Adventures in publishing

Photos of people reading my books in relaxing settings keep popping up on the Web. I admit I love it. This one is from Andrew Welch.

Just as I was mulling whether or not I should take more of a break in my running routine, I came down with what appears to be a mild stomach flu. It's crept up on me over the last three days of little food and less energy. On Monday I attempted one cramp-plagued run that included a mad dash to an outhouse. I haven't run again since. I think August is not a good month for me. I am glad it's over.

During my down time, I've been browsing the blogs of other authors who have shared their self-publishing stories. I thought I'd share my own story to provide another insight beyond the "How I Sold A Million eBooks" hype, but that I feel has been successful nonetheless. I also hope to entice other aspiring authors to join me at Arctic Glass Press. If you have any interest in independent publishing, please send me an e-mail at jillhomer@arcticglasspress.com and I'll explain more in detail my ideas for an indie author cooperative.

I fell into indie publishing by accident in November 2008. I spent the summer typing up the "long version" of my 2008 Iditarod Trail Invitational experience, woven together with the back-story of how I found myself in such a strange situation. I didn't write it with publication in mind, but by August I had a piece of writing I was excited about and wanted to share with others. I mulled how I could go about posting an 80,000-word story on my blog when I had a better idea: I should just publish a book, and maybe my blog readers will buy it to help me fund my 2009 Iditarod attempt.

I researched a few options and put together "Ghost Trails," then publicly released it on November 13, 2008. At the time, I was extremely shy about my project and hadn't even told my then-boyfriend that I planned to release a book. I was so uncertain about it that I convinced myself I had no choice but to cut the rope and hope for the best. So it came as a surprise to everyone. I made plenty of rookie mistakes in the execution and the book went through several drafts after that official release. But overall, I had a good experience with my first foray into self-publishing, in a time that is now considered the cusp of when self-publishing moved from its "vanity" stigma to the more widely accepted entrepreneurial endeavor that it is today. It's impossible to know how many copies of "Ghost Trails" I've sold. I didn't keep track of any of the books I sold from home, which number in the hundreds, and I didn't track sales when I first put the book on Amazon Kindle, thinking no one actually read eBooks. (ha!) But based on what I can track, I figure I sold roughly 2,000 copies of "Ghost Trails" from November 2008 to May 2011.

Fast forward to April 2010, when I had another book I felt was worthy of readers and wanted to look into the traditional publishing route. I worked a considerable number of hours during the months of April and May 2010 crafting a book proposal, writing query letters to agents, fielding calls, and trying to polish my manuscript. Feedback was just positive enough to keep me trying, but I never received any hard offers from agents or publishers. Most eventually fed me what appears to be a common response to authors, all along the lines of "I read your proposal and enjoyed your sample chapters, but your book doesn't fit my market right now." Reading between the lines, I gathered my book was too niche (basically, bikey) to attract a large enough audience to justify publication.

I completed a few freelance projects, but mostly I just lived off my savings during those months despite the fact I felt I was putting in a decent amount of actual work time. I figured I might as well just pay myself to travel around Alaska and ride my bike for a living, which was more fun than contacting publishers and had about the same odds of future financial success. I did this for a month in May and June, and then I got a real job at a magazine in Missoula, Montana.

When I moved to California in March 2011, I decided I wanted to pursue a career more focused on writing and didn't want to waste any more time with the book that had been hanging over my head for a year. I decided to venture down the self-publishing route again, and found the waters to be much friendlier than they were three years ago. For starters, there is a huge network of indie publishers out there these days, offering support and advice. Their sales are starting to match the numbers achieved by professional publishing houses. I don't feel shy about this anymore. I realize that I can create a good product, and I can sell it, without help from the "gatekeepers." I genuinely believe that traditional publishing is not a viable option for me. I wouldn't turn down any opportunity that had more potential than my current efforts, but at the same time, I'm not sure the publishing industry could offer me a better deal, at least not if I continue to write the kind of books I want to write.

My efforts, in my view, have been successful. While crunching my end-of-month numbers the other day, I determined I've sold about 800 copies of "Be Brave, Be Strong" and 300 copies of "Ghost Trails" since the initial release of my second book on June 15, paperback and eBook sales combined. Add to this my magazine and newspaper freelance projects, and it has not been a wholly useless summer. I'd go so far as to say that I'm almost making a living as a writer. Not enough to live un-subsidized in the San Francisco Bay area, no doubt, but if I went back to the frugal life I led when I lived in a small room in Juneau, I'd be set.

