Category Archives: feedback

December 02, 2010   DG&B   feedback, fun, holidays, Michael, reading, retailers  
11

Let’s do some shopping!

by Michael

I have a love/hate relationship with holiday shopping. On the one hand, holiday shopping is a pain: the crowds, the traffic (that one’s new to moving to LA!), the same five Christmas songs in every store, etc. On the other, I really like buying gifts for other people, and I still much prefer going to the store to do it. I don’t often have specific things in mind for specific people, but instead I really love to browse and see what’s on offer.

Amongst other things, every year I buy books for people. And yes, I do actually pay for them. Rarely do I get someone a big bestseller or literary must-read (though there was the year I got my father The DaVinci Code), but more often than not it’s titles I’ve found while browsing books at non-bookstores. Being an agent, I’m pretty familiar with what’s on the tables at Barnes & Noble or the front page of Amazon. But the books that tend to get me most excited at the holidays are those little gift books or ridiculous coffee table books. The other day at a small boutique here in LA, I found Concorde by Frederic Beniada and Michel Fraile, a book that’s a few years old but still remarkable in its detail, scope and beauty, and All My Friends Are Dead, a morbidly funny little picture book for adults by Avery Monsen and Jory John. Two gifts accounted for!

Clearly, it’s a very hip store to carry both of these books, but it reminded me that an awful lot of my book buying happens outside of the major book outlets. In a big bookstore, I admit that I sometimes get overwhelmed by the selection and tend to gravitate towards what I already know. I really appreciate those times when I can savor very curated environments, whether it’s a quirky selection (like the store I mentioned here) or the focus of a cookware or gardening store. I tend to spend more time with the books, and I while I can often leave Barnes & Noble without a book, I never leave a speciality store empty-handed.

I’m curious if there are other book people who also enjoy shopping and browsing in these environments. And what good discoveries have you made in them? Because I’m still looking for some gifts!

November 22, 2010   DG&B   about us, advice, feedback, Jim, our clients  
3

Where’s the love?

by Jim

On Friday, our commenter Jennifer asked the following question:

I have often heard agents discuss the fact that you need to “be in love” with a book in order to represent it…let’s say you take on a client because you’re in love with their first book, but you only like the next, or even the next few? Even my favorite writers are about 50% hit or miss for me. Some I love, some I just like, and some I even outright dislike. I imagine it would be unusual to really love every book someone wrote.

So I guess my question is two-fold. One, as an agent, do you often find yourself liking some stories more than others, or are you so passionate about a writer’s style that you tend to love them all, and two, what do you do if you aren’t feeling the same passion for subsequent books?

Tricky one, Jennifer! I think it’s completely fair to say that when we work with someone on multiple books, we won’t have an equally passionate reaction to each and every project they work on. If someone writes twelve novels, we won’t be equally fond of all twelve. Of course, chances are the author also won’t be.

The reason we always say that we need to fall in love with something in order to take it on is that we’re diving headfirst into a long, involved process with someone we haven’t worked with before. If you don’t love the book wholeheartedly, it’s a lot of dedication and time to offer something (and someone) without any guaranteed results. As we continue working with clients, we still want to love every book, but the dynamic has changed—we know how we work with these particular authors, how comfortable the fit is, what happened with that first novel, what shape their career might take. We’re still responsible for making sure that the best product possible gets out there, but we also have to make sure that our clients wishes and best interests are well represented.

Sometimes the situation can get tricky. Let’s say we don’t just not love a project; let’s say we actively dislike it. If our feeling is that the audience will have the same reaction, we have to say something. No one is helped by glad-handing. So there have been times when projects need to be set aside, or we make recommendations for other ideas that might be pursued. It’s not the most comfortable thing to bring up, but it’s necessary to be able to offer that kind of feedback. Our authors depend on our honesty and feedback. And we likewise depend on them, not to do everything we say, but to take our thoughts into account. The best agent/client relations are built on an ability to share thoughts and find compromise.

So no, we don’t love every single project the same, but ideally the base of every relationship with a client is deep admiration of their work. Even if you don’t love every single thing they do, you can still support and guide them.

November 19, 2010   DG&B   about us, advice, feedback, fun, Lauren, opinion, our blog  
7

What do you want?

by Lauren

Thanks to everyone who joined Jim yesterday for our first DGLM blog chat! If you missed it, check out the entry from yesterday to replay it and read the answers to all the great questions he got. Lots of good query information in there, especially. We’re going to be doing more of these, so if you have any suggestions for topics, please let us know in the comments!

More excitement that’s coming your way, dear blog readers, is a revamp and relaunch of our blog and website. Primarily we’re going to be combining the two into a single site, but we’d love to add some interesting and helpful new features in the process. That’s where you fine folks come in. What would you like to see? We’ve gotten some fantastic tips from all of you in the past, and we’d love to hear what more we could do that you’d find useful. As much as possible, we’d love to work the things that you want into our design!

