Over The Transom

Back In The Day before the internet, back when agents actually tried to get manuscripts in front of editors instead of preventing that very thing, and even before the Big Five (or Two or Three), there used to be an old expression. Manuscripts that an author somehow managed to sneak in front of an editor's eyes, in some cases literally through gaining access to his office by subterfuge and surreptitiously, physically slipping a typescript into the pile on his desk while he was out, were referred to as "coming in over the transom."

I think I may have hit on modern equivalent of a way to slip Give Me The Night over the transom onto the desk of reviewers and people who can create the necessary buzz to get readers curious and actually go to the Amazon or other order page. There are a couple of problems, though. 

This method relies on using the physical book itself, held in the hand, with its neat cover especially designed to catch the eye, and the back jacket blurb to stimulate the interest. This may be why I haven't been able to get more than three or four people actually to read the .pdfs I'm giving away. No purty picters and no blurb on a computer file. It is stashed away out of sight and out of mind, most likely not even on the desktop, but in a folder where the person might remember it by Labor Day (maybe) and might actually click on the mouse and open the file sometime around Thanksgiving (if I'm lucky.)

The first obvious problem is expense: I will run through my remaining free comps from the case of 30 copies I was sent pretty quick and then I'll have to buy more, which even at my author's discount will mount up. 

The second problem is that I will have not only need to choose my "targets" carefully, but then run down a physical mailing address for them, which is increasingly difficult in these times when more and more people hide behind e-mail addresses so as to avoid having to deal with real-world people stuff as much as possible. I get that--this reality really sucks, and the cyber-world is so much more fun and so much easier, dealing with a machine and not a person--but that doesn't do me much good in my quest for the New York Times best seller list. 

Somehow, I have to get people--the right people--to read the goddamned book! If I can just get those pages cracked open, and "Chapter One" in front of people's eyes and not hidden away on a machine or one of a stack of 17 TBR books on a table gathering dust, I'm on my way

Okay, here's the spritz: I mail a physical copy to someone or something with buzz potential, usually a periodical or a web site. An individual name is nice, but often not available since reviewers and buzzmakers A) hide behind e-mail addresses like everybody else, and B) are often physically located nowhere near their "office," which may well be a rented mailbox in a copy shop.

This process will most likely involve a mail room or else some flunky who opens the mail, and who will suddenly find dropping from the envelope into his or her unprepared rooker a real-world paper copy of the finest vampire novel since Dracula. A lot of these will be going to these outfits who write in letters of fire across their web sites: WE DO NOT REVIEW SELF-PUBLISHED FICTION or some other rendition of that old publishing industry classic, It Ain't What Ya Can Do, It's Who Ya Know And How Yez Jumps Through The Hoops In Old New Yawk. (Cue ragtime piano.)

Okay, the book clearly will not be placed on the right desk and in front of the right set of eyes. At least not at first. This is where it gets a little tricky and may fall down.

I am starting with the assumption that these recipients, whoever they are, will still in some inner core of their being be Book People, with enough respect for the printed volume not to simply throw it into the dumpster as "unsolicited, does not meet our godlike requirements, fuck you insolent Irishman, how dare you bring your wretched existence to our exalted notice? We'll show you! We will throw you away, we have the power, BWAHAHAHA and your little dog. too!" 

I am basing this gambit on the theory that this will not happen. I may be wrong on this, and if I am, a lot of copies of GMTN may end up in landfills. That's the risk I take. I am also presuming the recipients will be too cheap to spring for the postage to return the book.

So what I am hoping they will do--what I am gambling that they will do--is after turning the book over in their hands and muttering a few incantations and finding it to be Unclean, they will toss it to some secretary or mail room girl or barista at the Starbucks and say, "Here, Caitlin, you're into vampires, right? Present for you."

(I'm using female gender here because the stereotypical vampire fan is supposed to be a woman, which actually is one of the things I'd like to change, hence a male vampire protagonist in GMTN.)

Anyway, Caitlin from the mail room or data entry will then take it home, be fascinated by the cover and blurb, and I will achieve my ultimate goal. She will actually crack open the pages and read the frigging book. 

She will then take it back to whatever Dalek made the decision and talk it up so much that even the Dalek will become curious and he will Do The Deed, the forbidden dark deed--he will crack open the pages and read the effing book. Then I've got him.

Because yes--it really is that good.