the same line of work. Some people might think that I teach to supplement my creative life, but it’s actually my teaching of which I am most proud. First, teaching IS a creative act, if one allows it to be. Also, I think of all the lives I’ve touched and changed with my teaching. A good Amazon review of one of my books pales in comparison to getting an email from a student 10 years after class that says, “I still think about your class; it had a huge impact on me.”
But, even with my joy and pride in teaching, I still need creative outlets in my life. I find that the teaching and artistic output go hand in hand. I’m inspired to create when I see my students creating. I recall at one point, hearing that some students were taking my fiction writing class, but what they really wanted to do was write screenplays. Because our college didn’t offer anything like that, I went back to school to learn screenwriting. Subsequently, I was able to design and offer ENG 258: Introduction to Screenwriting at Delta College. Out of that grew many new courses and, as a result of my choosing to learn screenwriting in my forties, our college now has a film production program. I’m especially proud of our film program because it’s still pretty rare for a community college to have a full-blown film production program. I eventually took a sabbatical to learn camera operation and editing and, as a result, I’m now also a filmmaker with over 200 film festival acceptances. If you would have told me in my early thirties that I would also be a filmmaker, I would have said, “No I won’t. I don’t even know how to operate a camera.” But, here we are. My creative life has taught me that reinvention keeps me young and my mind active and engaged. It’s also lead me into woodworking, which gave me something to do in the evenings when I was quitting drinking.
That’s something I’m proud of as well. It’s been over three years since I’ve had a drink.
I’m still reinventing myself. In the past, I always wrote “literary” fiction but, just recently, during the pandemic, I took a stab at horror writing, which resulted in my most recent novel, The Dance of Rotten Sticks.
Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.
This might go back to what I mentioned earlier, but it’s something that I’ve run into a few times. It’s not enough to be creative, at least if you want to make money from it. (And, I wonder sometimes if that’s an issue…that we sometimes measure success with dollar signs. I feel like a money-driven mentality gets into everything, and that can poison the well. The best art would come from a pure place, unaffected by sales, but it seems difficult to separate our capitalistic thinking from our artistic thinking).
On that note, I sure wouldn’t mind turning a little more profit from my artistic endeavors. But what I didn’t understand, and what some non-creatives don’t understand, is that having a book out means very little monetarily. For instance, my creative writing students, who are often just starting to really explore their creativity, will ask, “Hey, if you have all these books, why do you even bother teaching?” I usually say something along the lines of, “Oh, I don’t know, I like the extravagant luxuries of a roof over my head and having three meals a day.” The having of the book means nothing. I heard a statistic once that the average book (this includes those who self publish) sells less than 100 copies. Nobody is living off sales like that!
So, for non-creatives who are maybe at a book fair or an art festival, and are wondering if this artist really needs this sale. Well, they do. For people trying to make any kind of living from being creative, it’s hard out here, folks!
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
Even though I’m not very good at marketing, I still try. Early on, when social media was becoming more significant in our lives (I remember when Twitter first became a thing), I was excited to use it for book marketing. It was really the perfect equation, seemingly. All these folks are online whom I might never meet in real life, and now I had access to them and the ease of posting an Amazon link to my book. I really believed that’s all it would take…just posting or Tweeting a link to my book. I remember posting, and then a few hours later looking at my book on Amazon, and wondering why the sales rank hadn’t improved. What I had to learn, and this is nothing new, an author can’t just post links. This usually has the effect of making people mute or unfollow you. Instead, you have to engage in a meaningful way. You have to wait until people maybe ask about your creative work. Using social media for sales can be effective, but it takes time to build up those meaningful relationships that might end up producing sales. I’m still working on it, but I know I’m still a little too quick to mention my book after only a few exchanges. I know there are times that I just don’t want to do the work, and I go back to posting book links… which always ends up with the same results: zero sales.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://authorjeffvandezande.blogspot.com/
- Twitter: @jcvandez
