Michael Dolan—Editor
Winding Road Stories
DOSSIER: How do you feel about acquiring strong books that have a poor starting off point with a tough first chapter? Do you get past that first chapter and see the potential, or do you stop once you get turned off with something you’re not happy with?
DOLAN: One of the reasons it takes us a little longer to respond to manuscripts is that we really do try to read every manuscript from beginning to end. We often receive manuscripts that don’t start off well but get much stronger as they go along. My theory is that when newer writers begin writing a book, they try to be something they’re not in those first pages, and it’s very difficult to sustain. Somewhere along the way, they settle down and find the voice they’ve been trying to disguise, and that’s the authentic voice that makes the book unique.
In other instances, I might read a manuscript and see another place where I think the book should start. If I give up in the first 30 pages, I’ll never discover that.
The most important thing to us at Winding Road is that the author is open-minded about how to make the book the best it can be. Whether that requires improvement in the beginning, middle or end doesn’t matter to us. What matters most is that we collaborate to create to the best representation of the author’s vision for the story. That being said, if you have a weak opening, you’re probably hampering your chances of finding a home for your book. A lot of publishers/agents only want you to submit the first few chapters, so they’re comfortable disqualifying your book on those pages alone.
DOSSIER: Since editors work for publishers who are focused on sales and the bottom line, how important is it for you to be able to convince them that a particular writer has a strong social media presence or a personal vehicle to generate sales right away?
DOLAN: I don’t think a strong social media presence guarantees success, and I don’t think a lack of online presence predicts doom. At the independent press level, I’ve found the best predictor of an author’s success is effort. How much is an author willing to invest time and energy in themselves? How willing are they to experiment and find creative ways to reach their audience. If you have a good book, it’s a matter of time before people discover it. But you have to give it that time.
At Bouchercon, an author said at a panel that she had done over 75 podcast interviews for her book. Everyone was impressed. The punch line was that she had reached out to over 700 podcasts to do those 75 interviews. She found a very methodical, sustainable way to pitch a few people each day, and she was consistent with her effort. It made a huge difference in building her audience.
The two biggest resources an author misuses are time and patience—whether it’s submitting a manuscript too soon, rushing it to market, or giving up long before the finish line. If you look at your writing career as something you plan to do for the rest of your life, you’ll take a long-term view to everything. You’re willing to give yourself a long enough runway to try new things and to organically build an audience over time. But if you go into it with the mindset of, “It’s been a week and nobody has bought my book,” you’ve set yourself up to fail. I always tell my authors, the best marketing tool you have is your ability to write, and we often don’t use that tool enough. That could mean writing more books. Or it could mean writing smaller things that you give away that help draw an audience. (This is often referred to as a “reader magnet.”) One of my authors, NJ Gallegos, has done a phenomenal job with this. When her debut novel, The Broken Heart, came out. She wrote a series of short stories that were related in theme to the book, and she gave them away. By doing that, she quickly started to build a mailing list of readers, many of whom like the stories and ended up buying her book. There are a lot of authors who aren’t willing to do that, but NJ is, and she deserves every reader she finds because of the effort she puts into both writing the book and helping people discover it.
DOSSIER: What do you focus on most—developmental editing and pulling the strings from behind the curtain or directing scenes, themes, and plot lines with a guiding hand?
DOLAN: Every author and book is different. The best way to do this is the way that works best for you. That’s different for every writer and editor. If I try to apply what works for me to everyone else, it’s going to make everyone miserable.
To answer the question as best as I can, the thing I focus on the most is communication. I talk to my authors quite a bit about their work before we even sign a contract. I want to understand what’s most important to them, and then it’s my job to create a map to help us get there. I’ve had authors tell me that they’ve never spoken to their editor and that what little communication they have is through email. I tip my hat if that works for them. I know how important a book is to an author. They may have spent years of their lives working on it. There’s way more I need to know than what can be taken from an email exchange.
Once we’ve had plenty of communication, I have a better idea of how to help the author get to where they want to go. Some authors aren’t confident in their work and they need encouragement to trust and protect their characters more. They’ll insert implausible things into the plot because they don’t think what they have is interesting enough. Other authors may entirely focus on the plot at the expense of the characters and themes, and it feels empty, at least to me. We serve a lot of roles as an editor—mentor, coach, cheerleader, therapist, whatever the writer needs. It’s a sacred relationship built on trust. That takes time. I look at every conversation I have with one of my authors as an investment in that author that will pay dividends down the road. But at the end of that, the hope is that their skills become sharper, their book improves both in the complexity of their storytelling and in the experience they provide for the reader. And when they set out to do the next book, they’ll have the confidence and ambition to know they can write books for as long as they have the passion to do it.
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