Character Spotlight: Jack Reacher

Jack Reacher #15 Worth Dying For

I first met Jack Reacher back in 2012. Although our first encounter could easily be described as theft, I still treasure our beginning and wouldn’t change it for the world. I was in the Student Union at the University of Central Missouri, waiting to meet my friend for lunch before my two o’ clock class. Reacher sat at next to me on an end table. He was a compact novel dressed in a red battered cover, displaying his father’s name, Lee Child, and Reacher’s adventure he called Worth Dying For.

            Reacher sat there, daring me to pick him up, daring me to take him home. “To hell with the person who forgot me,” Reacher had said. He had a story to tell me, and I was more than willing to let him tell it. I slipped him into my book bag, and from there we began our romance.

Reacher's Beginnings

 Jack Reacher’s literary birth was around 1995 when Jim Grant’s eighteen-year career as presentation director at Granada Television became redundant due to corporate restrictions. Seeing a door opening for future endeavors, Jim Grant went out and bought six dollars’ worth of paper and pencils and slowly began giving birth to Reacher at his dining room table.

While writing Killing Floor, which would become Reacher’s first adventure, Grant and his wife

Jack Reacher #1 Killing Floor

Jane were at the market, where a lady who wasn’t tall enough to reach the top shelf asked for Grant’s assistance. Grant, who is way over six foot, was happy to oblige. “Hey, if this writing thing doesn't pan out, you could always be a reacher in a supermarket,” his had wife told him. Jack was then given his last name.

Jim Grant then became Lee Child. He adopted the name “Lee” from a joke within his family about the mispronunciation of Renault's Le Car. In a ’99 interview with crimepays.com, Lee Child spoke of what he wanted Jack Reacher to be: “Old Reacher is a mixture of a lot of things. Obviously, he’s a fictional hero, so you start with a certain element of conscious design. For me, most of that was negative. I knew what I didn't want him to be.

“I didn't want him to be in any way dysfunctional, alcoholic, divorced, tired, gloomy, recovering from a previous trauma. Nothing like that. I felt that kind of hero is an old, tired concept. Great fifteen years ago, but now it's overdone. So I wanted him to be upbeat, confident in himself, very competent. I wanted him to avoid silly mistakes. I wanted him to be physically and mentally very powerful.”  

With 90 millions copies sold, 19 novels published, 13 literary awards won, and 1 movie made, Lee Child’s Jack Reacher is one of the most popular literary heroes, or as Stephen King said: “Lee Child’s tough but humane Jack Reacher is the coolest continuing series character now on offer.”

Reacher’s Allure

What makes Jack Reacher so alluring? In a 2012 interview with Playboy, Child himself gave the simple explanation, “Reacher is the alpha male of the genre.” After leaving the military in 1997, Reacher became a drifter, hitching across the United States. Reacher’s life on the road is so simple he doesn’t own a change of clothes. When the clothes on his back become soiled, he throws them away and buys new ones (he never seems to own a pair of underwear, however). Trouble always finds Reacher. He uses his immense military training and smarts to uncover an ominous mystery plaguing a town or a woman.

 Reacher is also mysterious. With each novel the reader learns a little more about Reacher’s past. Even in Reacher’s first adventure, the reader is given very little information about who Jack Reacher is, however, we soon discover that he is the wrong guy to cross. Reacher has the uncanny ability to stay calm under the worst of situations. While being held captive alongside FBI agent Holly Johnson in ’98’s Die Trying, Reacher never found himself panicking, he maintained a level head, trying to find a way out of the predicament he found himself in.

Movie rights have been sold as early as ’99, which for one reason or another, the deals have always fallen through. It wasn’t until 2012 where readers got to see Reacher on the big screen in Jack Reacher, based on Lee Child’s novel, One Shot. The movie starring Tom Cruise grossed $218,340,595 and a sequel based on Never Look Back is said to be in development with Tom Cruise reprising his role. Though I'm a huge Jack Reacher fan, I couldn’t bring myself to see the movie (my mind may change sooner or later). When seeing the theatrical

poster reading Tom Cruise is Jack Reacher I found myself yelling in my head “no, he’s not!” I can’t picture my Jack Reacher being portrayed as a five-foot pretty boy.

“When you transfer a book to the screen, something’s going to give,” Lee Child said when asked about his responds to Tom Cruise play Jack Reacher. “It seems to me there are three essential things about Reacher. First, he’s smart. Second, he’s still and quiet yet menacing. Third, he’s huge. It was always likely we were going to lose one of those characteristics. The question was which. For a long time we were fixated on his physique. We had to have a big guy. But we got nowhere. There were no actors big enough who could do even one of the other things. Then it came as an epiphany. Give up the physique and concentrate on Reacher’s smartness and quietness.”

Upon the release of Jack Reacher, a Facebook page called Tom Cruise is not Jack Reacher was created where fans of the books could complain about their disapproval. To date the page has generated over 10,000 likes. “Readers feel they have some incredibly intimate possession,” Child said of the Facebook page, “Reacher is theirs alone. Now suddenly this will be blown open. They get defensive. They think, I don’t want this taken away from me. This is my private thing, and the whole world is going to see it. The nature of the relationship has changed. People feel hostile toward someone else’s interpretation of a book. Their default position is opposition. I say to them, ‘See the movie, and then we’ll talk about it.’ My guess is that out of every 100 book lovers, 75 will say, ‘That was really good.’ And 25 will hate it. There’s just nothing you can do about that.”

