speaker-0: Welcome to Why Authors Write. I'm your host, Mary J. Cronin, and today I am excited to welcome Eric J. Dolan, whose maritime histories have included shipwrecks and adventures on the high seas in the age of sail. His latest book, The Wreck of the Mentor. keeps up that tradition with a gripping tale of shipwreck, captivity, and a surprisingly long and complicated path leading to the rescue of some of the survivors. Eric, thank you for joining us to talk about how and why you wrote The Wreck of the Mentor.
speaker-1: Thank you for having me. It's good to be back.
speaker-0: Eric, I want to start with the origin story in this particular book. I'm interested in how you learned so much about the islanders and why you chose to put the lens on their lives and cultural norms as well as on the sailors who were shipwrecked.
speaker-1: Well, the idea for the Wreck of the Mentor really goes back to 2007 when I published Leviathan, The History of Whaling in America. And since the Mentor is a whale ship out of New Bedford, while I was working on Leviathan, I came across the story of the mentor, but the mentor's story didn't fit into my narrative for the book. So I just tucked it into the back of my head. I needed a new topic for a book. So I started reading more about the history of the mentor, and I decided that it was the book that I wanted to write because it was one of the most fascinating, improbable, surprising, and dramatic tales of maritime history that I've ever come across. But I had to confront a basic question when I had so much information from the Western perspective, and a lot of the information about the natives was provided by the Westerners who wrote down what they saw. Can I really tell the story if I don't have that much of the authentic voice of the Palauans? And I decided as an historian, you either can throw up your hands and not write any of these histories, because that's going to be the case with so many stories, or you do the best you can. And I feel I did a very respectful job. I I tried to wring out every piece of information I could about Palauan history and their interactions, put it into context when when possible. And it was just a fascinating history, how Palauans got to Palau in the first place, what kind of culture they established, their rites and rituals. I mean, all of it was totally fascinating to me. To come at it from different angles. There was not only the wreck of the mentor, there was the wreck of the antelope, a British ship in seventeen eighty-three. A very extensive book was written about that wreck and the interactions with the Palauans at that time. So it was really fascinating for me to paint a portrait of this environment, this human and natural environment into which these American whalemen were thrust on account of their shipwreck.
speaker-0: What struck me in what you wrote, Eric, was the moral ethic of the leaders, in particular, of some of the islands, in that it was as if they took the word of the English and then the Americans as really reliable. Their word was believed, and it was almost as if. on the islands at that time there wasn't a duplicitous culture on both sides. But and then there was a wonderful episode that you recounted where the the leader, the chief, was going to announce the invasion that he was planning to make on a neighboring island. And the the captain said, wait, don't do that. Like We have to have a surprise attack. That's how we're gonna win. And the chief said, no, that is really immoral. That is wrong. And you did a wonderful job there of presenting the contrast of an indigenous culture which did not have a tradition of surprise attack and duplicitous w warfare.
speaker-1: His name was actually Abathol, but he was a very wise leader. He was universally proclaimed by not only the Westerners, the British who encountered him at first and his own people as being a a wise and fair leader. I thought that interchange was absolutely amazing because here we have the British who have already a long history of taking advantage of other cultures and bloody routes of natives. And here one of the American mariners is basically translating the conversation he had with the king of Karor, one of the villages, where he is going to, before they have a war, he's going to let the enemies know that they're coming. So give them time to surrender if they want to, but so that they'd be prepared. And the wars weren't all out events where they wanted to wipe out everybody. They just wanted to win and then take the spoils and be the leader of the local area and the g the American and the British as well were just flabbergasted that you would warn your enemies that you were coming because the element of surprise is how you often won these these battles and the Palauan chief said that wouldn't be fair, that would bring dishonor to us. That's not the way that you you do it. Just the human interactions and the way in which people evolved over time. Initially the Americans viewed the Palauans as nothing but savages and brutes and uncivilized. After six months of exposure to them, they had a much warmer view. They still felt that they were from an in uncivilized part of the world as compared with the West, and certainly as compared with all the things that Westerners had in their life, the material things. But on a more elemental basis, they came to appreciate the Palauans as being kind, respectful, supplying them with materials, wanting to help them. And so it was nice to see that little bit of evolution. But then that evolution got totally destroyed when they landed on Toby, where they were treated much worse. But you know, this is this is a common story back then of of whalemen and other other Western mariners. Who land on these Pacific Islands and have to deal with the natives. It's often fraught with violence. There were a couple of British sailors who had jumped ship earlier in the 1800s, married Palauan women, learned the language, and risen to the rank of minor chiefs, and they played the role of translator. So it it's a fascinating part of Pacific history. These numerous westerners who ended up in Tonga, in Fiji, in Palau, in the Marquesas. Herman Melville was a beachcomber for a little while in the Marquesas when he left the whale ship of Kushnit, and he used his experiences on the this island to help feed two of his novels, Taipee and Umu. And you wonder how Western Western understanding of Pacific the Pacific. might have been quite different had there been no beachcombers, because in so many instances they acted as translators and they helped ease the way in some cases for Westerners who ended up on the Pacific Islands.
