Name: Joan
Schweighardt
Book Title: The Accidental Art Thief
Genre: Fiction,
with a touch of magical realism
Publisher:
Twilight Times Books
Find The Accidental Thief on Amazon.
Thank you for your time in
answering our questions about getting published. Let’s begin by having
you explain to us why you decided to become an author and pen this book?
Joan: The Accidental Art Thief
is actually my fifth novel, so I caught the writing bug quite some time ago. Regarding
this book though, years back I misspelled my friend’s email address and my
email went to a stranger and we became good friends. I always knew that bit of
serendipity was something I would fictionalize one day. It doesn’t have everything
to do with the plot of the book, but it is the event at its core.
Is this your first book?
Joan: My other novels are Island, Homebodies and Virtual
Silence, all published by The Permanent Press, and Gudrun’s Tapestry, a historical novel published by Beagle Bay Books.
And, I have just finished a new novel, which I hope to have with an agent very
soon.
With this particular book, how
did you publish – traditional, small press, Indie, etc. – and why did you
choose this method?
Joan: We would all be lying if we said that we went with small presses
because we preferred small presses with small budgets to top presses with big
budgets and connections to TV and other media. But that is not to say the
quality of a book is determined by the size of the press. Big presses have
their own agenda for choosing books. I know something about this because I was
a publisher for a while and I have also done some agenting for various writers.
Big presses for the most part want to see numbers. A writer who did super well
with sales of a previous book can walk into a big
Can you tell us a little about
your publishing journey? The pros and
cons?
Joan: Collectively, my five books have been published by three publishers
that range from small to medium. All my publishing experiences have been good.
What lessons do you feel you
learned about your particular publishing journey and about the publishing
industry as a whole?
Joan: My first novel was published in the mid 90s. Back then if the book
didn’t come out in hardcover, there was no way Publishers Weekly or the other trades would consider a review. And
if you didn’t get reviewed in the trades, there was no way chains like Barnes
and Noble would order your book from your publisher’s distributor. And if you
didn’t get into BN…. You get the picture. The top publishers and the top chains
and the top trades ran the show. If you couldn’t play by their rules, you didn’t
play. Today we have democracy in the book world. Anyone can get published
because if you can’t find a publisher or you want more control, you can
affordably self publish. You can get books on demand, as you need them. (In the
old days it was too expensive to do a print run of less than 3000 books, which
could cost as much as $25,000.) And of course now we have e books. The industry
is totally changed. The problem now is that there are so many writers out there
competing for a piece of the pie, and the pie is shrinking all the time.
There’s no good reason to get into this fray unless you are totally addicted to
writing.
Would you recommend this method
of publishing to other authors?
Joan: I would recommend that all people who love to write write. It’s
good for the head and for the soul too. You might be one of the lucky ones to
go to the head of the class.
What’s the best advice you can
give to aspiring authors?
Joan: Marketing is everything.
If you don’t have mega bucks to pay a PR team, learn as much as you can about
how to do your own PR. And start your marketing campaign before the book comes
out, not after. Books have the shelf life of a house fly.
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