Once the blog is moved, we’re also going to look to better integrate our blog and Facebook page (Related: do you like us, but not yet “like” us? If so, follow us here!), so if anyone has any thoughts or tips on that, we’d love to hear them.

Part of the revamp means a move to WordPress, because we wanted to be able to host our website and blog as one. I know we had some readers who hoped we’d stay on Blogger when we first suggested it (and that’s why we didn’t move then just to get more bells & whistles) so I’m wondering what we can do to make the transition easy. I suspect most of you can just as easily follow us on WordPress, but I think the problem will come for Google devotees who don’t use a Google Reader. Have things changed on this front in the last year? Anyone know of a way we can keep things simple for the Blogger fans?

Let us know your thoughts below!

And on a final note, with Thanksgiving coming up next week, it’s a perfect time to say thanks to all of you for making our first year of blogging in earnest such a fun one! We’re so grateful for all the feedback we’ve gotten: from technical help, to reading suggestions, to your thoughts on the issues of the day. Thanks to you all for joining the conversation and for forming a little community for us to take part in! It’s not always easy to find time or a subject, but you do make it a pleasure!

August 23, 2010   DG&B   college, feedback, Jane, nonfiction, reading  
3

Letting go

by Jane

One of the really nice customs in publishing is that when an agent is invited to lunch by an editor or a publisher, the editor or publisher usually brings along a book or two from their list for the agent. Sometimes the books are bestsellers, sometimes they represent new voices the publisher is proud of and wants to show off.

Recently, though, an old friend, an editor with a major publishing house, gave me a particularly thoughtful book at our lunch, The iConnected Parent: Staying Close to Your Kids in College(and Beyond)While Letting Them Grow Up.  The book was written with research done at Middlebury and The University of Michigan and discusses how much or little parents should stay connected to their children as they leave the nest. 

The book was a particularly lovely gift as my son is going off to the University of Michigan next week where he will begin his college career. It has been difficult contemplating this separation even though my husband and I of course knew it was coming. Having friends and colleagues who are as thoughtful as this editor was at this time is helping us all to get through this experience far more smoothly.

I have no doubt that reading The iConnected Parent will be instructional and comforting and I am looking forward to it. I wonder if you have any other suggestions for books to help us empty nesters move forward.

August 12, 2010   DG&B   feedback, fun, Jessica, reading, writing  
8

Literary karma

by Jessica

There’s a funny article from debut novelist Matt Platt (The French Revolution) on the eye-opening experience of publishing a first book. Platt writes that whereas he once believed himself a “decent member” of the literary community, he has since had a series of epiphanies that he’d “been doing a whole lot wrong.” Included on his list of karma-correcting, right behaviors: “Read books from living authors only;” “channel jealousy into solidarity;” “shut up and buy books from people you know.”

Whether or not you agree with them, Platt’s epiphanies appear to occur more or less surrounding publication of his novel (and his essay is a fairly graceful piece of self-promotion) but it seems to me that many of my own clients and the writers whom I know report experiencing a similar road-to-Damascus moment even earlier in the process. Thus, I’m curious to know if and when your involvement in the writing life has changed the way you buy books, think about fellow writers, or indeed, persuaded you that such a thing as literary karma exists.

August 02, 2010   DG&B   feedback, fun, Jim, reading  
21

Bookaholic?

by Jim

It’s finally August which means a few things: I’m counting down to vacation (five days!), New York smells like hot garbage, and publishing is in its slowest season. I’ve set a goal of clearing my Kindle before I head out of town on Saturday. It’s an ambitious goal, but so far seems doable (check with me on Thursday).

So what does that mean? One week of entirely non-work reading. It’s the week I have in mind all year long when I hit the registers of a bookstore laden down with things I know I don’t have time to read. Book shopping is my crack. It always makes me feel good. Until I go to put the books on shelves and realize how much I have that I still haven’t read from the last time I went shopping. And the time before. And the time before that. And 2006-9.

Come Friday, I expect this to happen: I go through my bookshelves picking out my vacation reading. I end up with maybe 12 novels. As I start to whittle down, I realize that none of these are what I really want to read on vacation. I reshelve everything and start over. This time I come up with 15 novels. I narrow to five, and I’m completely sure of them. They go into my suitcase. Saturday morning: I pull all five out, throw them on the coffee table, and randomly grab the first four things I see. I get to the airport and drop $75 in the bookstore.

Does anyone else have this problem? We’re all readers here, so I feel like I can’t be alone in this. But, I mean…I work in publishing. I get free books! And I STILL can’t avoid the pull of bookstores.