speaker-0: Absolute that. So back to your research, Eric, and the story you wanted to tell in this book. You mentioned that you did a lot of work with Palauan sources and learned a lot from them. There were memoirs from a number of the survivors. Can you talk about how you used those and what you made of their lives after they were rescued? They were so different in how. People went on to live their lives back in the United States.
speaker-1: One of the first things that I read was the book written by Horace Holden, a green hand from New Hampshire, who was on the mentor and ultimately spent more than four years in Palau and Toby came back and wrote a book about his experiences. That was very important. Captain Edward Barnard wrote a handwritten manuscript of his experiences, which wasn't published during his life, but was published in 1979. I used that. There were hundreds of newspaper articles that were written. at the time that this event took place when the men started dribbling back, you know, two at a time. the Naval Rescue Mission had a chronicler on board who wrote very extensive articles, not only about the history of what happened to the mentor, but also what happened when the naval rescue mission sent by President Andrew Jackson arrived in Palau and on Toby and what they did and what their interactions were like. And then there were many books that are written by Palauans. Some written by Palauan community agencies. Some are textbooks used in Palau of their own history. There are books written by Palauans that talk about oral histories of Palau. There are scholars of Palauan history who have written books about Palau that talk not only about the mentor a little bit, but about the broader context of Palauan culture and history. So I used every possible source that I could find. That would help me inform the the story. And as any historian has to do, you look at the sources and you weigh and balance them and you decide, in effect, not who to believe so much, but what information to use. And if there's some information that might be suspect, you at least let the reader know that this might not have been the case. But in the end, you have to rely on the written record. Because I'm not a fan of making up stuff. And I know that there's been a big debate in recent years about books that claim to be nonfiction when parts of them are sort of made up to sort of bridge the gaps in the historical record. I am not comfortable doing that. It might have made for a more interesting story, because you could expand upon certain interchanges, but I really stuck as closely as possible. to the written record that I had and my understanding of the context within which the story took place.
speaker-0: You're maybe this isn't a fair question, but I'll ask it anyway. Did you like any of the characters in particular? Who were you becoming fond of as you scrupulously wrote about the facts that you knew?
speaker-1: Well, I like the the chief, the Ibadul, the one that interacted with the British because he just seemed like a great leader. And one of the things that was fascinating to read is a British ship with an American sailor, a guy a Massa Delano on board who shared a lot of his observations of the chief, the Ibadul. He was there when he was ruling Koror and everything in the community seemed to be going swimmingly. Then he left for a couple of years, and when he came back, the Ibadul had died, and he had been replaced by one of his brothers, who was a far crueler man, who also killed some of his older brothers' advisors. And I thought this one comment by Amasad Delano just hit me like a a a sledgehammer. He basically said that it is amazing to observe the change in an entire Community, a village, a little part of this country that one person can cause, one good leader can make the country or the village work properly and be a pleasant place. And one leader who's a horrible leader can make everything horrible. And I thought anybody who's talks who understands politics, whether it's today or in the past. It's it's really true. It's amazing. Even in a big country like the United States, one person can make a huge change both for the good and for ill. And when I read that, I said, Boy, is that true.
