5/17/05:  Ken won't toot his own horn so we will.  His new book is literally flying off the shelves.  With books selling faster than they come in Ken has now gone to a third printing - over 1500 books - and EP couldn't be prouder. Everyone here should give Ken a big round of applause.  We'll all be saying we knew him when....great job Ken, you've set a new bar for others to jump.  We'll be looking to you for marketing lessons. By the way, you haven't been reviewing much lately, what's up?  EP staff

An interview with Ken Nye

Ken Nye's book "Searching for the Spring" is all set to go to the printers. We expect that the first proof should be ready on or before April 15th.  Without any hitches, Ken's book should be available in May. 

Ken was selected as EP's first Featured Poet Award winner and he is most deserving.  We've had a first look at his book and we concur that it is magnificent and will be a huge success.

We "sat down" with Ken this weekend and had a wonderful chat.  We've printed that interview here for you to enjoy as well.

EP:  Ken, this has been such a long process; has it been all you expected or nothing like you imagined? 

Ken Nye: Well, never having published a book before, I didn't have a clue what to expect. It has been all consuming in terms of what I think about in the course of a day.  Regardless of the activity, my mind continually flips to thoughts of the book, oftentimes to nothing more than a feeling of anticipation and excitement that I'm getting closer to actually holding my book in my hands.

 EP:  What does it feel like to author such a book?

Ken Nye: It's a little surrealistic. I think my head is still adjusting to the reality that a book of my poems is going to be printed and out there for the world to read.  There are some things about which we spend our lives dreaming, never really expecting the dream to become real, and then if or when it does, the mind has to shake off the dream packaging , the styrofoam halo that made sure my psyche knew "we are only day dreaming, here, Ken.  Don't get all excited."  And I'm going to have to replace the styrofoam packaging with a little sticker that says, "Caution.  The attached dream is now reality."

 EP::      What are you hoping to achieve?

Ken Nye:  Somebody else asked me  - what was my purpose in putting out a book of my poetry?  I answered that the purpose is not to make money.  Being an egotist, I had to say that one thing I think I'm striving for is a legacy of some kind.  I have already thought that it's possible that after I'm gone, there may still be people who occasionally turn to my poems for enjoyment or comfort or assurance.

 And that leads, I think, to the second hope I have for my book, that it is helpful to other people who need an escape, need a new take on life, long for the comfort and security of an environment that I tried to recreate in my poetry.

Thirdly, I think I hope to find an audience receptive to the way I interpret human existence, what is important and what isn't.  I commented very arrogantly in my "reintroduction" in the Forum that my book does not raise questions about life, it offers answers that have worked for me and, if they work for me, they can work for whole world!!!  Here are my answers to questions about life.  Whatever the questions, the answers are:

- Life is brief, precious and a miracle.

- The purpose of life is to enjoy living, and it follows that, if that is everyone's purpose, we should do our best to help others enjoy life as much as we.

- The secret to happiness, and, I will go so far as to say, the path to eternal life, is love.

- The natural world is irrefutable evidence of the divine.

How's that for an answer to the question, "What do you hope to achieve?"  This guy doesn't have much of an ego problem, does he?  He has three simple goals for his book: a legacy, a source of inspiration and solace and understanding for others, and a credo for the rest of the world to adopt. No self image problem there.

EP:  Take us through the process.  How did you decide on the cover, the structure and more importantly the poems to include in this book?

Ken Nye: None of these decisions was difficult for me.  The photo of our farm was a wedding present to our daughter from a friend who, believe it or not, found the photo at a yard sale in another town in Maine.  We can tell by certain things in the photo that it was taken while we lived there.  But this photo was taken by some stranger who was so moved in some way by the classic New England structure of our farm or for whatever reason, he or she stopped up the road, got out of the car and took a picture of the place, had it blown up to an 8 1/2 by 11 and put in a frame, and it all ended up on a yard sale table in another county.  This lead me to conclude that the person who took the picture saw the same special something about our farm that I did.  And, because so many of my poems are about incidents during the years we lived on the farm, it was the first thing I thought of for the cover for the book.  As a matter of fact, early on in the process, using scizzors and glue and a reprint of the photo, I made a fascimile of the cover close to the way it will actually be on the book.

