Perspectives on Publishing Personal Essays on Nature and Environment
by Ann Wendland
This article was first published in The Exchange, Spring 2003.
University presses have a proud tradition of regional publishing. It is an area that fulfills a stated mission of many AAUP members— to publish for and about the communities that surround and support them. Regional publishing can also be an opportunity for a press to build a strong trade publishing program, and some regional titles have the potential for national appeal. Literary nonfiction that emphasizes nature and environment is one of the most important and vibrant genres within regional publishing. Ann Wendland, Publicity Manager at the University of Arizona Press and Exchange Contributing Editor, has undertaken to explore the place of writing of place within the changing worlds of publishing, writing, and reading. In this issue she talks to editors and publishers; look to future issues for perspectives on these titles from the marketing and sales departments.
The View from the Editor’s Desk
Literary nonfiction about the places where we live has held its own through these tough times. An April 28 Publisher’s Weekly feature attributes the success to the uplifting spirit of books about nature and their focus on areas close to home in times when Americans have cut travel.
After talking with five of the best editors and publishers in the field, I believe that these books have enduring success because their intense specificity, powerful writing, and close attention create transcendent experiences for readers in a time that is otherwise dislocated, hurried, and unfocused. A great essay is a big moon rising behind the streetlights and exhaust—all of our forgotten wonder and longing for life come brimming up.
Barbara Ras, now director of Trinity University Press, created and shaped stellar environmental literature lists as an editor at University of Georgia Press and Sierra Club Books. Ras, who won the Walt Whitman Award for her own poetry collection, Bite Every Sorrow (LSU), has published such writers as Barry Lopez, Rebecca Solnit, Paul Shepard, David Kline, and Rick Bass.
I asked how she knows when she’s reading important new work with a broad audience.
“It’s hard to predict. You have to gauge the level of raw enthusiasm that you feel as an editor, whether the work possesses that irresistible style and personal magnetism that makes you want to leap over all the obstacles to publish it.”
I wondered if university presses have a special niche in publishing personal essays on nature and environment; Ras doesn’t consider it a niche so much as an opportunity.
“University presses have a better shot at publishing some of these books because the New York houses need to be certain of high sales.” She also sees our regional readers as significant assets.
“In my experience, trying to break out a regional book to a national audience is overrated. It’s a better strategy to build from a concentrated center and move out in concentric circles.”
I asked Barbara if she sees any trends in the writing.
“Writers are getting more sophisticated and content-conscious. I’m not interested in what Kim Stafford called ‘first-person rhapsodic’ because it’s just too bland and vapid. I’m interested in something that’s going to deliver local lore and legend, culture, history, and natural history—coherent useful knowledge that not only informs you about a place but instructs you about how to be in the world.”
Emilie Buchwald is newly publisher emeritus of Milkweed Editions, the small press that has profoundly shaped the field of personal essays on nature and environment. Milkweed publishes series including Credo and Literature for a Land Ethic, and has recently published Janisse Ray, Annick Smith, William Kittredge, Alison Deming, Terry Tempest Williams, and many others vital to this field.
Buchwald feels that she’s discovered significant work with broad appeal if “a writer has written with verve about place—highly localized place. The more details the better. The best writing is made vivid by the choice of details that will make readers everywhere able to take part imaginatively in the writing.”
When I asked about trends in the genre, Emilie answered, “I see writers recognizing that their greatest strength lies in writing about a place they feel inside their bones.
“I would like to see writing that is not merely elegiac—about the loss of place—but filled with ideas for how to preserve, rebuild, rewild and rethink the issue. I don’t know whether that’s a trend, but it’s certainly the kind of book I’m interested in. We’ve just published Janisse Ray’s Wild Card Quilt, which represents exactly that kind of attitude.”
Formerly Editor-in-Chief of the University of Arizona Press, Gregory McNamee is a highly regarded essayist and anthologist. McNamee edits Arizona’s new Desert Places series, in which writers and photographers work together to portray their experience of a favorite corner of the desert.
I asked Gregory if he thought university presses would, and should, continue to be important publishers of personal essays on nature and environment.