speaker-0: Do you take some inspiration yourself or hope your readers will from Who Survives Against All Odds?
speaker-1: well there's an old saying I wish I should look up who said it. I think it might have been Voltaire, something to the effect that adversity introduces a man to himself. You could put in a woman. And I think that was certainly true with Horace Holden. He was one of the most amazing characters in the story, not only because he wrote a book about his experience, but because he survived such horrific conditions and then lived to be ninety-four years old and just seemed to be a very honorable guy, from what I can gather. From the historical record. Like when he came back, he was tattooed on his arms and chest. He didn't choose to capitalize on that. He only showed it to a few people. Whereas some other people who came back from the Pacific and were tattooed sort of went on to become showmen and circus freaks, for lack of a better word, and hired by PC Barnum. So I liked I liked Holden's the way he chose to live his life and how he handled himself on Palau. he gave me hope that maybe I'll live that long. I doubt it. But he seemed to l he seemed to have a good life. And it really is amazing how human nature, depending on your personality and your composition, can deal with just horrific conditions and then bounce back. Because by all accounts, once he came back into the United States, he had a happy and long productive life. You know, he didn't let He didn't let his time on Palau cripple him for the rest of his life.
speaker-0: Some people might have said, that's it, no more getting on a ship for me. But he went to Hawaii, went to help settle Oregon. I mean, he was a very adventurous gentleman, and he was obviously an optimist and a believer in you know doing what a human being should do in whatever circumstances. So let's believe, Eric, that that Is part of living a long and happy life to act honorably in whatever situation you find yourself and not to retreat when you face adversity. I'm gonna switch gears here because I always want to ask successful best selling authors about what you advise aspiring authors, people who are looking to emulate your success, and especially now because your success is in nonfiction. And the audience for nonfiction is shrinking. and that the books of the type that you write and continue to write are are classically being called now dad books. how do you feel about this market trend and what would you tell other authors who want to publish nonfiction books?
speaker-1: Actually, my last few books, each one is sold better than the next. So I'm going in the opposite direction, which is good. I don't believe dad books are dead, and I don't believe dad books are just for dads. I also believe heavily in cycles. Even if readership is going down for nonfiction broadly, and maybe dad books more intently. I think that people as they get older, they want to read. They don't want to just be on social media and doing things that are not as in-depth. I think there'll always be a market for g well-written histories. But a lot of the big publishers, they do seem to be focusing more attention on the big celebrity or platform-based books, people that have a big social media impact and s can sort of get out to a lot of potential readers. I s I think that money is sort of taking even more and more center stage and getting that big best seller, especially since some of the largest publishers in the world are not independent publishers, they're owned by venture capitalists or larger companies. And the bottom line takes on increasing importance when you have shareholders, you have to satisfy. I'm not saying that's good or bad. I'm just saying it adds a lot of pressure on the editors to pick the quote unquote right books or ones that'll hit. I still think there's an opportunity for mid-list and lower authors to get in if they have a really good idea, a good book, and a good story to tell. And the number one piece of advice I would give to any writer is to have a thick skin. Not let failure stop you, not let no stop you. Because if you are gonna wilt when you get your first rejection, you are never gonna make it in publishing. I know of best-selling authors who have had ideas for books turned down multiple times. It's not as if you get to this pinnacle point where you're a best-selling author and you could do whatever you want. It's a there are a lot of people that have to weigh in on your future. So just hang in there. If you have belief in yourself and you're basically a good writer and you have good stories to tell and you're persistent and you don't let no be the end of the matter, I think you have a shot at becoming a writer. I probably get approached 12 to 15 times a year easily from somebody who wants to write a book and they want to buy me a cup of coffee and they want to ask me questions. How did you get an agent? How did you get a book published? Where do you come up with your ideas? It's that much harder, I think, to get published because there's a lot of competition and there are a lot of good writers out there. In fact, there are a lot of books that are published that are wonderful books that don't sell very well. And I feel badly for the authors. Some of my books, older books, have been like that. I go, why aren't more people reading this? But there are literally thousands of books that come out every year just in nonfiction that are all. Interesting, well written. the person who wrote them knows what they're talking about, yet only a very small percentage of them take off and become, you know, real hits or what you consider super successful. So, unless you love what you're doing and you're willing to fight over many years to make a little name for yourself, and you're willing to cobble together a life and still be a writer. Don't start the process because if your eyes are set on Stephen King or David McCullough and that's your role model, good luck getting there. Well
speaker-0: I have to ask you, Eric, as we start to wrap up, share one story where you didn't take no for yourself. Do you have one that you are willing to talk about?
