The Case for Minimalism

In the last couple of years, I have gradually started to re-issue some of my novels that have been out of print for a long time, in part because readers have been asking for them and also because it seemed a shame to just have them sitting on my bookshelf, unavailable to anyone but me. For some thirty years or so, I made my living (if you want to call it that) as a fulltime writer, which can be something of a blade dance, as many writers know all too well.

A lot of people seem to labor under the misapprehension that writers tend to make a lot of money. Well, this happens to be true for writers that most people have heard of, those authors whose work routinely tops the bestseller lists and whose novels are adapted to film and TV. And then there are the rest of us, the “silent majority,” to borrow a phrase from a former president. And these are writers who either live on the ragged edge of poverty much of the time, or else have to work at full or part time jobs in order to make ends meet.

Over the years, I’ve held a score of part time jobs. To name just a few, I’ve worked as a sound engineer at the United Nations; an armed guard for Hollywood celebrities; a bookstore clerk; a bartender; a factory worker; a rock musician; a disc jockey; a motorcycle salesman; a dishwasher; a tobacconist; a data entry clerk; a comic book grader; and a college professor. During that time, my primary vocation was writing, which was my main source of income. However, this also meant that I had no health, dental or vision insurance, no 401K, no sick time, and no paid vacations. When you’re young and single and living a semi-nomadic existence out of little more than a motorcycle and a couple of saddlebags, this is all a bit of a grand adventure. As you grow older, however, it starts to become progressively less amusing, especially when you decide to settle down with someone.

Some years ago, I was attempting to juggle several teaching jobs at the same time. The term “adjunct faculty” might sound impressive to some, but what it actually means is “part time teacher to whom we do not have to pay benefits.” It also means that from semester to semester, you have no guarantees of work. At the same time, you have to do a ton of grading, which tends to seriously cut into your writing time.

One day, I was discussing this with several of my students, and I said that I would really like to quit at least one of my two teaching jobs, perhaps find something part time that I could do that had absolutely nothing to do with writing or teaching. Maybe something I could do with my hands, just to have a change of pace and clear the cobwebs out. A couple of my students happened to work as cashiers for a large home improvement store and they suggested that I apply to their company, which they said was a great place to work.

Well, it just so happened that I used to work in a little mom-and-pop hardware store when I was a kid, selling nuts and bolts and mixing paint, so I thought I could probably do that. Long story short, I applied, they hired me, and after I’d been there for about six weeks, the store manager told me that he liked my attitude and my work ethic and anytime I wanted a fulltime job, all I had to do was say the word. No one in academia had ever made me such an offer. I did a quick cost/benefit analysis and took him up on it, and this month, I’ve been with the company sixteen years.

During that time, I didn’t get much writing done. Less and less each year. My agent died and I didn’t seem to have much luck finding a new one I felt good about. My books gradually went out of print. And some people, apparently, concluded that I had passed away. I found that last bit amusing when a co-worker told me he’d overheard a clerk at Barnes and Noble telling a customer that I had died, which is why there weren’t any new Simon Hawke books.

At the same time, it was rather nice to know that there were still people out there who liked my work enough to ask about it. And now that there were Kindles, why wasn’t my work available for that? I started to look at some of the books I’d written that had simply been sitting on my bookshelves and I noticed that they were starting to get a little old. It wouldn’t be long before they started to degrade. And I thought about all the time I had put into writing them, and the fact that there were people who'd enjoyed them, and I thought, “What’s the point in just having them sit there on my shelves, fading and gathering dust? Why not try to rescue them?”

The only practical way to do this, since New York publishers seemed to have no interest, was to put them out myself. And the most effective way to do this was to put them out with Amazon’s Createspace division. Since I had no data files for any of these novels, and indeed, a good number of them had been written on typewriters, this meant cutting the binding off an original edition, scanning it in with a flatbed scanner one page at a time, and then uploading it as a PDF file to Createspace, where the process to re-issue the novel would begin.

The resulting trade paperbacks were larger than the original editions, nicely packaged, and, at least with the first five Time Wars novels, had the original artwork on the covers. This proved to be somewhat expensive, however, and limited my ability to get the novels out again. In an attempt to make the process a bit more cost effective, and be able to price the novels a bit more favorably, I decided to go with minimalist covers on some of my other books. This was, perhaps, a little risky.

With just a plain, colored background and title graphics, and no artwork at all, the books would look, well, plainer. But I could afford to put them out more quickly, and at a better price point. And while I would love to continue having great artwork on the covers, the fact is that, with the exception of the first five Time Wars novels, which had great art by David Mattingly, the rest of the series, and most of my other books, had, at best, forgettable covers. At worst, they had atrocious ones, because authors, with only rare exceptions, have little to no say to what goes on the covers of their books. This way, using a minimalist cover, I would at least have complete control of the entire process, and perhaps more people would be able to afford buying my books.

I rather like the minimalist look. It’s simple. And it’s clean. And, hopefully, people will come for what’s inside the book, rather than what’s on the outside. I suppose that time will tell.