Category Archives: interaction

November 10, 2015   Kemi Faderin   book reviews, interaction, reading  
0

Subway Reading

When I get on the subway, most times I read an e-book on my phone or a print copy. Other times, I people watch and get excited when I see people with books in their hands. I eagerly look around wondering if I’ll spot one of ours, a title I’ve read before, or one that looks interesting. I’ve never ventured to ask anyone about the book they are reading and what they think of it; instead, I try to look for signs on their faces (I can’t read without making a face: aghast, anxious, stupid grin….the whole roller-coaster thing), which does not help me at all. Sometimes, I get off at my stop and wrack my brain to try and remember the title of a book I thought looked good. It’s gotten to the point where I have the notepad on my phone ready to jot these things down!

Luckily, not too long ago I found a brilliant Instagram account to follow called Subway Book Review. It was started by Uli Beutter Cohen, who unlike me, talks to her fellow subway riders about the books they are reading and then posts the review on Instagram/ Facebook with a lovely picture of the book and the reviewer. The genres and titles differ greatly, just like the people that come in and out of the subways everyday.

Thanks to this amazing account, I am now inspired to start talking to people with books who might be standing or sitting close to me. What can it hurt? It’s the go-to conversation starter in our business. It’s also a great way to meet people and more importantly, practice pitching your book to agents/editors. I encourage you all to give it a try if you are like me and haven’t done so already. I would be glad to post a follow-up on the person I talked to and a review of the book they were reading!

 

February 03, 2015   mhoogland   about us, blog chat, chat, critique, dialogue, feedback, interaction, Mike H, opinion, our blog, our website, suggestions, websites  
7

Tell us how we’re doing

A while back (a year, maybe more—my conception of time is shockingly horrible, bordering on nonexistent), Sharon did a blog post asking for feedback from our readers. What we heard was eye-opening to say the least.

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All of it was informative and very helpful—and I believe it led to a better year in blogging for DGLM and our readers. So I will do so again here. Let’s call it our year-end review.

What do you guys enjoy about our blog? What keeps bringing you back for more? What would you like to see us do differently, do better?

This is your chance for some input. Our readers are important to us, and we want to blog about what you want to read about. So please, don’t hold back. What’s on your mind?

August 05, 2014   Jane   community, creativity, interaction, Jane, opinion, publishers  
3

Those wide open spaces

Many years ago, before I was an agent, I directed all book and magazine publishing for a large newspaper syndicate.  While those of us who didn’t work directly in editorial for the syndicate—publishing, licensing, sales and the executive suite—had our individual offices, some of them very spacious, the heart of the staff worked in an open bullpen.  There, they communicated easily with each other as they edited the writers with whom they worked.  In fact the editorial staff who worked in my division also worked in an open bullpen-like area, writing and editing material and sharing their ideas with each other.

Last Tuesday, many, many years later, Miriam and I attended a party held by HarperCollins to celebrate the relocation of their offices from Midtown to the Financial District downtown. The layout was open and airy with people sitting in bullpen-like settings.  Some, who previously had window offices still had offices with glass walls so that they could see out and those passing by could see in.  This layout, we were told, was meant to foster a spirit of collaboration.  In addition, I would guess that there was an overall downsizing in terms of the number of square feet the company now occupies, which will enable the publisher to spend money on the titles they are publishing rather than on rent and maintenance of the many floors they took up at 10 East 53rd Street.  Bottom line, my general impression was a very positive one.

Fostering a spirit of collaboration and cooperation in this publishing climate can produce nothing but solid results, in my opinion.  Sure, there is some resistance to this layout—those who previously had privacy don’t have it any more, certainly not as much.  But the benefits include a sense of team building and a  collegial environment.  I think growth will be the ultimate result here and I think this kind of organizational layout will become the norm in the years to come.

Of course, I am always curious as to what you, our readers, think of this idea and I look forward to your comments.

September 17, 2013   mhoogland   adaptation, audience, book to film, celebrity, classics, commercial, community, critiques, dialogue, fun, interaction, Mike H, opinion, reviews  
7

Why are the books always better?