speaker-1: take no. Well yeah, when I was starting off writing before I got before I had an agent, I wrote probably six or seven books. I submitted hundreds of query letters and I didn't get responses and I followed up and I kept going. I've got a whole file cabinet full of rejection letters. But I I do have to say that after Leviathan back in two thousand and seven did well and I had a literary agent at the time, since then I've had some ideas that I've pitched That have been knocked down, and I had a choice. Do I leave and try to find a new publisher? Do I go on to a different topic? So far, I've decided to stay with my current publisher. So there are three or four book proposals that I wrote of books that I wanted to write that I thought were good books, but the publisher was not interested in giving me an advance for them or giving me a contract. And they still sit on my computer, never written by me. one of them I've resuscitated and it might be my next book because circumstances have changed. But so once you have a track record, it is easier to get that next book contract, but it's not easy. It is easier. So we'll see this new book proposal that I just came up with. It's actually an old book proposal that I'm resuscitating. If my publisher says no. Then I don't think I'm gonna take no for an answer. We'll see. I'm not sure what that means, but I I may have to go shop it around, but we'll see what happens.
speaker-0: This has been a wonderful conversation. I know you are working hard to promote the rec of the mentor. Do you want to just tell our audience how they can reach you, where they might find you at a book talk, and any other wrap up remarks that you would like to share today?
speaker-1: Yeah. Well, the best thing to do is go to my website, which is just my name, www www. That's not my name, but you know, Eric J. Dolan, E-R-I-C-J-A-Y-D-O-L-I-N dot com. If you go there, not only can you see all the books I've written and read the introductions of all the books I've written, but you can also go to the events tab and every single book talk I have planned from now. through the beginning of next year is listed there. So if any of them are near you or if it's a Zoom talk, you can zoom on in and listen to me. As for my final words of advice, well, to people that are potential readers, please keep reading books and keeping authors employed. I think it's important to read books. I truly believe that if you don't understand history, not so much you're destined to repeat it, but you really can't put into good context what's happening. In your current life. And for those writers out there who want to be writers, again, if you have faith in yourself, if you don't have faith in yourself, nobody's gonna have faith in you. So you need to have faith in yourself. Keep plugging along, get all the rejections, move past them. And if you have a good product to sell, both a story, your own writing, and yourself, ultimately you'll be successful. But it is a very tough field, not only to break into. It's tough to get a literary agent. It's tough even with a literary agent to get good book deals. It's tough to write your book. It's tough to publish your book. And then you can publish a book that you've spent years on and it doesn't do that well. And you've got to get up the next morning and say, okay, I'm going to try another. Or maybe you're lucky and you're one of those people who has a a huge bestseller. That doesn't make your life all of a sudden easy. Let me tell you, not from my own personal experience so much, but I have so many. stories, anecdotes from other writers. There are a score of writers out there who had one huge hit and they never wrote another book that came close to their huge hit. And some of them it discourages, others it doesn't. And then there are many, many excellent, wonderful writers who never have a big best selling book. In fact, most people never have a best selling book. The average book in a bookstore that you see is gonna probably sell fewer than ten or five thousand hardcover copies in its lifetime. And that's not a huge bestseller.