 

Likewise, the decision to structure the book into two sections seemed a no brainer for me.  When I looked at my portfolio of poems, there are two obvious and distinct types.  There are poems about encounters with wild animals or incidents or experiences in the woods and waters of Maine, and there are more personal poems about my relationships with family and thoughts about life, etc.  So I divided the book into two sections, the first entitled "Maine's Natural World," and the second "From the Heart."  Following that grouping scheme, placing each poem in the appropriate section was pretty easy.  My rationale for where I placed each one was to simply provide a variety.

 

I included in the book just about every poem I had ever written up to that point.  There are two or three poems that were marginally acceptable or were still in the process of being rewritten, but for the most part, I wasn't too selective about which poems to include.  I've only been writing poetry for two years, so I couldn't be real selective or exclusive in my decisions of what poems to include or I would have ended up with a book even thinner than it is now.

 EP:      Please tell us, did you ever imagine you'd be doing something like this and how has your family reacted to this project?

Ken Nye: If someone had told me three years ago that I would be publishing a book of my own poems, I would have mentally tagged that person as a wacko.  This whole thing--- my starting to write poetry, my joining a poetry web site, my poems receiving warm reviews, my being selected as Featured Poet, my publishing a book of my own poems--- is right out of a story book.

I think my family is still coming to grips with the above.  They didn't perceive me to be a poet any more than I did. They are excited for me, but they are certainly not obsessing about the book the way I do, and are getting on with their lives.

I've asked Ann to share her feelings about my poetry and book project.

Ann:  I have to admit that as Ken became more and more involved  with poetry and the EP site, specifically, I have been jealous of the time he spends at the computer.  But I love his poetry and the feelings it evokes and I'm thrilled and proud that his work is actually going to be published.  I also know that it never would have happened without the support and encouragement of his friends on EP. ( I've read most of your comments and feel like I know many of you too.)

EP:  You had some fellow members here at EP help you and a great friend, Scott, did fantastic work editing and putting your work together for this book, how important was that?

Ken Nye: The feedback I've gotten from my colleagues on EP on each of my poems has been central to my own satisfaction with the poem.  If the feedback from a first posting is lukewarm or even cool, I will usually either let the poem sit for a few weeks so I can come to it with a more objective perspective, or I rework it immediately and repost it immediately.  In the first posted version of the poem "The Jack-in-the-pulpit," there was no Jack-in-the-pulpit.  The poem had a different title.  It was Donna who said she liked what I had, but the poem needed a central living organism to highlight the theme of the poem, that the old, dying and dead support new life.  So I added the Jack-in-the-pulpit and, after adding it, realized that that "central living organism" was so central to the theme of the poem I adopted the Jack-in-the-pulpit as the title.  Likewise, I can remember the first posting of "Monhegan Main Street at Dawn" which had a really feeble ending stanza, something like, "another day following another day following another day on main Street," trying to convey the idea that things do not change on Monhegan, that time stands still.  I can't remember who said they liked the poem but the last stanza was not up to my usual par.  But they were right.  As a matter of fact, I knew that even before I posted the poem, but I had to hear it.  They were right.  So I and Donna and a couple of others worked through the night to come up with an appropriate zinger stanza to end the poem.  We ended up voting on two alternate stanzas to finish the poem.  Feedback from EP colleagues has been crucial.

Scott, a local friend and one-man publisher has been the expert to whom I have turned when I wanted to start getting the manuscript ready for the printer.  He has the technical skills and know-how about which I had absolutely no idea.  So I couldn't have put together the quality book that I think Searching for the Spring is going to be without Scott.

EP:      Did this ever seem like it would never finish?  Is the process frustrating or rewarding or both?

Ken Nye:  It was a much slower process than I anticipated or than my nature likes.  I tend to be a go, go, go person and, with questions being raised and waiting for answers it got frustrating at times.  But when we put together the first facimile of the book with the cover and the pages trimmed to size, I couldn't believe that that was my book.  I was just amazed that it looked so great.  And I think it's going to be well received, because many hands and minds participated in the creation of that book.

EP:      There is a lot of talent here on EP, what advice would give them about preparing to publish a book?

Ken Nye: Well, I think you can have a heck of a good time putting your book together, even if you don't have any intention of publishing it.  Before I was selected as Featured Poet, I maintained an updated manuscript complete with updated table of contents and dedication and foreword and everything -- the works.  Whenever I finished a new poem and added it to the book, I updated the table of contents.  So when I was selected as Featured Poet, I was ready the next day to begin the process of making a dream come true.

EP:      What marketing plan have you personally designed for the presentation of your beautiful work?

