How Lucky Can You Get? Part 2.

Part 2. Continued from Yesterday.

In Their Defense.

John Glusman, Exec VP, Editor in Chief of Farrar, Strauss & Giroux sympathizes with authors and blames a marketplace that is more competitive than ever. "As a result of consolidation in the industry there is less of an emphasis on quality more attention paid to the bottom line. That makes the stakes higher and puts more expectation on certain books to perform."

Publishers aren't out to destroy writers, but publishing a successful book is very much a guessing game. Agents don't mean not to return our calls, they are just overworked. And publicists aren't the devil's spawn who think we are lunatics. They are for the most part overburdened with too many books to push each month and review sources have been truncated from 25% to 50% in the last year alone. There isn't time to do a good PR job on every book (which is why writers should learn to do some of their own, or save some of their advance to hire an outside PR firm.)

Glusman reminds authors that things that sometimes seem personal aren't. There are actual problems in publishing today. "There is less and less media attention for books and everyone is becoming anxious. The shelf life and book review space and the attention span of the general public is shorter. And the relatively long time it takes to produce a book makes it even more difficult."

Author Elizabeth Benedicts (Almost) said that while your book is the center of your world, to an editor it's one of two dozen books she's working on that season, and she knows that not all of those books are going to be smashing successes.

"I imagine that editors keep some distance between themselves and writers so that if a book doesn't take off, the editor can retreat a bit more gracefully, instead of having an author who feels as though the moon has been promised but not delivered.  Maybe this feels to some authors as though the publisher wants them to feel "grateful" instead of involved," she said.

One way to combat this feeling as an author is to have realistic expectations.

Simon Lipskar, a literary agent with Writers House Literary Agency suggests that when a publisher has paid a modest sum to publish a first novel, it's foolish, no matter how great one's fantasies, to hope that the publisher will print 50,000 copies in hardcover, run an expensive (and often pointless) ad campaign, send the author on an expensive (and often pointless) author tour, etc.  "It's the author's part of the bargain as a professional to know that, in most cases, these things will simply not happen.  Asking for them, begging for them, demanding them: this is part of what leads publishers to react with an attitude that implies that the author should shut up and take what's being given. "

If an author can instead balance expectations against the realities of what the publisher will or won't do for his or her book, then the cycle that leads to feelings of resentment and frustration can be put off from the start. 

Lipskar is not suggesting that authors should simply stand back and let publishers do what they're going to do. Rather, he says, one has to be realistic about what the publisher is going to bring to the table and then say to oneself, "Okay, so what I am going to do to sell copies of this book?"

Authors who are less frustrated with the process and their publishers are usually of two camps, the bestsellers and those who simply force the issue and get beyond this us vs. them mentality.

These last group of authors -- who do take control, realize that a book is NOT dead after three months as publishing wisdom dictates, and they get creative. The authors who do rely on luck tend to have more positive publishing experiences and feel less angry at the outcome.

"What's healthy is to do something about all of this--even if sometimes the only thing you can do is write. I've had to learn that I do have a right to nag my publisher to get back to me in a timely fashion, that I do have a right to nag my agent. It's important to talk. I just had a conversation with my new agent who told me I don't call her enough--I don't complain enough, that it's her job to do these things for me," said Ada L.

What To Do?

Ultimately, we all have to realize this basic truth: if writers don't write publishers have nothing to publish. And if they don't publish they don't have a business and we don't have a career.

They can't do it without us and we can't do it without them.

"Without the fruits of your labor, none of us would have jobs," said Bankoff. "I'd have no deals to commission, editors would have time to do nothing but refine their own prose, and the legion of promotion, marketing, publicity and sales people would be forced to invest their energies in other pursuits."

The editor and the agent, Bankoff said, are on a shared quest and it's one only the writer can satisfy. And yet all too often what should be a partnership is just not treated as such.

It begins with the very way that authors communicate (or rather don't communicate) with their publishers: an author deals with an agent who deals with an editor. The editor in deals with the rest off the house and then reports back to either the agent -- if it's business -- or to the author if it's editorial.

The channels are not very clear.

Glusman suggests that author rely on his or her agent to make this process go more smoothly.  "It's a big universe with a lot of different players in it," he said. The process it self is fairly simple but there is a lot of competition and every author feels it. An author's agent should be his or her champion, run interference and get involved when there are issues."

Amy Bloom, (Normal: Transsexual Ceos, Crossdressing Cops, and Hermaphrodites With Attitude) suggests we not be fooled by the nice stuff that proceeds signing a contract and that we should proceed through the publishing process with the right attitude. "One can be appreciative without being subservient. Objectively this is a business and publishers are not our parents our friends, We sell them our goods and they pay for them. We all need to concentrate on doing business in a positive and supportive way. In a way that does not causes pain. "

Whoever you talk to: authors, publishers or agents, everyone agrees. It all goes back to the agent: you must have an agent whom you trust.

Being grateful is a two-way street

If all the parties involved can have respect for the others' roles, then the idea of being grateful doesn't seem as onerous or troublesome.

In an ideal world editors and publishers would be genuinely grateful to be publishing and authors should be genuinely grateful to be published by the people and companies who publish them, and agents would be genuinely grateful to be working on behalf of the talented authors they represent.

In fact, many people are. Lipskar for one says he is. "Yes, relationships sometimes get strained, and I certainly know high-handed editors, agents and authors who all thing they're bigger than the process.  And authors should absolutely be on the lookout for agents and editors who from the outset treat them with disdain.  But 'being grateful' can be a positive way of approaching a process that is often fraught with tension as opposed to a sign of codependency and weakness."

Afterword

I have never written an article and had so few authors and publishing people willing to go on the record or be interviewed. Over 50 agents, editors and authors, all refused.

We are in the business of communicating and so this silence is alarming. Widespread hesitancy to speak about issue is almost as interesting as the issue itself.

"I don't think I have any right to complain about the things that are wrong -- and there is a lot wrong -- because I've been so lucky with how my career has gone," said one best selling writer whose name every reader and every bookseller knows. "I'd be afraid to jinx it," he added.

Not enough said, but as clear a communication as I've ever read.

Tomorrow Part 3- Ten Things You Can Do. And The Ten Things They Don't Tell You

Comments

[Leora Skolkin-Smith]

Great stuff, MJ. Thanks for posting all this.

[JT Ellison]

Ditto!