speaker-0: Well, thank you so much for writing The Wreck of the Mentor, an excellent book that does give us all a perspective on history as well as a a part of the world that few of us even today know nearly enough about. And thank you, Eric, for sharing your advice and the hard nails, nitty gritty, the truth of being a writer today. Thank you.
speaker-1: thank you for having me. Appreciate it.
speaker-1: Thank you for having me. It's good to be back.
speaker-0: Eric, I want to start with the origin story in this particular book. I'm interested in how you learned so much about the islanders and why you chose to put the lens on their lives and cultural norms as well as on the sailors who were shipwrecked.
speaker-1: Well, the idea for the Wreck of the Mentor really goes back to 2007 when I published Leviathan, The History of Whaling in America. And since the Mentor is a whale ship out of New Bedford, while I was working on Leviathan, I came across the story of the mentor, but the mentor's story didn't fit into my narrative for the book. So I just tucked it into the back of my head. I needed a new topic for a book. So I started reading more about the history of the mentor, and I decided that it was the book that I wanted to write because it was one of the most fascinating, improbable, surprising, and dramatic tales of maritime history that I've ever come across. But I had to confront a basic question when I had so much information from the Western perspective, and a lot of the information about the natives was provided by the Westerners who wrote down what they saw. Can I really tell the story if I don't have that much of the authentic voice of the Palauans? And I decided as an historian, you either can throw up your hands and not write any of these histories, because that's going to be the case with so many stories, or you do the best you can. And I feel I did a very respectful job. I I tried to wring out every piece of information I could about Palauan history and their interactions, put it into context when when possible. And it was just a fascinating history, how Palauans got to Palau in the first place, what kind of culture they established, their rites and rituals. I mean, all of it was totally fascinating to me. To come at it from different angles. There was not only the wreck of the mentor, there was the wreck of the antelope, a British ship in seventeen eighty-three. A very extensive book was written about that wreck and the interactions with the Palauans at that time. So it was really fascinating for me to paint a portrait of this environment, this human and natural environment into which these American whalemen were thrust on account of their shipwreck.
speaker-0: What struck me in what you wrote, Eric, was the moral ethic of the leaders, in particular, of some of the islands, in that it was as if they took the word of the English and then the Americans as really reliable. Their word was believed, and it was almost as if. on the islands at that time there wasn't a duplicitous culture on both sides. But and then there was a wonderful episode that you recounted where the the leader, the chief, was going to announce the invasion that he was planning to make on a neighboring island. And the the captain said, wait, don't do that. Like We have to have a surprise attack. That's how we're gonna win. And the chief said, no, that is really immoral. That is wrong. And you did a wonderful job there of presenting the contrast of an indigenous culture which did not have a tradition of surprise attack and duplicitous w warfare.
speaker-1: His name was actually Abathol, but he was a very wise leader. He was universally proclaimed by not only the Westerners, the British who encountered him at first and his own people as being a a wise and fair leader. I thought that interchange was absolutely amazing because here we have the British who have already a long history of taking advantage of other cultures and bloody routes of natives. And here one of the American mariners is basically translating the conversation he had with the king of Karor, one of the villages, where he is going to, before they have a war, he's going to let the enemies know that they're coming. So give them time to surrender if they want to, but so that they'd be prepared. And the wars weren't all out events where they wanted to wipe out everybody. They just wanted to win and then take the spoils and be the leader of the local area and the g the American and the British as well were just flabbergasted that you would warn your enemies that you were coming because the element of surprise is how you often won these these battles and the Palauan chief said that wouldn't be fair, that would bring dishonor to us. That's not the way that you you do it. Just the human interactions and the way in which people evolved over time. Initially the Americans viewed the Palauans as nothing but savages and brutes and uncivilized. After six months of exposure to them, they had a much warmer view. They still felt that they were from an in uncivilized part of the world as compared with the West, and certainly as compared with all the things that Westerners had in their life, the material things. But on a more elemental basis, they came to appreciate the Palauans as being kind, respectful, supplying them with materials, wanting to help them. And so it was nice to see that little bit of evolution. But then that evolution got totally destroyed when they landed on Toby, where they were treated much worse. But you know, this is this is a common story back then of of whalemen and other other Western mariners. Who land on these Pacific Islands and have to deal with the natives. It's often fraught with violence. There were a couple of British sailors who had jumped ship earlier in the 1800s, married Palauan women, learned the language, and risen to the rank of minor chiefs, and they played the role of translator. So it it's a fascinating part of Pacific history. These numerous westerners who ended up in Tonga, in Fiji, in Palau, in the Marquesas. Herman Melville was a beachcomber for a little while in the Marquesas when he left the whale ship of Kushnit, and he used his experiences on the this island to help feed two of his novels, Taipee and Umu. And you wonder how Western Western understanding of Pacific the Pacific. might have been quite different had there been no beachcombers, because in so many instances they acted as translators and they helped ease the way in some cases for Westerners who ended up on the Pacific Islands.