“A university press
properly situated should stake claim for its region,” Gregory answered.
“It has the constituency and the tradition of literary quality and
excellence—from natural history to landscape writing. Editors should
look for good books that interpret the places we live and, indeed,
advocate for them.”
Why does some place-based work fascinate readers
everywhere? Gregory feels the stories transcend place to make a
difference in the world.
“It’s the quality of work, not the familiarity
of setting that’s important to readers. No one calls Walden a regional
book.”
I asked Gregory what trends he saw, or hoped he saw, in the
literature.
“There’s been a powerful strain of rhetorical posing,
self-indulgence, and moralism in nature writing,” Gregory commented.
“The genre could benefit from a purging of this moralism.” He sees the
writing becoming even more resistant to categorization and working
along the connections between art, literature, and science. He
celebrates the trend toward writing about livable cities and lived-in
landscapes, rather than pristine nature.
Mary Elizabeth Braun, an
acquisitions editor at Oregon State University Press, also sees nature
writing venturing into cities and into multiple fields. Oregon is well
known for a distinguished list that investigates life in the Northwest
from every angle—from macrolichen guidebooks to edgy essays.
Asked
about trends, Mary answered that current environmental concerns have
strongly affected the field, that writing is expanding beyond
traditional wilderness settings, and that the cadre of authors is
changing.
“Rather than just penning rhapsodic tributes to the wonders
of supposedly pristine nature,” Mary said, “writers are working to
educate and motivate their readers—tackling health, food, agriculture, and quality of-life issues, and paying more attention to environmental justice.”
Nature and science writers are writing about urban and suburban environments in books such as Sagebrush and Cappucino (Sierra Club), Suburban Wild (Georgia), and City Wilds (Georgia). More people trained in the natural sciences are writing books for broad audiences, often including personal narratives such as bryologist Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Gathering Moss (Oregon).
With all the expansion and diversification in the field, what does an editor home in on?
“The primary quality I look for is fluid, intelligent writing. Secondary qualities include a subject matter of timely interest, a good fit with our list, and an author willing to help promote the book.”
I asked Mary if she thought that university presses have unique advantages in this area.
“Perhaps we do, although many of the more notable titles in recent years have come from commercial houses, not just university presses. We may be in a better position because we’re willing to take risks on such books, which may be written by less well known writers than a commercial house might want. Also, such authors and books may receive closer attention from university presses.”
Karen Orchard is the new director of Oregon State University Press and former director of the University of Georgia Press. Georgia grew into one of the country’s best mid-sized presses in Karen’s 28 years there, establishing exceptional fiction, poetry, and literary nonfiction lists.
She and I talked about the national appeal of place-specific work like Janisse Ray’s Ecology of a Cracker Childhood (Milkweed), much of which is set in a junkyard.
“When the author is a master storyteller and you know that, it doesn’t matter whether the junkyard was in south Georgia or northern California—what matters is the truth and power of the story.”
She feels that university presses have claimed a special place in publishing personal essays on nature and environment.
“At a time when authors of short fiction collections were having difficulty finding publishers, a few university presses (Georgia, LSU, Pittsburgh, and Illinois among them) made ongoing commitments to publishing book-length short fiction and contributed to a renaissance of that genre. I think that the same has been true more recently for literary nonfiction.
“Essays on nature and the environment, in particular, are a good fit for regional trade publishing programs. Those titles often hold the promise and possibility of breaking into the national trade. They have done especially well on the regional trade lists of university presses because we are very good at reaching their core market—general readers who care deeply about the place they call home.
“These books also often present opportunities for building on strengths a press already has. When I became director of the University of Georgia Press in the mid-1990s, one of the initiatives we pursued was an interdisciplinary list in environmental studies. Our tradition of literary publishing made creative works a natural addition to the scholarly studies, handbooks, and field guides that we planned for that list.”
Personal essays about nature appear to be venturing off of high ground to risky, complex new turf— our own very diverse homes. Because home is where the heart is, these essays engage and provoke readers.