I feel that the best thing I can do right now is continue to pursue new projects, and also work to advance my publishing effort. Right now I'm conversing with two authors who are interested in working with me. I'm also consistently tapping away at a new project I'm really excited about. It surpassed 25,000 words today. I'll expound on my book project soon; that is, if I'm still too sick and injured to bike or run. Stay tuned.

Cycling and art

I view cycling as an extension of my creativity, a kind of art in motion. The whir of hubs, crunch of tires on dirt and rhythm of pedal strokes are music; the trickles of sweat and labored breaths are poetry, the flow of my legs and sway of my upper body a dance. I draw invisible patterns on the world with my movements — broad paint strokes on the strenuous climbs, staccato marks on technical trails and swooping pencil lines for ethereal descents. Every ride is a different kind of work, seen and known only by me, but I find this creative outlet immensely satisfying all the same. I return home and write paragraphs and process photos, but these are only reflections of the beautiful creation that I left outside.

It doesn't surprise me that a lot of creative types find their way to cycling, or maybe it's the other way around. I recently received an e-mail from A. Jeffrey Tomassetti, a 2011 Tour Divide finisher who lives in Florida, offering to send me one of his Tour Divide-inspired original paintings, free of charge. He simply wanted to create something for his Tour Divide "compatriots." Even though Jeff and I have never met, he believed as a fellow finisher, I could understand and appreciate the depth of his work.

This is the painting Jeffrey sent to me, titled "Red Rock Pass." The painting is acrylic and texture layers with a Nanoraptor tire tread "lift" to reveal the darker layer underneath. Here's what Jeffrey wrote about it in his artist statement:

"During the 2011 Tour Divide Race from Banff, Alberta, to Antelope Wells, New Mexico, I studied bike tracks on the trail for hours and was consumed by their beauty. Often the trail was wet, impassable mud, which grabbed hard onto the bike until the wheels would no longer turn."

And then he quoted from my book, "Be Brave, Be Strong:" "Just a few short minutes of downpour had rendered the once-solid road into a chunky sludge the color and consistency of peanut butter. I could only pedal a few strokes into the goop before my rear wheel seized up like the mouth of a greedy kid who had taken too large a bite of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich."

I love that Jeffrey created this peanut-butter-colored painting with a Nanoraptor bike tread slogging down the center. His attention to details add to this painting's meaning, from the clear gloss coat that glistens like water from a recent rainstorm, and the cracks in the paint revealing once-dry and smooth dirt. I can relate to this particular Tour Divide scene a thousand times over; it remains the image that's burned deep into my memory.

Then he named it "Red Rock Pass." This is a picture a local photographer snapped of me on the backside of Red Rock Pass, near Island Park, Idaho, during the 2009 Tour Divide. The Centennial Valley of Montana was my first full and harrowing encounter with the horrors of wheel-sucking, bike-stopping mud, followed by an intense lightning storm. The photographer actually took this photo after I hosed off my bike and myself at an RV park on Red Rock Road. "The Mud" would become a near-daily battle through Wyoming, parts of Colorado and all of New Mexico. When people ask me what the hardest part of the Tour Divide was, I always say "The Mud." The Mud of Tour Divide is a worthy adversary more terrorizing than distance, elevation, and even solitude. And the Nanoraptor tire track signals, to me at least, the ultimate conquering of The Mud.

Thanks for this great painting, Jeff. As you can see, I hung it in the middle of my living room next to all of my bikes. It seems a fitting home for "Red Rock Pass."

Crisis of confidence

I enjoyed my weekend despite the fact I wasn't perched on my bike in Washington state, ripping through a cloud of Capitol Forest dust. We took a trip to the city, met up with friends, went for a couple of runs, ate good food. I spent most of Friday glued to updates about the Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc, which, in case you haven't heard of that race, is generally considered the most competitive ultrarunning race in the world. I was embarrassingly unproductive for most of the day, then stayed awake much too late on Friday night hitting refresh on my Twitter feed. I did feel the 4.6 earthquake that struck south of San Jose at 12:15 Saturday morning, and was still awake at 1:30 a.m. PDT, about the time Geoff and Scott Jurek dropped out of the race. I admit I went to bed feeling bummed. I was really pulling for Geoff — for obvious reasons — as well as all of the other "local" (American) runners in France.