speaker-0: Absolute that. So back to your research, Eric, and the story you wanted to tell in this book. You mentioned that you did a lot of work with Palauan sources and learned a lot from them. There were memoirs from a number of the survivors. Can you talk about how you used those and what you made of their lives after they were rescued? They were so different in how. People went on to live their lives back in the United States.
speaker-1: One of the first things that I read was the book written by Horace Holden, a green hand from New Hampshire, who was on the mentor and ultimately spent more than four years in Palau and Toby came back and wrote a book about his experiences. That was very important. Captain Edward Barnard wrote a handwritten manuscript of his experiences, which wasn't published during his life, but was published in 1979. I used that. There were hundreds of newspaper articles that were written. at the time that this event took place when the men started dribbling back, you know, two at a time. the Naval Rescue Mission had a chronicler on board who wrote very extensive articles, not only about the history of what happened to the mentor, but also what happened when the naval rescue mission sent by President Andrew Jackson arrived in Palau and on Toby and what they did and what their interactions were like. And then there were many books that are written by Palauans. Some written by Palauan community agencies. Some are textbooks used in Palau of their own history. There are books written by Palauans that talk about oral histories of Palau. There are scholars of Palauan history who have written books about Palau that talk not only about the mentor a little bit, but about the broader context of Palauan culture and history. So I used every possible source that I could find. That would help me inform the the story. And as any historian has to do, you look at the sources and you weigh and balance them and you decide, in effect, not who to believe so much, but what information to use. And if there's some information that might be suspect, you at least let the reader know that this might not have been the case. But in the end, you have to rely on the written record. Because I'm not a fan of making up stuff. And I know that there's been a big debate in recent years about books that claim to be nonfiction when parts of them are sort of made up to sort of bridge the gaps in the historical record. I am not comfortable doing that. It might have made for a more interesting story, because you could expand upon certain interchanges, but I really stuck as closely as possible. to the written record that I had and my understanding of the context within which the story took place.
speaker-0: You're maybe this isn't a fair question, but I'll ask it anyway. Did you like any of the characters in particular? Who were you becoming fond of as you scrupulously wrote about the facts that you knew?
speaker-1: Well, I like the the chief, the Ibadul, the one that interacted with the British because he just seemed like a great leader. And one of the things that was fascinating to read is a British ship with an American sailor, a guy a Massa Delano on board who shared a lot of his observations of the chief, the Ibadul. He was there when he was ruling Koror and everything in the community seemed to be going swimmingly. Then he left for a couple of years, and when he came back, the Ibadul had died, and he had been replaced by one of his brothers, who was a far crueler man, who also killed some of his older brothers' advisors. And I thought this one comment by Amasad Delano just hit me like a a a sledgehammer. He basically said that it is amazing to observe the change in an entire Community, a village, a little part of this country that one person can cause, one good leader can make the country or the village work properly and be a pleasant place. And one leader who's a horrible leader can make everything horrible. And I thought anybody who's talks who understands politics, whether it's today or in the past. It's it's really true. It's amazing. Even in a big country like the United States, one person can make a huge change both for the good and for ill. And when I read that, I said, Boy, is that true.
