I'd like to know how anyone can get a book published without an agent. I've been doing this (trying to, that is) for more than 30 years and I don't know of ANY publisher who will read an unsolicited manuscript. The field, as I see it, is set up like this: a publisher doesn't want you unless you're represented by an agent, who doesn't want you unless you have literally knocked their socks off with the query letter to end all query letters, and if the query letter doesn't turn their crank, you're stuck out in the cold. You may have the next Catcher in the Rye resting comfortably in your filing cabinet for the rest of your life, but unless you nail the publishing world with that perfect query letter, you're just another rank amateur no one cares about.
Did I get it right?
Well, yes, except for most of what you said, which was technically incorrect. First of all, my boss often does not wear socks with her sandals like I do. Second, I'm not sure what a crank has to do with being cold, but if we're supposed to have one of those crank things in the office, I should put in a complaint with the guys we rent from. I will say that it is very cold in our offices and I'm often wearing my coat in the summer, but they can't do anything about it because it's central air.
Now that I'm done being a smartass, I will say that any amount of research will inform you that may publishers DO take unsolicited manuscripts, and some of them even accept and publish them! Who knew! Publishers include Tor, Sourcebooks, Baen Books, Ace Books, Daw Books, several divisions of Harlequin Enterprises, and basically every small/independent press known to man.
Though specifically sci-fi/fantasy oriented, a great place to look up publishers and magazines that take unsolicited material is Ralan.com.
Monday, May 07, 2007
Thursday, May 03, 2007
Literary Fiction, Short Stories, and Getting Published
Many people have questioned how it's possible for the next generation of great literary masters to get published, what with people like me rejecting everything that comes in the mail. The answer (or one possible answer) is that generally literary fiction operates in a slightly different way than genre fiction does. Genre fiction, if well-written, can generally be sold to a major publishing house by a first-time novelist without any background. Not so with literary fiction.
Almost all of modern day literary fiction authors get started with short stories, and I don't mean the one or two you managed to get published in an online zine that paid you $5. These are generally people who get published in huge magazines like Atlantic Monthly or The Michigan Quarterly Review or even The New Yorker. And they don't just do it once. They've got a good 6 or 7 stories published before they sit down to write the novel.
Said novel is very appealing to us because those are some serious writing credits. The novel is good, so it's published, and to some critical acclaim, or makes some money, or quite possibly both (but not necessarily). At this point, the agent turns to the novelist and says, "What else do you have?"
"Well, I've got these short stories that I can now republish because the rights have expired with the magazines."
"Uh, there's only like 6 of them. Throw in a bunch of unpublished ones and something you've written recently and we'll put it out as a collection."
If you ask any agent, they will generally say they don't take short story collections. What they mean is, "We don't take short story collections from people who haven't had at least half of those stories published in major literary avenues," which rules out almost every applicant. Most short story collections by novelists are the bunch they got published, a few that they didn't, and maybe one or two that were thrown together to fill out the book. The publisher might even pull some strings and get one of the new stories published in The New Yorker at the same time the short story collection comes out to push the book. The collection feeds on the fame of the novel, and the literary novelist gets some more writing credits and some time to write the second novel. Or they might stay in short stories if they can't think up a new novel but have a few short ideas floating around their head, and keep publishing anthologies until they have enough to make up a "greatest hits" collection.
Can you see how the success of one thing kinda feeds off the other? People pick up books by names they recognize. It might help to have an "author of the acclaimed New Yorker piece..." sticker on the cover. Next time you're in a book store, pick up a short story collection and see how many pieces were previously published and where they were published.
You don't have to write short stories to get into literary fiction, but it helps.
Almost all of modern day literary fiction authors get started with short stories, and I don't mean the one or two you managed to get published in an online zine that paid you $5. These are generally people who get published in huge magazines like Atlantic Monthly or The Michigan Quarterly Review or even The New Yorker. And they don't just do it once. They've got a good 6 or 7 stories published before they sit down to write the novel.
Said novel is very appealing to us because those are some serious writing credits. The novel is good, so it's published, and to some critical acclaim, or makes some money, or quite possibly both (but not necessarily). At this point, the agent turns to the novelist and says, "What else do you have?"
"Well, I've got these short stories that I can now republish because the rights have expired with the magazines."
"Uh, there's only like 6 of them. Throw in a bunch of unpublished ones and something you've written recently and we'll put it out as a collection."
If you ask any agent, they will generally say they don't take short story collections. What they mean is, "We don't take short story collections from people who haven't had at least half of those stories published in major literary avenues," which rules out almost every applicant. Most short story collections by novelists are the bunch they got published, a few that they didn't, and maybe one or two that were thrown together to fill out the book. The publisher might even pull some strings and get one of the new stories published in The New Yorker at the same time the short story collection comes out to push the book. The collection feeds on the fame of the novel, and the literary novelist gets some more writing credits and some time to write the second novel. Or they might stay in short stories if they can't think up a new novel but have a few short ideas floating around their head, and keep publishing anthologies until they have enough to make up a "greatest hits" collection.
Can you see how the success of one thing kinda feeds off the other? People pick up books by names they recognize. It might help to have an "author of the acclaimed New Yorker piece..." sticker on the cover. Next time you're in a book store, pick up a short story collection and see how many pieces were previously published and where they were published.
You don't have to write short stories to get into literary fiction, but it helps.
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
Postage Alert
For those of you unaware, there's a rate hike starting May 14th on stamps from 39 to 41 cents. If you think this is unfair, you can go to usps.com and be told in very complicated language to "eat it." Apparently some aspects of the rate hike are still under negotiation, such as the proposed plan to throw out all the reasonable options for international shipping and just make everything really fast but really expensive and not give anyone any options to save money by waiting.
Remember to address your SASEs and apply the right postage. Some agents give leeway (especially to stuff that's been sitting on their desks for months because they were busy with managing their new bestseller) and put on the extra 2 cents themselves. Sometimes the post office just ignores it. Some agents reject by email.
Nobody's happy on this end, either. We do a lot of shipping ourselves - mainly contracts and books, often overseas. I don't know if the government cut their budget or what, but they'd better have a damn good reason for this.
Edit: See the comments for a mailman's damn good reason for this.
Remember to address your SASEs and apply the right postage. Some agents give leeway (especially to stuff that's been sitting on their desks for months because they were busy with managing their new bestseller) and put on the extra 2 cents themselves. Sometimes the post office just ignores it. Some agents reject by email.
Nobody's happy on this end, either. We do a lot of shipping ourselves - mainly contracts and books, often overseas. I don't know if the government cut their budget or what, but they'd better have a damn good reason for this.
Edit: See the comments for a mailman's damn good reason for this.
Yeah, Yeah, We Don't Like Literary Fiction
Dear Rejecter,
I am dying to know:
If "Gravity's Rainbow" landed on your desk, what would you make of it? I ask because, as far as literary fiction is concerned, experimentation is often a big part of enduring literature. How open are agencies to experimental work? Do they give it a close look over, or would this type of writing be an auto-reject. How would "The Recognitions," "Infinite Jest," "Ulysses" etc. fare coming from an unknown?
Thanks.
They would get rejected, by not by everybody. I don't care much for literary fiction, but I like to think that I know when a paragraph is just written well, or turns the craft of reading up on its head (as Pychon is known for doing, often contradicting himself, speaking to his readers, or doing historical fiction with known inaccuracies). Against the Day is hard. You have to think. And then when you're done thinking, you've accomplished something (hopefully). Perhaps my favorite piece of literary fiction is As I Lay Dying, but the only reason is because I was forced to read it line-by-line in high school and try to interpret it as I went.
Writing at the highest level has the trick of writing both appealing prose and putting substance behind it. In our hectice lives, we might not have the time I had to start pulling apart Faulkner's paragraphs and seeing how they were tragic and comic at the same time. We might just say, "No one will read this. Reject." Or the author might not know how to write a good query letter and might not send a sample page or two with it, so we'll never read them at all.
Literary fiction is very, very hard to break into, so generally agents don't make a lot of money on the first sale, so they're not entirely interested (especially if the text is above them - who wants to try to edit Joyce?) in this person as a client. That's the harsh business angle look at it.
I wouldn't say I wouldn't reject Pychon if I saw him labeled as someone else, but he would be noticable above all of the thrillers that start with the protagonist waking up too early in the morning and then complaining about it.
I am dying to know:
If "Gravity's Rainbow" landed on your desk, what would you make of it? I ask because, as far as literary fiction is concerned, experimentation is often a big part of enduring literature. How open are agencies to experimental work? Do they give it a close look over, or would this type of writing be an auto-reject. How would "The Recognitions," "Infinite Jest," "Ulysses" etc. fare coming from an unknown?
Thanks.
They would get rejected, by not by everybody. I don't care much for literary fiction, but I like to think that I know when a paragraph is just written well, or turns the craft of reading up on its head (as Pychon is known for doing, often contradicting himself, speaking to his readers, or doing historical fiction with known inaccuracies). Against the Day is hard. You have to think. And then when you're done thinking, you've accomplished something (hopefully). Perhaps my favorite piece of literary fiction is As I Lay Dying, but the only reason is because I was forced to read it line-by-line in high school and try to interpret it as I went.
Writing at the highest level has the trick of writing both appealing prose and putting substance behind it. In our hectice lives, we might not have the time I had to start pulling apart Faulkner's paragraphs and seeing how they were tragic and comic at the same time. We might just say, "No one will read this. Reject." Or the author might not know how to write a good query letter and might not send a sample page or two with it, so we'll never read them at all.
Literary fiction is very, very hard to break into, so generally agents don't make a lot of money on the first sale, so they're not entirely interested (especially if the text is above them - who wants to try to edit Joyce?) in this person as a client. That's the harsh business angle look at it.
I wouldn't say I wouldn't reject Pychon if I saw him labeled as someone else, but he would be noticable above all of the thrillers that start with the protagonist waking up too early in the morning and then complaining about it.
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Annoying Clients: Don't Be One.
We writers have websites, blogs, and message boards that warn us about the scam lit agents, for example, "Writer Beware". Do agents have the same sorts of blogs and message boards about some of the unpleasant writers who query them? Sort of "Agents Beware"?
We're browsing the same internet as you are, so no. The answer is no. Plus, it would be sort of rude of us to start branding people over the internet, if not downright immoral. No one's trying to scam us - it's not as if they don't have a manuscript when they say they do and then ask us to buy it sight-unseen (and we don't buy manuscripts anyway). As for query letters that are just plain obnoxious or annoying, those are instant rejects. End of story. Occasionally, in a shared office situation, one assistant will turn to the other and say, "Did you see this?" if everyone obviously got the same letter in the same mail bag that day. "Oh yeah, that was terrible." Laugh, move on.
