Phyllis Washburn sent me a copy of the book she’d written, Good Morning Sam, which includes many of her husband Ralph’s photos. In photos and words, theirs is the story of the mute swan Sam, whom they named when he accepted them as part of his natural world. Over the years, the couple saved Sam several times, watched him find and lose a mate of several years, and rebound from loneliness. You’ll enjoy learning about how the Washburns pursued not only helping Sam and learning about mute swans, but together employed their artistic endeavors to remember him and to bring him to a larger audience. Next week, we’ll post an excerpt from the book with photographs.

Sheila
When in your 24 years of experience with the swans, did you realize you would write a book?

Phyllis
My first thought was to write short vignettes of the interaction depicted in my husband Ralph’s photos of the swans for a coffee table book of the mute swan pictures. As our relationship with the swan Sam grew more involved and he accepted us into his world, the idea of a book with the whole story began to be a possibility.

Sheila
Had you kept journal entries all along because you wanted to record the experience in words as well as photographs?

Phyllis
Memory can be faulty at times so I began keeping a journal of our Sam visits. I wanted the book to stay true to what actually happened during our adventures with Sam. I didn’t want to write another cute animal story.

Sheila
Had you been a naturalist type before the swans appeared in your life?

Phyllis
I’ve always had a deep love for learning about nature and when we met Sam we had a golden opportunity to learn about wild mute swans. Many of my childhood memories are of nature related events. As an adult, I’ve watched a butterfly break out of its cocoon and flex its birth-moistened wings to dry in the sun before taking its maiden flight, a rainbow pass over a tiny dewdrop one sunny morning and watched as a beautiful green dragon-fly captured and devoured an insect foe to my garden.

Sheila
What did you need to learn as a writer from putting the story together?

Phyllis
Seriously considering the writing of a book, I signed up to attend classes at the Cape Cod Writers Center (CCWC) to hone my writing skills. Over the years, I’ve attended three annual CCWC conferences and numerous writer workshops. Marion Vuilleumier, Director of the conference, invited me to join her Advanced Writers Group (five members all writing for publication). It was there that I learned how to edit my prose to make for a better read. Her favorite mantra to correcting flowery wordiness was “murder your darlings,” cut unnecessary words out of your prose. I still follow her mantra in my writings today.

What was the biggest writer lesson I learned in writing Sam’s story?

That’s not an easy question to answer for I’ve learned so much about what it takes to write a “good to read” book: choose the subject that you want to write about and will pique the reader’s interest is a start, keep the reader in mind as you write, the need for structure in a book, and for me, the desire to keep it honest to what happened.

I feel that Good Morning Sam is a memoir about the depth of the human-swan relationship we experienced with Sam and an opportunity for a reader to learn more about mute swans. Fame and fortune are not the reasons we published our book; it was our desire to share our adventures with Sam and his swan friends with other nature lovers. Both Ralph and I had a vision of what we wanted our book to be, thus we self-published.

Sheila
What was the learning curve for you and Ralph in putting together and publishing the book?

Phyllis
We started at the beginning, so the learning curve was big, but not to the point of being an ugly chore. The two main reasons for self-publishing were we both wanted top-quality printing for the photos and it probably would take months and months, possibly years to locate a publisher willing to commit to publish the book as we envisioned it. Ralph and I are both pleased with the way Good Morning Sam turned out, and it also has been well received by readers.

Sheila
How did you choose the self-publishing venue that you did?

Phyllis
We researched what printing services were available. The printer we chose was someone we knew and whose quality of photo reprinting we approved. The manuscript we submitted had to be print- ready. Ralph’s next project was to research what needed to be done to formulate a book to print-ready status.

Sheila
The photos are such a big part of the book. Was it difficult to incorporate them into the manuscript? Were there requirements you had to meet?

Ralph
We wanted to keep publishing cost low as possible by doing book design and layout ourselves.

We looked for and found a printing company that had four-color offset printing equipment and could work with us in book design. We visited the printing company and reviewed the project.

Phyllis wrote the original manuscript in WORD 3.0, which had many limitations on what we would need. We transferred the manuscript and pictures to Open Office open source writer software to get around the Word problems. We purchased the book Getting it Printed, 4th edition by Eric Kenly, M.S. and Mark Beach, PhD, to study technical details and requirements for designing the book and working with the printing company.

The printing company we chose required commercial PDF file format to work with the print-ready project. We searched for and found an affordable program to do this with Page Plus X4 desktop publishing software by Serif. Using this software we designed the final book layout.

To maintain high quality requirement for the pictures, we worked directly with the prepress technician assigned to our project by the printing company. This included establishing color proofs before the book went to press.

The completed print ready PDF manuscript with pictures was sent to the printing company over the Internet using file transfer protocols.

Sheila
Thanks, Ralph. I know how important it is to any writer these days to have someone close at hand who is interested in handling technical matters!

How do you two market the book?

Phyllis
We have a website: www.ourswans.com and two YouTube swan videos, Mute Swans and Humans and Swan Duck Playtime, book signings, interviews for articles in local media and talks. My first book signing was at our local Bookstall bookstore. Since our book Good Morning Sam is about the mute swan that lived in Marion’s Sippican Harbor, Bookstall advertised the event in the local surrounding news outlets. The signing was well attended. I signed over eighty books that morning. Our local newspaper’s “Book Lovers” column published a full-page article with photos in both the local edition and their Cape Cod issue. I visit bookstores and leave a copy of Good morning Sam for the staff to review to see if they would consider selling the book and using the copy we leave for display. Tucked inside each display book is a sales brochure, my business card and a letter stating the cost of each copy to the merchants if they decide to offer the book to their customers.

