SHALLA CHATS with Barry Eisler

“Insider’s Look at Publishing the Rain Series”

by Shalla DeGuzman

First of all, who ’s Barry?

A writer with a longstanding interest in what he thinks of as “forbidden knowledge,” Barry spent three years in a covert position with the CIA's Directorate of Operations. During his time with the Agency, he was trained in small arms, long arms, hand-to-hand combat, improvised explosive devices, small water craft, air drops to friendly forces, surveillance, counter-surveillance, counter-terrorism, agent recruitment and management, and interrogation and manipulation techniques. After leaving the CIA he went to live and work in Japan, where he earned his black belt from the Kodokan International Judo Center.

The Rain books, featuring half-Japanese, half-American freelance assassin John Rain, have won the Deadly Pleasures Barry Award and the Mystery Ink Gumshoe Award for Best Thriller of the Year; have been included in numerous “Best Of” lists, including those of Amazon.com, Deadly Pleasures, News-Press, Publisher’s Weekly, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the San Jose Mercury News; have been translated into nearly twenty languages; and have been optioned for film by Barrie Osborne, Oscar-winning producer of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

To learn more, please visit www.barryeisler.com.

Shalla: Hello Barry, congratulations on your book The Last Assassin being nominated for the 2006 Gumshoe Best Thriller, that must be exciting.

Barry: It certainly is. Most of the Rain books have been nominated for the Gumshoe, and the third, Rain Storm, won it, and it’s gratifying to know that Rain still has his mojo…

Shalla: Please tell us about your Rain series. Everyone’s raving about it over at Amazon, many giving it 5 stars. What is it about? What makes it special?

Barry: The Rain books are a thriller series about a half-Japanese, half-American assassin named John Rain, whose specialty is making it look like natural causes. But that’s just the surface, of course.

What makes the series special? Well, it’s difficult to attribute a series’ success to any single factor. In the case of the Rain books, readers and critics have praised the rich cast of characters, strong sense of place, pacing, exciting action sequences, and steamy love scenes. Certainly these are all contributing causes. But if I had to attribute the series’ success to just one thing, I think I would point to realism.

First, there is Rain himself – an assassin with psychological antecedents drawn from sources like Lt. Col. Dave’s Grossman’s “On Killing” and “On Combat;” John L. Plaster’s works on Special Forces in Vietnam; and from personal acquaintance. This realism is part of what makes Rain so compelling – and what has led Entertainment Weekly to declare Rain “the stuff great characters are made of”; Publisher’s Weekly to call him “a wholly original, cliché-free character”; and the Daily Record to say Rain is “the coolest, sexiest killer on the block.” He’s not a cardboard cut-out; rather, he is someone with a history, a philosophy, even a (conflicted) conscience.

Also, there are the surveillance, countersurveillance, and other tradecraft elements, all of which draw on my time as a clandestine officer in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations. Similarly, the action sequences draw on my black belt in judo and other extensive martial arts experience, and have been praised by publications like Black Belt and Grappling magazines; websites like MMAFighting.com and OnTheMat.com; and experts like Tony Blauer, Gavin de Becker, Dave Grossman, and Marc MacYoung.

Then there are what the Washington Examiner calls “the beautifully rendered exotic settings that have become the series trademark”: a Tokyo that even Japanese reviewers like the Asahi Shinbun agree is “wonderfully depicted”; a Macau and Hong Kong that Publisher’s Weekly calls “rendered in intimately warm detail”; a Manila, Bangkok and Phuket that the Sun-Sentinal praises as ”wonderfully detailed.” I lived in Japan for three years and continue to travel there several times a year for research and promotion, and have visited all the other settings to ensure they come alive in the books. The bars, jazz clubs, martial arts training halls – they’re all real and described as I have found them. If you’re curious, you can see photos of me “walking in the footsteps of John Rain” on my website at http://www.barryeisler.com/photo.php.

Finally, the books deal with some interesting moral and philosophical issues, including the propriety of governments licensing men to kill; when ends justify means; and whether we can remain human if we leave society – questions that are sharpened by the realistic circumstances in which they are raised.

Ultimately, the experience I’m trying to create for readers is that of a fictional character caught up in real – even recognizable – circumstances. I think it’s this experience – that sense of “this could really have happened! This could really be going on!” that differentiates the Rain books from other thrillers and that, in addition to solid entertainment value, has led to the series’ overwhelmingly positive reception.

