Agent Salaries

I've been getting a lot of these:

Just out of curosity,

How much do agents (on average) get paid? What's the low and high end?

And here's another:

Once you become an agent, even if you have to give up a part of your income, don't you get a "base salary" and benefits? Wouldn't that be worth holding on for?


So, you know how when you sign with an agent, they find you a publisher, and then take 10-15% of your earnings? That's their paycheck.

Agents don't "work" for anyone but themselves and their clients. There's no one to provide them with a salary or benefits. Their income comes entirely from a small percentage of their clients' total earnings. This means that a year could pass where an agency could make no money whatsover, if none of their older clients have written books that sold that year, or they fail to sell any works from new clients. Most agents are smart enough to make some money every year, but that money could easily be under $4,000.

So how do they stay in business? An agent relies on an author (or preferably a few) that make considerable advances and write books on a regular basis of once every 2-3 years. And when I say "considerable" I mean, "over 100,000 dollars." Remember that the agent gets only 15% of that, tops.

A new fiction author will generally make around 5,000 dollars in an advance and then not earn any royalties. That's $750 for the agent. Now math isn't my strongest suit here, but to be able to earn $30,000 (with no benefits, no overtime, no 401k) the agent would have to take on 40 new authors a year, which is by anyone's reckoning an insane amount of authors. The agent simply wouldn't have the time to edit and sell all those manuscripts.

Most clients of the agent are not significant earners, but a few have to be, or the agency doesn't stay in business. My boss has a few clients who make about $250,000 or $500,000 advances, but those authors don't write a book a year, or even a book every other year. She just hopes one of them will come through, so she can pay her electricity bill.

In answer to the second question, as to why don't I become a salaried agent, it's because the job doesn't exist. If I started out as an agent today, I would have to build up contacts and a client list, and then sell the manuscripts of my clients to editors. It could easily be two years before I see any money at all, and more before I see enough money to constitute a living wage.

Reading Lists and Market Shares

I officially have to stop buying books. Not only is there very little room left in my apartment (we haven't started using them as furniture yet), but I am legitimately behind on my reading.

As I've been told many times by different publishers and market researches, Amazon.com only has about a 17% market share, so publishers tend to ignore the website. I think this number is deceptive. I still do buy books in bricks & mortar stores, but I also write down the titles and authors of books I want that look too expensive and then go buy them online for 10% of the cover price, after shipping. I know I'm the exception to the rule, what with buying an overwhelming majority of my books online and having an Amazon credit card to earn rewards points to continue buying books online, but maybe the industry should take a little note: I buy around 200 books a year. That makes me unusual in a very significant way. Serious readers without a tremendous amount of disposable income now have a serious alternative to libraries - buying used books on the ever-expanding online used book market. Honestly the biggest hurdle to that is the recent postage increase, but it's worth it if the book costs $0.01 and is "used, like new." Used book sales aren't tracked (at least not by anyone I've heard from), and I wonder what Amazon's "market share" would be if they were.

Reading list this week:

- The Mishnah, Seders Kodashim and Tohoroth
- I am America (And So Can You!) by Stephen Colbert (gift from dad)
- Sefer Yetzirah, Chapters 1:1 - 1:14
- Samurai by Mitsuo Kure
- The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty by Anne Rice (admittedly, couldn't get through it)
- Half of an urban fantasy manuscript I'm reading for a friend

The Job Ladder

I was wondering... how much access do you have to clients and publishers, how do you get to know them, and how easy is it for you to move up in your world? In the Hollywood system, assistants are expected to listen in on calls, memorize everyone's phone number, and talk to clients a lot-- this is sort of the "apprenticeship" phase of your career, and while you are getting this education in "who's who and how to please them," you work for $300-500 a week, with the promise that eventually you will be a better-paid agent/manager/producer. Does the lit biz in NY work like this, or do you have to be creative in figuring out how to meet people? And are you paid any better?

If I was working even close to full time, yeah, I guess I would be making about $400 a week. I'm not, though. That's the first misconception. Most assistants are only part-time. I know assistants who work for multiple agents on different days of the week to fill out their schedule (this is an accepted practice).

Beyond the hourly-wage part-time assistant, you generally move up in two ways.

(1) You become a sub-agent to your boss or go to work for another agency as a sub-agent and start representing your own clients. Your boss takes a cut, but you get to use her name and contact sheet and she holds your hand through the process of your first few contracts. More and more people are doing this as agencies proliferate, but in the past, being an agent required years of experience working on the other side, in a publishing house. I could go into long theorizing about why that's changed, but it would be guesses and I can't say if it's better or worse for the industry. It's difficult to make any hard statements about the book industry.

(2) You now have a year's experience and get a job as an editorial assistant (or a publicity assistant, or a production assistant, or whatever - the bottom rung) at a publishing house through the normal methods of calling your contacts and submitting resumes and whatnot. This is what I'll be doing in December, when I graduate from my MFA program. While an agency would be a better working environment for me (setting your own hours) with my chronic illness, I don't want to be an agent. Contracts and sales and pitching books to editors and rights don't interest me. My first boss nailed it on the head when she said I was made for editorial. So, that's where I hope to be, in a few months (hint hint, industry people) - rejecting people from the actual publishing house and not the agency. Or just doing general editorial work. Plus it's a standard paycheck thing, not relying on the success of your author to make any money, which I'm more comfortable with. As much as I enjoy working for an agent, I'm not a saleswoman at heart and I don't think I could do it for a living.

---

On an additional note, many, many people have been emailing me, asking how to get a job like mine. Please refer to my earlier post about it.

More on Rejections - Surprise!

Well! I'm less likely to respond to people flaming each other if I don't seem to be the one flamed, but I will answer some questions. Oh, and to clear things up, these segments are from different people's posts.

So Rejecter, if the personalized rejection comes five months after sending a requested partial which in turn came five months after sending a query, do I punch myself in the face or tell the agent's assistant (who, by the way, had no idea what he was talking about with respect to the subject matter - believe me, I know: I've heard from enough agents who DO understand the subject matter)to get F'ed?

You waited five months for a response from a query? Wow. The partial thing is not a surprise to me. Response time on requested material is slow. But if the whole process took 10 months, yeah, that is a little obnoxious, but surely you submitted to a ton of other agencies at the same time, right?

You can tell the assistant to get fucked only on the condition that you supply the money for the prostitute, with the understanding that the assistant might go spend it on a new hard drive instead. Or some DVD box set. Either one.

Here's to the fucking assholes of the world: they'll always be there and so will the professionals who see this whole process as a business.

We do classify our work as "business," at least to the IRS. Then books become a "business expense." Also agents rely on author's proceeds to pay the rent and electricity bill and stuff, so it actually needs to be a profitable business.

The agent in question has a blog where they blabber on about their vacations, and stuff they're doing with their kids and how they've been to this conference and that looking for clients, yet they can't keep their "house" in order with respect to projects they've requested. ... This agent reminds me of a part-time real estate agent - they were that unprofessional.

Not all agents act professionally all the time. Just like anyone in any other business.

I once got a rejection back from an agency on a partial after 3 days. The (requested) partial was 50 pages. No way they read it. And there were no sticky fingermarks, coffee rings, mustard stains or dog-eared pages on the pathetic pristine pages I got back. Nah, they didn't read it.

I would put my money on the idea that they did. We tend to treat submissions fairly professionally, especially if you supplied return postage for the entire submission. I don't smoke, drink coffee, wear lipstick, or dog-ear pages, and my hands are washed on a regular basis, so for the most part the partial looks the same when I'm done with it as when I started, and if it's going back to the author, I generally put it back together and make the neat before it goes in the envelope.

