Tag Archive: Scarecrow Press

A Year of Hitchcock coming to paperback

Wasn’t sure when I could safely announce this, but since our publisher has done so I guess that means I can do so, too. This fall, A Year of Hitchcock: 52 Weeks with the Master of Suspense, is coming to paperback! Our publisher, Scarecrow Press, is listing it on their website with an October 28 release date and, most exciting of all, a $19.95 price point. That’s a damn nice price, and one likely to be even nicer once it hits online retailers like Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Even better, our editor informs us this edition will be targeting bookstores — which means a wider market than the largely academic readership at which the hardcover edition was aimed. Both my co-author, Jim McDevitt, and…
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The book is HERE

After having a really bad day, yesterday I came home to a nice surprise. A box with my copies of A Year of Hitchcock. It was just the kind of boost I needed after a terrible day. I can’t tell you how happy I am with the production quality of this book. The folks at Scarecrow Press and their parent company, Rowman & Littlefield, did a spectacular job. This is top work by any measure. Thumbing through it and seeing my words presented so nicely … well, I felt very proud. This whole project, which my co-author Jim and I have lived with for over three years now, now feels real. Real in a very tangible way. And that makes all the work we did,…
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How I got published, part 6 – all that other stuff

There is a lot of stuff they don’t tell you about getting a book published. You hear about the process of writing, and crafting cover letters, and how to approach agents and publishers, and on and on and on, but what about all the stuff the happens after you secure a deal? No one tells you about that. By this point I had done a pretty good job of educating myself on The Process. Thanks to loads of reading — books, articles, and blogs — I knew what to expect at almost every step of the way. But I had no idea what would come after we had gotten a contract. Well, here’s what happens: You still have a whole helluva lot of work to…
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How I got published, part 5 – Revising and rewriting

A Year of Hitchcock

(If you’re joining me in progress, this is the 5th part in a series devoted to outlining how my co-author and I managed to get our book, A Year of Hitchcock, published.) So here’s the part where the joy of getting a contract is smothered in the giant pile of WORK no one tells you about when you first start writing. Because make no mistake, writing is not what you think it is when you daydream about a career as an author. It’s WORK. Never forget that. As noted in my last post, it took a full year from the moment we first made contact with a publisher interested in our work to actually getting a contract. And getting that contract meant agreeing to a…
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How I got published, part 4 – The Waiting Game

Welcome to part 4 of a series detailing from start to finish how A Year of Hitchcock went from a neat idea to a published book (Scarecrow Press, 2009). Every step of the way, from writing to pitching to all the work we had to do after it was sold. If you’re an aspiring writer, hopefully this will help give you some insight on the process as my co-author Jim and I experienced it. The query letter was the subject of my last blog post. If you’re not familiar with what a query letter is, go read that post. I’ve even included the text of the letter that helped us grab the eye of a few publishers. So in our first batch of six queries…
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