According to AAUP’s “The Value of University Presses,” our publishing programs promote engagement with ideas, preserve the distinctiveness of local cultures, and sustain a literate culture. Perhaps we have a special opportunity to distinguish our presses in this genre because so many of our goals and strengths are at work in it.
by Ann Wendland
This article originally appeared in The Exchange, Summer 2003.
Regional publishing, a proud tradition for university presses, provides an opportunity for presses to build strong trade publishing programs and fulfills a stated mission of many AAUP members—to publish for and about the communities that surround and support them. Some regional titles have met widespread acclaim and maintained strong sales; many of these are books of creative nonfiction emphasizing nature and environment.
In this series of four articles, Ann Wendland, Publicity Manager at the University of Arizona Press and Exchange Contributing Editor, focuses on aspects of publishing in this genre. The first article shared the views of several editors and publishers, our second focuses on the market through the eyes of booksellers, and the remaining two articles will highlight critics’ perspectives and case studies in book promotion.
This article focuses on the market for these books, sharing the insights of eight booksellers with more than 150 years of collective experience selling in this genre. Wendland asked each bookseller four questions. Their answers are compiled here.
Sharon Bosley is the national nature buyer for Barnes & Noble. Krista Hunter is book buyer for Village Books in Bellingham, Washington. University press buyer Cathy Langer and Rocky Mountain Land Series event coordinator Jeff Lee hail from Denver’s venerable Tattered Cover. Karl Pohrt owns Shaman Drum Bookshop in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Linda Ramsdell owns Galaxy Books in rural Hardwick, Vermont. Melissa Sanders manages Salt Lake City’s Ken Sanders Rare Books, which specializes in new and antiquarian editions in this genre. Phil Wikelund owns Great Northwest Books in Portland, Oregon.
Can you characterize readers in the genre of personal essays with environmental themes?
Barnes & Noble’s Sharon Bosley sees broad interest in this genre, with no significant demographic trends. Krista Hunter, too, finds a broad spectrum of outdoor enthusiasts and conservationists poring over the nature-writing shelves. She points out that many of them have been at this a while: “a lot of the active hikers are in their sixties.” Karl Pohrt of Shaman Drum agrees that there is a diversity of age within this market. He also feels that this genre has the same audience that university presses reach in general—well educated, socially and politically active. These readers, he finds, also buy in poetry and in religion. Jeff Lee characterizes the people who attend Rocky Mountain Land Series events as “naturally curious about things—their education didn’t stop at college.”
Many readers are looking to explore issues. Bosley notes: “Of course, there are the die-hard nature people who will read everything in the field, but others have specific interests, like birders or people who want to save wolves.” Cathy Langer adds: “Something on water issues that’s kind of personal is going to do nicely, because that’s big right now.” Phil Wikelund sees a steady stream of issue-driven readers from Portland’s environmental movement, but he also hand-sells books in the genre to cowboys from Oregon’s east side. “You have to know exactly who you’re talking to,” Phil says.
The readers can’t all be grouped as environmentalists. According to Bosley, “There are people who read these books because they’re for the environment, but there are also books in this genre that are against the environment, and there are readers interested in that too.” Linda Ramsdell finds Vermont hunters and anglers dipping into the environmental nonfiction shelves: “That kind of writing blends with more reflective writing about fishing or hunting.” Like other booksellers, she identifies the primary customers simply as people who care about the environment and spend a lot of time outdoors. Melissa Sanders sees readership crossing battle-lines in Salt Lake City. “…One of our best customers in this genre is a muckety-muck at Chevron. Most people here are interested in books that present an issue completely. This place has such a strong history of being one-sided, and there’s such a deep resentment here about that. …People work very proactively to read books that include a variety of ideas and perspectives.”
Over all, Tattered Cover’s Langer finds a “really solid, if not always huge market for that kind of book. …People who live here really understand the importance of a sense of place, and people who are new here are trying to get to know the place.” Krista Hunter, Melissa Sanders, and Linda Ramsdell also find that newcomers to their regions turn to personal essays. According to Hunter, “They choose the personal essays because nature for a lot of people is personal.” Phil Wikelund agrees that readers look for great writers to explore with: “The beauty of the prose characterizes the beauty of nature…[readers] feel as if ‘somebody has said what I feel about nature better than I could.’”