Inside the Partials Process

Obviously this is only true at agencies with an assistant, and then only some of them, but at every agency I've worked at, it's gone something like this:

(1) My boss asks me to read a partial she requested because she's especially busy lining up interviews for her bestselling author.

(2) I read the partial. (Obvious)

(3) We have a 2-minute conversation, tops, about the partial. Sometimes it doesn't take two minutes. I once worked at an agency where for the most part, the agent did not personalize the response to partials unless they were very close, but she did have a special form letter response specifically for partials. My current boss responds herself, in her own handwriting (not mine).

Most of the time with partials, I don't say to reject unless it's obviously so horrible that the query was just plain misleading. Partials are something the agent was interested in from the get-go, so I'm not quick to dismiss the work, and if I do, I have to give a reason. (Occasionally "The author can't spell" is enough) Here are some common responses I'll give her:

"I'm not thrilled about it, but to be honest, it's not my type of literature anyway, and there's nothing wrong with it on a sentence level, so you might like it."

"The author has a specific style of prose. You'll decide whether you love it or hate it in two pages."

"It's very similar to a lot of stuff on your list in terms of content, but I don't think it's as good as any of the stuff on your list."

"I can't make heads or tails of it. Was this an e-query you responded to? OK, you look at it then. I have no idea."

"Does this guy know you, or something? Why was this requested?"

"I hate literary fiction, and this is literary fiction, and I actually liked it a little, so that's pretty much a stunning recommendation."

And so on. If it's a reject and she doesn't want to read it herself for time reasons, she asks me specifics about it so she can be more personal in her reply.

Personalized Rejections

Dear Rejector,

I read in an agent blog today of a woman who hammered back at the agency with a long tirade of snide comments after receiving a rejection letter. I was horrified at her attitude.

Then I remembered a note by me to an agency about a year an a half ago where I frustratingly told them their standard rejection letter seemed very cold.

I have learned so much since then, and now look upon rejection letters as the things they truly are: not personal. It's a business. And a writer trying to sell a manuscript and enter into a business agreement should remember the other party has the right to reject it if it isn't good business for them.

Still, that comment I made might come back to haunt me when I start sending out query letters again. Yes? No? Probably wasn't memorable enough to stand out? Never darken an agent's door again?

To answer the second question first, no, that one agency will probably not remember you unless they rejected your full and you're resubmitting the same manuscript. And even then, it's one agency! There's over a hundred of them.

As to the first question, which was unasked, what is the deal with people complaining about personalized rejections? I mean it's still a rejection, but if you get a personalized rejection, it generally means we cared enough about your work to personalize our rejection. You were close. You were closer than about 95% of the applicants. Slap yourself on the back and then write something just a little bit better.

The Literal First Five Pages

Dear Ms. Rejector,

I've seen a lot of agents request the first five pages of a manuscript along with the query letter. This frustrates me a bit, because the prologue to my book is seven pages long, and I think an agent would be more enticed by the whole prologue than just the first five pages. So my options, as I see them, are:

1. Bite the bullet and only send 5 pages
2. Revise my prologue to be 5 pages long
3. Use 11pt font or 1.5 spaced lines to make it 5 pages long and hope the agent doesn't care/notice. Or better yet, if it's an email query, just send the text as part of the email and pretend it's 5 pages.
4. Send all seven pages, but be up front in the query letter ("I've sent you the first seven pages of my novel along with this query..."), and hope I don't get tossed aside for not following the specific instructions

Which of these options seems the most viable? Are any of them
completely idiotic and suicidal?

Actually, you've got a number of options open to you, but please use 12 point font. Our eyes, our eyes!

You can:

(1) Bite the bullet and send the first five pages, because those are also pages the agent will have to eventually like anyway, and if they aren't dramatically different from your general writing style, and your writing is good, that shouldn't be a terrible worry.

(2) Send seven pages. We won't really care if it's actually seven. On the other hand, we might not make it to page 6.

(3) Punch up the first five pages of the prologue.

(4) Send the first five pages of the novel proper, if they're understandable without the prologue. This makes a good deal of sense in many cases, when the prologue is a literary device or an informational device and doesn't actually look a lot like those overworked, perfect pages you mean to be your opening. We won't get mad at you. If you get a request for the actual manuscript afterwards, you might want to say something like, "There is now a prologue" so we don't get all confused. We get a lot of partials, and sometimes we forget who they're from or what they're about during the wait.

Note to all authors: When an agent requests the first five, he/she generally means the first five; this is the only case where he/she doesn't. Don't send the first five of the eighth chapter because you think the writing is the best in the beginning of the eighth chapter. The writing should be great everywhere.

Scams Upon Scams

When you expose a scammer, they don't learn their lesson unless they go to jail. They just find a new way to do it. Agencies that charge fees are now established to be evil thanks to the good people at Preditors and Editors and many other organizations, but that doesn't mean people aren't after your money and will find a way to get it.

Recently my agency received a letter that was a promotional pitch for a service by a company that would provide us with (for a very small fee, or no fee at all; I can't remember) rejection letters, or even stamps with our agency's name so we could just stamp the rejection line onto the author's query letter. It's essentially free paper and ink, but the catch was that all the rejections would include a link to their website, which coaches people on how to write novels (for $$$). Not only was this preposterous (no agency can't afford to type out one form rejection and photocopy it a bajillion times), it was also a scam - not for us, but the people who got rejected. We didn't dignify them with a reply.

Here's another one:

Rejector, I seek your opinion on:

1) having a freelance editor review/edit your book before sending it out to agents (I write non-fiction, so I'm usually in the "proposal" mode)

2) author representatives who "connect you with agents and publishers." (one i just stumbled on: authoronestop.com) isn't it just as effective to do research on your own, and submit to specific agents who represent your genre?

(1) Having a freelance editor review/edit your book is not a bad idea, provided they are legitimate. To an a normal eye, it is very hard to tell if people are legitimate, or if they are, if they're any good. Follow up on their references and see where that leads, first

(2) Instead of playing scam agents themselves, it seems the trend now is to pretend there's some kind of intermediary between you and an agent, like an agent is an intermediary between you and a publisher. Well, there isn't. We don't generally have people sending us stuff on behalf of new writers unless they are (a) our clients and friends or (b) other agents we know and trust and got drunk with at Frankfurt. I've never heard of Author One Stop.com, which is bad enough sign that I would discourage having anything to do with it.

Book Titles

Dear Ms Rejector

Do you have any insights on book titles, and if they affect the way you respond to a query?

The answer to your second question is no, they do not affect the way we respond to a query. We'll probably only notice the title if it's especially cool. Most of times it's just a regular title or an especially bad one, but that doesn't bother us. The title can be changed throughout most of the book-publication process. I'm not particularly sure if the right title has to go on the contract or if it can be changed later, but I think it can be changed as late as final editorial.

Titles are also deceptively hard to come up with unless you're writing a thriller. We don't expect you to nail it the first time.

E-Books! Did I do this already?

So, two people emailed me with questions about e-Books. Generally I trim long emails, but I'm going into ultra-pruning mode for the sake of time.

You should sell an e-book. Figure a five percent sell-through and 98 percent profit. If you get 500 visits per day and you're making $4.80 per unit, it works out to about $3,600 a month, possibly enough to rent a dumpster behind the Port Authority.

No, I wouldn't. Even if I sold 500 books per day, which bestsellers don't even do, Amazon would take 55% of my profits - or more. I'm not sure what their commission rate is for e-Books. I imagine it's high because they (and B&N.com, to be fair) are the only real vendor.

[Deleted section: This guy likes reading e-Books] Every-now and again though, for the same reasons I went to used bookstores and bought the most random title i could find, I nab stuff that is e-book only. Like before, most of it is pretty horrible and a few of them are worthwhile reads. One in particular was the best read I've had this year(since then its being picked up for print, which makes me very happy). Anyway, my question is this, where in the world are the reviews for this part of the industry?