My personal interest in Jack Reacher goes a little further than his heroic charm. I find him funny, I’m constantly laughing at what he’s saying or doing. And I find how he embraces his isolation to be beautiful. Reacher is a loner by choice. He has been given opportunities for companionship but he refuses them, because he feels more comfort on his own.

 I’ll be sure to catch Jack Reacher in his newest adventure Make Me, coming out in September. 

Jack Reacher #20 Make Me

 

The Truth About Self-Publishing

Publishing is a billion dollar industry with millions of titles being produced each year. In 2013, the United States alone published over 300,000 new titles and re-editions, while China saw close to 500,000. With all the tools now available for writers, getting ones work in the hands of readers has never been easier, right? WRONG! In order to give your book baby a fighting chance in a world where established authors have the first pick of readers, there is a right way and a wrong way to go about self-publishing.

The perks of self-publishing

Total creative control is one of the aspects of self-publishing that authors gravitate toward. Everything from the content within the pages to the packaging, self-publishing authors have full control over. They do not need to worry about a web of editors gradually muting their voice or artists designing horrid book covers (some brave authors are very vocal about their despair when seeing their book cover for the first time). A self-publishing author is able to guide their child through life from concept to publication. Another aspect of self-publishing that ALL DIY (do-it-yourself) authors do backflips over are their profits. Authors who self-publish see more profit than those who take the traditional route. Hell, authors who publish through Amazon see 70% of their sells. Too good to be true? You bet your sweet ass it is.

The hard truth about self-publishing

Based on a survey conducted by The Guardian, 1,007 self-published authors were asked their year earnings from book sells. The average book earnings a year was $10,000. When you think about it, if you were keep a full-time job, 10,000 extra dollars isn’t such a bad thing. However, half of those authors made…gasp…under $500 from their book sells…A YEAR! If you pay alimony or child support, don’t expect your yearly earning of $500 to keep anyone happy. It is said that the average sells for an eBook from a DIY author are 100 units. No, that’s not in the book’s first month on its own, that number is for its entire life. Literary agents don’t even want to hear about a self-published book unless it has sold over 20,000 copies.

One-Night Stan's by Greg Sisco

Like it or not, people judge books by their covers. A poorly designed book cover is viewed as a refection of its content. Even if you’re a master wordsmith, a crappy book cover generates crappy sells. Of course, this can be avoided by hiring someone to design a book cover for you. Greg Sisco, author of The Blood Brother Vampire Series and the dark comedic novel, One-Night Stan’s, was wise enough to hire designers to create covers that look as good as those from traditional publishing houses. And no, my opinion isn’t bias because I think he’s hot.

Self-publishing authors who refuse the assistance of a copy-editor, however, are bias; they are unable to see the flaws in their work. Even with a high-quality cover, self-publishing authors who self-edit are easy to spot, and their sells suffer from their refusal for help. Copy-editors play a huge role in perfecting a book. They earn a living annoying writers by pointing out the tiniest of flaws in their work. Self-publishing authors need to be taken seriously, more so than established authors, and each typo found in their pages takes away from the credibility they’re trying to gain. It would be wise to invest in a copy-editor. And despite what one may think, copy-editors do not stifle an author’s voice.

Self-publishing the right way

Can a self-publishing author achieve success without help? In my opinion, no. There are always expectations to any rule, but those expectations are wide and far in between. If you expect to become a household name by creating a crappy book cover, self-editing your manuscript and selling it through a free print-on-demand service, then you might as well reserve a spot in the unemployment line. That assumption, my dear reader, is the WRONG way to self-publish.

If I haven’t lost you yet, you’re probably yelling at your computer screen, demanding for me to tell you what’s the right way to go about self-publishing. Well, shut the hell up, and let me tell you.

Marketing is the key element for a self-published author to find success. Without word-of-mouth and discoverability, the most skillful writer’s career will diminish before it inhales its first breath. For a fee, print-on-demand services like iUniverse, Book Baby and Mill City Press will help their authors become visible in a cluttered industry. They work with the resources akin to a small or medium-sized publishing house. Press releases will be sent, websites will be made, social media presences will be felt, and even book trailers will be watched. If you choose to publish through a print-on-demand site like Amazon’s CreateSpace that doesn’t offer any marketing services, public relations sites like Smith Publicity exclusively work with authors wanting to market their books.

For $500 NetGalley is also an ideal resource for an author’s work to find the eyes of readers. NetGalley is designed for soon to be released books to generate reviews from newspapers, magazines and blogs. If a reviewer is interested in reviewing a book, a request will be sent to the author. When using this site, however, authors need to use their better judgment when allowing a reviewer to download the digital galley of their book. A few rotten apples who just want free books are among the honest reviewers.

You may have to spend a lot more money than thought, but don’t give up! Most authors who are looking into self-publishing do not have the financial means to invest thousands of dollars into bringing their manuscript to bookshelves. If you’re above turning tricks for extra cash, then crowd-funding is always an option. Backers on crowd-funding site like Publush and Kickstarter have donated thousands of dollars to authors whose projects they believed in. Projects on Kickstarter have 50% success rate.

Every writer’s dream is to have their book enjoyed by readers. Self-publishing IS an option to achieve that dream, but it’s not as easy as its said to be. It takes money and dedication. On one last note, keep this in mind: you could spend thousands of dollars on marketing, designers and editors, but no money in the world can buy talent.