I watched Gatsby the other day. Excuse me, let me clarify. I tried to watch yet another disappointing movie adaptation, another beloved-book-turned-train-wreck-of-a-movie. And I’ve never once gushed over F. Scott Fitzgerald’s magnum opus like so many do. No, I went in with reasonable expectations. Expectations even Leonardo DiCaprio with all his talent and all his movie-star swag couldn’t help the movie live up to.

So cheers to good books that can’t be experienced any other way than through the written word. Gatsby was flawed from the start. People have tried to make the movie before…and all have failed. Some other good examples of poor movie adaptations:

 

The Road by Cormac McCarthy: The man’s a genius. Again, another flawed project from the start—it was near impossible for this movie to live up to the book. Nobody does McCarthy better than McCarthy.

 

Any one of the Harry Potter movies: I know a lot of people liked these movies, but as someone who read the books, I can tell you that they don’t compare. So much was missing. Great parts were inevitably left out, and I was inevitably let down.

 

Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events: This was truly the worst adaptation of a book I’ve ever seen. The whole film was one unfortunate event after another. Someone during my show time screamed out, “My eyes!” and ran crying from theater only twenty minutes in.

My question to you is: why? Why are the books always better? What does the written word evoke that motion pictures can’t? Is it simply the element of surprise or something more? Can you think of a movie that defies this unwritten rule and surpasses its source material?

July 23, 2013   mhoogland   dialogue, favorites, fun, hypothetical, interaction, Mike H, opinion, reading, recommendations, sarcasm, suggestions  
1

If You Had to Choose

Very recently, I had to play that desert island game—you know the one where you’re stranded on a desert island and have to choose what to bring? It’s all pretend, of course. Just a quick little skip through Imagination Town, a vacation in make believe. Except I was forced to make my desert island choices for real. I’ll explain.

No, I wasn’t stranded on a desert island. Quite the opposite actually: I moved to Manhattan. Granted, moving into a tiny apartment in Manhattan isn’t on the same level, hardship-wise, but coming from a spacious place in the suburbs certainly made things difficult, especially when it came to choosing what books to bring.

Smaller room = less shelf space = the fewer books I can bring. It’s that simple; yet, you find yourself considering some difficult choices. Do you bring that book you’ve read dozens of times with the hundreds of dog-eared pages and even greater number of coffee stains? Or do you bring leave those behind, as painful as that is, to make room for those new books you recently acquired (say at BEA, maybe) and haven’t had the chance to read yet?

In the end, I cheated. One conference call with my soon-to-be roommates, and we worked out a way to put together a respectable library. John brings the Hemingway, while Ryan is in charge of all non-fiction. We managed to make room for everything, from the favorites like Infinite Jest right down to your political thrillers, such as a couple of Vince Flynn’s Mitch Rapp books. Oh yeah, and we have Kindles too…

What would you bring?

July 22, 2013   Jane   about us, interaction, Jane  
5

We’re not always what we seem

Recently, one of my favorite clients explained how even though she seems otherwise, she is an introvert in real life – and that gave me pause.

I am an active and very public literary agent in the publishing world.  I negotiate deals every day with publishers, movie and tv people and foreign publishers and I am known to be a staunch defender of my clients’ rights.  Indeed, I am passionate about what I do.

Deep down, though, I am truly very shy. In fact years ago, I found that during a job interview, the interviewer suggested to me that I really should look the person I was communicating with in the eye.  I never even realized I wasn’t doing that, but in fact, up until that point, I hadn’t been.

Still, today, many years later, if I agree to attend a cocktail party for example, I have to fight the impulse to find one person in a corner to talk to and stay there all evening.  I am extremely nervous entering  a room filled with groups of people I don’t know, and tend to stay with those with whom I am familiar.

Probably those who know me and who read this will find my admission of shyness a surprise because I am such a lioness when it comes to advocating for my clients. But it is very true.  And so I am a definite example of the fact that not all of us are what we appear to be outwardly.

I wonder how many of you are the same and how that comes into play in your professional lives.