Don't get me wrong - I'm a technocrat. My teenage years were spent on ultra-slow Prodigy Online and then on slightly faster local network. I shamelessly download an entire TV series that's either too expensive or not available for retail in this country (I like Japanese feudal dramas). That said, I hate reading books online. I'm willing to read fanfic because it's free and I already know the characters, so I'm more likely to like it, but I can't remember the last time I read an e-Book, even for free, that had no relation to some fandom. Why? Because most people feel that reading a book on a computer screen sucks. And most people make up most of the consumer market (though it's all right to feel special).

When hand-held devices that you could actually read on came out, there was a whole lot of press about how it would change publishing industry and we would all be switching to reading off our tiny, poorly-lit Palm Pilot screen like the guys in Prelude to Foundation. Remember when Stephen King did that chapter-by-chapter/pay-as-you-go posting of a novel? Or I took that course on hypertext fiction? (No, you don't because you weren't there. Well, I did. I needed more time to spend with my Playstation so I opted out of another history course.)

Even some ten years later, industry professionals are scratching their heads, trying to make a way to make e-Books profitable. As the person in charge of the digital division at I think it was HarperCollins explained to me this summer, "e-Books and internet files are being published by the major companies, but it's still basically R&D." (research and development) And she was a person willing to read a novel on her little novel-reading device, but she admitted no one understood her, even her co-workers.

As with any new thing that comes along unexpectedly and alternately revolutionizes/threatens your entire industry, it takes time to figure out how it's going to work. With the internet it's especially hard because things are constantly changing, as are the devices we buy to keep us hooked to that digital IV while we're away from the computer. What publishers have discovered, for the most part, is that e-Books are unprofitable. You put it up for $5.95 (dumb companies charge more), Amazon takes half, and then the author gets a cut. Also, people don't buy it, especially if it's a new author and/or it's also available in print form. In the end the result is easily less than $50 a month - for the company.

Not that the industry has given up. They have figured out that it costs almost nothing to create an e-Book other than editorial, especially if you've signed the author for a print run and you're doing the editorial anyway, so they don't really lose money; they just don't make money. The advantage is in time: it takes a book a year, at absolute best, to go to press, between the contract signing and the day the books appear on shelves. e-Books can go up whenever the editorial is done and someone's put some cover art together. Some companies are using the e-Book as a promotional tool while they're waiting for the book to come out, and even then, that's promotion restricted to people who spend a lot of time on Amazon. I do, but a lot of people don't. The point is that it's free promotion, and promotion is rarely free, so that's why you're seeing e-Books.

(Also you're seeing them because some people like them, but those people remain in the minority until our computer screens don't make our eyes want to bleed after a 12-hour session)

Rejection Timeline

Hi Rejecter-

Here's my question: sometimes query replies (in my case rejections so far) come like lightening, and other times it takes several weeks. What I guess I'm wondering is, if it a case of "the longer it's out, the better your chances are" because it's actually being considered, or does the fact that the query is still out just mean it's in a pile somewhere? Is this a total toss-up or is there a "usually" answer?

There are very few hard truths in this industry, and this is definitely an area in which a million things could be going on in the other side. I can tell you this:

(1) The "pile" (referring to the snail mail pile) stacks up based on how often the agent checks it, or if the assistant is in charge of that and if so, how often they come in. Sometimes I only come in once a week and do the whole pile. I used to work three days a week, so the pile didn't build up as much, except over the weekend. We do not go through it in any kind of order based on how much you spent on postage, so don't waste your money. What I do - and it's not always done this way - is go through the whole thing to make sure nothing's a bill or a royalty check or a bank statement, then stack it back up from largest to smallest envelope because it stacks better on the table. Then I do the whole stack.

(2) It's true that we reject instantaneously while we might take more time to think about a maybe query, but this by no means universally true. Generally I make a pile of maybes, and my boss looks at them, picks up the one she likes, and sets them aside. Then when she gets a chance, she emails the person. It's probably within the day because she's polite, but that's not true of everyone. They might let it sit on their shelf for a couple weeks (even a letter) if they are extremely busy. Agenting stuff like contract negotiations, publisher-set submission deadlines of final manuscripts, proof approval, and any kind of conference to get ready for (like the BEA or Frankfurt) are really more demanding and is what the agent does all day. In fact, hope that they do, because it means they're working hard for their clients, and if you become one, you'll want the same treatment.

(3) Partials and fulls can take a long time. This is true. I have had agents get back to me really quickly, generally with a rejection. Or if it's a partial, the agent can take a quick look and say, "Eh... I'm not sure. Need to see the whole thing" and request a full very quickly as well. If you have a full or a partial and it's been 6 months, give them an email. If something comes up, like an offer from that publishing house you sent into a year ago, call them and tell them. They will drop everything and read the manuscript. If they don't, they're definitely not the right agent for you.

(4) Some agents do not feel the need to respond to email queries if it's a rejection. I think this is rude and I'm glad my boss takes the time to reply to her emails, but that's the way some people feel. It's slowly changing as e-queries become more common, but some agents still just ignore it if they don't like it. The paper query with the SASE is a little harder to toss in the trash. There's some guilt factor there.

Beyond that, I can't say. Every agent works differently, and they work differently from week to week depending on what's going on that week. If they're busy badgering an author to get the final manuscript copy into the publisher by the deadline because it's tomorrow, then they won't be reading partials.

Covers!

I haven't posted much from a combination Jewish internet-less holidays/illness, but that'll be over in a week (the holiday part and hopefully the other part). Please know that if you post a comment past 6:15 pm EST tonight, it might not be approved until Saturday night.

Every once in a while, we get someone who's made their own cover. Either they've self-published already and are sending a copy or a copy of the cover, or they just designed a cover for what they hope will be their published novel. Let me say this: We love it. Why? Because they're so hilariously bad that we get a chuckle before moving on to the query, which is the only thing that concerns us anyway.

No, you do not get to design your own cover. I remember long before I worked in publishing and was submitting manuscripts (none of which were accepted), and I had wild dreams of designing my own cover. I even went into Photoshop, but at the time I wasn't very good at it and didn't come up with anything. I thought I could do a better job than those awful people who make covers using stock images (i.e. public domain) and something to make the author's name look shiny. Well, I was wrong. Unless the author has a master's in artistic design, with a speciality in commercial design for the book market, the cover will suck. So hard.

Oh man do I love them. There's the memoir covers made using a personal picture with the title written over it using Microsoft Paint. There's the self-drawn fantasy covers with the woman with impossibly large breasts standing beside the hero. There's the person who thinks a photograph of an empty building would look nice as long as they went a little nuts with the bevel/emboss function of Photoshop. And, last but not least, the person who pasted some photographs and newspaper clippings and drawings to a piece of paper and did a color photocopy, so it looks like some kind of collage.

Yes, you can not like professionally-done book covers. Many authors and readers don't. But you probably couldn't do better.

The Joy of Low Advances

For those of you who don't know Anon 7:55, check out the replies in the previous post. As he actually asked a valid question, I'll answer it here.

Unpleasant Anonymous Poster said...

I concede. As far as it is possible to discern talent by prejudice alone, your book has every possibility of success. Although, I have a few more questions, just to show I'm not affected by the fact that everybody has turned against me. (They always do that, so I'm used to it. I actually think it makes a man stronger to have lots of enemies and no friends.)

This may just be my interpretation of it, but generally having lots of enemies and no friends means that you have poor social skills, not any particular kind of character-related strength. It's a negative thing.

Why would you accept such a small advance, even for genre fiction? Back to the subject of self-respect: If it's that good, then it deserves more money. At least the same amount as the average book of its category. And in response to all my enemies, I apologize for expecting more from you, The Rejecter. Are you just hoping it will earn out the advance? And if it sells only a few thousand copies, will you be disappointed? Are you taking commercial success into consideration? If you're so good, you should want to make all kinds of money, so you can write another one, where you won't be distracted by any preoccupation.