Since Friday there has been a lot of chatter about why so many Americans didn't finish UTMB. Of course I don't know any of the racers' individual reasons, but to me the answer seems obvious. It's an extremely hard mountain race and many of the Americans who made the effort to travel to Europe intended to compete with the top runners. Anyone racing to win has to stick with or nearby the leaders, and racing near the front always comes with enormous risks, even more so when the race is on unknown terrain. It doesn't surprise me that so many U.S. runners flared out in the process. The after-race chatter has bothered me. I'm not usually one to subscribe to nationalism but I admit even I bristled a bit about the  jabs against "lazy Americans."

Since I started to follow ultrarunning more closely, I've been surprised by the strong anti-DNF sentiment that is so prevalent in this sport. Of course finishing a race is always preferable to not finishing, but the "finish at all costs" sentiment doesn't seem nearly as strong in ultra-cycling. Indeed, a fair amount of respect is doled out to bikers who crash and burn during races because "they left it all on the trail." Finishing with gas left in the tank is seen as a negative in competition. And finishing the race with completely wrecked knees just to say you finished is viewed as actually kind of dumb. (Believe me, I know. This was some of the feedback I received after the 2007 Susitna 100, in which I ignored blatant knee pain in a drive to finish that race, and couldn't ride a bicycle again for three months afterward.) But in ultrarunning, DNFs seem to be strong marks of shame. My ever-kind friends are always quick to point out that I "timed out" of the TRT100, which as far as I can tell is preferable to a "quitting" DNF (but in my mind just emphasizes the fact that I'm ultra-slow.) Other friends have described vast horrors in their drive to finish ultras. One has a particularly cringe-inducing story about her Su100 finish, involving a few moments of literal crawling. I certainly have gone through some challenging times in my efforts to finish ultra races, but I don't think there's shame in quitting if you are truly spent. And only the individual can make this judgement call. Agonizing later about a DNF is only human; I still second-guess a lot of decisions I made in the TRT100. But the acronym to "Did Nothing Fatal" still applies.

It's likely that much of the sensitivity I feel about criticisms surrounding American DNFs is attached to my own current insecurities. On Saturday, my friends and I went for a mellow 11-mile run in the Marin Headlands on the Dipsea Trail. Because of my injured arm, I have been running extremely carefully all week long, especially during descents, where I scrutinize every short, deliberate step. But on Saturday, near the steepest part of the descent, I was distracted by a large group of hikers and hooked my left foot on a root. Suddenly, in extreme slow motion, I felt myself going down, and my injured elbow was headed directly for the hard, painful-looking gravel far below. I had an intense surge of adrenaline and somehow threw my right leg out just in time, landing hard and twisting my knee in the process. But it must have been an impressive save, because one of the hikers said "Nice." I felt shattered. My sense of ability drained from tentative to nothing. I hiked down to catch up with my friends and declared that I would never run again, because I "sucked," and from now on would stick to hiking forever and ever.

I know I sounded like a whining child, but the truth is I haven't experienced a crisis of confidence like this since 2007, when chondromalacia patella (decreased knee mobility) dogged me for the better part of three months. It started with the TRT100 DNF, continued through the slump I was experiencing before the crash, onto the crash, and the longer-than-expected recovery. And recovery is going well. There really isn't any complication in my injury that would prevent me from continuing to run, except for I really shouldn't rub any more gravel into my wound if I can avoid it. The problem is, I'm not sure I can avoid it. My crisis of confidence has extended to the point where I question whether I even have control over my movements, or if I'm doomed to perpetual clumsiness, mistakes, and pain.

In some ways, I place too much faith in my irrational insecurities, but I also view them as my own personal challenge — forget that I wasn't "Born to Run," forget my clumsy legs and awkward arm flailing and over-sensitive feet, I'm going to run anyway. Indeed, I went back out today with Beat. We charged hard through the heat up Black Mountain, until my elbow was soaked in so much salty sweat that it burned with distracting intensity. But I continued running anyway. At the top, I turned around and ran down. I was very careful. I did move more slowly than usual. I did think about how amazingly hard it must be to finish a race like UTMB. But I didn't fall. I did finish my run with a smile on my face. Running up and down Black Mountain felt good, except for the burning wound part.

I'll get through this crisis of confidence, I will.