When washed-up B-movie star Jack Palms agrees to show some high rollers a good time, he finds himself caught in the middle of a Bay Area drug war... and it'll take the performance of a lifetime to get him through it alive.The book has garnered great quotes from the likes of Michael Connelly and Allan Guthrie. Originally published in podcast, Seth's online audience rocketed the book to #1 in Crime/Mystery when Breakneck Books published JACK WAKES UP in March of 2008. Now, purchased by Three Rivers Press, it will be released in May 2009 and is scheduled for review by the New York Times.
Seth Harwood grew up in the Boston area, graduated from the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 2002. His subsequent jobs included commodities floor trading clerk, bartender, copy-editor for Avon Products, rare book cataloguer, librarian, English teacher, and freelance journalist. Currently, he lives in Berkeley, CA with his wife Joelle and their dog, teaches writing and literature at Stanford University and the City College of San Francisco, and writes.
I find it fascinating that the last few years you have been writing novels and disseminating them over the Internet as serialized podcasts. It's said you record your podcasts in the small spare bedroom of your Berkeley flat. So what inspired you to go this route?
I wanted to build an audience, get my work out to people. Disseminating text on the web seemed less effective, so when I saw people were doing audio, I jumped on it. I've had commutes where I always listened to books on CD/tape.
Are we talking full length novels?
Yes! They've run from 15 episodes to 30 each (episodes are usually 35-45 min).
How many novels have you serialized this way, and where does JACK WAKES UP fall?
Four novels (the fourth is finishing this weekend) and two sets of short stories. JACK WAKES UP is the first. Then there are two Jack Palms novels that follow directly and the current book, Young Junius, examines the background of one of the popular secondary characters in JWU. All told, it makes over 100 35-45 min episodes!! It's been a lot of work, but getting a lot of positive feedback from appreciative fans--tons of emails--has really spurred me on!
Do you think that being able to listen to the stories free might deter fans from buying a book for full cover price, or do you feel your fans will support you?Fact is, for an unknown writer, there's no way it can hurt me to get people starting to know/like/support my work. Everyone asks this question. The answer is two-fold: 1) it's free publicity. No way that's going to hurt me. 2) it's a numbers game. Some of the listeners will buy, others won't. But they like me, get to know me, and I ask them to buy. By now they've gotten HOURS of free entertainment from me. Many are grateful. Another way to look at it: if I can get 5-10% of the listeners to buy the book, that's a phenomenal return rate compared to any form of advertising you can stack it up against. AND, it's a form of advertising that I can do all on my own, with barely any financial cost!
What size audiences did you build up? I'm assuming we're talking thousands of fans here, am I right?.
Thousands of fans listening/downloading every week, and I'm guessing there've been 25k-35k people who've downloaded and listened to Jack Wakes Up since it's been out. (Started in July 06, so that's 3 years.) Last year at the release, I gave away the PDF of the book free, and it hit over 80k downloads!
Obviously this all led to a book contract, first by Break Neck Books (print on demand) and now by Three Rivers Press. What's the different between the publishers?
Breakneck Books. Well, they were print on demand, so distribution to brick and mortars was almost impossible. Lining up readings was hard. If you didn't know me/my podcast, you probably never heard of the release. But Three Rivers Press is a part of Random House!! That means an advance, full distribution to ALL stores, much more respect from booksellers and readings easier to set up, great support from the publisher and copies in every bookstore! (oh, I mentioned that.) The similarity between both is that they both got to see I could sell the book. Then they wanted a piece of that.
Jack is a B rated movie star--a one hit wonder turned criminal. Tell us a little bit about him.
He made one hit action movie and then ruined his career in a downward spiral of drugs, depression and a bad marriage. We pick up the book just after he's rebuilt himself from the lows. But now he's got to find a way to make money.
Why did you choose this profession for him? Are you drawing on your own past or fantasies?
I thought it was interesting to think about how an actor would be perceived if he'd done just one action movie. He's not Stallone or Van Dame or Steven Seagal, he's just a guy who kicked butt for one movie. And then what happens when there isn't another? How do people react. No past history in action movies. I wish!
From what I gather, Jack is a real guy's guy. Do you think your books will appeal across the genders, or did you write these books mainly for men?
I wrote the book because I wanted to write something fun, something that moves and has action, that allowed me to incorporate my influences that go beyond just reading: to my enjoyment of video games, kung-fu cinema, classic action flicks, you name it! I wrote it for everybody--plenty of women have listened to the podcast and really enjoyed it. Jack has lots of female fans!
You've done some other "outside the box"-type promotion - billboards, Amazon sales tactics. Can you tell us about these? Were they your ideas? Do you have any other things in the works?
I've done these things as they come to me: I had a listener who was in charge of Bay Area outdoor advertising for CBS, so he suggested subway signs and a billboard. I said YES! Scott Sigler made big waves in April 2007 by having all his listeners buy his book on Amazon to rush it up the charts. It was basically a way of getting New York to take notice. When Breakneck released Jack Wakes Up last year, I just copied his method. Luckily it worked!
I think I just reached a point where I was ready to say yes to everything that came along. Instead of say "No, I'm not going to try... [the web, online publishing, what have you] I got to the point where if someone had an idea I wanted to try it. So a lot of the ideas haven't come from me. I just follow what the best ideas seem to be. For a while that was anything Scott Sigler did. Now we're both creating the front of this wave. What's next? I can't say that I know. More podcasting! CrimeWAV short stories... maybe even CrimeWAV books!
What type of "in person" events do you have coming up? Signings? Conferences?
I'm giving readings and signings all over the Bay Area, in San Diego, LA, Phoenix, Houston, Tuscon, Boston, New York. I'm paying for all of it myself. From traditional publishing routes I still hold to the belief that getting out and meeting people, booksellers and readers, is irreplaceable. I'll be at the Apple Store in San Francisco on May 8th explaining my podcast methods. Scott and I have been running a course called Author Boot Camp (http://authorbootcamp.com) where we teach our methods. The next one is June 19-20 in San Francisco. We'll be at the Writers' Digest Conference in NY this September. We also have some class-events in the works with universities on both coasts.
What's coming up? Do you have a new book in the works?
I've written and podcast three Jack Palms novels now as well as a prequel that tells the story of a minor character's younger life in the late 80s. That's been a lot of writing over the past 3-4 years. Young Junius (the prequel) has also been full-serialization: writing it while I release weekly episodes. That's been a bear! But I finished it and the last podcast episode goes live this Sunday! What's next? A summer of touring, video podcasts from the road/readings, and a new writing project as I get close to fall. Not sure yet what that will be.
Meet Seth Harwood at http://sethharwood.com/readings and http://sethharw.startlogic.com/Flyer-Readings.pdf.
Contributing editor, Christine Goff,
is the award-winning author of the bestselling "Birdwatcher's Mystery"
series. She began her career writing non-fiction for local, regional
and national publication. Chosen Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers' 2002
Writer of the Year, two of her novels were named finalists for the
prestigious Willa Literary Award for Best Original Paperback Fiction;
and her latest novel, DEATH SHOOTS A BIRDIE, was a named finalist for
the Colorado Authors League 2008 Best Genre Fiction Award. Her novels
focus on environmental concerns through bird-related issues. Currently,
she is working on a new book; a thriller set in Israel.