Why did I accept such a low advance? Aren't my years of patience and time and money spent honing my craft worth some kind of reward, preferably in the form of a pool filled with dollar coins that you can swim in like Scrooge McDuck? I deserve compensation for the hours I spent at the computer when I could have been out drinking and partying and being a normal, functioning member of society and not a shut-in.

Fortunately I paid enough attention during the first submission attempts to learn that that wasn't going to happen. The market is hard on new fiction writers; you're lucky to get in at all. I got an offer, I got an agent - I had it all. Except money, but that seems to concern my agent more than me. Sure, I could have taken that risk and walked away from the initial offer to hunt for a higher one at other companies, but had that attempt failed, I would be back to square one. And you know what? Square one sucks. I want to be published.

That said, there was a more practical reason to accepting a low advance. If you're offered a good one, man, reach for that star. But you probably won't be offered a good one, and if you're hopig to be a career writer like me, that might not be a bad thing.

For those unfamiliar with the term, an "advance" is what it is - an "advance" on future predicted royalties you will be earning from the book. The good news is that even if the book doesn't sell enough copies to earn that amount of money back for the company, you get to keep the advance money. The bad news is that the company does detract your first royalties and keeps them until you "earn out your advance" and go into royalty territory. The company has seen its investment returned, and you get paychecks again.

"Earning out" is an important thing to do if you have the intention of trying to sell future books to that company or other companies, because they will look at your sales record and see not only how many copies sold but how much money the book actually made for the company. If I had a half-million dollar advance, man had my book better be a bestseller, or I'll have a poor record as an overpaid author. Considering I've written something that is a niche genre, that's unlikely.

With a low advance, I'm more likely to see royalties because there isn't that much to earn back. When I go in with the second novel, they're more likely to buy it - and for a decent amount of money. Hopefully.

This is a practical concern. If you don't make enough money, you can't afford to spend all your time focused on developing your talent, getting better, which is all any serious artist cares about. Genius is eternal patience. You need unlimited free time to have eternal patience.

Are you writing from some kind of alternate dimension where eating, sleeping, earning money, and the normal spectrum of human activities don't consume most of your time, and you find yourself sacrificing your free time for just a few hours of writing a day? If so, where is this dimension and is there a bus from the NYC Port Authority that goes there?

Who's On Your Side?

But one question--is a publisher LIKELY to pull something like that if it jeopardizes their relationship with an author? Or does it all depend on just who that author is?

Yes. No. Maybe.

This summer at the publishing institute I got to hear from a lot of editors. Most of my contact, aside from at the BEA, has been with agents. Sometimes they're on the same side of the field, sometimes they're not. Sometimes it seems like one's on your side and the other isn't, but you may be wrong. Or it may not matter. I'm being very helpful, am I?

Everyone involved in the publishing process obviously has a vested interest in having the author succeed. They also have a vested interest in making sure that they are compensated for their time and avoid any legal issues while doing so. So everyone is sort of working together but sort of not. I got a first-hand taste of this this summer, when I was offered a book contract by an editor and ran off to find an agent. It was a long and complex process that I don't want to get into because it involves specific people, but the point is, suddenly after many years of rejection, the spotlight was on me and my commercially viable manuscript. I didn't mention it at the time on the blog because I was having the argument with Jill about her book contract, and I was sure it would just confuse the issue, which was unrelated. But anyway, yes, G-d willing, I am going to be published sometime in late 2008.

Despite having worked for an agent and taken an publishing course, picking an agent was a maddening process. The editor didn't want me to get an agent. Some editors simply don't like working with agents; they feel they drive up the price. They don't like the middleman. (These editors accept unsolicited manuscripts) On the other hand the advance was very low even for genre fiction, and the agent wanted to threaten to walk away and take a chance with other publishers, while I wanted to take the offer on the table (with some re-negotiations and revisions that I needed an agent to do) because damnit, I wanted to be published, and I knew a lot about the publishing company and I knew they would do a good job and probably eventually pick up the whole series. I called around to former bosses and co-workers and they all gave me different advice, and really wondered what the hell I was doing, and then wondered, "Wait, I work in publishing. How do I not know what I'm doing?" A lot of guessing and going with gut feelings was involved.

Currently we're in contract revisions similar to the one in my previous post. A lot of people who knew me asked me why in the world was I looking for an agent who would just take a cut of my pay when I knew all about the job and already had a book deal. Couldn't I do it myself? I decided to let someone else do the nitty-gritty of the contract, which turned out to be a big deal, which is why I'm relieved and heavy on the "you need an agent" recommendation for most authors.

That doesn't mean that the publisher was trying to "screw me." The publisher presented a contract that would give me an advance and future royalties if I earn out my advance, and they would get a lot of rights. It wasn't bad; I just knew I could do better.

Take the example of the previous post to this one. The publisher has a valid reason for not wanting to have to contact the author prior to revisions. Revisions are expensive, so chances are they would be minor anyway, and what the publisher is trying to avoid is a situation in which the author disappears (dies, moves to another country, etc) and the publisher is unable to contact them to inform them of revisions, so they're not able to republish. The publisher could very well have had every intention of informing the author prior to publication with the old wording, but wanted to safeguard themselves against extreme cases that could become a legal mess. Or, maybe they just really didn't want to be hassled and were being sort of sneaky.

No one's really evil, but no one really wants to be hassled when they're trying to do their work. Agents don't want to be hassled by their clients when they're in a waiting period and can't do anything for them anyway, publishers don't want to be hassled by agents demanding every last word be changed in some way, and nobody wants to hassle the author too much if they're an earner because they might jump ship with the next book and/or fire their agent.

So, it's one of these. (waves hands up and down like a measuring scale)

Why You Need An Agent

I'm logging off for Rosh Hoshanah/Shabbos, so your comments won't be moderated for a while, unless I get someone to moderate them for me while I'm gone (Don't offer; I would have someone I know do it). Before I go, this story.

So my boss was on the phone the other day because she wanted another contract revision. In this case it was one word that she wanted inserted.

The original contract language said something like, "If revisions are made by the Publisher to the Work for a new edition, the Publisher must consult the Author."

She wanted it changed to, "If revisions are made by the Publisher to the Work for a new edition, the Publisher must first consult the Author."

Otherwise, the language is murky enough that technically revisions could be made, the second edition could be published, and THEN the author would be informed. In the original wording, no time frame is given to "consult."

I never would have thought of that.

Querying Agents in Same Agency

Dear Rejecter:

From what I've read, it's okay (and recommended) to query several agents at once. However, what about querying agents within the same literary agency? I have a friend who assists two agents at a very well-known agency and if I should query the two agents for whom she works in the future, would that be frowned upon? (I am speaking generally as I know my friend's opinion.) How much do agents within an agency "gossip" about us unpublished writers? Would they pass on a query sent to everyone in the house (even though several of them represent my genre)?

It is considered fair to query different agents in the same house, but space it out over a few weeks, because it might be the same assistant reading (or at least sorting) the mail, and when a bunch of letters with the same handwriting come in on the same day it looks tacky.

Anyone Want to Help?

Dear Rejecter:

I have a friend who is a professional book reviewer (www.bookwormsez.com) read by millions through the U.S. and Canada. She's promised to blurb my book when it's published. Is this something I should mention in a query letter?

I'm very skeptical of people I've never heard of. After all, there are a lot of places that basically just give everything a thumbs-up because a publishing company pays them to. Anyone heard of this person?

PS: Why have all the best bloggers in the publishing industry cut so far back on their blogging?

We're busy/on vacation.