There are annoying writers out there, but they're not scam artists, and sometimes, they're well-intentioned. If they're not clients and they're already acting annoying (calling a lot to check on their manuscript, etc), they don't become clients. There are essentially three kinds of clients that are annoying.
1. The bestseller who thinks too much of himself. This guy will call us to complain about how he didn't like the fruit on his party platter at the post-signing launch dinner for his third book. There's not much we can do, but this guy is usually the one who is responsible for 99% of the agent's income for the year, so we put up with him.
2. The client who doesn't know how to edit. Speaking for a moment as a writer myself, editing is really, really, really hard, so I don't blame anyone for this, but it often gets to the point of severe frustration. If this is the client's first book, we probably accepted the manuscript because we loved it but said, "It has a few flaws; do you agree to do some editing?" and the writer of course says yes, because they want to be a client. So we send them a list of issues - opener is slow, this thing doesn't make sense, character's name is spelled inconsistently, etc - and they do a host of things. They don't respond. They do respond, but change nothing. They respond and change everything, so that the manuscript looks nothing like the one we liked. Editing is tricky. You can do too much. If we get too frustrated, we may end up telling the would-be client we just can't sell their manuscript, because they can't seem to get it into enough shape to be sell-able (we leave out that last part). We've lost a lot of time, and time is money, so it's a bad situation all around.
There's also the real client, the one who's already sold a book with us, and the second or third book has serious problems that the first book didn't have. The first book they worked on for years; the second they wrote in about 6 months, and you can see the results. Said client doesn't understand why suddenly we're so critical of their work, and has the same editorial problems that writers go through. Solving problems in stories is hard, especially when the problems are structure-related or involve a major alteration of character or plot. Some writers aren't up to the task. They had one book in them, and we sold it already.
3. The client who doesn't understand deadlines. It may seem like we live in a nebulous world where we take our time getting back to you, but that's because we're rushing to meet real deadlines, ones set by publishers and editors by way of contract. We need those revisions, and we need them now. No, seriously, Penguin Putnam will not be happy if it's not on their desks by 9 am on Monday morning. They might even not pay you because of a breach of contract. Get out of that fucking restaurant, go home, finish your revisions, and send us a copy. What? You hand-wrote them?!? All right, overnight them. Yes, from England. Well, I don't care, find a post office that's open; maybe you shouldn't have put this off for 6 months! Or something like that. It's very stressful when it happens, usually because big money is involved. And there's no website to warn us about that.
We're browsing the same internet as you are, so no. The answer is no. Plus, it would be sort of rude of us to start branding people over the internet, if not downright immoral. No one's trying to scam us - it's not as if they don't have a manuscript when they say they do and then ask us to buy it sight-unseen (and we don't buy manuscripts anyway). As for query letters that are just plain obnoxious or annoying, those are instant rejects. End of story. Occasionally, in a shared office situation, one assistant will turn to the other and say, "Did you see this?" if everyone obviously got the same letter in the same mail bag that day. "Oh yeah, that was terrible." Laugh, move on.
There are annoying writers out there, but they're not scam artists, and sometimes, they're well-intentioned. If they're not clients and they're already acting annoying (calling a lot to check on their manuscript, etc), they don't become clients. There are essentially three kinds of clients that are annoying.
1. The bestseller who thinks too much of himself. This guy will call us to complain about how he didn't like the fruit on his party platter at the post-signing launch dinner for his third book. There's not much we can do, but this guy is usually the one who is responsible for 99% of the agent's income for the year, so we put up with him.
2. The client who doesn't know how to edit. Speaking for a moment as a writer myself, editing is really, really, really hard, so I don't blame anyone for this, but it often gets to the point of severe frustration. If this is the client's first book, we probably accepted the manuscript because we loved it but said, "It has a few flaws; do you agree to do some editing?" and the writer of course says yes, because they want to be a client. So we send them a list of issues - opener is slow, this thing doesn't make sense, character's name is spelled inconsistently, etc - and they do a host of things. They don't respond. They do respond, but change nothing. They respond and change everything, so that the manuscript looks nothing like the one we liked. Editing is tricky. You can do too much. If we get too frustrated, we may end up telling the would-be client we just can't sell their manuscript, because they can't seem to get it into enough shape to be sell-able (we leave out that last part). We've lost a lot of time, and time is money, so it's a bad situation all around.
There's also the real client, the one who's already sold a book with us, and the second or third book has serious problems that the first book didn't have. The first book they worked on for years; the second they wrote in about 6 months, and you can see the results. Said client doesn't understand why suddenly we're so critical of their work, and has the same editorial problems that writers go through. Solving problems in stories is hard, especially when the problems are structure-related or involve a major alteration of character or plot. Some writers aren't up to the task. They had one book in them, and we sold it already.
3. The client who doesn't understand deadlines. It may seem like we live in a nebulous world where we take our time getting back to you, but that's because we're rushing to meet real deadlines, ones set by publishers and editors by way of contract. We need those revisions, and we need them now. No, seriously, Penguin Putnam will not be happy if it's not on their desks by 9 am on Monday morning. They might even not pay you because of a breach of contract. Get out of that fucking restaurant, go home, finish your revisions, and send us a copy. What? You hand-wrote them?!? All right, overnight them. Yes, from England. Well, I don't care, find a post office that's open; maybe you shouldn't have put this off for 6 months! Or something like that. It's very stressful when it happens, usually because big money is involved. And there's no website to warn us about that.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
That Second-Book Clause
Remember, DVC wasn't Brown's first book using church/church history. Angels & Demons came before. And that wasn't really huge until after DVC, And it was published by a different publisher. How does this work? Wouldn't the Angels & Demons guys want to keep the second book?
If you don't include a guide to dating for women that he wrote under the name Danielle Brown, then DVC was actually Dan Brown's fourth book, after Digital Fortress (1998), Angels and Demons (2000), and Deception Point (2001). None of them did particularly well.
Generally when a writer skips from publishing house to publishing house, it means that their books are not consistently selling or that the newer piece was not as good as the previous one, at least in the eyes of the publishing house. In other words, they decided not to take advantage of their second-book clause, which is a standard clause in the boilerplate publishing contract for any company. It usually goes something like this:
Option. The Author grants Publishing House the exclusive option to acquire the same rights as have been granted in this Agreement to the next full-length work to be written by the Author. Publishing House will be entitled to a period of sixty (60) days after submission of a proposal and sample chapters for the next work in which to make an offer for that work, during which time the Author agrees not to solicit any third-party offers, directly or indirectily. If Publishing House wishes to acquire the next work, the Author and Publishing House will attempt to reach an agreement as to terms during a reasonable period of exclusive negotiations. If they cannot reach an agreement, the Author shall be free to Submit the next work elsewhere, but the Author may not accept an offer from any other publisher on terms equal to or less favorable than those offered by Publishing House.
This means, essentially, that the publishing house has dibs on your next book, but if they don't want it, they don't have to make an offer. If they make an offer and you don't accept it, and you shop it around and no one makes a better offer, then you can't accept a lower offer at another house and you have to go with the original offer at the original house. This protects them from having you jump ship and protects you from having to turn down better offers at other houses because the offer at your house was too low. Generally contracts read like this; they're meant to protect both the interests of the author and of the company, sometimes leaning to one side and sometimes to the other, which is why agents like to negotiate clauses. Most of the time this is not one of those clauses.
Dan Brown's last book before DVC was Deception Point, which was published by Pocket Books, like his previous book, Angels and Demons. For whatever reason, Pocket Books took a look at DVC and said "enough with this guy already" and let him make offers elsewhere. He got a contract with Doubleday, and he took it. I'm going to guess it wasn't much, but he certainly made it up in royalties. Pocket Books has retained the rights to Angels and Demons, and reissued it in 2006, but have also sold the rights to other companies for whatever complex reasons they would have to do that. Man, are those guys kicking themselves.
If you don't include a guide to dating for women that he wrote under the name Danielle Brown, then DVC was actually Dan Brown's fourth book, after Digital Fortress (1998), Angels and Demons (2000), and Deception Point (2001). None of them did particularly well.
Generally when a writer skips from publishing house to publishing house, it means that their books are not consistently selling or that the newer piece was not as good as the previous one, at least in the eyes of the publishing house. In other words, they decided not to take advantage of their second-book clause, which is a standard clause in the boilerplate publishing contract for any company. It usually goes something like this:
Option. The Author grants Publishing House the exclusive option to acquire the same rights as have been granted in this Agreement to the next full-length work to be written by the Author. Publishing House will be entitled to a period of sixty (60) days after submission of a proposal and sample chapters for the next work in which to make an offer for that work, during which time the Author agrees not to solicit any third-party offers, directly or indirectily. If Publishing House wishes to acquire the next work, the Author and Publishing House will attempt to reach an agreement as to terms during a reasonable period of exclusive negotiations. If they cannot reach an agreement, the Author shall be free to Submit the next work elsewhere, but the Author may not accept an offer from any other publisher on terms equal to or less favorable than those offered by Publishing House.
This means, essentially, that the publishing house has dibs on your next book, but if they don't want it, they don't have to make an offer. If they make an offer and you don't accept it, and you shop it around and no one makes a better offer, then you can't accept a lower offer at another house and you have to go with the original offer at the original house. This protects them from having you jump ship and protects you from having to turn down better offers at other houses because the offer at your house was too low. Generally contracts read like this; they're meant to protect both the interests of the author and of the company, sometimes leaning to one side and sometimes to the other, which is why agents like to negotiate clauses. Most of the time this is not one of those clauses.
Dan Brown's last book before DVC was Deception Point, which was published by Pocket Books, like his previous book, Angels and Demons. For whatever reason, Pocket Books took a look at DVC and said "enough with this guy already" and let him make offers elsewhere. He got a contract with Doubleday, and he took it. I'm going to guess it wasn't much, but he certainly made it up in royalties. Pocket Books has retained the rights to Angels and Demons, and reissued it in 2006, but have also sold the rights to other companies for whatever complex reasons they would have to do that. Man, are those guys kicking themselves.
Sunday, April 22, 2007
How a Trend is Born
I wish there were a central location where agents and editors could post what they've been seeing too much of. If there's a run on drug books/mysteries where Jesus's clone did it/fantasies where farm boys get blipped through portals in search of magical jewels, it would be great to know about it. It would also be entertaining, because so few of the topics agents complain about are obvious to those of us who don't see the slush.
It would be cool, but it would be for amusement purposes only.
All of you unpublished writers out there, here's a message from me: Don't follow a trend or even ignore a trend. Don't think about trends. Just write the novel you've always wanted to write. Then when that gets rejected, write the novel it turns out you really wanted to write. Rinse, repeat unti; you actually get published, and then say, "Thank G-d that original novel didn't get published! That was crap."
