Category Archives: Jane

May 17, 2010   DG&B   advice, conferences, fun, Jane, writing  
4

The Storytellers at the University of Florida

by Jane

This weekend, I spent a couple of days at a really super writers’ conference at the University of Florida at Gainesville, the Storytellers’ Summit, which was organized by Dr. William McKeen and Professor Mike Foley, two incredibly talented and inspirational journalists and teachers. There were over 200 attendees.

And, again at this conference as was the case at the one I attended in February in a far different setting, I spent time with some really wonderful people:

Michael Connelly, the down-to-earth, bestselling author who told us he had actually graduated from the University of Florida 30 years ago this weekend.

Rick Bragg, the outrageously funny and brilliant Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, bestselling author and fanatical sports fan.

Andrea Billups, the gorgeous journalist and author formerly from Florida, now living in Michigan.

Dear Roy Peter Clark, client, friend and mentor.

Nicole Cisneros McKeen, Bill’s wife and editor of the Engineering School Alumni magazine, who made me feel immediately welcome.

Jeffrey Klinkenberg, award winning journalist and book author who had great stories to tell. (I wish we’d had more time to chat).

Wonderful Tom French, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, author and incredibly talented and inspirational teacher and his beautiful wife Kelley, a superb journalist herself who I am hoping will be writing a proposal for a book very soon.

Steve Johnson, a talented photojournalist and precocious junior at the university who many are certain will some day rule the world.

Witty and brilliant Norton book editor Amy Cherry with whom I shared a panel and who I like and respect deeply.

I have always found these gatherings so inspirational. We talk about the business and our experiences, we learn from each other, we discuss ideas for new projects, we laugh a lot.

I encourage everyone who can possibly do this to find at least one conference a year to attend – I think you will learn a great deal from doing so. If you have already been to some of these, I would be most interested in hearing about your experiences.

May 10, 2010   DG&B   advice, Jane, queries  
27

Query mistakes

by Jane

Every once in a while, a writer sends me a query addressed to another agent at another company and it makes me think that she or he couldn’t be that serious about getting representation if s/he is so careless with his or her submission.

Then there are those who query every agent in our agency at the same time, a definite no- no.

And I am always suspicious of the writer who refers to his or her work as a fiction novel.

In response to Miriam Goderich’s very clever blog entry last week regarding having fun while we do our jobs, Mary Witzl suggested that we ask writers what their worst query mistakes have been. That sounded like a great idea to me and so I am throwing the question out to our blog readers.

Bring those submission errors on! I am eager to hear about them.

May 03, 2010   DG&B   e-books, future of publishing, Jane, opinion, reading  
16

To Kindle or not to Kindle

by Jane

Last fall, after hearing many people discuss the Kindle for many months and after owning a Sony Reader for a couple of years, I decided to purchase several Kindles for our staff. It seemed to me that the Kindle was more versatile than the Reader and I was excited to begin using it.

Now, it is six months later and I have been reading both books and manuscripts on my Kindle. There is no question in my mind that it is far more versatile than the Reader and, when I am traveling, as I have been quite a bit for the last six months, there is nothing more convenient than the Kindle.

Over the last several weeks, though, I have been reading Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann, and while I was doing so, I kept wondering why I wasn’t loving it as much as many of my colleagues had. I finished the book the other night and all of a sudden I realized that the reason I hadn’t gotten the same pleasure out of reading it as everyone else at DGLM had was because I wasn’t reading an actual book—I was reading it on the Kindle. Let the Great World Spin is, first of all, a beautifully designed book with a gorgeous jacket; there is no way to tell this on the Kindle. It is also a story that makes the reader want to dip back and forth to re-read certain passages and this is all but impossible to do on the Kindle. In addition, because there are no page numbers on the Kindle (all one can tell is the percent of the book one has already read), there is no way to know how to reference page numbers. Ultimately, even though I enjoyed the book I believe it would have been a far more pleasurable reading experience had I had a print copy of the book.

Then, recently during a meeting in our office, one of my colleagues was describing her experience reading The Help. She mentioned that it felt like a really long book. I was surprised to hear this. In fact, I had read the book last December and had no sense of how long it was—none at all—because I had read it on the Kindle.

There are so many different opinions about what reading on a Kindle is like. My doctor, who only reads on the Kindle, has to go buy the actual book when he is writing a paper and needs to cite a page. There are those who say they really miss the “feel” of an actual book when they are reading on the Kindle; and then there are those who say that the iPad is better than all the other devices.