Revisions Without A Contract

Hi there. I don't want to take up too much of your time, so I'll get straight to the point. An executive editor at a major publishing company requested my manuscript. During the process of waiting, her editorial assistant was kind enough to tell me the executive editor loved the book and that she was just as adamant about working with me as I am with her. Her editorial assistant even asked me to critique a piece of her work, which I did.

The editor sent me a list of revisions she would like to see, which don't seem impossible to make, but my question is whether or not it's a good idea to make revisions to a manuscript that hasn't been accepted or rejected.

I've been in this situation a couple times with agents and been burned a couple times, so I'll give you my advice.

From your description, she seems pretty interested. Also if she recommends revisions and is very specific about them and they seem sensible to you, you should probably be making them anyway. That said, she hasn't made you an offer yet, so don't be surprised if you turn around and she says no after you did the revisions. On the other hand, you come out with a better manuscript for other editors based on what was probably good feedback, so it's not necessary win-win (i.e. this might not immediately result in a publishing deal) but I would make the revisions and resubmit.

Bad Sign: Genres I've Never Heard of

What are your thoughts on stories using anthropomorphic fantasy? Is this a sub-genre all by itself and is it popular enough to be marketable?

Anything that is good enough can be marketable. That said, it is not to me knowledge an official sub-genre, so you shouldn't say that's your genre in your query.

What is an official sub-genre? It gets a bit hard to tell. Genres are actually pretty much determined these days by in what section the bookstores places them, and a lot of things get lumped together. Why some things are in sci-fi/fantasy and some things are in fiction & literature (i.e. general fiction) are a mystery to me, but that's why I'm not a Barnes and Noble buyer. As for sub-genres, they're only really relevant in certain cases particular to the genre, and generally they're not worth thinking about in the query because we can probably figure out the sub-genre from the summary. If it's about elves in New York, it's urban fantasy. If it's about a small-town amateur detective who solves crimes, it's a cozy. If it's a fictionalized account of the last days of General Custer, it's historical fiction. You don't really need to tell us that; we know the business, plus we think it's hilarious (in a bad way for you) when you get your sub-genre wrong, or list multiple genres in the hopes that you will convince us that it will be a crossover hit. (Man, I've done that. I was such a dork)

A good way to tell if your genre is "popular" is to go to a large bookstore and see how many titles on the shelves would fall in the same category as your work. I'm guessing in this case it would be very few, and I'm even counting the Dragons of Pern stuff.

Things That Make Me Laugh #2

The funniest book title I've ever read in a query was "The Mask of Nudity."

The book was about an unrelated subject, as far as I could tell.

Authorial Beauty Contests

Recently I was asked to give my opinion on this article on authors and beauty. I advise you to read the article and form your opinions before hearing mine.

July 16, 2001 — What if the only way a magazine would run a short story by Eudora Welty was if she agreed to an accompanying photo in which she posed as the protagonist of her story — a "'Sex and the City'–type woman," say, "wearing a bright red spaghetti–strap dress and sandals"?

What if Nadine Gordimer had to agree to a shot where she's wearing a low–cut blouse and "kneeling on crushed velvet"?

What if Philip Roth had to pose "staring blankly while holding a fat pug inside a Bulgarian restaurant"?

No self–respecting editor would propose such insulting childishness, of course, to such esteemed writers.

I don’t know. Is this their first time getting publishing? Now? And they were young and relatively attractive people with no other publishing prospects?

But in a move that's generated considerable comment — the first description above comes from a Washington Post report, the others from the New York Observer — the New Yorker just made three younger writers model those exact poses for its "Debut Fiction" supplement to its annual fiction issue: Jonathan "Bulgarian Restaurant" Safran Foer, Nell "Crushed Velvet" Freudenberger, and Erika "Spaghetti Strap" Krouse. A fourth twentysomething, Gabe Hudson, was made to pretend he was writing at a picnic table beneath the Brooklyn Bridge, with the Manhattan skyline behind him.

It’s not clear here whether the New Yorker gave them an option to say “no” to various aspects of the photography, such as how revealing the clothing was or how ridiculous it made them. As much as I don’t care for the New Yorker, I imagine they would be somewhat willing to deal with my own religious modesty requirements.

"They told me what clothes to bring," said Krouse. "I had to embody the main character, which made me uncomfortable because she's a bitch."

Well, yes, silly, because young writers generally do not know how to dress for a photo shoot unless they happen to work or have worked in fashion or magazines. If the New Yorker called me up and said they wanted to do a photo shoot, my first question would be “What am I supposed to wear?” I’d ask them for details. Maybe a book with colored pictures. Otherwise I might show up dressed in a Snoopy T-shirt because it was the thing not in the laundry basket and a flannel over it because I dress like I’m still 13 and Nirvana is fresh and popular. Generally people do not know how to dress outside their sphere of “what events do I attend that require a certain style of dressing?”

As for her being unwilling to identify with the main character, I have some sympathy for that. Score one for you. Unless you wrote some piece about someone who's your age bracket, has the same job as you once had, and generally looks like you. Then you shouldn't be surprised.

"It's the book jacket principle," New Yorker fiction editor Bill Buford told the Observer.

A principle that only applies to young writers, apparently — E. L. Doctorow, also featured in the issue, was not pictured along with his story.

"If anything, [the photos] contribute to the culture of authors being good looking or young in order to receive attention," Don Lee, editor of the literary journal Ploughshares, told the Observer. "That's the aspect I find of it that's a little bit disturbing."

Or, as reporter Linton Weeks put it in the Post, "Looks sell books. It's a closed–doors secret in contemporary American publishing, but the word is leaking out.

My problem with this segment is not that it says that looks sell books and if you’re hot, chances are the publisher will put you on the back cover or even the front cover where they otherwise not have. And young writers are more likely to be hot, because our society tends to favor people between the ages of when you turn legal and 30, so that’s going to skew it.

The problem it isn’t universal, as these people imply. Most writers are only featured on the inside back cover of the book jacket, if at all, because they might not want to be pictured or they might have a disfiguring grape wine stain. And hopefully the authors who are featured are intelligent enough to have their photo done by a professional photographer. I was once reading a Victorian-type fantasy book by a poor fellow, who shall be unnamed because I’m insulting his looks. For the first book, his wife took the photograph in their basement, and let’s just say that it was less than flattering. Also, 300-pound men should not have acne or ponytails. By the third, he’d figured out to have someone else do it, and not in a basement, and maybe he shouldn’t be wearing a T-shirt for it.

Leaking out because, if for no other reason, the rookies in the New Yorker "Debut Fiction Issue" often reap the kind of astonishing rewards that earn headlines. After he had a story — and his photo — in last year's issue, for example, David Schickler signed with the Dial Press for what was reported to be a $500,000 two-book deal. Z.Z. Packer, who also had a story in that issue, sold her story collection to Riverhead for $250,000.

Their writing probably was also probably of some quality, at least by the standards of literary short stories that the New Yorker likes and I hate. And hey, look – a new author just got $500,000 for two books! It CAN happen to you! That’s a success story more than anything else.

But this year's issue generated an even more stunning deal. No sooner had the "Debut Fiction Issue" hit the stands than Nell Freudenberger — you remember, crushed velvet? — found herself in the middle of a "clamor for a collection of her short stories," as Inside magazine put it. She signed with New York's most powerful literary agent, Binky Urban of the ICM agency, and within days, Inside reports, had "received at least one pre–emptive offer of $500,000" for that collection of stories.

I want to highlight this. Amanda “Binky” Urban (and I hope that she wanted that name) is not New York’s most powerful literary agent. Or maybe she is, but probably not. Yes, yes, she’s with ICM, the agency with triple offices in New York, Los Angeles, and London, so Mrs. Freudenberger is definitely in good hands, and Miss Urban has an impressive client list of young authors.