I'll turn this into a larger discussion of trends. In this case I'll be using The Da Vinci Code, not because I have some obsession with it but because it's really the most massive example I could use, as opposed to all the little ones you might not have heard about.
When I was in college (fall 1999- spring 2003), there was a huge trend on an academia level of studying early Christianity - the gospels themselves and the people who wrote them (the gospel was probably written over 20 years after Jesus died), and the generation or two that followed immediately afterwards. There a bunch of feminist professors who were interested in women in the early church and writing about the role of women and how Paul was against women taking leadership roles in the church. The early Celtic Church, where women could be priests, had also been a hot academic topic for several years. People were publishing their materials on university presses, which is what professors do, and they would immediately go out of print, which is what happens unless there's some real non-academia interest in the topic. (Also, a lot of professors can only write papers, and their books are just long papers. This is one of the many reasons I didn't go for a PhD in history)
I have a sneaking suspicion that Dan Brown got some of his ideas from this particular academic trend, and then was inspired to make it a series of novels about early Christianity, and one of them was The Da Vinci Code, and as we all know, it became the biggest non-Harry Potter publishing phenomenon in decades. This lead to the knock-offs and academic books that followed, both of which I will discuss.
(1) The fiction knock-offs of The Da Vinci Code were not written, for the most part, by first-time writers. They were written by established writers - part of some agent's or publishing house's "stable" - who were either inspired by the success (and saw little dollar signs in their eyelids) or told by the publishing company to go "write a book about that." Generally the negotiations go like this:
Publishing House: "Do you want to write a The Da Vinci Code knock-off?"
Established Author: "How much will you pay?"
Publishing House: "A lot."
Established Author: "When do you want it? Friday's bad for me."
There are also book packaging companies, which you've never heard of because they don't advertise to the public, who are put in charge of packaging a novel that resembles whatever the publishing house wants it to resemble. They'll get some writers to work with them and do that. It's all in-house.
(2) History books that deal with the same (or similar) subject that said novel discusses. These books are the type that appear in the bargain bin at Barnes and Noble. They're not original. Chances are they're a republished version of some academic text on the subject that was published by a university press in 1971 and went out of print in 1972 and now is impossible to get. Barnes and Noble's publishing house (same name) bought the rights, which were quickly sold because the author realized their book would never see the light of day again otherwise, and then repackaged and republished the book.
The other option is that a publishing house wants to put out a history book that is accessible enough for people to read about the trendy topic, so they approach some established historical author or professor in that field of research and say, "Hey, do you want to write a book?" Then they get the book packaging company in to make sure it's readable (Remember: Most history professors can't write) and put it out as quickly as possible.
And that's where books come from.
It would be cool, but it would be for amusement purposes only.
All of you unpublished writers out there, here's a message from me: Don't follow a trend or even ignore a trend. Don't think about trends. Just write the novel you've always wanted to write. Then when that gets rejected, write the novel it turns out you really wanted to write. Rinse, repeat unti; you actually get published, and then say, "Thank G-d that original novel didn't get published! That was crap."
I'll turn this into a larger discussion of trends. In this case I'll be using The Da Vinci Code, not because I have some obsession with it but because it's really the most massive example I could use, as opposed to all the little ones you might not have heard about.
When I was in college (fall 1999- spring 2003), there was a huge trend on an academia level of studying early Christianity - the gospels themselves and the people who wrote them (the gospel was probably written over 20 years after Jesus died), and the generation or two that followed immediately afterwards. There a bunch of feminist professors who were interested in women in the early church and writing about the role of women and how Paul was against women taking leadership roles in the church. The early Celtic Church, where women could be priests, had also been a hot academic topic for several years. People were publishing their materials on university presses, which is what professors do, and they would immediately go out of print, which is what happens unless there's some real non-academia interest in the topic. (Also, a lot of professors can only write papers, and their books are just long papers. This is one of the many reasons I didn't go for a PhD in history)
I have a sneaking suspicion that Dan Brown got some of his ideas from this particular academic trend, and then was inspired to make it a series of novels about early Christianity, and one of them was The Da Vinci Code, and as we all know, it became the biggest non-Harry Potter publishing phenomenon in decades. This lead to the knock-offs and academic books that followed, both of which I will discuss.
(1) The fiction knock-offs of The Da Vinci Code were not written, for the most part, by first-time writers. They were written by established writers - part of some agent's or publishing house's "stable" - who were either inspired by the success (and saw little dollar signs in their eyelids) or told by the publishing company to go "write a book about that." Generally the negotiations go like this:
Publishing House: "Do you want to write a The Da Vinci Code knock-off?"
Established Author: "How much will you pay?"
Publishing House: "A lot."
Established Author: "When do you want it? Friday's bad for me."
There are also book packaging companies, which you've never heard of because they don't advertise to the public, who are put in charge of packaging a novel that resembles whatever the publishing house wants it to resemble. They'll get some writers to work with them and do that. It's all in-house.
(2) History books that deal with the same (or similar) subject that said novel discusses. These books are the type that appear in the bargain bin at Barnes and Noble. They're not original. Chances are they're a republished version of some academic text on the subject that was published by a university press in 1971 and went out of print in 1972 and now is impossible to get. Barnes and Noble's publishing house (same name) bought the rights, which were quickly sold because the author realized their book would never see the light of day again otherwise, and then repackaged and republished the book.
The other option is that a publishing house wants to put out a history book that is accessible enough for people to read about the trendy topic, so they approach some established historical author or professor in that field of research and say, "Hey, do you want to write a book?" Then they get the book packaging company in to make sure it's readable (Remember: Most history professors can't write) and put it out as quickly as possible.
And that's where books come from.
Saturday, April 21, 2007
Midlife Thriller Crisis
There are various types of writers to whom I’m willing to randomly assign categories to, though I won’t list them all here. There’s the child prodigy, who was writing short stories about cats when she was in 4th grade, and writing fanfic will all the names changed when she was in 11th grade, and probably got suckered into some MFA program after college, but will probably give up at some point if she ever comes to the realization that her dream is not commercially viable. (Future me) There’s the prisoner, who’s doing significant time. Thanks to some well-meaning creative writing instructor (probably a failed writer herself) sent by the state, he starts to write and writes whatever type of novel he’s been reading from the prison library or an account that more than loosely resembles his own life of crime. The list goes on and on.
I believe strongly that there is the occasional person who can write solely thanks to raw talent, so no matter what category you might hail from, you might have written a great novel, even a masterpiece. But that’s another story.
There’s a particular type of writer that we probably see the most of, and rarely ever accept. It’s what I’ll call the “midlife crisis writer.” This person has done the normal thing and has a job that pays money but generally doesn’t make a mark on society in any way. Now they’re forty or fifty, and instead of buying themselves a new car or having plastic surgery, they decided to write a novel. Novels last forever, don’t they? They touch millions of people! (And even appropriately!)
If said writer decides to move into fiction and not autobiography or some thing about how their cat taught them everything they know, this writer will probably move into the thriller, suspense, or mystery genre. This is because it’s what they’re probably reading and because those are genres that look deceptively easy to write. You have your basic plot elements at work: Open with a guy being chased by a killer and then killed. Move into Chapter 1, a domestic scene, until the protagonist (who usually has a similar job to the author’s) gets tied to the killed person in some way and decides to solve the crime or gets thrown into some conspiracy because of a package of information sent to them by the dead person. Throw in some attempts on protagonist’s life, maybe a love triangle, and end somewhere dramatic or symbolic (a church, a graveyard, or the original murder site) with the protagonist facing off against the killer. The protagonist wins but probably gets shot. End with a wrap-up three months later and try to end on a mysterious letter or the announcement that someone’s pregnant. There, done.
Recognize anything? We get tons of these. The only thing that ever changes is the thing driving the plot. For several, unbearable years it was some church secret about Jesus, thanks to The Da Vinci Code, but that died down when the movie came out and everyone realized how much the book sucked when they saw it on screen. Then we saw a lot of Templar stuff because novels/histories about the Templars (based on their mention in The Da Vinci Code) were selling. Now we’re back to the more standard international crime/mafia/drugs/nuclear threat thing, or if the author is the doctor, it involves a disease in some way.
For some reason the current trend is drugs. All drugs. Everyone’s smuggling drugs or killing people over smuggled drugs. Maybe they’ll connect it to terrorism (another big seller) by making it Afghan hash, which supports al-Qaeda. What’s the deal, guys? I haven’t really seen drugs in the news much except crystal meth epidemics, but those don’t involve smuggling. They involve making me sign my name and address when I’m buying one box of Sudafed. What’s up?
I believe strongly that there is the occasional person who can write solely thanks to raw talent, so no matter what category you might hail from, you might have written a great novel, even a masterpiece. But that’s another story.
There’s a particular type of writer that we probably see the most of, and rarely ever accept. It’s what I’ll call the “midlife crisis writer.” This person has done the normal thing and has a job that pays money but generally doesn’t make a mark on society in any way. Now they’re forty or fifty, and instead of buying themselves a new car or having plastic surgery, they decided to write a novel. Novels last forever, don’t they? They touch millions of people! (And even appropriately!)
If said writer decides to move into fiction and not autobiography or some thing about how their cat taught them everything they know, this writer will probably move into the thriller, suspense, or mystery genre. This is because it’s what they’re probably reading and because those are genres that look deceptively easy to write. You have your basic plot elements at work: Open with a guy being chased by a killer and then killed. Move into Chapter 1, a domestic scene, until the protagonist (who usually has a similar job to the author’s) gets tied to the killed person in some way and decides to solve the crime or gets thrown into some conspiracy because of a package of information sent to them by the dead person. Throw in some attempts on protagonist’s life, maybe a love triangle, and end somewhere dramatic or symbolic (a church, a graveyard, or the original murder site) with the protagonist facing off against the killer. The protagonist wins but probably gets shot. End with a wrap-up three months later and try to end on a mysterious letter or the announcement that someone’s pregnant. There, done.
Recognize anything? We get tons of these. The only thing that ever changes is the thing driving the plot. For several, unbearable years it was some church secret about Jesus, thanks to The Da Vinci Code, but that died down when the movie came out and everyone realized how much the book sucked when they saw it on screen. Then we saw a lot of Templar stuff because novels/histories about the Templars (based on their mention in The Da Vinci Code) were selling. Now we’re back to the more standard international crime/mafia/drugs/nuclear threat thing, or if the author is the doctor, it involves a disease in some way.
For some reason the current trend is drugs. All drugs. Everyone’s smuggling drugs or killing people over smuggled drugs. Maybe they’ll connect it to terrorism (another big seller) by making it Afghan hash, which supports al-Qaeda. What’s the deal, guys? I haven’t really seen drugs in the news much except crystal meth epidemics, but those don’t involve smuggling. They involve making me sign my name and address when I’m buying one box of Sudafed. What’s up?
