A moveable feast.

8 July 2003—My mom, Alice Zyetz, and her friend, Jaimie Hall, recently co-edited and self-published RV Traveling Tales: Women’s Journeys on the Open Road. It’s a wonderful book, filled with diverse stories by women, many of whom live full-time in their RVs. For readers who are already familiar with the RVing way of life, it’s a chance to read about others who echo their experiences. For readers whose only encounter with an RV to date is getting stuck behind one on a winding mountain road, it’s a great opportunity to peer into a fascinating new world.

I had the great pleasure of consulting on the interior design of the book. I wish I’d been able to do the cover (severe timing conflicts), but I think the designer they used, Robert Aulicino, did a good job.

Jaimie and Alice answered some questions separately via email about the book and their adventures with self-publishing. This is a slightly edited transcript of the interview.

How did you decide to do the book?

Jaimie: The idea of an anthology of women RVers‚ writing popped into my head one day and I immediately thought of Alice and me doing it together.

Alice: I had been off the road for two years and when I decided to start traveling again, Jaimie said, “I’m so glad you’re going back on the road; I have an idea for a collection of women’s stories and I’d like to do it with you.” Jaimie and I were in the first version of our writers’ group eight years earlier and had been supporters of each other’s writing since then. She edited my first book and I edited her first book.

Why women’s stories specifically? Are there already other such collections of stories out there?

Alice: As a result of our writing sessions with other women, we were always impressed with the variety and quality of their expression. We wanted to give voice to them.

Jaimie: There are other travel anthologies by women but none specifically by RVers. In fact RV books are either how-to or are the story of one author.

Alice: Seal Press and Traveler’s Tales have published a number of fine books in recent years. A few authors have written their own stories of their RV travels. Two of them are Joei Carlton Hossack and Sharlene Minshall. They are both contributors to our anthology.

How did you get people to submit stories?

Alice: We belong to a large RV organization and both emailed and published a short blurb asking people to contact us for writer’s guidelines. We also e-mailed a group of younger RVers (forties through sixties), an RV writers’ group, and various writers we knew. We didn’t get as much response as we had hoped so we extended the deadline and sent out individual emails to people we knew who might be interested. Wherever we traveled among RVers, we told people about it. At several large gatherings, I had flyers printed up with the guidelines on them. With several potential authors, I used personal persuasion and nagged a lot. One woman who was a great storyteller resisted every entreaty. When we were together at a large gathering, I grabbed my tape recorder and said, “You talk and I’ll transcribe it. You never have to touch a pen to paper.” She allowed as this was truly a win-win situation. I was doubly blessed because she wanted an audience so she invited a friend to be there. Afterwards, the friend said it reminded her of her story. The next day I taped the friend as well.

What was your selection process? Were there any stories you had to leave out that you wished you hadn't had to?

Jaimie: We sat together and read them all. We kept sorting and winnowing and ended up divvying up the submissions to work on. In some cases we were able to find a paragraph or two to use. The book took shape — stories, short takes, short pieces as we worked on it.

Alice: We loved the stories that were sent in. They captured the diverse spirit we were looking for. Rather than limit them, we made the book longer than we had originally planned. Some selections were perfect for vignettes. Only one person’s writing was inappropriate to the book.

Jaimie: That one story was so disjointed and hard to follow and was not remotely related to RVing.

Alice: A second person fell victim to cyberspace. She had sent her piece as an attachment, but had omitted to write her name and contact information on the attachment. Inadvertently I had deleted her original email. Jaimie had her name but by the time we sat down to review all the submissions, Jaimie’s computer had glitched and she had lost a number of emails, including this author’s. We tried but were unable to locate her to get her written permission to use her story.

You had a very long process of trying to name the book. How did you settle on RV Traveling Tales? Is it tied into who you think your audience is? Who do you see as your audience?

Alice: We asked lots of people for feedback, including you, and got a range of suggestions.

Jaimie: We wanted a catchy name, and we also wanted a name that told it all. The idea of using RV Traveling Tales is that it could be a series like the Travel Tales books. Some names like Dashboard Dollies had negative feedback. Somehow we RVing women don’t consider ourselves dollies!