That said, she is not New York’s most powerful literary agent. Or maybe she is. I don’t know. No one knows. How exactly do you rate “most powerful?” Is it the person who does the most deals per year? Or the person who does the least deals for the most money? Or some 60-year-old living entirely off his 15% of the royalties of a deceased author still in copyright, and who only has to take the yearly check and send the other 85% on to the estate of the author to make a living? We don’t know. Agents don’t even try and guess at this, unless it’s at a party and there’s an open bar.

There was just one seeming hitch: the 26–year–old — who happens to be an "assistant" at the New Yorker itself — hasn't written any other stories. But nobody seemed to care. Publishers continued to make offers for the kind of money that not even the best short story writers — John Updike or Alice Munroe, say — would get for a collection.

That is pretty damning evidence, if she didn’t write any other stories. Nonetheless I will mention that John Updike, one of the best living short story writers in the world, probably did not get $500,000 for his Pulitzer-prize winning novel, Rabbit is Rich. Why not? Because he wrote it in 1981. Maybe today, he gets that kind of advance, even for novels like Terrorist, but certainly not in 1981.

All of which sadly proves what the Washington Post's Weeks says about looks selling books. There was, after all, little else to sell in this instance.

And all of which sounds nuts. Are an author's looks alone worthy of a half-million dollar advance? Do people really buy books — or magazines — because the authors are young and skinny and resemble movie stars?

Well, if it’s more likely to sell, it probably will get a bigger advance. That’s just business sense.

There’s another issue I want to address here, which is that the article’s arguments are against the New Yorker, which is a magazine. It is generally in a magazine’s best interest to have good art and pictures of beautiful people, because people do not like to look at blank pages or pictures of ugly people. (And Newsweek, please, please stop running those ads for donations to the organization to treat cleft pallets. I know it’s a charity, but I need a warning before I see those pictures!) What probably happened here is that the editor, for whatever reason, decided that the “Debut Fiction” issue was going to feature author pictures instead of art, and then someone else said, “And let’s make sure they look decent. Hire a photographer.” If the ensuing brouhaha resulted in some shady book deals and some young authors got rich off poor material, that’s not great, but “authors getting rich” is not a phrase I hear very often.

Well, they may get what they pay for if they do: Schickler's book — named after his New Yorker story, "Kissing in Manhattan" — came out last month and has been getting uniformly dreadful reviews.

This is why I don’t read short story collections by authors with only one publishing credit: They’re usually bad.

But as the Schickler case also shows, people may not be as shallow as this kind of marketing takes them for — his book isn't selling near well enough to make back the phenomenal advance. In fact, according to Inside, the entire Barnes & Noble chain — which includes B & N, B. Dalton, and barnesandnoble.com — has sold only 1,222 copies of his book nationwide.

Of course, there are numerous other bookselling outlets, but B & N is the coutnry's biggest, and those stats may be telling. They may indicate how tired of this kind of marketing people have become, not to mention how devalued the New Yorker's imprimatur has become to savvy readers.

Go readers! Yay! In the end, quality triumphs hotness. Though, some writer got rich. I want to be that rich writer. I want to sell out. Please! I will! Just give me half a million dollars and I’ll do a photo shoot, but I won’t wear something that exposes my shoulders. That’s my line in the sand.

None of which is to say that Freudenberger's book, or Z.Z. Packer's, which isn't out yet, won't be good. And none of which is to say that reading first fictions isn't exciting in itself.

But certainly, this kind of marketing is an indicator of the major shift that has occured in the book business, where just a few short years ago editors still judged books by contents and not covers.

It's also a mark of how far the New Yorker has fallen. The fact that the magazine exploits the younger writers, but doesn't include a photo of Doctorow, speaks clearly to the nature of what's going on, and it's insulting to writers and readers, both.

You don't need a picture to see that.

My argument with this argument is that the shift happened 15 years ago (not three), when Tina Brown was hired as editor of the New Yorker. That’s sort of the benchmark we use for the decline in the short story and literary fiction.

While most of the facts checked out for this article, it's important to view it within context. Yes, some sketchy things happened here, but trust me when I say this is not why your manuscript about a small-town grocery store owner stopping terrorists from blowing up the Vatican didn't get accepted. They are separate issues. Plus, let's give the writers who appear in the debut fiction issue some slack. They probably had to sleep with someone important to get in there, and that's more than I would do.

Nice/Mean Wording

And I'm back. Been busy setting up my new digs, i.e. buying more bookshelves for books. Man do I have a lot of them.

Dear Rejecter:

I mean can we just stop with the "I'm not the best agent for your book" reply? Duh! Of course, you're not the best agent. I know that. You know that. The whole world knows it. How can a profession, or caste, obsessively fixated on crisp, to the point queries even make such a statement, let alone repeat it day after day, week…? Do they ever read their own writing? The best agent is retired or can’t be bothered with me. That’s no secret. I mean what is that response attempting to accomplish? Maybe someone else finds the pain of rejection soothed by those words, but I don’t it. Hopefully, if you agree and publicize the absurdity of this response, we can move forward together.

As Rejectioncollection.com will prove to you, there is no good rejection that satisfies the writer, unless the writer has extremely thick skin or is delusional. It basically goes something like this.

Rejection: "Thanks, not for me."
Author: "What, she couldn't take the time to write more than one line?"

Rejection: "(long and winding things about how the author should try other agencies and there's potential, but it's just not for this agent for some such reason, and good luck!)"
Author: "How long does it take her to say 'no'?"

Rejection: Printed on a half-slip of paper.
Author: "She couldn't afford an entire sheet of paper?"

Rejection: Printed on a normal sheet of high-quality paper.
Author: "For two lines? What a waste of paper. I guess agents don't care about the environment."

Rejection: Photocopied form response.
Author: "How impersonal! Did she even read it or did she just stuff envelopes?"

Rejection: Personal note on original query letter, handwritten.
Author: "What, she couldn't afford the time to type out a whole letter?"

It goes on an on. The point is: We're saying no and you don't like it. All agents try to use different tactics to soften the blow, but none of them work, though intentions are usually good.

The "I'm not the right agent for this is" response is actually an honest, decent response that probably is true for any number of reasons. Maybe your work is really bad, or maybe it's that the agent doesn't have time for new writers because she's got 2 bestsellers on tour and she would only take on something if she had a lot of time to devote to it (new authors require a lot of hours to edit the manuscript and submit it to publishers, and then do contract revisions). Maybe you've written in a genre she doesn't represent. (I'm using the "she" here despite the plethora of male agents just for consistency's sake)

Chances are it's the last one. My boss doesn't handle most genres of fiction except for her stated specialties, so that narrows down the pile considerably. She does a lot of non-fiction, but not self-help, so that narrows it down even further. Seriously, guys, stick to what genres are listed on AgentQuery.

Cheap Advice to Young Writers

Before we begin, I'd like to comment that I'll be away the 2 weeks. First I plan to attend Pennsic and get run over by a bunch of 300-pound guys dressed as Normans, then I plan to spend a lot of time in bed recovering from said brawl. I have to approve posts, so you might not see your comment come up for a long time, so don't comment after Tuesday morning unless you really have something you want to eventually say.

Dear Rejecter,

I've read some of your blog entries and was especially amused with your response to the pompous 19-year old, who believed she could conquer the world with her writing. As a teenager, I don't believe I am ready to conquer any worlds with my words yet, but I am very interested in taking steps in order to improve my writing. Most of what I have written is academic writing, or, as a guilty pleasure, fanfiction. And, like any other teenager, I have dangerously forayed into the wonderful world of poetry. I understand that the natural tendency of older writers is to dismiss teenage writing, but I still want to pursue writing, even if what I write now is bad. I understand that a few years from now I will look at my writing and slap my forehead, wondering how in the world I was able to write such utter junk.