Friday, April 20, 2007
Bad Books vs. Bad Books
After careful observation of the phenomenon, I'm pretty sure that what's going on is that publishers have developed a canny method for distinguishing bad books that make them money from bad books that lose lots of money.
I like to think that we can tell. I mean, there is the guiding principle that we also have to like the book, which wins out far more than you think. Many, many times I've said to various bosses, "Well, it's the kind of book that isn't very good, but will probably sell a million copies" and then they've said to reject it. When agents get behind bad projects, it generally isn't intentional. But if it's bad AND it won't make money - that we can smell from a mile away.
"I've discovered the secret to the universe and it's this weird idea about body energy!"
"You can lose weight if you cut back on your calories and exercise."
"My grandfather was full of old man wisdom and I'd like to spend a book talking about it."
"This gripping epic of a Civil War-era family spans the final decades of the 19th century and ends with the First World War."
"I wrote this book with the help of G-d. No, I mean literally."
"The real gospel was hidden away by the Templars for some reason I never properly establish, but in it contains the true message of Christianity, which is that the church sucks."
"The story of my cat's battle with cancer will be an inspiration to millions!"
...Yeah. Sometimes my job isn't very hard.
I like to think that we can tell. I mean, there is the guiding principle that we also have to like the book, which wins out far more than you think. Many, many times I've said to various bosses, "Well, it's the kind of book that isn't very good, but will probably sell a million copies" and then they've said to reject it. When agents get behind bad projects, it generally isn't intentional. But if it's bad AND it won't make money - that we can smell from a mile away.
"I've discovered the secret to the universe and it's this weird idea about body energy!"
"You can lose weight if you cut back on your calories and exercise."
"My grandfather was full of old man wisdom and I'd like to spend a book talking about it."
"This gripping epic of a Civil War-era family spans the final decades of the 19th century and ends with the First World War."
"I wrote this book with the help of G-d. No, I mean literally."
"The real gospel was hidden away by the Templars for some reason I never properly establish, but in it contains the true message of Christianity, which is that the church sucks."
"The story of my cat's battle with cancer will be an inspiration to millions!"
...Yeah. Sometimes my job isn't very hard.
Sunday, April 15, 2007
So, You Want My Job, Huh?
One of the questions I get most frequently is how a person acquires my job - i.e. how do they enter entry-level publishing. (The other question is why do bad books get published, and nobody can answer that to everyone's satisfaction, so I've stopped trying)
The answer is: Craig's list NYC. Job search: Writing/Editing.
No, seriously, that's where all the listings are, aside from the NY Times, and this day and age, by the time the ad goes out, the position might be filled. Check on Saturdays and Sundays, too. My first job was posted on a Saturday night, and I answered within an hour, and got a call on Monday morning. She said she had 100 applicants within a day for a job that paid $10 an hour.
Serious work - full-time work at a publishing house as an editorial assistant, with health and dental benefits - usually requires either an "in" (your uncle works there) or a year's experience. Many people get started as unpaid interns at publishing houses and literary agencies. Some houses even have programs in the summer that offer college credit. The programs work both ways - the company gets free workers and the workers get work experience and a reference or two.
That said, it is not actually necessary to be an intern before you become a paid worker. I came into the industry with no experience working in it and no references. I just killed in the interview. Here are some tips:
(1) Know what a query letter is and how to tell between a good one and a bad one. Subscribe to Publisher's Lunch (in case that comes up in conversation). Read the bad queries people are posting on Writers.net and people's comments on them. Read agent blogs. The key moment of my first interview, where my boss obviously decided then and there not to bother with the rest of the pile of people, was when she showed me query letters and had me analyze them on the spot, and I was able to say things like, "He's comparing himself to Dan Brown - bad. He's listing being a member of the Romance Writer Association [or whatever it's called] as a credit, but anyone can be a member of that. That's not a real credit. And nothing strikes me as interesting in the hook." Etc etc.
(2) If asked what you read, list as many things as you can. Don't be afraid to list your guilty pleasures (mine was "Entertainment Weekly"). Have a good joke ready about why your favorite book is your favorite book. Try not to sound like an English major when talking about literature.
(3) If you're a writer and you're going into publishing, don't deny it, but have an explanation as to why you're not going into publishing just to get "in's" for your writing career. I legitimately went into publishing because I love reading and I love helping writers succeed. My own writing career is separate. It does, however, mean I've been in writer's communities and workshops and I'm familiar with what they're doing. That's not a bad thing.
(4) If you're applying to an agency, familiarize yourself with the client list of the agency if it's available. Read the summaries and reviews of the books on Amazon.com so you can at least said, "I've read reviews."
(5) Smile! Unless you have exceptionally bad teeth.
Good luck!
The answer is: Craig's list NYC. Job search: Writing/Editing.
No, seriously, that's where all the listings are, aside from the NY Times, and this day and age, by the time the ad goes out, the position might be filled. Check on Saturdays and Sundays, too. My first job was posted on a Saturday night, and I answered within an hour, and got a call on Monday morning. She said she had 100 applicants within a day for a job that paid $10 an hour.
Serious work - full-time work at a publishing house as an editorial assistant, with health and dental benefits - usually requires either an "in" (your uncle works there) or a year's experience. Many people get started as unpaid interns at publishing houses and literary agencies. Some houses even have programs in the summer that offer college credit. The programs work both ways - the company gets free workers and the workers get work experience and a reference or two.
That said, it is not actually necessary to be an intern before you become a paid worker. I came into the industry with no experience working in it and no references. I just killed in the interview. Here are some tips:
(1) Know what a query letter is and how to tell between a good one and a bad one. Subscribe to Publisher's Lunch (in case that comes up in conversation). Read the bad queries people are posting on Writers.net and people's comments on them. Read agent blogs. The key moment of my first interview, where my boss obviously decided then and there not to bother with the rest of the pile of people, was when she showed me query letters and had me analyze them on the spot, and I was able to say things like, "He's comparing himself to Dan Brown - bad. He's listing being a member of the Romance Writer Association [or whatever it's called] as a credit, but anyone can be a member of that. That's not a real credit. And nothing strikes me as interesting in the hook." Etc etc.
(2) If asked what you read, list as many things as you can. Don't be afraid to list your guilty pleasures (mine was "Entertainment Weekly"). Have a good joke ready about why your favorite book is your favorite book. Try not to sound like an English major when talking about literature.
(3) If you're a writer and you're going into publishing, don't deny it, but have an explanation as to why you're not going into publishing just to get "in's" for your writing career. I legitimately went into publishing because I love reading and I love helping writers succeed. My own writing career is separate. It does, however, mean I've been in writer's communities and workshops and I'm familiar with what they're doing. That's not a bad thing.
(4) If you're applying to an agency, familiarize yourself with the client list of the agency if it's available. Read the summaries and reviews of the books on Amazon.com so you can at least said, "I've read reviews."
(5) Smile! Unless you have exceptionally bad teeth.
Good luck!
Sunday, April 01, 2007
Response Time, Yet Again
The Rejector's been a bit busy as of late. If you are ever are considering converting to Judaism, make sure to ask about Passover/Pesach in great detail. Don't let the rabbi leave out the part about how much work it takes to clean your whole house out and cook for special week when you can't eat normal food. Yeah.
Miss Rejector,
Without knowing I queried what turned out to be an agent assistant at a very prestigious agency and she asked me to email my entire novel. Would it be safe to say she is eyeing my book for one of the agents she works under? I don't think she has any clients, and has been at this large agency less than four months. I would guess you must have to put in at least a year or so before you can rep clients, right?
There is no standard for when assistant agents who are taking on clients are different from regular agents. The line is very wavy and not really relevant to you at all. All you need is a person who is going to take your manusript, edit it, care about it, promote it, sell it, and make sure the publishing house sells it. Whether they have "senior" or "assistant" in front of their agent title is irrelevant.
And as far as how assistants work, I would think you guys especially want to keep your to-do pile in check. From what I've read it seems you and your boss reject quickly, but I've heard many response horror stories. In my case the assistant has had my ms for over two months and just responded to my "checking-in" email to say stay patient and that she will get through it asap. For all I know she might not of read a single page. But overall, assistants are probably more on the ball, right?
A good assistant who has been hire to do the mail will do first-level rejections basically same-day, though same-day may be "the one day a week the assistant comes in." Either way, rejection is fast. Acceptance is slow. Three chapters doesn't take long to read. I can read a stack of partials in less than an hour. Then a full - even if I read it fast, that doesn't help because the agent has to read it and make the final, crucial business decision to put their time and money behind the project. That's a major decision and is made carefully. So there's really no way for me to answer your question, except to say, assistants are paid hourly, so we are expected to get the job done.
Miss Rejector,
Without knowing I queried what turned out to be an agent assistant at a very prestigious agency and she asked me to email my entire novel. Would it be safe to say she is eyeing my book for one of the agents she works under? I don't think she has any clients, and has been at this large agency less than four months. I would guess you must have to put in at least a year or so before you can rep clients, right?
There is no standard for when assistant agents who are taking on clients are different from regular agents. The line is very wavy and not really relevant to you at all. All you need is a person who is going to take your manusript, edit it, care about it, promote it, sell it, and make sure the publishing house sells it. Whether they have "senior" or "assistant" in front of their agent title is irrelevant.
And as far as how assistants work, I would think you guys especially want to keep your to-do pile in check. From what I've read it seems you and your boss reject quickly, but I've heard many response horror stories. In my case the assistant has had my ms for over two months and just responded to my "checking-in" email to say stay patient and that she will get through it asap. For all I know she might not of read a single page. But overall, assistants are probably more on the ball, right?
A good assistant who has been hire to do the mail will do first-level rejections basically same-day, though same-day may be "the one day a week the assistant comes in." Either way, rejection is fast. Acceptance is slow. Three chapters doesn't take long to read. I can read a stack of partials in less than an hour. Then a full - even if I read it fast, that doesn't help because the agent has to read it and make the final, crucial business decision to put their time and money behind the project. That's a major decision and is made carefully. So there's really no way for me to answer your question, except to say, assistants are paid hourly, so we are expected to get the job done.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
In Which People Do More Dumb Things
Everyone once in a while some new stupid idea comes along that we legitimately have never seen before. It's a new and fun occurrence - the first time.
Opening some guy's unsolicited three chapters (not the end of the world), I read the query, which began with, "I had the pleasure of meeting you at the _____ Conference." In fact, it was the same conference name that had been written on the envelope, which I had ignored.
Now having just completed going over all of my boss' expenses for the last year to enter them for tax purposes, I think I can safely say what business-related trips she has taken, because she kept the receipts. I turned to her and said, "Did you attend ____ Conference?"
"Oh, no. I was on the list, but I cancelled way in advance."