speaker-0: Do you take some inspiration yourself or hope your readers will from Who Survives Against All Odds?
speaker-1: well there's an old saying I wish I should look up who said it. I think it might have been Voltaire, something to the effect that adversity introduces a man to himself. You could put in a woman. And I think that was certainly true with Horace Holden. He was one of the most amazing characters in the story, not only because he wrote a book about his experience, but because he survived such horrific conditions and then lived to be ninety-four years old and just seemed to be a very honorable guy, from what I can gather. From the historical record. Like when he came back, he was tattooed on his arms and chest. He didn't choose to capitalize on that. He only showed it to a few people. Whereas some other people who came back from the Pacific and were tattooed sort of went on to become showmen and circus freaks, for lack of a better word, and hired by PC Barnum. So I liked I liked Holden's the way he chose to live his life and how he handled himself on Palau. he gave me hope that maybe I'll live that long. I doubt it. But he seemed to l he seemed to have a good life. And it really is amazing how human nature, depending on your personality and your composition, can deal with just horrific conditions and then bounce back. Because by all accounts, once he came back into the United States, he had a happy and long productive life. You know, he didn't let He didn't let his time on Palau cripple him for the rest of his life.
speaker-0: Some people might have said, that's it, no more getting on a ship for me. But he went to Hawaii, went to help settle Oregon. I mean, he was a very adventurous gentleman, and he was obviously an optimist and a believer in you know doing what a human being should do in whatever circumstances. So let's believe, Eric, that that Is part of living a long and happy life to act honorably in whatever situation you find yourself and not to retreat when you face adversity. I'm gonna switch gears here because I always want to ask successful best selling authors about what you advise aspiring authors, people who are looking to emulate your success, and especially now because your success is in nonfiction. And the audience for nonfiction is shrinking. and that the books of the type that you write and continue to write are are classically being called now dad books. how do you feel about this market trend and what would you tell other authors who want to publish nonfiction books?
speaker-1: Actually, my last few books, each one is sold better than the next. So I'm going in the opposite direction, which is good. I don't believe dad books are dead, and I don't believe dad books are just for dads. I also believe heavily in cycles. Even if readership is going down for nonfiction broadly, and maybe dad books more intently. I think that people as they get older, they want to read. They don't want to just be on social media and doing things that are not as in-depth. I think there'll always be a market for g well-written histories. But a lot of the big publishers, they do seem to be focusing more attention on the big celebrity or platform-based books, people that have a big social media impact and s can sort of get out to a lot of potential readers. I s I think that money is sort of taking even more and more center stage and getting that big best seller, especially since some of the largest publishers in the world are not independent publishers, they're owned by venture capitalists or larger companies. And the bottom line takes on increasing importance when you have shareholders, you have to satisfy. I'm not saying that's good or bad. I'm just saying it adds a lot of pressure on the editors to pick the quote unquote right books or ones that'll hit. I still think there's an opportunity for mid-list and lower authors to get in if they have a really good idea, a good book, and a good story to tell. And the number one piece of advice I would give to any writer is to have a thick skin. Not let failure stop you, not let no stop you. Because if you are gonna wilt when you get your first rejection, you are never gonna make it in publishing. I know of best-selling authors who have had ideas for books turned down multiple times. It's not as if you get to this pinnacle point where you're a best-selling author and you could do whatever you want. It's a there are a lot of people that have to weigh in on your future. So just hang in there. If you have belief in yourself and you're basically a good writer and you have good stories to tell and you're persistent and you don't let no be the end of the matter, I think you have a shot at becoming a writer. I probably get approached 12 to 15 times a year easily from somebody who wants to write a book and they want to buy me a cup of coffee and they want to ask me questions. How did you get an agent? How did you get a book published? Where do you come up with your ideas? It's that much harder, I think, to get published because there's a lot of competition and there are a lot of good writers out there. In fact, there are a lot of books that are published that are wonderful books that don't sell very well. And I feel badly for the authors. Some of my books, older books, have been like that. I go, why aren't more people reading this? But there are literally thousands of books that come out every year just in nonfiction that are all. Interesting, well written. the person who wrote them knows what they're talking about, yet only a very small percentage of them take off and become, you know, real hits or what you consider super successful. So, unless you love what you're doing and you're willing to fight over many years to make a little name for yourself, and you're willing to cobble together a life and still be a writer. Don't start the process because if your eyes are set on Stephen King or David McCullough and that's your role model, good luck getting there. Well
speaker-0: I have to ask you, Eric, as we start to wrap up, share one story where you didn't take no for yourself. Do you have one that you are willing to talk about?
