Outdoorsman to Orator

Case Study

Dan Ellens, Forest Legend: The Tale of Ol' Split Toe

Dan Ellens is excited about his latest book and is tickled when others are receptive to hearing about it. He would probably scoff at being called an orator, or a “skilled, eloquent speaker” but during our interview, he was confident, convincing, and delivered his message with clarity. These days, he finds himself talking to a lot of people about his recently published fiction book, Forest Legend: The Tale of Ol’ Split Toe, with Mission Point Press.

This book has been a new chapter in Ellens life. He had mulled over the storyline for more than a year. It was a story he wanted to tell his children and grandchildren. He was seeing it as an adventure tale, but also with a deep vein of ecological reverence and somewhat shamanic. In his childhood, Ellens was always out on adventures, including biking the whole length of the Lake Michigan coast, up through the Mackinaw Straits and down the Lake Huron coast to home in the burbs of Detroit.

Praise for Forest Legend is rolling in.

“A powerful, lyrical meditation on wilderness, myth, and memory. Ellens has created a tale that feels ancient and urgent at the same time,” noted William Gibson, author of Neuromancer and The New York Times bestseller, Agency.

Ellens says he’s actually a shy person, but he follows his instinct of what needs to be done. He admits, “I know I need to do this, because I’m the face of this book. I believe in the ecological message, it’s the reason I wrote it. I will put myself out there until the book takes on a life of its own.”

He’s no stranger to writing. Ellens had self-published four books before Forest Legend: The Tale of Ol’ Split Toe. He spent nearly half of each year in an isolated, electricity-free treehouse on Winterfield Pines Nature Sanctuary in northern, central Michigan with woodstove heat, handpump water, and oil lamp lighting—more than 3,000 nights in all.

For his new manuscript, Ellens needed a “good polish.” When he finally landed with a hybrid publisher, he was hoping to connect with a publisher who would publish his novel as with as much passion as he had written it. He was impressed by how MPP “delivered an elegant product with skilled teamwork, and care and attention to detail.”

Marketing, however, is another animal … one that authors often find daunting. He found himself at loose ends about approaching social media, so he started with a different route that suited him better: hitting the pavement. Ellens is on a quest to meet face-to-face with each and every library and bookstore in the lower peninsula of Michigan and give them his pitch for his new young adult, fiction tale with strong themes of nature, adventure, and time travel woven through it. 

Ellens says, “To put it in context, when I started at MPP, I started at zero.” He had no social media accounts, no website, little knowledge of marketing in general. “So, I pressed it pretty hard and made a pest of myself online. I wanted to brand myself as a woodsman who lives in the woods—the authentic me for the last decade!” He estimates that ninety percent of the content he now puts out is getting his book title in front of people. On all his sites—Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, website, blog—he posts every day and this has changed his lifestyle.

Used to being out in the woods every day, Ellens now spends only about twenty percent of his time at his beloved forest property. Instead, he’s out making cold calls, bringing the MPP sell sheet, and telling them about the book—he puts a face on it to booksellers. This has led to plenty of author events; incredibly, he’s scheduled out for the next eight months. He doesn’t say no to anything—readings, book fairs, radio and TV interviews. All he knows is that he’s trending after these visits. Ellens’s theory is that if he sits still, it drifts off, the buzz of it all, his book’s attention. So, he “wiggled his way through [marketing] and basically did as the experts told me.” Ellens promotes his work the same way he wrote his book, with energy and passion.

And it’s working. Sales are going up, and Ellens is finding out how supportive readers and booksellers are for his book. Nearly all of the people he contacts respond positively. He concludes, “The way I am looking at things is that what we have done so far—everything we have done (Amazon enhancements, Goodreads giveaways, net galley, websites, social media, media blitzes, press releases, and more)—has created a solid foundation to build on as time goes on. None of the things would be enough on their own, but together they are a force.”

Ellens believes the MPP imprint carries a lot of weight. “It is a well-respected, professional home for this book. I was happy with the self-publishing solution for my first four books.  But those books did not have the potential that this story does. The imprint I have used in the past does not carry the same mainstream impression in my own mind or the mind of the people I am talking to as MPP does.”  In his first four books, he had done his own editing and design but admits it was not near the caliber of Mission Point Press.

From Ellens point of view, “MPP should not be put in the pack with other hybrid publishers. I think they have a whole lot more depth. They have high quality people and a robust publishing process. The results speak for themselves. I found my publishing experience with MPP to be a trouble-free way to do it.”

Cheers to you, Dan Ellens. Now, get back to your woods.