Clearly the guy had just gone down the list of names of all of the agents supposedly attending the conference and hit them all up with queries, hoping it would be an "in." Well, it is an "in" even if we don't remember you, provided we did actually attend the conference and did actually meet a ton of people we wouldn't remember. So, be more careful like that, or end up looking like a jackass.
Opening some guy's unsolicited three chapters (not the end of the world), I read the query, which began with, "I had the pleasure of meeting you at the _____ Conference." In fact, it was the same conference name that had been written on the envelope, which I had ignored.
Now having just completed going over all of my boss' expenses for the last year to enter them for tax purposes, I think I can safely say what business-related trips she has taken, because she kept the receipts. I turned to her and said, "Did you attend ____ Conference?"
"Oh, no. I was on the list, but I cancelled way in advance."
Clearly the guy had just gone down the list of names of all of the agents supposedly attending the conference and hit them all up with queries, hoping it would be an "in." Well, it is an "in" even if we don't remember you, provided we did actually attend the conference and did actually meet a ton of people we wouldn't remember. So, be more careful like that, or end up looking like a jackass.
Saturday, March 24, 2007
And Grammar Just Gets Harder and Harder
I was recently killing time in a Barnes and Noble and decided to make my regular stop at the publishing/writing section, to rifle through the offerings. I rarely buy at full price, but I only need a few pages of the book to tell if it's worth buying, and then I'll go and buy it used online.
For once I found a more recent grammar book that I would actually recommend: Lapsing into a Comma: A Curmudgeon's Guide to the Many Things That Can Go Wrong in Print--and How to Avoid Them by Bill Walsh. Aside from being useful by listing common mistakes instead of going into complex rules of grammar first and hoping you get the rest (that's E.B. White's job), it discusses how grammar is actually a very malleable and the normal method of establishing a change in rules has been utterly destroyed by the internet. For example, high-school student became high school student (an exception to the general rule about multiple-word adjectives) a long time ago, while e-mail became email basically overnight. This of course makes the entry-level copyeditor's job go from hard to nearly impossible, and don't get Mr. Walsh started on the difference between copy-editor and copyeditor.
That doesn't mean it's a free-for-all and you can just go and do whatever you want, but it means that if you find something in a book that you think is wrong, you may be wrong yourself. Many people have criticized my blog for being spelled incorrectly. Is someone who rejects things a rejecter or a rejector? Answer: It's both. Both are acceptable official spellings.
What else did I read this week? (What's a low-level publishing assistant reading?)
The Lais of Marie de France
Japan Made Easy: All You Need to Know to Enjoy Japan
Rome and Vatican (travel/photography book)
Printing Press: Ideas into Type
Kabuki: Design Aesthetics (Okay, I didn't read it. I don't know Japanese. I looked at the pictures)
Patrick: Patron Saint of Ireland
(I'm not planning on going anywhere. Most of these books were research)
For once I found a more recent grammar book that I would actually recommend: Lapsing into a Comma: A Curmudgeon's Guide to the Many Things That Can Go Wrong in Print--and How to Avoid Them by Bill Walsh. Aside from being useful by listing common mistakes instead of going into complex rules of grammar first and hoping you get the rest (that's E.B. White's job), it discusses how grammar is actually a very malleable and the normal method of establishing a change in rules has been utterly destroyed by the internet. For example, high-school student became high school student (an exception to the general rule about multiple-word adjectives) a long time ago, while e-mail became email basically overnight. This of course makes the entry-level copyeditor's job go from hard to nearly impossible, and don't get Mr. Walsh started on the difference between copy-editor and copyeditor.
That doesn't mean it's a free-for-all and you can just go and do whatever you want, but it means that if you find something in a book that you think is wrong, you may be wrong yourself. Many people have criticized my blog for being spelled incorrectly. Is someone who rejects things a rejecter or a rejector? Answer: It's both. Both are acceptable official spellings.
What else did I read this week? (What's a low-level publishing assistant reading?)
The Lais of Marie de France
Japan Made Easy: All You Need to Know to Enjoy Japan
Rome and Vatican (travel/photography book)
Printing Press: Ideas into Type
Kabuki: Design Aesthetics (Okay, I didn't read it. I don't know Japanese. I looked at the pictures)
Patrick: Patron Saint of Ireland
(I'm not planning on going anywhere. Most of these books were research)
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Selling Literary Fiction
Dear Ms. Rejecter,
You must help me, for I am incredibly saddened after reading over your archives, notably the Wed. October 11, 2006 entry concerning "literary fiction," which you call "unpublishable."
If I had to classify my work, it would certainly fall into the category of "literary fiction." I do not write Fantasy or Sci-Fi or Romance or Dan Brown-style commercial novels. I want to write literature; and I say that without a pretentious bone in my body.
For example, the novel I'm working on now is set in the Arab world and follows the relationships between multiple families just before the country's revolution, touching on political and religious themes. It is highly influenced by "Anna Karenina" - at least in my own mind. Can this type of literary fiction be published?
If not, how is it that people like DeLillo, Pynchon, Roth, Morrison, Updike, etc. - all contemporary authors whose work is by and large considered "literature" as opposed to commercial fiction - being published? How do Jonathan Franzen and others make it happen?
This is the part where I backpedal and try to explain the huge generalizations I usually make in an attempt to answer unanswerable questions. I've contradicted myself probably half a dozen times by now (Uh, please don't go actually counting...). Nonetheless I will foolishly attempt to answer your question.
As your last paragraph seems to imply, we'll go with the basic assumption that there is a clear definition between "commercial" fiction (here, meaning genre fiction) and "literature" that will be read and discussed and analyzed by lit majors for generations to come. I'll be honest when I say I don't think anyone in higher education will be pulling apart the symbolism in the Dragonlance novels, so you have a point there, but that line is really not terribly clear. People cross it all the time.
The direct answer to your question is not that "literary fiction" or "literature" is unpublishable. It clearly is. You just named six authors who publish what is considered "literary fiction" by people who make these considerations and who have been rather successful financially in the past two years. It doesn't mean all those novels are great - some of them were really riding on the author's reputation for sales more than their particular quality - but they were high lit and they sold, even if they might have had rambling and confusing contemporary/weirdo non-contemporary plotlines or no plotlines at all.
That said, great literature is very, very hard to write. It's even harder to publish. For all they're worth, the Dragonlance novels have a built-in set of readers who are going to buy the next book. A new author does not and is going to rely on the publishing company's faith in him/her and put a lot of money behind publicity to even get it noticed. And of the ones that do get noticed, they're usually noticed because they're so high quality that they win Pulitzers (Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections lost to Empire Falls by a couple votes. I know this because I know someone who was on the Pulitzer committee that year. It was in the final round).
Taste aside, these people are good. These people are, arguably, the best writers in our generation in terms of "high literature." Not necessarily in terms of plot, structure, comprehensibility, or reader enjoyment, but they are what "the literary world" deems as the best of the best. And they're the only literary fiction writers you've heard of.
That's how hard it is to make it in literary fiction. Good luck.
You must help me, for I am incredibly saddened after reading over your archives, notably the Wed. October 11, 2006 entry concerning "literary fiction," which you call "unpublishable."
If I had to classify my work, it would certainly fall into the category of "literary fiction." I do not write Fantasy or Sci-Fi or Romance or Dan Brown-style commercial novels. I want to write literature; and I say that without a pretentious bone in my body.
For example, the novel I'm working on now is set in the Arab world and follows the relationships between multiple families just before the country's revolution, touching on political and religious themes. It is highly influenced by "Anna Karenina" - at least in my own mind. Can this type of literary fiction be published?
If not, how is it that people like DeLillo, Pynchon, Roth, Morrison, Updike, etc. - all contemporary authors whose work is by and large considered "literature" as opposed to commercial fiction - being published? How do Jonathan Franzen and others make it happen?
This is the part where I backpedal and try to explain the huge generalizations I usually make in an attempt to answer unanswerable questions. I've contradicted myself probably half a dozen times by now (Uh, please don't go actually counting...). Nonetheless I will foolishly attempt to answer your question.
As your last paragraph seems to imply, we'll go with the basic assumption that there is a clear definition between "commercial" fiction (here, meaning genre fiction) and "literature" that will be read and discussed and analyzed by lit majors for generations to come. I'll be honest when I say I don't think anyone in higher education will be pulling apart the symbolism in the Dragonlance novels, so you have a point there, but that line is really not terribly clear. People cross it all the time.
The direct answer to your question is not that "literary fiction" or "literature" is unpublishable. It clearly is. You just named six authors who publish what is considered "literary fiction" by people who make these considerations and who have been rather successful financially in the past two years. It doesn't mean all those novels are great - some of them were really riding on the author's reputation for sales more than their particular quality - but they were high lit and they sold, even if they might have had rambling and confusing contemporary/weirdo non-contemporary plotlines or no plotlines at all.
That said, great literature is very, very hard to write. It's even harder to publish. For all they're worth, the Dragonlance novels have a built-in set of readers who are going to buy the next book. A new author does not and is going to rely on the publishing company's faith in him/her and put a lot of money behind publicity to even get it noticed. And of the ones that do get noticed, they're usually noticed because they're so high quality that they win Pulitzers (Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections lost to Empire Falls by a couple votes. I know this because I know someone who was on the Pulitzer committee that year. It was in the final round).
Taste aside, these people are good. These people are, arguably, the best writers in our generation in terms of "high literature." Not necessarily in terms of plot, structure, comprehensibility, or reader enjoyment, but they are what "the literary world" deems as the best of the best. And they're the only literary fiction writers you've heard of.
That's how hard it is to make it in literary fiction. Good luck.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
I Heart New York
Rejecter,
I love your blog and spent most of this morning going through the archives. Your sense of humor had me literally, not figuratively, laughing out loud. (Invisible gorillas on a plane sent me on a laughing jag that had me crying.) After reading through several posts and responses and such, I'm struck by the following question:
Is it possible that New Yorkers are the wrong people to be deciding what America likes to read? Is it concievable that they are perhaps a bit to jaded/cynical/angry (you know, New Yorkerish) to make the necessary decisions regarding the value of literature?
I ask this as someone who understands that to live there and thrive you need an ego the size of John Edwards' mansion. Since I have a comparable ego and I'm sometimes reminded, usually by my wife, that I'm not as clever as I think I am, I feel fully qualified to ask this question and the response would fascinate me.
Hey, that's mean! Let me get out my stabbing knife. I'll cut you, man. I'll cut you.
But seriously, instead of quoting what I heard on the subway last week, let me actually answer your question. With a couple notations:
(1) Not all literary agents live and operate in New York. Many live in LA, and work mainly in film rights. Instead of being cynical and jaded I guess you can assume they are more phony and have better tans. Whatever you want to think. And there some legitimate agents who live in other states, because most of agency work is done over mail/fax/phone anyway, but these are usually people who know people in New York because they worked there at some point. It's a very "you have to know someone to get somewhere" industry (for those who work in it, not the writers), so being in New York is kinda crucial.