What trends do you see in readers’ interests?
Interest in the entire genre is up, says Sharon Bosley, particularly in trade paper. Linda Ramsdell of Galaxy Books celebrates new generations and readers coming to the literature. “I wouldn’t say that their interests change, but some of the writing is more scientific now, whereas before the more scientific writing might have been separate or had a separate readership— that readership has joined with the personal essay readers. People are just going deeper into this subject.” Karl Pohrt agrees that his Ann Arbor readers increasingly eschew “general feel-good work that’s less grounded—they want to read something…where they’re going to learn some hard information and enjoy an excellent narrative.”
Melissa Sanders feels that a recent generation of writers marked a sea change for this genre—writers who reflect on humanity such as Wallace Stegner, Edward Abbey, or, currently, Scott Carrier or Andrea Peacock. “For a lot of people involved in activism and environmental work, it’s a lot easier to relate to their work than to the work of earlier naturalists,” she believes.
Jeff Lee comments, “Place-based writing seems to appeal to people…whereas before I was more aware of the straight natural history books. There seems to be more of a desire for reflective writing.” Great Northwest Books’ Wikelund adds, “There’s an increased sense of the pressure of population on the places that people love—while I wouldn’t say there’s a chronology that goes from soft-spoken to desperation, there is more and more firmness, more polemic and stronger prose.” Krista Hunter sees readers searching for connection with nature as it becomes more politicized. “Barry Lopez, David James Duncan, Wendell Berry and Terry Tempest Williams have spoken out in a very personal way. We have a real core of great writers out there who don’t see a separation between humans and nature.” And that, she feels, encourages readers.
Cathy Langer observes that “there’s more being published in this area. It’s something that people care about. This is a heavily browsed and searched out kind of area, and obscure books sell more quickly than in other areas.”
How do readers in this genre learn about new books—how do you promote them?
Readers can expect hand-selling of these books. “A lot of staff members here read in this area and recommend books to customers, coming from different angles from gardening and farming to hiking and kayaking,” says Krista Hunter. Phil Wikelund leads readers from their cherished authors to similar writers, and steers issue driven readers to related issues. Cathy Langer admits a helpful bias: “A lot of us [at Tattered Cover] really like that kind of book, so we tend to nurture them a little more.”
One thing Hunter hasn’t seen much is adoption into the Book Sense program. “If you’re really hot on a book, press kits and cardboard posters for the books are helpful…reader’s copies might be a good consideration for a particular book that you want mainstream attention for.” Karl Pohrt also notes the absence and suggests sending galleys and talking with individual booksellers who might particularly like an important book. He encourages presses to consider devoting special attention to the 50 or 100 bookshops with the strongest markets for a particular book in order to break into Book Sense.
Partly because of their beauty, books in this genre can get great placement. At Galaxy Books, Linda Ramsdell keeps them prominent. “These books are really core to what we have here to sell, they’re up front and center. Vermont books are right there by the door…nature essays are on the way to the cash register.” Village Books devotes extensive primary floor space to nature writing, and offers publications that frequently review this genre—Bloomsbury, High Country News, and its own Chuckanut Reader.
“Not that looks are everything,” says Krista Hunter, “but I think that academic presses understand the trade market now, and produce books that have the look and the feel that people expect.” Karl Pohrt agrees that “this is a really visually oriented culture. Even for academic and scholarly people to whom this shouldn’t matter, a good cover design is really critical.”
While intriguing cover art or timely topics help carry the books, Sharon Bosley believes they really need media reviews and coverage to get attention. “You get someone like Janisse Ray, who’s out there talking about her book, and if she has a strong personal presence that really sells the book. A nonfiction book that has a strong, well-written narrative is the likeliest candidate for breakout to a wider audience.”
Author events shine a spotlight on these books. Tattered Cover draws attention to the genre with a special event series developed in partnership with the nonprofit Rocky Mountain Land Library and organized by Jeff Lee. The series attracts frequent CSpan coverage. “The event series embeds the store further in its community, which is what an independent really wants to do,” Lee says. “There’s a nice mix of new faces— each author or subject brings in a fresh batch—with regulars.”