Alice: Personally I liked Odometer Mamas, but I was outvoted. All along we kept referring to the working title as RV Traveling Tales. When Jaimie and I met to complete the final edits, we realized that we had to make a decision. We couldn’t wait any longer. We kept saying the titles over and over and finally one of us (I can’t remember who) said in a timid voice, “Well, they are RV women. I still like RV Traveling Tales.” The other one said that she felt the same way. We did add open road thanks to your reminding us of the literary allusion. And we made it journeys as a metaphor for the physical and emotional journeys many of our authors experienced.

Jaimie: We also included RV in the title so it would come up in a search at Amazon. We see our audience as first, women RVers. Second, RVers or their families. Third, armchair travelers. We are having success in that order and are working on reaching the third group, which we believe would love the book if they picked it up.

Alice: To date most of our sales are to RVers or wannabes. We are trying to pick up a larger market (travel narratives, mature women, book review venues) but have not been successful yet.

How do you feel about Amazon pairing RV Traveling Tales with The Complete Idiot’s Guide to RVing as a special two-book deal? Do you think it’s a match?

Jaimie: I don’t think Amazon sees their pairs as matches! I imagine someone who has no idea about the topic picks these pairs in some sort of way, perhaps based on the fact that many people are clicking on both.

Alice: Let’s face it: We loved publishing the book but we do want to SELL it. If the Idiot’s Guide is selling, then we are happy to be on their coattails. Also, the audience for their book are new owners and wannabes so it is a good match for us.

What is RVing, anyway?

Alice: Briefly, RV stands for recreational vehicle, which can be a motorhome, a fifth-wheel trailer, a travel trailer, a truck with a slide-in camper shell, a van designed for camping, or a bus. The cost can vary from $500 for a thirty-year-old travel trailer to over a million dollars for some of the high-end buses. The vehicle is generally self-contained and can be used for weekend camping, short trips, trips lasting several months, and full-time living where the RVer no longer has a fixed domicile.

Jaimie: RVing is both living in an RV and also traveling in an RV. I normally use RVing when talking about extended travel rather than weekend warrior stuff, but I guess it could cover that too. You may have seen the “Go RVing” campaign. They don’t care how often and even count rentals.

Why did you decide to self-publish?

Jaimie: Spending energy on finding a publisher for a book that has a more targeted audience seemed a waste of time. Having read (and seen firsthand with Alice) that even if you have a publisher, you must still promote your book, why not get a larger share of the price? And with a publisher you lose control of the book (again, this happened to Alice). It is a lot of work but I am very proud of our final result. It is a challenge to be so focused on marketing but in a positive way too. I am glad I have Alice to share the whole process with. We work well together.

Alice: Jaimie had self-published her first book and felt comfortable with the process. She also had many fine contacts in the RV world to provide us with an accessible market. However, when we looked at the stories we received, we realized that they might have an audience that transcended RVers, so we decided to find an agent who would represent us. We were turned down by several agents and one publisher, so we decided to return to our original plan. The interesting aspect is that once we had designed the book, we were happy that we had decided to have total control over our book.

How has the self-publishing experience been for you? What are the particular challenges of self-publishing that you wouldn't necessarily expect to encounter?

Alice: The experience has been very exciting. Sometimes it felt like we were in an old Perils of Pauline Saturday afternoon serial, tied to the track with the train bearing down on us. I was fortunate that Jaimie had better computer skills and the previous experience so she did the computer typesetting. My focus was mainly the final copyediting. We also asked several others to give us editing input and it was a constant struggle to not listen to everyone’s advice all the time. The very same day that I was going to tell Jaimie I thought we had too many dashes, one of our other editors sent back the copy with a note that there were too many semicolons and not enough dashes. We also kept having to revise because of typos or errors that we had missed. When we got the bluelines from the printer, we spent $75 on critical errors we still missed. When the first copy came off the press, I saw a glaring error on page 2 we had missed and one of our readers found another mistake.

The other big area is marketing and trying to overcome the prejudice the major reviewers have against self-published books. With the advance of the POD (print on demand) companies, everybody can now publish a book, whether it’s five copies of the unrequited love affair between your pet hamster and the mouse you caught in the mousetrap or 2000 copies of a book like ours with an ISBN number and a well-designed interior (ed. note: thanks, Mom, your check’s in the mail) and cover. Unfortunately, major newspapers can’t tell the difference.

Alice, your last book was done with a publishing house. How has this experience been different? Which do you prefer?