(2) Most literary agents were not born and raised in New York and do not, in fact, live there. They may have moved to New York in search of a career in publishing because it's rather necessary to do that, and once they made enough money, they bought a house in New Jersey and now they commute. For tax purposes, a lot of agencies and a couple publishing houses are based in places just outside of New York (like Bayonne or Lyndhurst), because taxes in New York State are really high.
(3) Not all New Yorkers are mean. That said, don't pick a fight with anyone on the 1 line between 96th Street and 137th. Seriously.
All joking and non-joking aside, if I wanted to be psychological about it, I would say that we seem jaded and cynical because the industry makes us that way. We happen to operate in an industry based on crushing people's hopes and dreams most of the time and then finding a few people who are actually great writers. We then champion those writers, and hopefully only half of them are crushed by some executive higher up on the line than we are. While not as bad as being that guy who stands outside the Spring store and hands out flyers all day to people who don't want his flyers, publishing is definitely a job that can get you down. Even when you find something great, odds are against it that it will succeed at all, much less to the extent that you want it to. It has to sell to a good company, get all the right attention, get good reviews, make a couple lists, and sell a lot of copies. Then, hopefully, the writer actually has enough talent for another book. (Some writers legitimately only have one book in them, especially if they're writing a memoir)
We operate this way because it's the only way to operate. I reject people because they're bad writers, or at the very least, are good writers with a bad book idea. But it's not quite the same as someone who works for Nabisco and is in charge of deciding which new chip line will make it out next quarter. No one is emotionally invested in those chips. Writers, on the other hand, have poured their hearts and souls into their work. It's their baby, and we're killing it.
Sometimes we get letters from homeless people who have returns as post office boxes. We get letters from dying people who just want their story told. We get letters from paraplegic veterans. We get letters about SIDS. And if the material is good, we accept, but it rarely is. Once I asked my first boss about a homeless person's sci-fi novel, which sounded really bad. I felt really bad about rejecting him. She only shrugged and said, "I give to charities for the homeless. If his book is bad, we can't sell it."
Harsh? Yes. Realistic? Yes. The way the world turns? Yes. I don't think they would do it any differently in another city, because accepting bad writing would be a bad economic decision and the agency would go under if we couldn't sell our clients' manuscripts.
As for whether the New York crowd is qualified to make decisions, well, it's not actually that hard to tell bad writing from good writing. We get our skills from experience and reading a lot. None of that has anything to do with where the office is located.
I love your blog and spent most of this morning going through the archives. Your sense of humor had me literally, not figuratively, laughing out loud. (Invisible gorillas on a plane sent me on a laughing jag that had me crying.) After reading through several posts and responses and such, I'm struck by the following question:
Is it possible that New Yorkers are the wrong people to be deciding what America likes to read? Is it concievable that they are perhaps a bit to jaded/cynical/angry (you know, New Yorkerish) to make the necessary decisions regarding the value of literature?
I ask this as someone who understands that to live there and thrive you need an ego the size of John Edwards' mansion. Since I have a comparable ego and I'm sometimes reminded, usually by my wife, that I'm not as clever as I think I am, I feel fully qualified to ask this question and the response would fascinate me.
Hey, that's mean! Let me get out my stabbing knife. I'll cut you, man. I'll cut you.
But seriously, instead of quoting what I heard on the subway last week, let me actually answer your question. With a couple notations:
(1) Not all literary agents live and operate in New York. Many live in LA, and work mainly in film rights. Instead of being cynical and jaded I guess you can assume they are more phony and have better tans. Whatever you want to think. And there some legitimate agents who live in other states, because most of agency work is done over mail/fax/phone anyway, but these are usually people who know people in New York because they worked there at some point. It's a very "you have to know someone to get somewhere" industry (for those who work in it, not the writers), so being in New York is kinda crucial.
(2) Most literary agents were not born and raised in New York and do not, in fact, live there. They may have moved to New York in search of a career in publishing because it's rather necessary to do that, and once they made enough money, they bought a house in New Jersey and now they commute. For tax purposes, a lot of agencies and a couple publishing houses are based in places just outside of New York (like Bayonne or Lyndhurst), because taxes in New York State are really high.
(3) Not all New Yorkers are mean. That said, don't pick a fight with anyone on the 1 line between 96th Street and 137th. Seriously.
All joking and non-joking aside, if I wanted to be psychological about it, I would say that we seem jaded and cynical because the industry makes us that way. We happen to operate in an industry based on crushing people's hopes and dreams most of the time and then finding a few people who are actually great writers. We then champion those writers, and hopefully only half of them are crushed by some executive higher up on the line than we are. While not as bad as being that guy who stands outside the Spring store and hands out flyers all day to people who don't want his flyers, publishing is definitely a job that can get you down. Even when you find something great, odds are against it that it will succeed at all, much less to the extent that you want it to. It has to sell to a good company, get all the right attention, get good reviews, make a couple lists, and sell a lot of copies. Then, hopefully, the writer actually has enough talent for another book. (Some writers legitimately only have one book in them, especially if they're writing a memoir)
We operate this way because it's the only way to operate. I reject people because they're bad writers, or at the very least, are good writers with a bad book idea. But it's not quite the same as someone who works for Nabisco and is in charge of deciding which new chip line will make it out next quarter. No one is emotionally invested in those chips. Writers, on the other hand, have poured their hearts and souls into their work. It's their baby, and we're killing it.
Sometimes we get letters from homeless people who have returns as post office boxes. We get letters from dying people who just want their story told. We get letters from paraplegic veterans. We get letters about SIDS. And if the material is good, we accept, but it rarely is. Once I asked my first boss about a homeless person's sci-fi novel, which sounded really bad. I felt really bad about rejecting him. She only shrugged and said, "I give to charities for the homeless. If his book is bad, we can't sell it."
Harsh? Yes. Realistic? Yes. The way the world turns? Yes. I don't think they would do it any differently in another city, because accepting bad writing would be a bad economic decision and the agency would go under if we couldn't sell our clients' manuscripts.
As for whether the New York crowd is qualified to make decisions, well, it's not actually that hard to tell bad writing from good writing. We get our skills from experience and reading a lot. None of that has anything to do with where the office is located.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Form Letter Codes
Rejecter,
I recently recieved a form letter rejection from a fiction magazine. The editor had circled the stock phrases, "does not meet our current needs" and "please submit to us in the future." The editor also underlined the word "current." Does this represent a legitimate interest in my work on the part of the editor or should I just assume that a form letter of any kind is a flat out rejection?
Congratulations: You will never know the answer to this question. Assume it's a form letter.
I've been told there's actually a code to Fantasy & Science Fiction, the magazine that everyone submits to and no one gets accepted, but they get a really really fast reply (and by snail mail! So it took effort). There are different form letters they use, and the different ones indicate how far they got in your piece before they decided to reject it. I have a number of rejections from them, and they all have different wordings - "I didn't feel it was right for me" or "This doesn't meet our needs" and apparently there's a way to interpret these if you're a Fantasy & Science Fiction insider. If anyone wants to pitch in and tell us the code, I think everyone here would benefit. Everyone in science fiction submits a short story to F&SF. I've never met a single person who's read the magazine, but that's not the point here.
I recently recieved a form letter rejection from a fiction magazine. The editor had circled the stock phrases, "does not meet our current needs" and "please submit to us in the future." The editor also underlined the word "current." Does this represent a legitimate interest in my work on the part of the editor or should I just assume that a form letter of any kind is a flat out rejection?
Congratulations: You will never know the answer to this question. Assume it's a form letter.
I've been told there's actually a code to Fantasy & Science Fiction, the magazine that everyone submits to and no one gets accepted, but they get a really really fast reply (and by snail mail! So it took effort). There are different form letters they use, and the different ones indicate how far they got in your piece before they decided to reject it. I have a number of rejections from them, and they all have different wordings - "I didn't feel it was right for me" or "This doesn't meet our needs" and apparently there's a way to interpret these if you're a Fantasy & Science Fiction insider. If anyone wants to pitch in and tell us the code, I think everyone here would benefit. Everyone in science fiction submits a short story to F&SF. I've never met a single person who's read the magazine, but that's not the point here.
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Adjectives and How I Hate Them
Dear Rejecter,
I'm wondering what genre to label my novel-mainstream/contemporary or the little checkbox on many agents' lists, "Offbeat/quirky." Now, I don't think "offbeat" is officially a genre, but if that's what my novel best fits into, should I call it that anyway? When the agent's reader encounters the surreal elements of my novel a mainstream/contemporary" tag is going to seem clueless, I fear. I am also trying, in my desperation, to avoid comparing my work to great works, because I know how often agents roll their eyes at every writer who thinks they're "the next great X." However, if I use a sparing simile here and there- I'm thinking of comparing the surreal effects as comparable to David Lynch, but with the black humor of Dr. Strangelove- might my query not get tossed? My friends tell me it's a strong novel, it's just very surreal. Is there any way to sell that today? What do you recommend for writers that have an odd but strong novel? How does one sell strange?
Must resist urge to say something mean.
Must resist urge to say something mean.
Deep breath....
...If you novel has strange things happen in it, that should be obvious from the summary in the first part of the query. We don't like people using adjectives to describe their novel - we like people who describe their novel and then happen to mention its genre, and "quirky" is not a genre. What's your novel about? Insane commanders ordering their men to drop nuclear weapons on an unsuspecting populace? A backwards-talking dwarf? If you mention that yeah, there is a backwards-talking dwarf in your story (and he's the killer! haha!), we will be able to figure out "Hey, this is pretty strange" and then decide if it meets our tastes based on that and a host of other reasons, like the quality of your writing in the query letter and/or the partial.
Do not use words to describe your novel - and this goes for everyone - that are not words used by bookstores to define genre so that they can put it on the correct shelf. If you don't know and the genre isn't obvious, that means it's probably just fiction and would go in that "fiction and literature" section. We can tell from the summary. Don't label it as "great" or "funny" or "strange" or "the next bestseller." And I don't know why everyone's memoirs about how they were brutally raped by their fathers involves "a touch of humor" and I refuse to believe it until I see it, and I usually don't want to see it. Everyone, stop saying your novel is humorous if it so obviously isn't because you just said it was about how your wife died of cancer. That's not funny. You have to be a pretty brilliant humorist to make that funny.
Sorry, poster - that last bit didn't involve you so much, but we're seeing a lot of those these days. Everybody's writing dark comedy, but every "dark comedy" manuscript I've seen isn't very funny.