After reading your blog and learning more about how 95% of submitted writing is automatically rejected, I want to ask this -- what are some things that a young writer can do now to improve their writing, while accepting that their writing may not necessarily be good? I have loved books such as Lolita , for their ability to captivate an audience. I realize that being young, I am likely to "steal" from my influences, borrowing their style. I can't be the next Nabokov, but I would like to learn from someone who has been in the publishing industry, what a young writer can do now to improve their writing and prepare themselves to be in a good position when they wish to submit their manuscripts in the future.

The 95% does not actually represent your chances of being rejected. It just means that 95% percent of our submissions are crap. If you are a great writer, your chances are very good. If you are a bad writer, your chances are very bad. If you were a President, it doesn't matter either way; you're going to get a book deal, no matter how narcissistic or anti-Semitic you are.

You answered the first question yourself, which is why I'm so discouraging to young writers about submitting or mentioning their age in the query. Yes, you will be really, really embarrassed about your old stuff. Generally, writers only get better until they peak, and then they start repeating themselves or just run dry, with a few exceptions. I would cut off submissions at 21. I know that's sort of a randomly-assigned number, but you really do need to have a certain level of adult maturity to write. People can attack me for that statement, but I don't think there's an older, well-published writer out there who wouldn't have a brain aneurysm if someone published the short story he wrote for his high school English class. All right, maybe there's one or two, but seriously.

But you already know that, so let's move on.

It is true that you are very easily influenced when you're young; science has proven that the brain intentionally works that way and that younger people are more capable of learning new things. This is a survival skill. However, that doesn't mean older writers aren't just as easily influenced by their favorites or the novel they read last week. Show of hands - Who here has put down a great novel, or even just a fun one, and said, "Why can't I write like that?" OK, you should all be raising your hands now. I see you in the back there. Raise it!

I wouldn't lose any sleep over it. My writing is an amalgamation of techniques I picked up along the way, consciously or unconsciously. Eventually, with enough practice, you develop your own style, which is what comes naturally to you, and even that can change rapidly. Read whatever you want. Ray Bradbury was once interviewed by The New York Times and when they asked him what he was reading and why recent science fiction wasn't on the list, he famously said, "That would be incest. You don't read in your own field. You read in that field when you're young, so that you can learn. I read Jules Verne, H.G. Wells. When you're older you want to learn from other people." Once you find your genre (if you decide you only like one), you'll either fall into the category of writers who feel like Ray did or the writers who read everything else written in that genre that they can possibly get their hands on.

As for developing your writing, I would say fanfiction is a great way to go. A lot of people knock fanfiction, because yes, there's not a lot to be said in justification of incestuous Weasley slash, but it's just a great place to write. You get a lot of positive feedback, and more importantly, it's an exercise in not writing about yourself, which I hate. Don't write what you know. Writing is about creativity. Fanfiction is like training wheels - you get a setting and a set of characters, and you can do what you whatever you want with them, and people will read your work because they like the characters and they want to see what you did with them. The best fanfiction is by people who come up with something legitimately new and interesting to do with familiar characters without making them unfamiliar. Also, I like fanfiction, so go write some. Just no Weasley slash. Or anything with a character played by Orlando Bloom. And geez, when did real person become socially acceptable again? No. Not cool.

Medical Trends

So according to yesterday's queries, everyone has bipolar disorder. Or, everyone has written a memoir about having it. We've been getting a lot of them since that Newsweek article a few months ago on it.

Diagnostic trends are very interesting. They're not so much trends but further understandings of disease and our limited abilities to categorize them. The patient wants to hear something. A classic case is Crohn's Disease/Ulcerative Colitis. In the ten years since my diagnosis with the former, I've heard dozens of stories of people who've said they were misdiagnosed with one and really had the other and only just found out. There's a doctor on my team who has a theory that UC is actually one of the five subtypes of Crohn's, and you can determine which type you have based on a blood test. I had the blood test, and the numbers came back, and I asked what they meant, to which my doctor replied, "We don't know yet. We'll know in about ten years." It was basically research. This doctor probably isn't wrong, either; he's the guy who invented immuno-suppressant drugs, which were the major way of fighting the disease until Remicade came along in 1998.

Psychiatry has even greater challenges because of so many symptoms that overlap, are inconsistent, and are sometimes incredibly subjective. Two hundred years ago, everything was monomania. Then they added schizophrenia. Then manic depression. Then bipolar disorder. Then they divided bipolar disorder into two types, Type I or II, then debated whether one of the types wasn't just manic depression, because the two major symptoms (mania and depression) were overlapping. Then they started labeling people with various personality disorders, which gave them a much wider range to work with, but didn't really define anything except in certain cases. I have a friend who was diagnosed with "schizoid affective disorder. " I cannot find a single doctor who can effectively tell me what that is. Also, he has symptoms that don't fit into that subtype, and I know he's not under good care, so he may well be misdiagnosed. For a while it didn't matter, because treatment was limited, but now that we not only have SSRIs but know how to use them in combination with newer drugs, it's more and more important to put the right label on the right person.

Anyway, I don't think the little boom of bipolar-based memoirs is due to the Newsweek article entirely, but it helped. There were probably people with memoirs floating around about their illness, and they decided to mention the diagnosis in the query, figuring bipolar disorder is a hotter topic than it was a year ago (which is true). Also, because it's being more commonly diagnosed (to the point where many say it's over-diagnosed), we're just going to see more people who say they have it.

All of this doesn't work for or against the query. When it comes to memoir, it's whether the person has an intriguing story and the ability to communicate in a way that makes people want to read about it is or not is the determining factor. I just thought that was an interesting little note.

Evil Rejector!

Blogger has decided I am not a spammer and should be allowed to post again. Finally, I can promote bulk generic versions of prescription drugs and stock tips on my blog!

Tonight/tomorrow is a fast day, Tisha B'av when the Jews mourn the destruction of our two temples, 2000 years ago about 2500 years ago, respectively. They happened on the same day of the calender (the 9th of Av). It's the same day that the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, and the day that Auschwitz opened. In general, it's a bad day.

I've been exempt from all of the fasts in the Jewish calender for many years. On various occasions doctors have said I was well enough to fast, which generally ended in disaster. Oh, and one time, I got crazy paranoid and started calling my friends and asking if they hated me for some reason. Yeah.

I'm going to work tomorrow, which is not forbidden on Tisha B'Av, but I wouldn't if I was fasting. As I just explained above, I'm not in the right state of mind while fasting, and despite what I usually imply, I actually take people's life's work in the form of a bad manuscript very seriously. I don't do it when I'm not up to it for crazy reasons.

The New York Bias

Jill Elaine Hughes said...

"The Rejecter said...
OK guys, knock it off. There's a MILLION agent websites that will tell you that publishers/agents do not care where the author is from and do not demand, or even recommend, that the author is from NY. "

---True, they SAY this. But it does not reflect who they actually publish. Of all the new memoirs I've read in the past 6 months (I follow the genre closely since I write it myself), 8 out of 10 were by authors who live in NYC. And my own (and my agent's) experience with the NYC publishers definitely shows an anti-Midwest bias. The fact that the publishers who are buying my books (all major pubs) are not headquartered in NYC (two are in the Midwest; one is in London but is a division of Random House nonethelesss) certainly reflects this.

If you were from the Midwest yourself, you'd better appreciate the bias we have aimed at us from the East.

