A travel memoir has reminded me that successful books enjoy lives as gadgets. The memoir includes a chapter on visiting New Mexico, where the immigrant author took in the saga and spectacle of Los Alamos. That was the location for the work of Manhattan Project, which created the first atomic bomb.
The memoir’s story reminded us that the project’s goal was never called a bomb. Not among the scientists there, especially. It was called “the gadget.” The naming helped everybody calm down and do good work. Yes, the bomb was going to save civilization from the Nazis. But thinking about it that way, well, it might introduce some errors. Or worry, which can then cause errors.
Books are not civilization-saving weapons, but as authors and editors we think of them as crucial to us. As creators, as curators, they will save something, preserve a moment forever. Change a life outlook, that sort of thing.
You can think of your book like that, and it will also help to make room for calling The Gadget. To publishers who will bring your book into the world en masse, your lifesaving book is a gadget, lining up alongside many other gadgets. The engine of intellect and hope puts gadgets into shopping carts and bags. Every book is a line entry on a spreadsheet. Some gadgets work and others do not make such a big bang.
making the Best Gadget
It’s hard for a creator to take this view at the start of the book journey. Your heart might be deep inside that book about your great grandmother and her mighty effort to save her family after her husband went back to the priesthood. There was a child, oh my, and what because of that was a lesson in courage. Something like the events in Sins of Liberty.
On the other hand, great grandma’s courage is a gadget, which makes it easier to endure its failures and be patient for its successes. You’re making a story, and those are magic. Then at one point, you’ll want readers and the gadget work — carried out by patient scientists who knew lots of mistakes had to add up before the biggest win ever — enters the book’s life.
When a book is misprinted, boxes go missing, a review includes a mistake, or the price of the enterprise doesn’t match the estimate, it’s become gadget time. Poolside clocks and garden gnomes suffer the same kinds of mistakes. The makers and the sellers don’t freak out. They remember this is part of the trip to make a book into an item with a tangible expression. That tangible aspect deserves respect, too. Making the best story we can as we write and edit and revise — that’s showing respect for the gadget part of the book’s life.
Until we know our target for a book — the readers we want to delight and locate — it won’t do us much good to push a book into gadget status. Knowing our readers is worth the time it takes to learn that answer. You’ll have to express that audience understanding over and over as you take your book from dream, to reality, and onward to gadget.