Melissa Sanders notes, “Events are critical…We don’t make money on events or on keeping our doors open late, but it’s the only way for us to be a living, breathing bookstore. We want to attract people who haven’t been to the store, and also to maintain our involvement with long-time customers.” Village Books has a tremendously successful reading series, and place-based writers are particular hits. “When Barry Lopez comes it’s like sardines in here,” Hunter laughs. “People like Mary Oliver have been a tremendous boost—people who aren’t necessarily hikers and campers enjoy her thoughtfulness.”
Do you see a special niche for university presses in this area of publishing?
All of the booksellers agree that university presses do have a special niche in this genre. Linda Ramsdell sums up the consensus: “University presses are so good at finding the books and keeping them in print. UPNE [University Press of New England] books are really core to what we sell here, and I can’t picture anybody else publishing them. I also think of Nebraska keeping Loren Eiseley’s books in print. And when books come from university presses, I implicitly trust the scholarship and seriousness. A book from a trade house I’d scrutinize more.” Sharon Bosley confirms, “It’s the university presses that lend authority to this subject.”
Melissa Sanders feels that university presses will continue to succeed by “getting in on the ground level with a writer who’s very talented, like Rick Bass [The Deer Pasture, Texas A&M University Press]. The list of naturalist authors who were first published by university presses is endless—it’s definitely an area where university presses have led the pack. They are very in-tune with their area and with what’s happening in it…university presses add regional significance to what would otherwise be a very bland national market.”
by Ann Wendland
This article originally appeared in The Exchange, Fall 2003.
Third in a series of four articles on publishing creative nonfiction that emphasizes nature, this article addresses marketing methods. The first article shared the viewpoints of five acquiring editors, and the second featured interviews with eight booksellers with special experience in this genre. The author is Publicity Manager at the University of Arizona Press. Nature writing has been a perennial favorite with Arizona’s customers and is an important and growing part of its publication program.
In two previous articles in this series, booksellers and acquiring editors affirmed university presses’ niche in publishing nature writing—how publishing place-based creative nonfiction fits our missions and our strengths. University presses have a reputation for finding important new nature writers and for keeping classics in print, for staying at the forefront of trends, and for producing gorgeous books that appeal to a trade audience.
So, to be blunt, why the short print runs?
To find out, it’s back to the publishing house for an inside look at the challenges and opportunities involved in marketing nature writing.
Selling nature writing demands unusual approaches, knowledge, and decisions in direct and academic mail, exhibits, sales, and publicity.
Direct mail is the most problematic tool for marketing nature writing. The irony of mass-mailing leaflets that advertise books about our fragile environment is not lost on recipients. For this reason, a perfectly well targeted mailing can earn a response of thunderous silence.
It’s not much easier to get word to the academic community. There is only one strong mailing list and one conference dedicated to literature and the environment; interested professors are scattered across disciplines. Faculty teaching environmental studies, environmental education, creative nonfiction, and American literature courses might assign these books. But the genre falls between disciplines, and lists blanketing all faculty in one or another of these areas can’t be counted on to return cost effective numbers of course adoptions.
Many professors likely to assign these books self-identify by joining the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment. The ASLE mailing list of about 800 names is the best bet for academic mailings. The College Mailing List Directory includes a few applicable lists of faculty—250 teaching nature-in-literature, 150 teaching environmental education, 4,600 teaching creative writing, and 250 teaching literature of the American West. These may, in select cases, offer reasonable return on marketing dollars.
Professors who do assign these books often stick with classics, making course adoption especially unlikely for new authors. The lively discourse, niche schools, and highbrow journals characteristic of some genres haven’t developed in nature writing. The larger genre of creative nonfiction itself is just beginning to come into its own, increasingly featured in MFA programs that once included only poetry and fiction.