I'm wondering what genre to label my novel-mainstream/contemporary or the little checkbox on many agents' lists, "Offbeat/quirky." Now, I don't think "offbeat" is officially a genre, but if that's what my novel best fits into, should I call it that anyway? When the agent's reader encounters the surreal elements of my novel a mainstream/contemporary" tag is going to seem clueless, I fear. I am also trying, in my desperation, to avoid comparing my work to great works, because I know how often agents roll their eyes at every writer who thinks they're "the next great X." However, if I use a sparing simile here and there- I'm thinking of comparing the surreal effects as comparable to David Lynch, but with the black humor of Dr. Strangelove- might my query not get tossed? My friends tell me it's a strong novel, it's just very surreal. Is there any way to sell that today? What do you recommend for writers that have an odd but strong novel? How does one sell strange?
Must resist urge to say something mean.
Must resist urge to say something mean.
Deep breath....
...If you novel has strange things happen in it, that should be obvious from the summary in the first part of the query. We don't like people using adjectives to describe their novel - we like people who describe their novel and then happen to mention its genre, and "quirky" is not a genre. What's your novel about? Insane commanders ordering their men to drop nuclear weapons on an unsuspecting populace? A backwards-talking dwarf? If you mention that yeah, there is a backwards-talking dwarf in your story (and he's the killer! haha!), we will be able to figure out "Hey, this is pretty strange" and then decide if it meets our tastes based on that and a host of other reasons, like the quality of your writing in the query letter and/or the partial.
Do not use words to describe your novel - and this goes for everyone - that are not words used by bookstores to define genre so that they can put it on the correct shelf. If you don't know and the genre isn't obvious, that means it's probably just fiction and would go in that "fiction and literature" section. We can tell from the summary. Don't label it as "great" or "funny" or "strange" or "the next bestseller." And I don't know why everyone's memoirs about how they were brutally raped by their fathers involves "a touch of humor" and I refuse to believe it until I see it, and I usually don't want to see it. Everyone, stop saying your novel is humorous if it so obviously isn't because you just said it was about how your wife died of cancer. That's not funny. You have to be a pretty brilliant humorist to make that funny.
Sorry, poster - that last bit didn't involve you so much, but we're seeing a lot of those these days. Everybody's writing dark comedy, but every "dark comedy" manuscript I've seen isn't very funny.
Monday, March 12, 2007
Oooo! Mysterious Disk!
One of the newer trends has been for people to supple CDs with their query letters, or in the most extreme cases, just the CD. Let me explain to you how bad an idea this is: This is a really bad idea. Not only do we need like to have to do extra work, there is nothing I, as a person, like doing more than putting a mysterious disk I got in the mail from a total stranger into my beloved laptop.
Now I've heard sarcasm is hard to detect on the internet, so let me be clear: That last line was sarcastic. It's like attachments, which any agent website will tell you not to send, but so much worse. At least with attachments we can scan them for viruses.
And while we're on the subject: If you send an SASE for the return of your CD, make sure your CD fits in the envelope.
Now I've heard sarcasm is hard to detect on the internet, so let me be clear: That last line was sarcastic. It's like attachments, which any agent website will tell you not to send, but so much worse. At least with attachments we can scan them for viruses.
And while we're on the subject: If you send an SASE for the return of your CD, make sure your CD fits in the envelope.
Friday, March 09, 2007
The Secret: Magic is real! Santa Claus exists!
A previous poster asked about The Secret, and if it inspired the current inspirational book phase. I can say that no, it did not. It's just the latest, most awful movie/book in a long succession of awful books that make us hate people's query letters because they think they can write them because honestly, they look pretty easy to write. Well, they're not, so stop it.
As to why The Secret is such a success, the short answer is of course that people are stupid. That's all I was going to write, but then I realized that blogs are meant for long, rambling monologues where the poster insults the readers' political/spiritual/moral beliefs, and that writing about something other than my mystery virus would distract me from the headache that is caused by my mystery virus. Don't start a publishing company.
Self-help and inspirational books have existed since the beginning of contemporary publishing, whenever that was (sometime this century). It exists as a genre because there's a great demand for it, for the most part by bored people who want to improve themselves or their lives, and I support the idea of buying a book about carpentry and building a birdhouse. Sure it'll fall apart next week, but you'll feel better about the crappy Dilbert job you have and feel like you accomplished something, even if the thing was just glued together and your area doesn't have many birds.
Then there's "inspirational" books, a term I take to mean, "at least vaguely-Christian watered-down spirituality, sometimes in the form of old man wisdom." On a certain level I admire a person who can find total happiness in life with a $7.95 paperback on the bargain rack at CVS. It's a lot cheaper than my synagogue membership and this person probably has way more free time than I do. I'm busy trying to figure out if I can put the chili on the hot plate on Saturday morning because the chili is so watery that it might cook the water, which is a violation of one of the 39 labors forbidden by G-d to perform on the Sabbath (as opposed to solid food, which cannot be re-cooked), and this person is at the movies or the theater or riding a bike. Who knows.
On the other hand, most people who turn to the bargain rack at CVS for meaning in their lives are probably in pretty dire straits in terms of finding that meaning. Allow me to sum them all up in one sentence:
If you have a more positive attitude, your crappy life will not seem so crappy, because you have a positive attitude about it.
This does not, however, actually change the quality of your life, as these books lead you to believe. It may, but it depends what you're up against. Cancer, not so much. These sorts of books have a double-edged sword that can cut you, to take the metaphor way too far. If you believe that you will recover from an illness by positive thinking and then you don't, you might come to the very logical conclusion that it's your fault that you're ill because you didn't think hard enough about how much better you were going to get.
You may have guessed at this point that I'm speaking from experience. When I was newly diagnosed with Crohn's Disease a lot of this mind-body shit was shoved down my throat to the point where I actually believed it, and when my surgical procedure did arguably more harm than good and the complication nearly killed me, I thought it was my fault. It wasn't a hyperactive N-protein in my immune system causing inflammation to my lower intestines that was the problem. It was my bad attitude.
When I realized that was complete bullshit, I felt much better - about my life, at least. I didn't actually feel better health-wise, further proving my point.
The problem with The Secret and the reason that it's caused so much controversy is that it takes this basic concept to the extreme of wish fulfillment. There's apparently a segment in the original video on which the book was based in which a woman wishes for a gold necklace around her next, and because she wishes hard enough, the necklace appears. At this point I can't help but think of Patrick Swayze's slimy motivational speaker in Donnie Darko, who turns out to be a kiddie porn addict. At one point in the movie, the gym teacher (who is a devotee) makes the class watch one of the videos and says that all of human experience can be put into the categories of either fear or love, to which Donnie angrily replies:
Donnie Darko: "I just don't get this. You can't just lump things into two categories. Things aren't that simple."
Gym Teacher: "The lifeline is divided that way."
Donnie Darko: "Well, life isn't that simple. Who cares of Ling Ling returns the wallet and keeps the money? It has nothing to do with either fear or love."
Gym Teacher: "Fear and love are the deepest of human emotions."
Donnie Darko: "...Okay. But you're not listening to me. There are other things that have to be taken into account here - like, the whole spectrum of human emotions! You can't just lump everything into these two categories and just deny everything else!"
Needless to say, when the gym teacher threatens him with a failing grade, he replies with something that involves shoving a card up where the sun doesn't shine and earns himself a visit to the principal's office.
The Secret isn't just stupid; it's dangerous. Telling people that they will just get things by wishing for them is only moral if you happen to inhabit a Disney movie, and not one of those ones where the parent of the protagonist dies. The idea does work in some circumstances; if you happen to be standing in the middle of the road on a misty day and wish to be hit by a car, you might get your wish, and then Rod Sterling might step out of the bushes and talk to the camera about how stupid you were.
One of the many professors and doctors trotted out on the video was recently interviewed about the infamous "necklace scene" - to which he replied that it wasn't meant to be "taken so literally" and had clearly no idea the lengths to which Rhonda Byrne was willing to take things to sell more copies of her video. She even wound up on Oprah with her new book. Oprah's a fairly intelligent woman (she's very good at making people feel better about themselves, which is a talent), but she has a tendency to fall for literary shysters.
It's one thing to be a semi-talented writer and speaker who knows how to lump extremely conventional wisdom together into a book and have it be a bestseller. It's another thing to tell people that wishes come true.
For everyone's information, we get submissions like The Secret all the time from people who think they have figured out the secrets of the universe or how to do real magic or the date that Christ is coming back and the exact set of things we have to do to bring him along. We call these people "crazy" and trash their query letters. Sure, a couple of them might be written well enough to sell a bajillion copies to, but we like to sleep at night.
As to why The Secret is such a success, the short answer is of course that people are stupid. That's all I was going to write, but then I realized that blogs are meant for long, rambling monologues where the poster insults the readers' political/spiritual/moral beliefs, and that writing about something other than my mystery virus would distract me from the headache that is caused by my mystery virus. Don't start a publishing company.
Self-help and inspirational books have existed since the beginning of contemporary publishing, whenever that was (sometime this century). It exists as a genre because there's a great demand for it, for the most part by bored people who want to improve themselves or their lives, and I support the idea of buying a book about carpentry and building a birdhouse. Sure it'll fall apart next week, but you'll feel better about the crappy Dilbert job you have and feel like you accomplished something, even if the thing was just glued together and your area doesn't have many birds.
Then there's "inspirational" books, a term I take to mean, "at least vaguely-Christian watered-down spirituality, sometimes in the form of old man wisdom." On a certain level I admire a person who can find total happiness in life with a $7.95 paperback on the bargain rack at CVS. It's a lot cheaper than my synagogue membership and this person probably has way more free time than I do. I'm busy trying to figure out if I can put the chili on the hot plate on Saturday morning because the chili is so watery that it might cook the water, which is a violation of one of the 39 labors forbidden by G-d to perform on the Sabbath (as opposed to solid food, which cannot be re-cooked), and this person is at the movies or the theater or riding a bike. Who knows.
On the other hand, most people who turn to the bargain rack at CVS for meaning in their lives are probably in pretty dire straits in terms of finding that meaning. Allow me to sum them all up in one sentence:
If you have a more positive attitude, your crappy life will not seem so crappy, because you have a positive attitude about it.
This does not, however, actually change the quality of your life, as these books lead you to believe. It may, but it depends what you're up against. Cancer, not so much. These sorts of books have a double-edged sword that can cut you, to take the metaphor way too far. If you believe that you will recover from an illness by positive thinking and then you don't, you might come to the very logical conclusion that it's your fault that you're ill because you didn't think hard enough about how much better you were going to get.
You may have guessed at this point that I'm speaking from experience. When I was newly diagnosed with Crohn's Disease a lot of this mind-body shit was shoved down my throat to the point where I actually believed it, and when my surgical procedure did arguably more harm than good and the complication nearly killed me, I thought it was my fault. It wasn't a hyperactive N-protein in my immune system causing inflammation to my lower intestines that was the problem. It was my bad attitude.