So fess up: does anyone else have the Barnes and Noble and the Borders frequent shopper card…even though they prefer shopping in independent bookstores? Has anyone else bought three copies of the same book because they just kept thinking it looked awesome? Or shown up late to dinners, shows, movies because they were lost in the stacks of beautiful books waiting to be read?

And, okay, let’s say I do end up shopping again for my vacation reads. Anyone fall completely head over heels for a book lately and just HAVE to recommend it?

July 15, 2010   DG&B   feedback, Jessica, marketing/publicity, opinion, reading  
15

What drives us to buy books?

by Jessica

Last week I discovered that many of you who responded to my post about blurbs don’t actually place much stock in them, so now I’m offering up another of publishing’s sacred cows to see whether (and how) it’s barbequed. I’m curious about the publicity or promotion that is most likely to convince you to buy a book. NYT Book Review, appearance on The Daily Show, Oprah segment, Salon, Slate? Although I ought not play favorites, the book publicity to which I most respond has to be the NPR interview, in particular, Fresh Air’s long form, in depth, almost-always-memorable conversation with an author. Somehow, even more than a lengthy review, this format—which is capacious enough to allow a writer not only to discuss her thesis, but explore her ideas in detail—succeeds in piquing my interest.

I listen when I can, and download the podcast for times that I can’t tune in. This past Tuesday’s interview was with psychiatrist and author Daniel Carlat, whose new book Unhinged, The Trouble with Psychiatry, has just been added to my to-read list. My fondness for NPR in general and Fresh Air in particular may border on the unhealthy, but mine is a functional addiction, and enables me to participate willingly in any number of otherwise tedious chores/activities: running on a treadmill, folding laundry, doing dishes, even, on occasion, cooking. My husband refers to NPR as “the drone” and teases me mercilessly regarding its dangerous propensity for inducing catatonia, but as far as books are concerned, and sometimes music, I find NPR tremendously convincing.

What sort of promotion/interview/feature captures your attention?

July 12, 2010   DG&B   feedback, fun, Jim, marketing/publicity, opinion, video  
25

What are you watching?

by Jim

We think a lot about book trailers here. How effective are they? Does anyone watch them that isn’t the author’s husband, cousin, editor, or Facebook friend? And how do some trailers begin to get tons of hits while others wouldn’t stand a chance of going viral even if they ran on the back end of a Susan Boyle video?

We’re still in the beginning stages, even if the book trailer has been around for a few years. Do you think they’ll last? Do you watch them? Are they the best advertising for books?

To help you make a decision, I present a book trailer that offers something I know the internet loves: pretty animals! From DGLM’s own, Thomas French:

June 28, 2010   DG&B   advice, feedback, Jim, opinion, queries, rejection  
46

Are we too nice?

by Jim

At a writer’s conference a few years back, one of the organizers implored me to, “Keep it happy. No one pays to hear they won’t make it.” Which led to some questions on my part:

First, why single me out? Do I look like such a downer that you have to tell me not to be a schmuck?

More importantly: is it fair to tell publishing pros to keep it peppy so as not to scare off potential paying guests to your next writers conference?

MOST importantly: is it really right to be upbeat all the time?

Listen, I’ve told people time and again that they’re only going to make it if they keep trying. I just wrote a very positive entry for another blog about how determined you have to be to make it in this business. I do believe that wholeheartedly. But sometimes the numbers sneak into the back of my mind, and I think about how many people will never make it. At the risk of discouraging people who haven’t yet reached their fullest potential, are we encouraging people who will never succeed? Is that fair?

Or do the doubts of every writer do enough of the discouraging on their own?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Is it right to encourage everyone? Should we be more brutal than we are?

June 21, 2010   DG&B   advice, feedback, fun, Jim, writing  
18

Source of inspiration

by Jim

We talk all the time about how important it is to use social media to connect with readers. And it IS. But sometimes it’s crazy hard to come up with something to say. I’m fully aware of this. So aware of it, in fact, that I have virtually nothing to say RIGHT NOW.

I’ve been staring at this blank screen as my inbox gets more and more full, and coming up with something to post today becomes a more and more imposing task.

Now, I could give a pretty full breakdown of last week’s episodes of So You Think You Can Dance (Team Billy!) or catch you up with what’s going on with the World Cup (haha…France), but that doesn’t really jibe with the subject matter of our blog.

So instead, let’s talk about something else: writers’ block. Or…bloggers’ block, I suppose. Where do you turn when your mind is just a blank? And is it the same as when you get blocked while writing a book? Different? Better? Worse?

And also, just in case in comes up again that somewhere down the road I have NOTHING to say (which is pretty rare but does happen!), are there any specific requests our readers have for content they’d like to see from me (or us)?

Lastly, is turning it over to the readers to help identify material/content totally lame or totally acceptable?

P.S. I guest blogged in greater detail over at What Women Write today. Check it out!

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