Do academics find these books at exhibits? Yes, if they’re among the 400 or so participants in the ASLE conference, attended by up to eight university presses. But nature writing sells slowly at other literary and environmental conferences, unless those conferences take place in the region described in the books. The University of Arizona Press’s Ecological Society of America exhibit sales quadrupled at the 2002 conference held in Tucson. Nature writing represented an unusually high percentage of unit sales.
Nature writing makes life interesting for sales managers, too. Most books sell best, especially at first, in the place that the essays describe. Perhaps that explains part of the trend toward urban nature writing— Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire aside, it may help sales if the book describes an area that includes more than one trailer and a thousand square miles of scorching, bookstore-free desert.
Even if a press publishes nature writing frequently, sales managers must handcraft a list of outlets for each book, because each focuses on a unique place. Gift distributors rarely succeed selling books of nature writing except for coffee-table picture-books.
Nontraditional bookstores not visited by sales representatives may dominate a book’s potential sales outlets, requiring special calls and mailings. Mainstays for nature writing include visitor centers at parks and the sales outlets of local nonprofit groups, such as Audubon societies. Some natural history museums carry nature writing, but budget cuts at most museums have forced store managers to emphasize higher-margin souvenirs.
Sales managers have extra steps to take with the cooperating associations or friends groups that run National Park and National Forest bookstores. Book buyers require a review copy and a waiting period while the cooperating association and the agency decide if the book promotes their mission. The review process and staff support take on special meaning to the publisher when one store is the make-or-break outlet for the book.
The publicist may help by pitching signings at the best possible sales outlets to encourage them to sell the book and draw the staff’s attention to the publication. At Arizona, we’ve successfully jump-started the review process by offering author events.
Publicity for nature writing also differs from publicity for other trade publishing genres. Blurbs, review lists, media relations, events, and award nominations for nature writing all require unconventional approaches and specialized knowledge or research.
Blurbs may have particular importance in this genre because of the difficulty of selling books by unknown authors. According to booksellers interviewed in the previous article in this series, nature writing sells in two categories—books by well-known authors and books with a local focus. Fans of well-known authors might try out a new writer if they see an accolade from a favorite author. Readers interested in learning about their local area may trust an unknown author if the director of a regional conservation group or the author of a best-selling guidebook praises the book.
Nature writing has wonderful creative potential for events. Place based books, with their more concentrated sales outlets, demand diverse events. Rather than dragging the author through a string of diminishing-returns signings at every local bookstore, the publicist and author can craft a series of workshops, excursions, signings, and lectures.
Co-sponsoring events with outdoor and environmental groups helps attract varied audiences and gives the publicist one-time access to the organization’s mailing list for postcard mailings and e-mail announcements. The co-sponsor may include a feature about the book, an author interview, and event publicity in its newsletter. They may help create, pay for, and distribute postcards and fliers. The group may also buy autographed copies as development gifts. Bookstores appreciate co-sponsored events because they help attract new customers and increase chances of media attention.
While events at core outlets generate sales momentum and staff support, events outside of bookstores and visitor centers offer tasty possibilities. Authors may lead workshops or outdoor adventures with a local field institute, speak at monthly meetings of local Sierra Club and Audubon chapters, or participate in a lecture series in campus creative writing or environmental studies departments.
Authors in this field often participate in e-mail lists and hold memberships in relevant organizations. Follow-up on these memberships can boost possibilities for coverage in chapter newsletters and national membership magazines, such as Audubon, Sierra, OnEarth, Defenders, Environmental Defense Letter, Nature Conservancy, Land & People, and Wilderness.
The publicist is the ray of hope when it comes to coverage in newspapers, national magazines, and destination travel magazines, which have prohibitive ad rates. Several magazines in this field don’t run ads at all because of state sponsorship or editorial policy.
Magazines that focus on nature, environment, outdoor sports and travel may carry a book review, a profile of the author as a conservationist, a mention in an annual gift roundup, or a story that depends on the book as a reference. State-published travel magazines or destination-specific travel magazines such as Arizona Highways, Colorado Outdoors, or Massachusetts Wildlife offer excellent potential for excerpts, author profiles, and book reviews.