August 02, 2012   Miriam   authors, fun, interaction, marketing/publicity, mentors, Miriam, relationships, self-publishing  
9

Support systems

We’ve lately had the good fortune to represent some lovely women, like Tracey Garvis Graves and Colleen Hoover, who started out self-publishing their fiction and for whom we’ve now been able to make some significant deals with “legacy” publishers (have I mentioned that I really dislike that term?).  These women are very smart and committed about their work, but they are also incredibly generous in their support of other writers who are embarking on the same kind of venture.  They belong to online support groups where they critique each other’s works, give each other tips on how to market their books, and serve as cheerleaders to each other on their public platforms.  As Jane mentioned in her blog post last week, authors mentoring and supporting other authors should not be a surprising phenomenon, but, in fact, it often is.  It’s also wonderful and important and we hope that other authors are taking note and emulating this kind of esprit de corps.

But, as I mull over this interesting development, it occurred to me that I don’t see this kind of “community” among male writers.  Sure, people like our own David Morrell are tireless in speaking at conferences, sharing  insights with up and coming writers, and offering priceless advice (in David’s case like the professor he once was).  And I know that  Joe Konrath, whom we’ve represented for many years, has a huge online following for his often controversial but always provocative views about the publishing process.  But, I have not seen the kind of small  influential online writing groups among male writers that seem to be flowering in the women’s fiction world.

Why is this, do you suppose?  Is it a XX/XY thing?  Is it because of category?  Is it because men are more naturally competitive and women more nurturing (to apply the most pervasive stereotypes)?  Or do these groups exist and thrive and I’m just not hip to them?

October 27, 2011   Jessica   buzz, culture, e-books, interaction, Jessica, multimedia  
14

The Uses of Pudding

From the always innovative Richard Nash, formerly of Soft Skull Press and Red Lemonade, comes an interesting new project called Small Demons. Media bistro covers it here, and Quill and Quire here.  I’m not 100 percent sure that I grasp its  implications, but Small Demons catalogs and compiles details within books, so presumably I could find what fictional characters also listen to Bach’s double concerto or the Stone Roses, both particular favorites of mine, or reproduce a cocktail menu from Brideshead Revisited for an equally fictional party I might throw. The computer can find links across books—resonances, repetitions, relationships–but maybe I’m being too literal and utilitarian when I claim I don’t yet see what it’s for.  What do you think?

Actually, scratch that. I can spy a use for Small Demons, and the site may prove a blessing or curse to lit graduate students, and many a dissertation has been based around this sort of quirky detective work. So whether The Use of Pudding in the Victorian Novel will remain an appropriate field for academic inquiry now that a website can investigate it in seconds is anybody’s guess. However, I’m planning to try it out, and you can too can give it a whirl in its beta site here.

February 25, 2010   DG&B   future of publishing, interaction, Jessica, opinion, reading  
3

Entering the Fray

by Jessica

I didn’t actually make it to the O’Reilly Tools of Change Conference, which took place here in New York earlier this week, but between assorted bloggers, tweets and handy You Tube posts, plus the actual eyewitness reports of colleagues and friends, I was something of a virtual attendee. No doubt actual conference-goers will say that I missed the frisson of excitement coursing through the event (so many smart people assembled to discuss the publishing’s digital future must mean that there is money to be made!), but I feel I’ve gained reasonable insight into the discussion, and if you are so inclined, said insight can be yours as well. For a handy overview have a look at this PW article.

You might then check out social media guru Chris Brogan discussing on-line audience building for authors, or Ariana Huffington, delivering a keynote address entitled “Publishing is Dead, Long Live Publishing.” She makes a good, albeit not entirely new, point that the digital space allows readers a heretofore-unimaginable degree of engagement with the written word. Thanks to the magic of the Internet, readers are now able to join the conversation, to participate in the greater cultural discourse in a direct, visible and sometimes influential way. All to the good, I say, though I must admit that for all the reading I do online, I rarely comment on articles, even those that move me to paroxysms of delight or fits of fury. (Theoretically, these fits should no longer happen, as my on-line reading choices should, as studies indicate, lead me into an echo chamber of like-minded thinkers. I must be following the wrong links, because I still find plenty to infuriate.)

And while I know this question is necessarily self-selecting for its respondents, I wonder how often you weigh in on your favorite sites? Where? I’ve no shortage of opinions, but somehow, aside from this blog, I’ve not developed the habit of expressing them in any google-able format. I suppose I’m a reader/lurker, but in keeping with the exhortations of the Tools of Change cheerleaders, I plan to make a more concerted effort to enter the fray.