The Story Behind the Story: “The Fall,” by David Fulmer

(Editor’s note: Rap Sheet readers probably recognize David Fulmer as the author of four historical mystery novels set in New Orleans and starring Creole detective Valentin St. Cyr, the most recently published of which was last year’s Lost River. But, forced by circumstances, he has also become a publisher, part of the Atlanta, Georgia-based venture Five Stones Press, which has just released Fulmer’s seventh novel, a contemporary standalone called The Fall. That book, according to press materials, “delves into the deepest bonds of friendship, all accompanied by a rock ’n’ roll beat. After Richard Zale receives news of the death of a childhood friend, he returns to their hometown to pay his respects. It isn’t long, however, before old frictions and a new puzzle emerge, drawing him deeper into the mystery of his friend’s demise.” In the essay below, Fulmer describes his sometimes awkward steps into the publishing market.)

The timing couldn’t have been worse.

Just as my contract with publisher Harcourt ended after six books, the company merged with Houghton Mifflin in 2007 and proceeded to drop me and several other writers with decent cred like so many dirty shirts. Never mind that my last two novels had sold the best since the first, and that The Blue Door had been nominated for the 2009 Shamus for Best Novel.

Hit the road, Jack.

On top of all this, the financial storm that was wrecking businesses around the world slammed the publishing industry as well. Advance dollars dried up and a bunch of authors were on the street. My agent soon found out that New York wasn’t much interested in a nominated, awarded, and well-reviewed author. I didn’t fit the current market agenda. We couldn’t get arrested. Not even the small presses would talk to me.

I wasn’t about to give up writing books. Call it pride; I wouldn’t let the bastards beat me. Also, I can’t do anything else very well. Mostly, though, I’d had plenty of experience being rebuffed when I was trying to get my first novel (2001’s Chasing the Devil’s Tail) published. The one that got nominated for a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, a Barry Award, and the Falcon Award and won the Shamus Award for Best First Novel. The same book that received excellent reviews from coast to coast. The one that everyone in New York had turned down flat. In other words, I had seen this movie before.

So I started thinking about angles. Self-publishing was an absolute down-and-out, drinking-muddy-water-and-sleeping-in-a-hollow-log last resort. I met with friends who knew different segments of the business and got their input. One was Dana Barrett, who started me thinking about alternative lean-and-green publishing models. She’d done some homework on the subject. Another big bright light came on when I sat down with Daren Wang, one of the partners in Georgia’s Decatur Book Festival, the driving force behind Verb.org, and now an organizer of Agnes and Eddie, a concert series at Agnes Scott College in Decatur that he puts together with Eddie Owen of the folk club Eddie’s Attic.

In Wang’s view, the publishing business was entering a phase similar to what the music business had gone through some years back, in which digital technologies and Internet marketing made it possible for talented artists who didn’t fit a musical mold or offer lowest-common-denominator sales potential for the Big Labels to do end runs and keep their careers alive. I understood that the book business is a different animal, but I saw the connection.

The true turning point came last spring, when I read a feature in The New Yorker on the plane ride back from taking my daughter to visit her grandparents. In that essay by Malcolm Gladwell, headlined “How David Beats Goliath” (gotta love that title), the author pointed out that Davids (i.e., the little guys) beat Goliaths (i.e., the big guys) not by trying to play the big guys’ game--an inevitably uneven competition--but by changing the game itself. Gladwell cited an underdog girls’ basketball team as a prime example, and gave some others as well. Over the days following my reading of that New Yorker piece, I saw similar examples everywhere I looked.

As the financial crisis lingered and I spoke to other publishing professionals, it became clear that the New York publishing model was facing a sea change. The industry was becoming increasingly top-heavy, or so those insiders reported, shifting more toward a business model that favored big-sellers. There would be no place left for a little feller like me. I had visions of fighting it out for scraps. My daughter, Italia, and I would end up living in a mobile home on the outskirts of Snellville, Georgia.

With all of this in mind, I still had no burning desire to become a publisher and produce my own books. I cheered myself by looking to musicians and actors who had taken control of their careers by moving into the production end. I also told myself that once we got this ship under sail, I would become an emeritus, leave the business to the grown-ups, and go back to my former life, which consisted of writing my books, teaching my classes, and raising my kid.

Thus mollified, I sat down over coffee and then adult beverages with Tara Coyt and Anna Foote, two friends who had business and marketing smarts. I explained that I wanted to sell shares in my next book. They thought about it and said, Go ahead. They would help. I told them I wanted to name the venture Five Stones Press. They got that, too. We scratched a business outline on a legal pad.

The next week, I sent a letter to a select group of people, explaining that shares in my new, seventh novel, The Fall, would be sold at $125 each. We would split the profits 50-50 between the venture and the shareholders. If there were profits. I made it clear that it was something of a crapshoot and I didn’t want any bad noise if it didn’t work out. In the same instant, I knew I would feel completely responsible for every penny.

I was deeply moved that those people got it, as well, and were ready to step up. Within a couple of weeks, we had enough revenue to get the motors running. My next book would be released under the banner of Five Stones Press.

Announcing this plan to the world was the easy part. There were missteps from the start. I had held out too long, waiting for a deal to come through from New York, so we were behind schedule from the beginning. The proof of my novel was rushed into production and went out to editors a bloody mess. I was embarrassed, and then gratified that a number of the reviewers didn’t hold that against us.

We did run into constant questions (and occasional accusations) about self-publishing. In the only definition of that phrase that I know, the author pays to have his or her book published. I didn’t go that route. There’s not a cent of my own money in this venture. I did put a ton of hard work into it, though.

We scrambled to get the cover and text right. We brought in Susan Archie, a Grammy Award-winning boxed-set artist to design the book jacket. We understood that we had no business mucking about with the sales end of the equation, and so hooked up with Small Press United, a book-distribution service for pocket-edition publishers.

Although I had spent 11 years in the media end of the motorsports business and still had some game, getting the word out was nonetheless a challenge. We ran into resistance in some mainstream quarters. While Publishers Weekly did a nice piece that got picked up all over the United States and in the UK, two of my hometown business editors made a point of ignoring us. This was not really a surprise, any more that the cold shoulder we got from some of our “friends” in the publishing business. On the other hand, there were enough people who came forward with words of encouragement, in spite of all our gaffes and stumbles.

We were late, but the pieces finally fell into place, though in a Rube Goldberg-like patchwork of moving parts. Now the official book release is upon us. We have no idea what to expect. Failure, success, or something in the middle.

We will go forward with a good dose of hope, though not too much. I’ve been in the book game too long for that.