Regional newspapers such as High Country News, Rocky Mountain News, The Denver Post, Salt Lake Tribune, Albuquerque Journal, and Portland Oregonian frequently review place-based creative nonfiction. But in general, getting into the daily news requires ingenuity; as nature writing is reflective, not newsy. The publicist might pitch stories linked to a special author event, travel stories about the site described in the book, or stories about the author’s personal journey (culminating, of course, in the book.)
Some books of personal essays center on topics of news interest— wildfire, water, sprawl-endangered wetlands or forests, for instance— and have potential for issue-driven publicity. When a relevant conservation issue hits the news, the author may publish an op-ed or be interviewed on television and radio. Books with a chronological progression may serialize in newspapers or on the radio. Fiveminute “almanac” readings by two University of Arizona Press nature writers have become listener favorites on a local radio station.
The review lists are rich, labor intensive, and eclectic before the publicist even gets to the creative nonfiction reviewers. The jewels of the genre, in terms of frequency and thoughtfulness of nature-writing reviews, include High Country News, Orion, Bloomsbury Review, ISLE, and regional literary reviews like Ruminator Review or Chuckanut Reader. The publicist can also send review copies to dozens of literary reviews that cover nonfiction, such as Creative Nonfiction, The Georgia Review, and Salon.com.
Publicists may quail before sending galleys of place-based books to out-of-region newspapers and prepublication reviewers. Is the book a delightful evocation of a region or is it literature? Reviews of Janisse Ray’s Ecology of a Cracker Childhood appeared in The New York Times, Booklist, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, and many out-of-region newspapers. Publishers Weekly caught Rick Bass’s Oil Notes back when the Montana nature writer still worked as a southern petroleum geologist.
Award nominations also require attention to both local and national possibilities. National awards such as the John Burroughs Medal offer a huge boost in visibility, but well publicized regional awards and inclusion in holiday gift lists may boost sales equally.
All in all, marketing nature writing requires original work, broad and deep knowledge or research, hand-selling and hand-pitching to new and established contacts. Introducing a new writer or a new nature writing list can be daunting, with so much of the field revolving around a select set of authors, publishers, and booksellers. As unique as the places that inspire them, these books require careful reading and creative, individualized marketing plans. Presses planning to sell more nature writing must recognize the atypical, hand-crafted outreach that these books demand and gear up to commit significant marketing energy.
Place-Based Personal Essays with the Power to Change Us
by Ann Wendland
Originally published in The Exchange, Winter 2004.
This is the final article in a series about publishing creative nonfiction that emphasizes place and nature. The first article shared the viewpoints of acquiring editors, the second featured interviews with booksellers with outstanding records selling this genre, and the third focused on marketing. This final article takes a step back to suggest the telltale signs of the next Thoreau, analyze the earlier articles for an overall look at trends, and offer a few compelling reasons for University presses to publish in this genre. The writer, Ann Wendland, has been Publicity Manager at the University of Arizona Press for three years. She is moving to Boulder, Colorado, and would be happy to respond to any comments on this article; e-mail her at wendland@earthlink.net.
Jacket-copy comparisons of new nature writers to Henry David Thoreau or Rachel Carson (if female) have been made on such a regular basis as to keep both of these greats in a perpetual spin in their graves. In fact, Thoreaus and Carsons aren’t popping up daily. Many place-based memoirs and collections of personal essays run thick with rhapsody, enlightenment, moral outrage and despair, but very few generate sweeping activism and alter our views of nature and of ourselves the way that Carson and Thoreau did.
How can publishers identify stand-out work with potential to make a tremendous social impact—in advance of the rapid-fire of reviews, the J-curve of sales, and the appearance of the author on the Today Show and the House and Senate floors?
The old-fashioned way, say editors: look at the writing. And what do they look for?
Verve, irresistible style and personal magnetism, transcendence, masterful storytelling, and fluid, intelligent writing are the qualities editors singled out when interviewed for the first article in this series.
