Category Archives: authors

June 08, 2012   Rachel   author events, authors, BEA, Rachel S.  
4

One more about BEA (Kind of)

Since no one has written about BEA yet, I thought I would be the trailblazer on this one.

My favorite thing about BEA (Besides, obviously the free totebags and galleys, oh, and also chocolate. There’s so much chocolate.), are the author signings. Some are celebrities, yes, and others are big name authors who already have a huge fan base, but there are also a large percentage of first time authors on the schedule, sitting at their respective booths with a  big stack of galleys, a pen and a line of eager readers waiting for their copy.

Both the publishing industry and the readers it caters to are still excited about new talent—a good story and great writing can still beat out the name on the cover. What other chance will a reader have to chat, however briefly, with an author whose work they love, or whose story they identify with? Having that personal connection with the author of a book can enrich the reading experience, even if your conversation consisted solely of a discussion of your mutual love of glitter nail polish, which you both happened to be wearing. Yes, this was an actual conversation I had with an author at a book signing. And yes, it was great and yes, I enjoyed her book more for it.

Where in normal circumstances, you have to go out of your way to one bookstore to see one author and get one book signed, at BEA there are dozens of authors and dozens of books and everyone is equally as excited (if not more, in some cases—I’m looking at you, Chris Colfer fans) about the prospect of meeting multiple authors as you are.

What’s your greatest book signing/author meeting story? Did you find it changed your perception of the book at all? How great is glitter nail polish?

May 24, 2012   Michael   authors, Michael  
3

Your work is worth something

Two stories this week got me thinking. The first was McSweeney’s “competition” for cartoonists. It was not well received. It was so badly received, in fact, that McSweeney’s pulled the contest and apologized. The rub? They were asking cartoonists to do spec work with no plan to pay anyone than the “winner,” who would get $500. I was amazed at how much anger it produced (though there were many who thought it was worth it for the exposure), and happy about it. In the race to “free” content by devaluing it, there are many people who still understand that work, and the intellectual property generated from it, are worth something.

While this was still in the back of my mind, Galleycat pointed me today to this story from All American Blogger. Long story short, Duane Lester had his article copied verbatim by a small paper, decided to do something about it, and actually taped his visit to confront the paper. This man was cool under pressure, made his case very well, and stood up for his rights as an author. It’s impressive, and worth a few minutes of your time to watch. It’s empowering!

(He asked for and got $500 for their use the piece, the coincidence of which just reinforced the connection to the events of earlier this week. I love when things line up so nicely.)

March 16, 2012   Rachel   authors, fun, Rachel S.  
8

Best Friends Forever

Having recently (well, recently enough) read Paula McClain’s The Paris Wife and seen Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, I am well aware of, and fascinated by, the great literary friendships of the Lost Generation. I’m embarrassed to say, however, that I didn’t even think of all the other author pals who have existed throughout history. When Lauren sent me this article just yesterday that starts off with Hemingway/Fitzgerald and explores the impact of other great writers who were admirers of and friends to one another, I dove right in.

Many of them I had previously been aware of—Shelley and Byron, of course, Tolkien and Lewis, Wordsworth and Coleridge (I’ll always have a soft spot for the Romantics, and I’m sure everyone else here at DGLM is groaning a “you would” right now), and Emerson and Thoreau are an obvious pair…though I never noticed before how strongly each resembles Abraham Lincoln in distinct ways. The rest, however, were new to me, and both surprising and not. Writing is in so many ways such a solitary endeavor, yet we tend to flock towards those with similar values, sentiments and aspirations to our own. While there were clearly disagreements—some of the physical—it was also, what I can assume, a benefit to the craft of each of these well-known figures. Without the ability to defend one’s own ideas to a compatriot who is willing to cut one down to size, yet also completely understand the absolute anguish and exhilaration that accompany grand literary output, there is less chance, less motivation to grow, evolve and even change, should it benefit.

If you had the opportunity to befriend any author—past or present, well-known or little-read—who would it be? I don’t mean someone who merely interests you or whose work you particularly admire, but someone who you feel could really be both adversary and advisor, who would help you grow as a writer. This takes some thinking, but I’m curious!

January 12, 2012   Jessica   authors, words, writing  
11

Getting the Words Right.

A published author and a Facebook friend posted the following exchange to her profile, excerpted from a Paris Review Interview with Ernest Hemingway.

INTERVIEWER

How much rewriting do you do?

HEMINGWAY

It depends. I rewrote the ending to Farewell to Arms, the last page of it, thirty-nine times before I was satisfied.

INTERVIEWER

Was there some technical problem there? What was it that had stumped you?

HEMINGWAY

Getting the words right.

His is a marvelous and pithy response, underscoring again that brevity is not only the soul of wit, but devilishly difficult to achieve.

I’m curious, can you top Papa Hemingway’s 39-times-a-charm ? Have you rewritten a scene not dozens but scores of times? If so, what sort of scene were you struggling with?