All right, let me give this a shot. Looking at this week's hardcover non-fiction bestseller list and the memoirs or memoir-like material listed:

1. THE LONE SURVIVOR by Marcus Luttrell. (Texas)

5. A LONG WAY GONE, by Ishmael Beah. (Sierre Leone)

7. THE REAGAN DIARIES, by Ronald Reagan. (Illinois)

10. THE BLACK SWAN, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. (Lebanon)

14. I FEEL BAD ABOUT MY NECK, by Nora Ephron. (Brooklyn. Fair enough)

20. SAVE ME FROM MYSELF, by Brian "Head" Welch. (California)

21. MERLE'S DOOR, by Ted Kerasote. (Wyoming)

22. LITTLE HEATHENS, by Mildred Armstrong Kalish. (Iowa)

23. MARLEY & ME, by John Grogan. (Michigan or Florida; I can't tell)

24. DOG DAYS, by Jon Katz. (Upstate New York)

29. INFIDEL, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. (Somalia)

The Return Process Further Explained

Let's start by not allowing shops to return unsold books. Perhaps that'll make them stop overordering (which means it stops you overprinting in the first place)

During the program I had the opportunity to speak with two highly distinguished Barnes and Noble buyers, who explained their job and the challenges behind it. 114,000 books a year are published in America, and while these particular buyers dealt only with major companies and not small presses, and dealt only in their individual genres, that still equals dozens of books presented to them a day, on which they must make a very quick decision based on a lot of factors – content, price, author’s previous selling history, topic popularity, etc.

It’s an incredibly difficult job because it involves what amounts to guesswork, but if they guess wrong, they don’t last long as buyers. If they overguess, it means returns, at the expense of B&N, which is responsible for shipping them back to the publisher. If they underguess, it means they have to go back to the publisher and hope the books are ready to go or can be produced quickly enough to replenish their stocks before they lose potential business from customers. Obviously it’s expected that some books are going to become break-out hits and they are going to under-buy and then be ordering tens of thousands (or hundreds of thousands) more, but those books are extremely rare. Pinpointing the exact number is something the buyer is asked to do, even though it’s really impossible.

Addressing the poster, the shops being able to return unsold books is actually positive to both the store and the publisher, even if it’s a thing as well. The stores have to pay to get rid of them, but they would otherwise have to pay to rid of them as well. The books would go to scrap, and they would have to hire someone to pick them up and deliver them to the city as trash (recycling centers won’t take them). If they return to the publisher, the publisher has at least some hopes of reselling them at cost to the used market and recovering the cost of printing. Also it floods the used market, which means you can buy books for cheap. So, everyone wins/losses when the books go back to the publisher.

It’s a very complicated process, but it’s the best one anyone can think of until P.O.D. technology (as we’ve discussed) replaces printing books.

While we’re on the topic, let me dispel a myth. Books are not printed at publishing houses. Books are printed by massive printing centers somewhere in the mid-west and then shipped to warehouses of store. Presses are large machines, paper production smells bad, and we’re talking hundreds of thousands of books per month, so the center has to be large. Most mass market books are printed on Indian paper, which is cheaper and of lower quality, and keeps the cover price down on the book, so the paper is flown in from India and set to the printers in the mid-west. Most editors have never been to the place where the books they edit are printed, or if they have, it was once in their lifetime.

The End of the Insanity

My publishing institute course ends tomorrow. I won't say which one it was, but it was in Manhattan and high-profile, so you can make your guesses from there. Now I can get back to what I do best - reject people. I mean, find new talent for the industry. Yeah. That's what I meant. Totally.

I did learn a tremendous amount, some of which I'll be happy to share with you (because it's not physically possible to share it all with you).

1. Editors do edit. In fact, they do a tremendous amount of it. The difference now is that publishing requires them to do their editing alongside acquisitions, pitches to higher management, and some promotion alongside the marketing staff. They're busy people. However, the rumor that they will no longer even look at a manuscript unless it is highly polished and ready for press is not true. Very often in non-fiction (especially memoir) they will get something through an agent that is disorganized but has that spark of brilliance that makes the editor passion enough about it to devote massive time and energy to turning it into a book that makes sense. They are less willing to do this with genre fiction.

2. Publishing is not generally a profitable industry. Yes, most of the titles on the Barnes and Noble shelves are from the big five corporations that have dozens of imprints that used to be independent companies, but just because you hear the words "giant corporation" doesn't mean a tax shelter on an island somewhere to hide the profits from the IRS. Random House recently revealed that most of their line is not profitable. Out of 8, they say, 1 is a bestseller, 1 loses money, and 6 break even or make a small profit (four digits). And this is Random House. Imagine how the small presses that don't have big authors and can't get their books into Barnes and Noble are doing.

3. Most books are mid-list books. Many authors decry being on the mid-list, but it's where most authors are. As you can see from above, most books barely break even. After paying the author an advance, a tremendous amount of money goes into the production of a book, and then the publicity and possibly some marketing, and then the publisher has to sit back and hope to G-d it sells. Almost every major book has returns, too, and I don't mean people returning books to the store, which rarely happens. "Returns" refers to when a big bookseller (B&N, Borders, Books-a-Million) buys 4 thousand copies, sells 3000, returns 1000 to the publisher. Those books usually go to scrap or are resold at cost (1-2 dollars) to the used market. Sometimes they're not resalable because they were damaged in transit, or have stains, or stickers on them, or something like that. Sometimes they're not resalable because hey, they didn't sell the first time. The publishing company expects this and factors it into the equation on the Profits & Losses sheet, along with all the money they have to spend paying to make the book go to print. In our class on P&Ls a guy from Hotlzbrinck came in and showed us a "normal" book for them. It had a solid advance for a first time fiction author ($15,000), sold reasonably well for the run that was done, and after costs, had a $4000 net profit. $4000. Everyone's been paid at the net stage so no one's lost money, but those are not huge profits for a major corporation. It doesn't leave them much room to acquire new material. However, this is a "normal" book. Most books aren't bestsellers - they don't have the audience, they don't get the attention, they aren't good enough to sell hundreds of thousands of copies. At least maybe they'll somehow manage to break even and not ruin the author's career.

4. Numbers 2 and 3 explain why publishing is a low-paying industry, so you have to love books to be involved. The speech we got from most people when discussing their career choices was, "I barely make enough to make ends meet, I work more than 50 hours a week, and I have to worry that every single book I do might be a colossal failure that will ruin my career as an editor, because we have no test markets or focus groups like other consumer market-based industries. That said, I wouldn't want to do anything else in my life." Granted, these were the people who hadn't burned out (the industry has a high burnout rate; it usually occurs in 1-2 years of a new full time employee entering the workforce), but these people care about books. They care about authors. They want to sell these books to as many people as they possibly can and have the books as widely-read as possible. They want to make a mark in literature. They're on your side.

5. P.O.D. is the way of the future, but not in the way that you think. There was a lot of discussion of new technologies which have not changed the industry, but have the potential to do. Audio books ecome more successful as people spend more times in transit with audio devices that can read CDs or collect CD material through a computer, so people aren't hassled by a giant collection of audio tapes. They tried eBooks, only to discover (not very much to their surprise) that people don't actually want to read books on a tiny Palm pilot screen, or an iPod screen, or an iPhone screen. What is attractive about P.O.D. and digital publishing is that it means no returns, something that makes any publisher salivate. However, the idea of waiting 2 weeks for a book (which is about how long it takes at best at the moment) is not attractive to most buyers, and the bookstore experience is still key, but they're getting better at it every day. Eventually we will reach a point where a person can walk into a bookstore, see the 1 copy on the shelf, take it to the desk, and the person behind the desk will pull up the file and print the book out for them in an hour. Does that mean the giant companies won't continue to control the industry? Probably not. The big five are giant because they do their job well and have success in finding good books, packaging them well, and getting them to the right markets. It takes hard work and some talent to do that. Oh, and luck. So, combining all those factors, the self-published author might do well, but he's probably better off if his work is good enough for a company to pay him money to buy it and then market it themselves.