How to publish without a publisher

DelMio.com (MCT) - If there were many roads to Rome a thousand years ago, think what it's like now with global communications. There is a reason book publishers fret about the future: It's because authors and readers are finding ways to connect to each other in new and direct ways. Consider the story of writer Scott Campbell.

Campbell experienced the familiar story of not being able to find a publisher for his book. Instead, he found an award-winning German film director who bought rights to his manuscript, intending to make a movie in Hollywood. What happened: After facing roadblocks in Hollywood, the film director took the manuscript back home to produce a movie in German, which recently premiered at the International Film Festival in Toronto. Now Campbell, who needs subtitles to understand the film adaptation, has decided to publish his book through his Web site.

Campbell's story exemplifies what it's like to get published if you're not a celebrity or an author with proven sales. It also shows how it's possible to find alternatives to traditional channels. Campbell, it would seem, had an advantage over many writers. His position as director of communications at MIT's School of Architecture and Planning gave him a measure of instant credibility. He even had a well-connected agent.

His agent, while trying to find a publisher, discovered an opportunity to sell film rights to the awarding-winning German director Caroline Link. A previous film by Link, titled "Nowhere in Africa," won a foreign-language Academy Award five years ago.

Campbell's book, titled "Aftermath," became "Im Winter ein Jahr (A Year Ago in Winter)" in the film adaptation set in suburban Munich.

The book is based on the true story of a wealthy Boston couple facing despair after the death of a son. Campbell learned of the story after a friend of his who had been asked to paint this portrait. The parents wanted the painting to include their deceased son along with their surviving daughter. The story in the book is told from the perspective of the painter, who experiences his own emotional struggle, especially as he forges a bond with the daughter and learns of her own inner turmoil. Eventually the painter helps the girl come to terms with her identity.

"Whatever Caroline did, she really captured my journey as a painter through Scott's book," Campbell's friend Louis Briel told the Boston Globe. Briel's homosexuality is clear in the book but not as much so in the film.

You can view the trailer at Campbell's Web site at www.scottcampbellbooks.com. Implicit in the Web site, where you can "e-mail Scott" directly: The construction of many new roads to book publishing.

By the way, if you go to the trailer, there's no "Press 2" for English.

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ABOUT THE WRITER

Diane Evans is a former Knight Ridder columnist and is now president of DelMio.com, a new interactive online magazine on books for writers and readers.

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