December 14, 2011   Miriam   advice, agents, authors, contracts, Miriam  
9

Know when to walk away, know when to run…

I warn you, I’m feeling crabby this week.  Christmas is in ten days and I’m woefully behind on my shopping and general preparedness.  Sure, I’m not like Jane who’s finished buying everyone’s holiday present by July 4th weekend, but I like to give myself a little leeway and not have to deal with the last minute rush to buy, wrap, and decorate.  This year, I’m so swamped, I can’t even run out during lunch to visit the shops in Union Square Park.

I know, I know, I should be grateful that business is booming at a typically dead time of year.  And in theory I am.  Unfortunately, I’ve been busy with a slew of difficult contract negotiations that have me yanking at my already unmanageable hair.  In general, difficult contracts don’t make me all that crabby.  The difference right now is that the negotiations are unnecessarily difficult—lots of lawyerly requests for language that does nothing but overgild the lily  without adding anything of substance to the deal.  Or, worse yet, a negotiation that has taken weeks of pointless back and forth for something we advised our client to walk away from in the first place.

To be clear, we don’t often advise our clients to walk away from any deal that has the potential to make money for them.  That would go against their interests and ours.  But we draw the line at allowing our clients to be treated unfairly or exposed to onerous terms and liabilities without a strong word of caution and a push in the direction of “run, don’t walk away from this deal.”  It pains us when our advice is not heeded because, usually, we’re right.  And even when the most dire consequences do not materialize, a process that starts out as contentious and unreasonable usually continues to be so up until the bitter end…of the book project that is.

So, while we like to keep our clients busy and happy and in funds for their own Christmas shopping, sometimes the only thing that makes sense to us is for them to walk away no matter how tempting it might be to take a bad deal.

Here’s my question to you guys:  If your agent is suggesting that you walk away from an offer—whether it’s a publishing offer from a house that wants your first born in exchange for print publication of your work or a chance to collaborate with a celebrity housewife on her juicy tell-all, say— and you are not in desperate financial straits that leave you without choices, would you listen and take his/her advice?

P.S.  Boy, you guys really don’t have any interest in headlines, do you?  I’m gonna call it a tie between Tamara and Sarah.  Send me your addresses at miriam@dystel.com for your prizes, ladies.

December 05, 2011   Jane   authors, Jane, opinion, selling  
30

Why not an older novelist?

Several months ago, I submitted a new novel by one of my bestselling clients to a house that hadn’t previously published him and to an editor who was a great fan of his.  The editor loved the novel – he should have, it is brilliant – but when he presented it to his colleagues, they turned it down.  A couple of weeks later, I had lunch with one of this editor’s co-workers who told me the real reason the novel was turned down was that my client was too old.  I was absolutely dumbfounded.

Then I read this piece in Publishers Weekly and I realized that in this day and age, when it’s all about youth, older authors are sometimes discriminated against simply because of age.

How incredibly stupid is that?  These writers have not only honed their skills over many years, they also have so much more life experience to draw upon in their writing.  Older novelists, I find, have the skill and patience to create stories with depth and well drawn characters.  While there are many brilliant young novelists, we should not discount the contributions of our literary “elder statesmen and –women.”

So I wonder, what you think about all of this?  Have you read any interesting well written fiction lately by someone who is, say, over fifty or sixty?

Oh, and about that client of mine – the one I spoke about at the beginning of this blog?  I sold his novel to a much better publisher than the one who had claimed he was too old. We have great expectations that the novel is going to be a huge success.

November 16, 2011   Stacey   authors, future of publishing, independent bookstores, opinion, retailers, Stacey  
10

How would you save the book biz?

We’ve all heard the horror stories over the last couple of years about the end of publishing and books basically becoming obsolete and going the way of the VHS tape.

Those of us who work in publishing do our part to help keep the business afloat. Writers by writing, where it all begins; agents by selling writers’ works; publishers by publishing and getting the books to the consumer. We work hard, despite the changing landscape and gloom and doom mantras, to get our books into the marketplace, especially those hard-to-sell titles that fall into the “labor of love” category, of which I can list my fair share from over the years.

Now bestselling author Ann Patchett has made the front page of the New York Times (rare for a publishing story at all, and a positive one at that) talking about opening an independent bookstore in her hometown of Nashville. I loved Ann Patchett before (State of Wonder was definitely one of the best books I read this year) and now I love her even more for using her own time and resources to help give back to her community, and by extension, to the publishing industry.

I can’t think of a quick-fix to transform the biz, but new successful indie stores will help, and as Patchett notes in the piece: “If you like this thing, it’s your responsibility to keep this thing alive.” Meantime, I will be continuing to try and sell books that make a difference in people’s lives, and I will be more mindful of supporting my local bookseller as we approach the holiday season.

If you could do one thing to help save the book business, what would it be?