The booksellers who shared their experience selling place-based writing agree with the editors. Their reports from the field show readers turning away from “general feel-good work that’s less grounded” and toward writing with strong, well-written narrative, a reflective, personal style and lots of interesting detail. Linda Ramsdell, a bookseller in Vermont, sees clienteles merging as more science shows up in essays and more reflection appears in science-writing. Melissa Sanders, in Salt Lake City, believes that customers involved in activism and environmental work relate more easily to writers whose work includes deliberation on culture than to the earlier naturalists.
Editors and readers are looking for the same traits in these books: powerful narrative, fascinating information, and insightful reflection.
The reflection in place-based writing is unusual. It sustains a singular cultural conversation that’s important to American identity and social development. Writers speak from a specific place—as small as Thoreau’s reflecting pool or as large as Carson’s U.S. farmland—to show us how we look from the outside and how we’re operating in relation to other life. The intertwined reflection on people and nature distinguishes nature writing from science writing, which shines its light at natures other than our own, and from outdoor sports writing, which focuses on empowerment and really big blisters, with nature as enabling mechanism.
Another identifying characteristic of books that shake up culture is that they sell. Any book that’s going to make a big difference in a place has to get a critical mass of people in that place talking. Editors can predict marketability through their long perspective on developments in the field. Booksellers can help by telling us what their readers want from those shelves of nature writing and regional books.
Readers want imaginative, enthusiastic engagement, but in this genre, there’s a hurdle for writers to leap before they can provide it. They must suspend our disbelief that nature matters. It takes a dose of disbelief in the significance of nature just to get through a day. Mindboggling impact to the places we live combines nastily with increasingly busy lives; and both the casual indifference of industry and the moralistic orientation of the environmental movement have made intimacy with place seem a tedious and discouraging duty, not a continuing pleasure. So, how do writers suspend our disbelief and reengage us?
Writers recognize that their greatest strength lies in writing about a place they feel inside their bones, says Milkweed Publisher Emeritus Emilie Buchwald. Great work, she feels, is crammed with details about a highly localized place, each chosen to bring readers there in their imaginations. The writers live for the places they write about. The initial attraction of their strange ardor turns to intrigue and then to full engagement for the reader.
Two western booksellers, Utah’s Sanders and Cathy Langer of Colorado’s Tattered Cover, share the sense that people increasingly want to experience the place they live deeply. Now that nature writers are publishing work set in cities, rural places, and suburbs (a trend confirmed by every editor interviewed), they’re in a perfect position to answer this hunger for connection.
Booksellers from Vermont to Utah to Washington say that they’re finding the clientele for placebased nonfiction expanding and diversifying. The wider audience expects exploration of issues from a variety of viewpoints, even opposing viewpoints. Rather than reading broadly in the genre, a growing number of customers select titles that offer more thoughtful, well-rounded and innovative look at particular issues that are important to them.
Editors are looking for work to match these readers’ interests— timely, issue-driven work that investigates many sides of a problem. Mary Elizabeth Braun, of Oregon State University Press, sees writers tackling health, food, agriculture, environmental justice, and quality-oflife issues. Buchwald looks for ideas for how to preserve, rebuild, rewild and rethink. And Barbara Ras of Trinity University Press wants work that not only informs but instructs people about how to be in the world. Rachel Carson might have been excited to see this confluence in the interests of readers, writers, and publishers, the new energy pouring into the search for ways to think about and address issues.
Readers are looking for the next Thoreau, the next Carson, the next great writer who can tell powerful stories, reflect on our culture in relation to the rest of life, teach and provoke us.
University presses, as regional publishers, have a perfect opportunity in this field because we know the places, know the markets, and can take risks on publishing books that might or might not break out to a national audience. The books answer our commitment to help to preserve the distinctiveness of local cultures through publication of works on our home regions. We’re good at discovering talent; once in a great while, we’ll find even those writers who can shake up culture with a book of nature writing.
In The Log from the Sea of Cortez, John Steinbeck says: “A child’s world spreads only a little beyond his understanding while that of a great scientist thrusts outward immeasurably. An answer is invariably the parent of a great family of new questions.” University presses exist to perpetuate questions, analysis, reflection, and cultural conversation. Place-based creative nonfiction sustains a singular line of inquiry with its intertwined reflection on people and nature. It’s a perfect match.