speaker-1: take no. Well yeah, when I was starting off writing before I got before I had an agent, I wrote probably six or seven books. I submitted hundreds of query letters and I didn't get responses and I followed up and I kept going. I've got a whole file cabinet full of rejection letters. But I I do have to say that after Leviathan back in two thousand and seven did well and I had a literary agent at the time, since then I've had some ideas that I've pitched That have been knocked down, and I had a choice. Do I leave and try to find a new publisher? Do I go on to a different topic? So far, I've decided to stay with my current publisher. So there are three or four book proposals that I wrote of books that I wanted to write that I thought were good books, but the publisher was not interested in giving me an advance for them or giving me a contract. And they still sit on my computer, never written by me. one of them I've resuscitated and it might be my next book because circumstances have changed. But so once you have a track record, it is easier to get that next book contract, but it's not easy. It is easier. So we'll see this new book proposal that I just came up with. It's actually an old book proposal that I'm resuscitating. If my publisher says no. Then I don't think I'm gonna take no for an answer. We'll see. I'm not sure what that means, but I I may have to go shop it around, but we'll see what happens.
speaker-0: This has been a wonderful conversation. I know you are working hard to promote the rec of the mentor. Do you want to just tell our audience how they can reach you, where they might find you at a book talk, and any other wrap up remarks that you would like to share today?
speaker-1: Yeah. Well, the best thing to do is go to my website, which is just my name, www www. That's not my name, but you know, Eric J. Dolan, E-R-I-C-J-A-Y-D-O-L-I-N dot com. If you go there, not only can you see all the books I've written and read the introductions of all the books I've written, but you can also go to the events tab and every single book talk I have planned from now. through the beginning of next year is listed there. So if any of them are near you or if it's a Zoom talk, you can zoom on in and listen to me. As for my final words of advice, well, to people that are potential readers, please keep reading books and keeping authors employed. I think it's important to read books. I truly believe that if you don't understand history, not so much you're destined to repeat it, but you really can't put into good context what's happening. In your current life. And for those writers out there who want to be writers, again, if you have faith in yourself, if you don't have faith in yourself, nobody's gonna have faith in you. So you need to have faith in yourself. Keep plugging along, get all the rejections, move past them. And if you have a good product to sell, both a story, your own writing, and yourself, ultimately you'll be successful. But it is a very tough field, not only to break into. It's tough to get a literary agent. It's tough even with a literary agent to get good book deals. It's tough to write your book. It's tough to publish your book. And then you can publish a book that you've spent years on and it doesn't do that well. And you've got to get up the next morning and say, okay, I'm going to try another. Or maybe you're lucky and you're one of those people who has a a huge bestseller. That doesn't make your life all of a sudden easy. Let me tell you, not from my own personal experience so much, but I have so many. stories, anecdotes from other writers. There are a score of writers out there who had one huge hit and they never wrote another book that came close to their huge hit. And some of them it discourages, others it doesn't. And then there are many, many excellent, wonderful writers who never have a big best selling book. In fact, most people never have a best selling book. The average book in a bookstore that you see is gonna probably sell fewer than ten or five thousand hardcover copies in its lifetime. And that's not a huge bestseller.
speaker-0: Well, thank you so much for writing The Wreck of the Mentor, an excellent book that does give us all a perspective on history as well as a a part of the world that few of us even today know nearly enough about. And thank you, Eric, for sharing your advice and the hard nails, nitty gritty, the truth of being a writer today. Thank you.
speaker-1: thank you for having me. Appreciate it.