Alice: My last book (You Shoulda Listened to Your Mother: 36 Timeless Success Tips for Working Women, published by Chandler House Press) was a financial success for me but a marketing failure. I shoulda listened to the marketing mavens who all said that you still have to market your own book unless you are Hillary Rodham Clinton. The marketing people the publisher hired were ineffective. I had one speaking engagement, and that was arranged by someone else. My “team” was able to set up five telephone interviews with tiny stations no one ever heard. The only reviews I had were from the magazines I contacted.

The other issue is that I lost control of the book. I had wanted a short book and was told that they couldn’t charge enough. So I padded the information. The book was meant to be an informal but professional business book for women, but the cover looked like an ad for a Kotex box. The inside design had some feathery stuff on every page.

Which one do I prefer? RV Traveling Tales! Even though the money is less, I am proud of this book and Jaimie and I do our own marketing. We depend on Dan Poynter (The Self-Publishing Manual) and John Kremer (1001 Ways to Market Your Books).

You and Jamie have mostly had to work remotely from each other. How did you divide the work?

Jaimie: Alice is a great list maker and task master! Which is a good thing.

Alice: We each took half of the stories to edit. As I mentioned earlier, Jaimie did the typesetting and I did more of the copyediting. I also communicated with the authors more since she was so busy with preparing the manuscript. We met several times for a few days to make final decisions about the stories, the manuscript, the marketing plans.

Jaimie: When we got together we planned what we would do and left with tasks assigned. We also did a lot of emailing and phone calling. Alice has stronger editing skills and I know PageMaker. I think I also have a pretty good eye for what looks good so it worked out well. I do the fulfillment because I have a garage to store the books yet when traveling this time, Alice is doing that.

Alice: The one biggest regret we both shared is not scheduling time together for the very final edits. We would be sending attachments back and forth via email and never quite sure which “final edit” I was editing again or which “final” changes she was keying in. The few differences of opinion we had, we solved “by the number,” a technique that’s in the book. We assigned a numerical value to how we felt about a particular issue so if one of us had a high commitment to it and the other’s number was low, we went with the higher one. If we both had a high commitment, we negotiated.

What advice would you give someone who wants to live full-time on the road, or someone who wants to self-publish, or someone who wants to do both?

Jaimie: Go for it! It is not an irrevocable decision so you can do it and then you can change your lifestyle again if it doesn’t suit or you get tired of it. Many of us find ourselves getting home bases after several years of travel. If you are considering self-publishing, know that it is a lot of work and that you must wear the marketing hat and business hat after it is published. If you don’t like promoting yourself and your book, print only a few copies for relatives and friends. The whole process can be hard on relationships and the actual writing in the limited space of a rig was about impossible for me. But others have done it so it can be done. I am lucky that Bill is supportive. And while he complains sometimes, on the whole he is willing to help and is a real asset in helping me with seminars and other aspects of marketing.

Alice: 1. Educate yourself. For self-publishing, buy the two books I mentioned. Join SPAN, a network of small publishers. Talk to people. It does take a huge commitment to be successful. The same advice for full-timing. There are many fine books on the subject now. For a glimpse into life on the road, purchase a copy of our book. If you want to work on the road, buy Jaimie’s other book, Support Your RV Lifestyle! An Insider’s Guide to Working on the Road. For more information, start with Escapees and follow the links.

2. Once you’ve learned about it, and it feels right to you, don’t wait. Do it!

Has anyone bought the movie rights yet?

Alice: Not yet, but I’m waiting by the phone. Actually I thought it might make a good one-actress play in the style of Anna Deveare Smith, without the politics. There are many different voices and styles in the book. I have sent it to one actress and one producer. No response yet.

Anything else you’d like to tell us?

Jaimie: I feel so good about RV Traveling Tales because we have given voice to many women who would otherwise not be heard. And they should be! It is a real gift to them that they are published in a book, a beautiful one, I might add. And that makes me feel good too. When I have edited newsletters what I have enjoyed most is getting other people to contribute and then producing a nice product showcasing their piece, whether it be a short quote or an article. I guess that is something I am good at! It also gives me a great sense of accomplishment to see both books and know they are the result of sharing and a great deal of work and there is something to show for it.

Alice: Thank you for letting me talk about my favorite subject.

For more about RV Traveling Tales: Women’s Journeys on the Open Road, including how to purchase it, check out the book’s website.