While I approach mostly bookstores, I also visit other types of businesses (gift shops, bird feeder and bird food shops, any place where nature or bird lovers might visit). If I do not hear back, I visit the business once more to learn if they are interested in placing the book on their shelves. If not, I say “Thank You” and pick up the display copy. Some books are sold via word-of-mouth by pleased readers who want to share Sam’s story with others. When sales seem to lag, I remind myself that I was told while writing my book that successful marketing of a book can take as much time as it took to write the manuscript. This has proven true, but I’m not disheartened, I just keep making my visits to retailers with my sales pitch and search for new outlets to pursue. I did advertise nationally in the National League of American Pen Women (I’ve been a member for more than ten years) quarterly The Pen Woman. I keep searching, hoping to find the key that opens the national sales door.

Sheila
What hurdles did you face in self-publishing?

Phyllis
We faced all the hurdles of anyone learning about some new venue. Locating an appropriate printing service was just one part of the many items to be done. We copyrighted the manuscript, purchased a block the ISBN numbers, registered Station House Publishing as a business entity, established a business bank account, established a state sales tax account since we chose to be our book’s distributor (this we decided because I was an unknown author and we would be the best and most enthusiastic marketing team). We established our bookkeeping system to keep accurate records of book sales and publishing expenses.

Sheila
What were the delightful surprises along the way and since the book has been out there?

Phyllis
We both experienced pure joy when we unpacked the first box of 40 copies of Good Morning Sam and held the finished book in our hands. We are elated that Sam’s story is well received with positive feedback from readers. One resident in the next town arrived our driveway one summer day and announced, “I just had to come see where Sam had lived.” I even had an invitation to lunch to discuss Sam and the other swans we have known. Since the publication of our book, we’ve learned about some of Sam’s previous memorable capers before we knew him. While a book sale is important, I feel most successful as an author when I share our mute swan adventures with others and they share their delight in reading the book.

Sheila
That is a heartwarming approach to writing and having an audience. Thank you. I was going to ask you if you would you do it again, but what you’ve said makes me think I know the answer. Do you have plans for more books, nature-oriented or otherwise?

Phyllis
First, yes, I would do it again. And yes, there is a next book. At least I have a glimmer of a children’s book on the relationship between Little One (Sam’s last mate) and a mixed Black/Wood duck named Max that lived with her after Sam died. Our “Swan and Duck at Play” YouTube video shows them together.

Meanwhile, I’ve had articles published, most locally but one in a national publication. I do a lot of writing for two town committees I serve on, as a Deacon for my church and as a leader/member of the Wednesday Wordsmyths critique (five members) group I started fifteen years ago. Our Wordsmyths group visited a sixth grade school class to talk about how critique writing groups can make better writers. We formed small groups with one Wordsmyth and a few students each; they each read an essay and we discussed how it could be better written.

Sheila
Did you and your husband have any disagreements even though you shared a vision? Did publishing together cause friction or ever more intimacy?

Phyllis
In all honesty, I can truthfully answer NO to disagreements. We are a long-term married couple; we may disagree on how something should be but we discuss the difference then make a decision agreeable to both. We both considered the photos were his domain and the writing was mine. Suggestions were always welcomed, but the final decision was made by both or by the photographer for photos or the author on prose. I think Ralph would concur on that statement. If any thing, I truly believe the book adventure has brought us more intimacy. In a marriage there is the wife domain and the husband domain; we both view the Good Morning Sam book as OUR BOOK. The prose or the photos without the other would be less of a book.

Sheila
Have you presented the book at venues where people have come to learn about swans? Has your experience caused any ripples in the community or among nature groups?

Phyllis
No, I haven’t because I do not consider myself an expert on mute swans. I do speak to others about what we have learned about mute swans through our relationship with Sam and friends. I always caution people not to approach any wild mute swan they see because if that swan feels threatened it will attack you. We decided to bring Sam to live in our backyard when we sensed he was having difficulty oiling his feathers and thus losing the ability float on the water and was having difficulty walking on land. I wondered if others would object to our decision thinking we were wrong in doing so, but we never experienced negative repercussions. By that time, we had been seen by many people visiting, feeding and playing with Sam in various Sippican Harbor areas for many years, and Sam had been the harbor resident mute swan for an even longer time.

Sheila
I know from your book that Sam is no longer alive. You must miss him very much.

Phyllis
Yes, but we continue to observe a pair of mute swans who have chosen a pond near our home for their “nursery,” giving us an opportunity to observe a baby cygnet grow from nestling to adolescent and then fly off with its parents in November. For two years, there had been five cygnets born but only one survived. Then last year not one of the cygnets survived but the adult swans spent the summer on the pond. The swans have returned again this year. We are hoping to see cygnets survive this time around.

Sheila
I am glad you are continuing your close observations and that you have another book you are thinking about writing as well as continuing with other writing that interests you. Next week we will post an excerpt from your book. Ralph, keeping taking photos! It is very fortunate to have your subject documented visually as well as in words. Phyllis, thank you for taking the time to share the way you worked. I think we will all be inspired to connect with what is right out there in front of us.