When I realized that was complete bullshit, I felt much better - about my life, at least. I didn't actually feel better health-wise, further proving my point.
The problem with The Secret and the reason that it's caused so much controversy is that it takes this basic concept to the extreme of wish fulfillment. There's apparently a segment in the original video on which the book was based in which a woman wishes for a gold necklace around her next, and because she wishes hard enough, the necklace appears. At this point I can't help but think of Patrick Swayze's slimy motivational speaker in Donnie Darko, who turns out to be a kiddie porn addict. At one point in the movie, the gym teacher (who is a devotee) makes the class watch one of the videos and says that all of human experience can be put into the categories of either fear or love, to which Donnie angrily replies:
Donnie Darko: "I just don't get this. You can't just lump things into two categories. Things aren't that simple."
Gym Teacher: "The lifeline is divided that way."
Donnie Darko: "Well, life isn't that simple. Who cares of Ling Ling returns the wallet and keeps the money? It has nothing to do with either fear or love."
Gym Teacher: "Fear and love are the deepest of human emotions."
Donnie Darko: "...Okay. But you're not listening to me. There are other things that have to be taken into account here - like, the whole spectrum of human emotions! You can't just lump everything into these two categories and just deny everything else!"
Needless to say, when the gym teacher threatens him with a failing grade, he replies with something that involves shoving a card up where the sun doesn't shine and earns himself a visit to the principal's office.
The Secret isn't just stupid; it's dangerous. Telling people that they will just get things by wishing for them is only moral if you happen to inhabit a Disney movie, and not one of those ones where the parent of the protagonist dies. The idea does work in some circumstances; if you happen to be standing in the middle of the road on a misty day and wish to be hit by a car, you might get your wish, and then Rod Sterling might step out of the bushes and talk to the camera about how stupid you were.
One of the many professors and doctors trotted out on the video was recently interviewed about the infamous "necklace scene" - to which he replied that it wasn't meant to be "taken so literally" and had clearly no idea the lengths to which Rhonda Byrne was willing to take things to sell more copies of her video. She even wound up on Oprah with her new book. Oprah's a fairly intelligent woman (she's very good at making people feel better about themselves, which is a talent), but she has a tendency to fall for literary shysters.
It's one thing to be a semi-talented writer and speaker who knows how to lump extremely conventional wisdom together into a book and have it be a bestseller. It's another thing to tell people that wishes come true.
For everyone's information, we get submissions like The Secret all the time from people who think they have figured out the secrets of the universe or how to do real magic or the date that Christ is coming back and the exact set of things we have to do to bring him along. We call these people "crazy" and trash their query letters. Sure, a couple of them might be written well enough to sell a bajillion copies to, but we like to sleep at night.
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Indepedent Publishing
The answer to where I've been is: in bed. Apparently starting your own publishing company while being a full time student and having two other jobs can cause your body to like, collapse for a week. Or two.
Which brings us to our topic, which is self-publishing. Yes, the much-maligned business of publishing your own books using either a digital printer or a POD service. There are three reasons to self-publish:
(1) You have written a body of work intended for a small audience (under 100 people) and just want it bound so that it's easier to read and this audience is willing to spend a lot of money to get it.
(2) You want to reprint a public domain book that has not been printed in a very long time and is very hard to get for a niche audience that you know will buy it like mad, but generally have no plans for mass market.
(3) You are an idiot or a terrible writer with lots of money to blow.
I fell into category number two. I discovered that this book that a group of people (a few hundred) wanted had gone horribly out of print to the point that the New York Public Library only had one copy in the reading room and they wouldn't let me take it out. After some investigation I also discovered that the book had fallen into public domain in the 70's with a lot of other books published between 1932 and 1950 because the original publishers had never renewed the copyright. I decided to reprint it by scanning it in to my computer after photocopying it at the reading room, writing an introduction, and start collecting quotes from digital printers. I would (or will) probably make back the money I invested in the project (roughly $500) and then maybe a few thousand on top of that, much of which would go to charity. The real intent was to get the book back in print. As someone who loves books and collects them, I feel it's sort of a public responsibility to make sure literature doesn't disappear because of circumstance and time.
I decided not to go with a POD press, which would have been really easy in that they would have done stuff like layout and promotion and generally managing the project. They also would have taken most of the profits, and I decided I didn't want that,. Since I work in publishing, I should probably have some idea how to do layout myself anyway, so instead I looked into digital printers, who are willing to do print runs in the 100-300 range for about $5 a book. I charge for shipping and handling, and the everything in between on the cover price (in the $15 range) is profit.
Other than causing a physical collapse from exhaustion, this little (and still ongoing) exercise taught me a thing or two about how much it takes to actually create a book. It's true that the amount an author makes on a book is low. Most of it goes to the publishing company, because no matter how altruistic they are, they still have to pay their employees and they still have to make a profit. And boy, are there a lot of little jobs to pay people for. There's layout, copy-editing, proof reading, buying the ISBN, cover art, deciding on various types of binding, and last but not least, making sure the book does not look like crap or fall apart in anybody's hands. Companies have choices beyond hardcover and softcover. There's paper weight, thickness, and quality. There's the size of the book, which lowers page count but increases the price of binding. There's things like what font to use and how much of the page to leave blank (more white space makes the book look more professional, but raises page count). And then, at the very end, there's me, trying to make sense of all of the options the digital printer's website is giving me. (matte instead of gloss costs more but looks better. How much more? Can I get a new quote for 300 versus 200 copies?)
Oh, and publicity. The biggest job and the one I'm totally unequipped to do, being one person. Thank G-d I'm only doing this for a niche market that I already am in contact with. There's more to it than posting your book on Amazon. In fact, you don't really want to post your book on Amazon. Amazon takes a high commission - higher than bookstores, in fact, which is how it can afford to offer you, the buyer, all of those discounts. Bookstores generally take 50% off the cover price for themselves, while Amazon.com and other websites will take 55%, a very significant difference. It's quite brilliant, actually. They offer discounts and then offer super shipper savings so that you'll buy more books than you originally planned to do, knowing that they'll make it up in bulk shipping as opposed to individual purchases. Also, they take most of the money from the used market. There's a flat rate of $3.49 for shipping on a used book sold through Amazon - Amazon will take half of that, and then a percentage from the price the book is actually being sold for, to the point where the sellers might actually be losing money if the book is very heavy and media mail goes over $2.00.
So, it has all been kind of insane, and will continue to be until I get over the initial hump of selling off my first run (if there even is a second run; I could care less), but now at least I'm back on my feet. Today was a much easier day for me in terms of working at the office because I felt better. It didn't result in more maybes - lots of auto-rejects instead. We're in the middle of an inspirational self-help craze the way we were in a Da Vinci Code-type thriller phase about a year ago, and it's just as annoying, but in a different way.
Which brings us to our topic, which is self-publishing. Yes, the much-maligned business of publishing your own books using either a digital printer or a POD service. There are three reasons to self-publish:
(1) You have written a body of work intended for a small audience (under 100 people) and just want it bound so that it's easier to read and this audience is willing to spend a lot of money to get it.
(2) You want to reprint a public domain book that has not been printed in a very long time and is very hard to get for a niche audience that you know will buy it like mad, but generally have no plans for mass market.
(3) You are an idiot or a terrible writer with lots of money to blow.
I fell into category number two. I discovered that this book that a group of people (a few hundred) wanted had gone horribly out of print to the point that the New York Public Library only had one copy in the reading room and they wouldn't let me take it out. After some investigation I also discovered that the book had fallen into public domain in the 70's with a lot of other books published between 1932 and 1950 because the original publishers had never renewed the copyright. I decided to reprint it by scanning it in to my computer after photocopying it at the reading room, writing an introduction, and start collecting quotes from digital printers. I would (or will) probably make back the money I invested in the project (roughly $500) and then maybe a few thousand on top of that, much of which would go to charity. The real intent was to get the book back in print. As someone who loves books and collects them, I feel it's sort of a public responsibility to make sure literature doesn't disappear because of circumstance and time.
I decided not to go with a POD press, which would have been really easy in that they would have done stuff like layout and promotion and generally managing the project. They also would have taken most of the profits, and I decided I didn't want that,. Since I work in publishing, I should probably have some idea how to do layout myself anyway, so instead I looked into digital printers, who are willing to do print runs in the 100-300 range for about $5 a book. I charge for shipping and handling, and the everything in between on the cover price (in the $15 range) is profit.
Other than causing a physical collapse from exhaustion, this little (and still ongoing) exercise taught me a thing or two about how much it takes to actually create a book. It's true that the amount an author makes on a book is low. Most of it goes to the publishing company, because no matter how altruistic they are, they still have to pay their employees and they still have to make a profit. And boy, are there a lot of little jobs to pay people for. There's layout, copy-editing, proof reading, buying the ISBN, cover art, deciding on various types of binding, and last but not least, making sure the book does not look like crap or fall apart in anybody's hands. Companies have choices beyond hardcover and softcover. There's paper weight, thickness, and quality. There's the size of the book, which lowers page count but increases the price of binding. There's things like what font to use and how much of the page to leave blank (more white space makes the book look more professional, but raises page count). And then, at the very end, there's me, trying to make sense of all of the options the digital printer's website is giving me. (matte instead of gloss costs more but looks better. How much more? Can I get a new quote for 300 versus 200 copies?)
Oh, and publicity. The biggest job and the one I'm totally unequipped to do, being one person. Thank G-d I'm only doing this for a niche market that I already am in contact with. There's more to it than posting your book on Amazon. In fact, you don't really want to post your book on Amazon. Amazon takes a high commission - higher than bookstores, in fact, which is how it can afford to offer you, the buyer, all of those discounts. Bookstores generally take 50% off the cover price for themselves, while Amazon.com and other websites will take 55%, a very significant difference. It's quite brilliant, actually. They offer discounts and then offer super shipper savings so that you'll buy more books than you originally planned to do, knowing that they'll make it up in bulk shipping as opposed to individual purchases. Also, they take most of the money from the used market. There's a flat rate of $3.49 for shipping on a used book sold through Amazon - Amazon will take half of that, and then a percentage from the price the book is actually being sold for, to the point where the sellers might actually be losing money if the book is very heavy and media mail goes over $2.00.
So, it has all been kind of insane, and will continue to be until I get over the initial hump of selling off my first run (if there even is a second run; I could care less), but now at least I'm back on my feet. Today was a much easier day for me in terms of working at the office because I felt better. It didn't result in more maybes - lots of auto-rejects instead. We're in the middle of an inspirational self-help craze the way we were in a Da Vinci Code-type thriller phase about a year ago, and it's just as annoying, but in a different way.
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