October 26, 2011   Miriam   authors, favorites, fun, Miriam  
4

Unconditional

I don’t know about you guys but I have a handful of authors that I love unconditionally.  Yes, that’s right.  I love them beyond, despite, because.  Rationally and irrationally.  I’d buy one their books even if it was a technical guide to taxidermy.  Needless to say, this kind of unconditional love is exceedingly rare and requires much more than mere skill, talent or even genius in order to blossom and thrive.   Really, authors have to earn that I’ll-forgive-anything feeling about their work and not just because of how brilliant one or two or even a dozen of their books are.  For me, it’s a combination of their writing and the subjects that obsess them, their public persona, their ability to surprise, rabble rouse, or consistently awe (this last is the hardest).

There is, of course, no subjective measure for who is worthy of unconditional love.   For instance, I’ve read enough Joyce Carol Oates to have developed great respect and admiration for her.  But love, much less unconditional love?  Uh uhn.  On the other hand, Toni Morrison could fill a notebook with crayoned squiggles and I’d add it to my collection.  Don DeLillo?  Admiration, respect, deep like.  Jonathan Franzen?  Unconditional love.  (I know, I know.  Don’t judge.)

This is, of course, a longwinded way of telling you guys about my unconditional love of Jeffrey Eugenides, newly bolstered by this ridiculously charming essay in The Millions.  I haven’t read The Marriage Plot yet, but I will because this is an author whose failures I’d probably find more interesting and moving than other authors’ successes.   Does that make sense?

In fact, is there a place for unconditional love in literature?  Should we allow ourselves to blindly champion an author no matter how flawed, offensive, or just plain lame his/her work becomes?   Or should we be driven by our critical faculties and let the work in front of us be the sole basis for affection or dismissal?  Do you guys ever love writers unconditionally?

October 26, 2011   Stephanie   authors, children's books, classics, favorites, fun, Stephanie  
2

Everything old is new again

I’ve always been a firm believer in the notion that the past is something to hold on to, interpret, and learn from. Which is why I really loved reading this piece from NPR written by Norton Juster, author of the 1961 classic, The Phantom Tollbooth.  Fifty years after its debut release, Juster looks back at the road that led him to create what was and continues to be one of the leading classics for young readers. I myself can remember reading it as a child.

What really resonated with me in this piece was Juster’s own experiences with reluctant publishers, who felt that Phantom’s vocabulary and themes were too lofty and would be lost on young readers. His response?

There is no such thing as a difficult word. There are only words you don’t know yet…Children are still the same as they’ve always been. They still get bored and confused, and still struggle to figure out the important questions of life.

In thinking this through, there’s no doubt that Juster’s words withstand the passage of time. With the publishing world changing as much as it has been lately, it’s always comforting to see that there are still ideals that hold true today.

October 19, 2011   Miriam   Amazon, authors, bestsellers, competition, controversy, digital publishing, e-books, Miriam, self-publishing, selling  
9

Moneyball, Amazon and the end of publishing as we know it

In this week’s death watch, the publishing business is going the way of the Edsel.  E-books have won.  Traditional publishers don’t know what to do with themselves or their lists.  Agents are unnecessary.  Anarchy reigns among authors.   And, oh, yeah, Amazon is getting closer to world domination (tricky bastards).  There is no leadership.  The darkness is encroaching.  The center cannot hold!

Let’s see, that about covers it, I think.  Except, does it?

The afore-linked-to New York Times article contains a quote from Russ Grandinetti (whom we’ve met a few times at Amazon seminars we’ve attended and whom the Times refers to as “one of Amazon’s top executives,” leading me to believe they don’t know exactly what he does) which I actually loved: “It’s always the end of the world. You could set your watch on it arriving.”  It also mentions some other shady (unnamed) Amazon characters twirling their mustaches while claiming that “publishers [are] in love with their own demise.”  As wary as  my colleagues and I are about Amazon and their plans to expand into publishing, I tend to agree with their assessment that traditional publishers can come across as a self-indulgent, hand wringing bunch who’d rather blame the big bad corporate entity for poaching their authors and re-drawing the battle lines than take effective steps to compete and prosper.

Enough, already.  If the model is broken or the times have changed and there’s a new model out there, then learn it, adapt your systems, and make it work for you.  Publishers are sitting on gold mines of backlists.  They seem to be unable or unwilling to competitively price and promote the e-books  they are putting out.  They’re still paying too much for that “sure thing” Jane was talking about earlier this week.  Most of all, they are loath to innovate at the speed the new paradigm requires.

Gerry Howard writes movingly in this week’s PW about how you really can’t apply the principles of Moneyball to publishing because you’d be ripping out its heart and doing away with all that wonderful serendipity that made The Bridges of Madison County, Tuesdays with Morrie, The DaVinci Code and countless other “small” buys into huge bestsellers.  I agree.  But, the thing I take away from Moneyball (the book and the film) is that you’ve got to look at your game differently if you are up against a rich behemoth who outpitches, outhits, and outfields you because they can buy all the talent out there.  Whether you’re talking about the Yankees or Amazon, I think the lesson is the same:  you can win playing smart small ball too.

Thoughts?  Comments?  Angry rebuttals?

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