The authors I’m compared to most often seem to be Lee Child (who I’m proud to count as a Rain enthusiast – and certainly there seems to be a heavy overlap between Jack Reacher’s readers and those of John Rain), Michael Connelly, Ian Fleming, Graham Greene, John le Carré, and Trevanian. As a fan of all these authors, needless to say I’m pleased and honored by the comparisons.

Shalla: Requiem for an Assassin is the sixth book in the series, right? Are all your books published by Putnam Adult?

Barry: Right on both counts. Requiem for an Assassin is out on May 22, and it will be my sixth book with Penguin Putnam.

Shalla: Have you always only worked with print publishers? Have you ever tried e-publishing before? Why/why not?

Barry: Well, the books are also available electronically, and I don’t think print and electronic should be either/or – there are markets for both and publishers would be wise to sell through both channels. But given the current relative immaturity of the e-publishing market, I think it would be hard to make a living selling my books by download only.

Shalla: What would you say are the benefits to being published by a large publishing house like Putnam? And Signet?

Barry: The primary benefit a big publisher confers is distribution and imprimatur. Distribution, because the big publishers have sales forces that sell into the largest channels for book sales: independent booksellers; chain stores like Borders and B&N; Amazon; and “big box” stores like Costco and Wal-Mart. Without a large sales force with relationships with these channels, it would be hard to sell a lot of books.

Of course, if you self-publish, you keep a higher percentage of the price from each book. Every writer should do the math for herself: will you make more money selling fewer books with more profit from each sale, or more books with lower profit from each sale? Run the numbers, and whichever is the better business model, go with it. I doubt that self publishing has the same overall profit potential as the outsourced sales force model, but I’ve never done a study, so I could be wrong.

As for the “imprimatur” value, think of it as an Ivy League degree. The substantive education you receive is no better than that of a far less expensive state school, but the magic of the Ivy League name opens doors that would otherwise remain closed. And, as with that super expensive Ivy League degree, individual authors need to decide whether the benefit of the big publisher’s imprimatur is worth the price.

Shalla: Do you consider working with a large publishing house a bit on the impersonal side? Do you get to meet everyone who’s worked on the publication of your book?

Barry: Shalla, if I didn’t know better, at this point I would suspect you have an agenda… ?

I haven’t found it impersonal at all. I know and am in touch with all the key players involved in the publication of my book, including the president of the company. That said, I can imagine where you’d have even more contact and input at a smaller house. For me, though, contact and input are only means to an end. The end itself is the commercial success of my novels. Whatever publisher is best positioned to achieve that success is the one I want to work with.

Shalla: You’re a seasoned, talented writer and I’m wondering, do you still find yourself having to go through the long rigmarole of editing? With the help from line editors? Copy editors? Editors-at-large?

Barry: Hmmm, I’m not sure what you mean by rigmarole. I can’t imagine any 100,000 word manuscript that wouldn’t benefit from substantial editorial feedback. What did Hemingway say? “The first draft is shit.” So I welcome the rigor of multiple levels of review and feedback, from my wife; my agent and his wife; my editor and his assistant; various friends and family whose opinions I trust; the copyeditor; and finally the proofreader.

All editorial suggestions that come my way are exactly that – suggestions – and I only take the ones that I think are good. Sure, the process is a pain in the neck, but if want your book to be the best it can be, there’s no shortcut.

Shalla: Lastly, where is the Rain series going next? Any hints?

Barry: I’m taking a break from Rain with the seventh book, which will be a standalone thriller. After that, I might return to Rain’s universe, perhaps with his lover, Israeli operative Delilah, in the lead role. It’s hard to me to think more than one book ahead, though, so I won’t know for sure until I’m a little closer…

Shalla: Thanks Barry, I’ll probably pick up a copy of the first one, Rain Fall, I hear it’s a stunning debut!

For more on Barry Eisler, please visit http://www.barryeisler.com.

Shalla DeGuzman's short stories have appeared in Poetic Diversity, the Mosaic Literary Journal, the Mad Hatters Review, etc.; her articles in The Scriptorium and L.A. Freepress; her skits at the Stella Adler Theatre. Her flash fiction The Fish In My Bed recently won the FISH AND PLANE Competition and is featured in Issue 6 of Mad Hatters Review. Shalla, a former writer and producer of a health and fitness cable show, is currently writing a novel. She is President of The ShallaDeGuzman Writers Group where she interviews literary agents, publishers, editors, etc. News! Shalla has been nominated for the prestigious Pushcart Prize. SHALLA Magazine, which features short stories and excerpts from top, award-winning writers, is here! For more on Shalla: www.shalladeguzman.com