High Hill Press

Oh, yeah. Needlepoint is for loser wimps, sure. Tell that to the galleries and museums carrying my stuff, eh:



20 years before I wrote, I stitched. I'm not going to take seriously anyone who keeps spouting the aforementioned
post-craft hipster nonsense, about art or writing.

Our daughter-in-love (California hippie chick, just like my wife!) is a knitter extraordinaire. Every year we can't wait to see what's she's made for us for Christmas, and each time it's breathtaking.

At least she didn't mention decoupage. Hah! Real writers do it with scissors and glue. And pictures and paint and glitter, and those little paper and wooden boxes. My hands have metallic paint and glitter paint, and my legs look have emerald green metallic paint. (Don't ask how it got on my legs...)

Unless they're real writers who knit. Then they do it with needles. And if they do needlepoint, they do it with those really really tiny needles and itsy bitsy thread that would drive me insane to attempt to use.

Anyone who thinks knitting, or fabric arts, or any craft in general is "lesser" than writing doesn't really know many writers at all, do they? Author Sheila Viehl recommended to aspiring writers that they learn to do crafts, so they can have something creative to do when they are not writing. Considering the numbers of books she has sold, I'll listen to her instead of this publisher, thank you very much.

Edited to Add: I mean, it doesn't really make sense, does it? Why can't you knit and write? If I were to learn to knit (that sound you hear is my mother laughing because she tried to teach me, and it never caught on), would the "writing" part of my brain suddenly fade away in a puff of yarn smoke? It's just as likely that knitting (or decoupage, for that matter) can enhance the "writing" parts of your brain. Anyway... who insults knitters?! Maybe they were just trying to needle us?

Filigree... Needlepoint dragons! We are not worthy. *whimpers*

aliceshortcake said:

Friendly Frog, you've obviously never heard of Maggie Sefton's Knitting Mysteries.

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Ah bless you, Aliceshortcake! I have actually seen one of these in the bookshop a good while time ago but alas couldn't buy it then and didn't write down the name either. I have been hoping for a while now to come across them again. Now I know what I'll be buying in January.

Which, while amusing, is getting waaaay off topic.

Mea culpa, Unk.

So, anyway, High Hill. What about those guys, eh?

Gravity said:

So, anyway, High Hill. What about those guys, eh?

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After reading this thread, I rather wish the publisher would come back and tell me exactly what I would get from them that I couldn't get from Kinko's. If I'm expected to do all my own editing and selling, it sounds like all they do is put the words on paper and slap on a not-particularly-attractive cover.

(And once upon a time I made a nice side income as a quilling artist. And no, that's not misspelled.)

Mea culpa, for getting off track. To make up for it, some research any prospective author should do for any press they're considering. Here are the Amazon rankings (current for this date stamp) for every HHP book I could easily find on Amazon. There are a couple of decent sellers, and a lot with what I suspect are mid double-digit sales or lower.

This isn't bad for a press with a strong regional focus, and for authors who simply want their work published by someone passionate about that focus. Many of these books do have scholarly acclaim. But they don't appear to have big sales.

Blowing Carbon 3,665,211
Albert's Happy Thanksgiving 7,479,760
The Baron Decision 2,956,291
Bigfoot Confidential (new) 925,119
The Bounty Man and Doe 2,835,788
Cuivre River Anthology Volume III 8,386,008
Cuivre River Anthology Volume I 5,400,487
Cuivre River anthology V 7,709,920
Cuivre River Anthology IV 6,512,413
The Devil's Hoofprints 703,888
Echoes of the Ozarks (AWOC edtion with same editor) 6,440,454
Echoes of the Ozarks (AWOC edition with same editor) anthology III 4,983,925
Echoes of the Ozarks (HHP version) 6,993,129
From Trash to Treasure 4,559,960
Geese to a Poor Market 886,030
G-Eye 3,496,201
God's Three Step Plan 1,852,673
The Last Dark Elf 4,516,198
Life on the Half Shelly 5,797,847
The Sad Blue Frog 4,006,698
Mysteries of the Ozarks III 3,467,910
Mysteries of the Ozarks V 5,695,013
The Neighborhood 2,607,298
Pea Brain and Wheelchair Willie 4,875,988
The Prophetess One: At Risk 2,725,629
Queen of the Last Frontier 1,581,483
Soldiers from the Mist 321,006
SpellBinder 275,321
Strengthen Your Non Fiction Writing 7,825,494
Tanka Moments 8,661,511
This, That and Sometimes the Other 4,806,150
Voices 5,765,408
Voices II no sales on Amazon
Why Not? and the Perfect Murder 1,307,804
Writing the West 2,742,812
Writing With a Mentor 6,944,745
The Yesteryear Tales 2,857,658

I suspect that a lot of HHP books are sold directly to the author.

Filigree said:

Echoes of the Ozarks (AWOC edtion with same editor) 6,440,454
Echoes of the Ozarks (AWOC edition with same editor) anthology III 4,983,925
Echoes of the Ozarks (HHP version) 6,993,129

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A change in publisher moved it up half a million places? If my understanding is correct that doesn't speak well for HHP.

Oh, my gosh. Those are some of the worst ranks I've ever seen. I feel a bit better about my own standings now, but even with my rankings, I have tepid sales. Many of those examples show that they haven't had sales in years.


tri

All they show is that they aren't selling a lot through Amazon. Even looking at Amazon alone, turning an Amazon rank into numbers of books sold is impossible.