Ken Nye: Again, I am kind of feeling my way in this business.  I am being optimistic and assuming that I am going to sell a lot of copies of this book.  My original plan was to market the book in all of the gift shops of Maine, in addition to the book stores.  I have already prepared in draft form a large post card with the cover of Searching for the Spring on one side and an announcement about the release of the book and a little about the book and me on the other side.  This post card will be mailed to as many possible marketing venues in Maine (for starters) as I can think of.  Then, in my original plan, I was going to spend my retirement traveling around the state visiting the gift shops and book stores personally.  However, I have since decided that fulfilling that plan could get overwhelming and become a real chore.  Consequently, I have hired a woman to be my sales rep.  She will contact the shops and promote the book, for which I will pay her $1 a book.  She is already the sales rep for "The Names of Maine," a self-published book by a teacher in Massachusetts. In just one year she has sold over 9,000 copies of the book in Maine alone.  The timing is perfect for her to add "Searching for the Spring" to her caseload, because she planned to begin her marketing campaign for "The Names of Maine" in May, when my book will be released, and so now she will simply market two books this year instead of one.  I have also indicated on the post card my availability for and interest in poetry readings.  I have been in the classroom all my life, have extensive experience speaking in public, and relish the thought of sharing in a public forum the background to my poems and associated stories.  I think I would have fun doing the readings, plus I think they will generate interest in and sales of the book.

I just reread this paragraph and it occurs to me that you guys live all over the country.  I don't know if this book is geared too specifically to a Maine market, or if it will be enjoyed by people in other parts of the country. I like to think that it is the latter, but reality may prove the former.  But, on the chance that it will appeal to people outside of Maine, if anybody would like to be a sales rep. for the book in your corner of the world, I'd be thrilled.  And I'll pay $1 a book for the books that are ordered by anyone in your "territory."

I also plan to send the book to the Portland newspaper which tries to review the works of  as many Maine authors as they can.  If my book is reviewed and gets a positive reception, I have been told by a local bookstore manager that the next day they will sell out of the book.

In addition to all of this, Sterling is keeping the pressure on for me to apply to as many poetry contests as she can locate, and I think she has located them all.  ( More than anyone else, Sterling is  making me believe in myself as a poet.)

EP: What do you feel is the most important, publishing the book itself or the plan to promote it.?

Ken Nye:  This is another one that, if I had experience publishing and marketing a book, I could be the voice of experience.  But I can only guess.  My gut feeling is that the important thing in the whole process of publishing and marketing is the product being marketed, the book.  If the book is mediocre or poor, no amount of high class promotion is going to make it a success.  On the other hand, I think that there are probably a lot of well written novels, collections of poetry, short stories, etc. out there which, for the lack of a good plan to promote them, have been languishing in obscurity.  The answer, it seems to me, is to begin with a high quality book, implement an effective plan to promote it, and, if the book is really good, it will be a success.

EP:  The book will become available in May, how can our members get a copy of your book?

Ken Nye: I don't know the answer to this one yet.  But, as I explained in the Forum on EP, I intend to make the book available to EP members as cost.  Once I know what "cost"  is, and what shipping will be, I will let everyone know.  I am going to investigate using PayPal as an electronic way for them to get me the money.  When I figure this stuff out, I'll post it on the Forum.

EP:      Ken, you're a great choice for EP's first featured poet.  Though we planned on selecting a Featured Poet more often, we really feel it should be a top honor and we probably will only select two a year.  What suggestions would you give to EP for this process?

Ken Nye: I would suggest that EP form a committee of long-standng EP members whose task it would be to prepare kind of a policy manual that outlines the procedures to be followed in the selection of Featured Poets, and that also outlines the criteria that should be used in the selection.

I would also suggest that EP form an ad hoc committee of EP members who have participated in the publication of a book of poetry, either by themselves or co-authoring, whose task it would be to prepare a handbook for authors who have been selected for publication that outlines the entire publishing process: who is usually responsible for each step of the process, a suggested time line for the publication process, and any other information the committee feels would be helpful to fledgling authors embarking on their first experience publishing.

EP:      Ken, EP wishes you the best with this book and we hope we're making a dream come true for you.  Thank you so much for being a part of this site.

Ken Nye: I will never be able to adequately express my gratitude to you, Jim, and everyone else on EP.  I hope my book showcases the spirit of EP, and that when you read those poems you hear your own voices in the words that are spoken. You all had a part in the creation of "Searching for the Spring."