I’d like to believe that, in time, much will change technologically with these electronic readers and I think that, ultimately, they will increase the number of readers over all. I would also like to believe that old fashioned books will never disappear entirely; they offer too much comfort to many of us who love physical books. Reading a book electronically simply does not offer the same kind of pleasure in my opinion as reading it in hard copy.

So now I would love to know what you think?

April 26, 2010   DG&B   advice, Amazon, Apple, e-books, future of publishing, Google, Jane, publishers, retailers  
8

Publish or perish

by Jane

With all of the sturm und drang going on in the publishing business over the last few months with regard to Amazon, Apple and Google, there is an enormous amount of confusion—understandably.

I found this article in this week’s New Yorker to be quite enlightening. Even if it will “date” quickly because of the speed at which things are changing, I highly recommend that all published and unpublished writers read it. There is much to learn and absorb here.

I would be interested in hearing what you think.

April 19, 2010   DG&B   deals, Jane, publishers, submissions, timing  
4

Timing is everything

by Jane

So much of life has to do with timing: where we go to school; who we end up with as a partner or a spouse; what job we end up with. And, there is no business where this is more true than in publishing.

An author has an idea, finds just the right agent who “gets” that idea and who then finds the right publisher to publish that book at just the right time. There are so many good examples of this–and, of course, there are negative examples as well.

This week, for me at least all of this really rang true:

I sold a novel that one of our best and oldest clients had been working on for five long years to just the right editor and publisher.

I sold another book just a week after I sent it out on submission–it was an idea that just happened to strike a chord right now, from an author who wrote a brilliant proposal and it went to a publisher who really got it.

Trying to beat the rush out of town for the London Book Fair, I also quickly closed two other deals. As it turns out, I didn’t have to hurry. As a result of the unpronounceable volcano, many of my colleagues had to cancel their travel plans.

Still, timing is everything.

April 13, 2010   DG&B   fun, Jane, optimism, our clients, why I signed up, why we are agents  
4

The strategy of building a client

by Jane

Every once in a while, we are asked why we signed a particular client and what the process was like, specifically what appealed to us about the client and/or the project in the first place, what strategies we used to build that client’s career and how things went from when they first contacted us until now.

Naturally, I have many different stories that could answer this question but one of my favorites is that of Thomas French, a hugely talented journalist and author.

In the fall of 1988, I read a series Tom had written for the St. Petersburg Times about a murder case in Gulfport, Florida, a case where the small town detective ended up arresting one of his best friends and charging him with rape and first degree murder. It was a fascinating case with lots of twists. As I do when I read interesting and compelling material, I called Tom immediately and told him I thought that the series would make a terrific book.

Tom became a client and together we created a super book proposal which we sold to St. Martin’s Press. The book was published first in hardcover in 1991 and then a year later in paperback. It turned out to be a terrific success; it’s still in print and continues to sell today.

In the decades since, I have advised Tom on his other book projects and I think he and I have taught each other a lot. We have talked about the continuing challenges of writing, about the business of publishing, and the differences between the two. I have analyzed for him why this project can snag a contract and why that one will not. Over the years, when Tom found himself having trouble with one of his sources or stuck at a certain point in the writing of a book, I have listened and tried to help him see the big picture. Working in this way allowed Tom to focus on what he wanted to focus on–the reporting and writing and the storytelling and everything else required to wrestle another page, another chapter, another book into publication.

In 1998, Tom French won the Pulitzer Prize for series he did for the St. Petersburg Times entitled “Angels and Demons,” and we actually sold a movie option of the series.

Now, Tom’s third and I think best book to date is about to come out. In July, Zoo Story, an account of life and death inside the Tampa zoo, will be published by Hyperion; it has required six years of immersion reporting, interviewing and writing. For me, it has been exhilarating to watch Tom develop this incredible tale, and I am eagerly anticipating its success.

Now, once again, we are in the early stages of discussing new projects which Tom will develop in the next several months.

When the agent/author relationship unfolds as this one has it is incredibly fulfilling. In fact it is why I continue to love what I do. Strategizing literary careers and developing successful authors is challenging, sure, but it is also enormously satisfying to watch our clients grow and succeed.

April 12, 2010   DG&B   controversy, fun, Jane  
10

The blown “publishing coup of the century”

by Jane

The majority of authors are concerned with having some control over the way their books are published. They (rightfully) want to have a say in the title, the quality of the paper, the look of the interior, and the cover art and design. And, often, publishers fight authors on these things–sometimes tooth and nail.

So when I read this piece in last week’s New York magazine, it was nice to see, for a change, what might happen when an author doesn’t maintain the control he wants over his book’s publication.