James D. Macdonald said:

All they show is that they aren't selling a lot through Amazon. Even looking at Amazon alone, turning an Amazon rank into numbers of books sold is impossible.

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Yes. The review I saw for one of their titles mentions buying the book at a local event--a county fair or similar. Given Ms. Turner's insistence that the only way books are sold is out of the trunk of a car, I imagine this is fairly standard.

As Aliceshortcake says:

aliceshortcake said:

I suspect that a lot of HHP books are sold directly to the author.

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In that case, I don't see the point of going to High Hill. What can they do for you that you can't get from a good printer and bindery?

Amazon rankings are only a general picture, of course. A book that hasn't sold a single copy on Amazon during a whole year might have sold a few dozen copies at a local event. That means the author had to buy the books wholesale, arrange publicity, attend the gathering, and hand-sell the books.

In this case, they're probably not selling through the publishers' website. Here's HHP's ranking on www.alexa.com: 23,456,381.

Out of umpteen million sites, this one is over twenty three million down on the list. 19 websites link to it, including author sites and regional writers' groups.

Contrast that with one of my favorite publishers, Chronicle Books, a muscular indie press with a wide range of genres and at least one or two titles a year that sell over 25,000 copies. Chronicle's rank on Alexa is 60,002 globally, and nearly 12,000 in the US. They give advances. They can arrange book tours and guide writers through successful online promotion. Major reviewers have heard of them. Over 5000 sites link to Chronicle.

Of these two publishers, guess which one I'd choose, if I had a book that fit their guidelines?

This is why so many folks on AW say start at the top and work your way down. It's not enough to be just 'published'.

Filigree said:

Contrast that with one of my favorite publishers, Chronicle Books, a muscular indie press with a wide range of genres and at least one or two titles a year that sell over 25,000 copies. Chronicle's rank on Alexa is 60,002 globally, and nearly 12,000 in the US. They give advances. They can arrange book tours and guide writers through successful online promotion. Major reviewers have heard of them. Over 5000 sites link to Chronicle.

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AW has the following Alexa stats:

31,593 overall. 12,691 in the US. 4,097 sites link in.

Take everything into account when you decide where to submit your works, then make the best decision you can based on each individual book.

HapiSofi said:

The actual connection between truckers and Jacqueline Susann: Once the paperback edition had come out, she'd go out to the loading docks of the big distributors' warehouses at three or four in the morning, and schmooze and hand out coffee and doughnuts to the guys who loaded paperbacks onto the trucks. No one had ever done that before. The guys loading the trucks appreciated the attention. This increased the chances that cartons of her books would make it onto the truck, get racked at the other end, and sell.

I have no idea how the nuns got added to the story.

HHP: as she drove from the east coast to the west.
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This is pure folklore: The Epic Coast-to-Coast Book-Pushing Journey of Jacqueline Susann! ... which never happened.

Considering how much of Susann's self-promotion consisted of television appearances, I have to wonder what Ms. Turner imagines she was doing in the interior of the continent.

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I realize I'm um, late, (and about to say something largely insignificant) but I believe I have it.

Just now I was searching for Bette Midler movies on Netflix and stumbled across something called Isn't She Great. Having no idea what it was about, I started watching.

Wouldn't you know, it's about Jacqueline Susann...

In the movie, there is driving. There is a montage with a map and a car and, while she does schmooze with truck drivers, she also takes books into individual bookstores (whilst driving across this map) and schmoozes with booksellers. She also walks into a convent, and there, her husband (played by Nathan Lane) says, "If you like the Old Testament, you'll love Valley of the Dolls." (And of course the nuns do in fact love it.)

This just gets better.

The number of times Nathan Lane says "Isn't she great?" aside, there are so many things wrong with Isn't She Great?, it's not funny. There's a scene where Susann is in advanced stage breast cancer and dying. She and her husband drive by a theater that's showing the movie version of The Love Machine, based on another of her books.

Which is impossible because she died before the movie was released.

But it makes for great bio-pic drama. A little research goes a long way, but with the advent of teh intarwebz, you'll find everything to back up anything you want to believe, no matter how incorrect, inaccurate, or flat out wrong it might be.

And with IMDb's wonderful media geeks pooling their collective knowledge, it's not safe to blindly use Hollywood versions of reality as a primary source.

You really, really couldn't make this stuff up. I knew there had to be an explanation for how the nuns got dragged into Ms Turner's Valley of the Dolls fantasy !

buzhidao said:

I realize I'm um, late, (and about to say something largely insignificant) but I believe I have it.

Just now I was searching for Bette Midler movies on Netflix and stumbled across something called Isn't She Great. Having no idea what it was about, I started watching.

Wouldn't you know, it's about Jacqueline Susann...

In the movie, there is driving. There is a montage with a map and a car and, while she does schmooze with truck drivers, she also takes books into individual bookstores (whilst driving across this map) and schmoozes with booksellers. She also walks into a convent, and there, her husband (played by Nathan Lane) says, "If you like the Old Testament, you'll love Valley of the Dolls." (And of course the nuns do in fact love it.)

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No words ...

Off-topic, but for a biting review of Isn't She Great, go here.

...we waste a lot of time watching her vamp some teamsters who deliver the book and driving around the country kissing up to small town bookstore owners. In fact, such tactics were used by the real Susann to drive the novel’s success, and if the film contained a serious examination of her insights into the business of bookselling and publicity campaigns, the film would have been a lot more interesting. Needless to say, though, it’s all played instead for comedy, such as it is.

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