I would be interested to hear what you think.

April 05, 2010   DG&B   controversy, e-books, future of publishing, Jane, opinion  
10

The greening of the e-book

by Jane

One morning last week I, along with probably every other agent, received an e-mail from the Chief Executive Officer of Penguin announcing that because their company had been unable to reach an agreement with Amazon on the agency model pricing of e-books, all new Penguin titles would not be available on the Kindle until such agreement was reached. A short while later, I had a call from an executive at Amazon telling me essentially the same thing. And so another chapter began in the ups and downs of the publishing and distribution of e-books.

But one thing that I don’t think has been widely discussed in this whole e-book controversy is how environmentally friendly e-books are. Yesterday, I was enlightened on this subject.

An Op-Ed piece in the New York Times by Daniel Goleman and Gregory Norris called some very interesting facts to my (and hopefully many others’) attention. It turns out that even though one would think e-books would be more environmentally friendly because they don’t involve cutting down all of the trees it takes to manufacture paper books and fuel consumption in shipping them to their final destinations, they’re not.

I was really surprised by all of this–and actually found it somewhat comforting. I wonder what you think.

March 29, 2010   DG&B   about us, advice, contracts, Jane, why we are agents  
15

Why do you need an agent?

by Jane

So back to that age-old question again, and an experience I had last week that provides the response.

I received a call from a man who had already sold his book to a publisher (he had not submitted it to multiple publishers, and so really had no idea what it was worth) for a modest sum and had located and “hired” a movie agent through the internet. He had found an attorney (I am not sure how) who had “reviewed” his contract for him.

When he called me, he wasn’t sure why–he had just been told by his editor and publisher that he should have an agent.

I agreed that I would be interested in helping him, and he instructed his attorney to send me a copy of the contract and to talk with the movie agent to tell him that I would be on board.

But then I looked at the contract and I was stunned. There was a huge problem on the very first page; knowing that we didn’t have a signed agency agreement, I didn’t read further but I am absolutely certain that there are other major problems in that contract that will lead to problems down the road.

Ultimately, this writer told me that he had decided not to use an agent, after all. He thought there was no need as the publishing contract was already signed. I wished him well, but thought to myself that he had made a very big mistake at the beginning and hoped that he doesn’t rue the day he made this decision and that the movie agent is successful in helping the book become a film.

Vetting contracts, of course, is not all we agents do. And, as you’ve gathered from our posts on this blog, the sale of a book is just the beginning of our work with our clients. But, this is a good example of why it’s important to have an agent in your corner.

I am curious what you think about this experience and look forward to hearing.

March 22, 2010   DG&B   about us, advice, Jane, publishers, submissions  
14

The submission process

by Jane

In the comments last week, Joan Swan asked us to review how submissions are done. I raised my hand to offer this explanation:

I submit proposals and manuscripts on a multiple basis nearly all the time. While the proposal or the manuscript is being completed, I am talking about the project with various editors who I think might be interested. If they are, I add their names to a submission list, and when we deem the proposal or manuscript ready to submit, I set a date and tell the author when I am planning to send it out.

All of our proposals and manuscripts are now being submitted electronically as opposed to only a short while ago when they were sent in the mail. We find this is far more efficient and it has helped us streamline the process. With nonfiction proposals, we generally go to at least 20 publishers at a time. With fiction, we submit to 5 or 10. On the day of the submission, I sometimes call editors to say the material is coming to give them a heads up–editors receive so much material from agents and authors, I don’t want our submissions to get “lost” in a crowded inbox.

With nonfiction I usually begin following up, if I haven’t heard back from editors, about a week to 10 days later. With fiction I will wait for two weeks as reading an entire manuscript is bound to take longer than just a proposal. I ascertain the editor’s level of interest (and, yes, I collect their rejections) and then I gently try to press for when we will have an offer. If more than one publisher makes an offer, I usually try to have an auction.

Sometimes this process takes only a couple of days; sometimes it can take months depending upon how many interested parties I have and how many rounds of publishers I have to go to.

If I feel after the first round that more work needs to be done to improve the proposal or manuscript, based on feedback from the editors, I will suggest that to my client and share the comments that I have received from publishers. It is up to the author to decide whether he or she wants to make any changes.

Depending on the project and the comments I receive back from publishers, I decide just how far I will go in terms of submitting to more and smaller publishers. Sometimes we go to a number of rounds and sometimes we don’t. I do find though that I am persistent enough to sell a very high percentage of the projects I take on.

I am happy to answer any specific questions on this process if you have them.

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