Category Archives: Jim

October 17, 2011   Jim   awards, controversy, Jim  
5

National Book Flub

Maybe I shouldn’t blog about the National Book Awards kerfuffle since once upon a time I interned for the foundation for one semester. But oh man, I love a good scandal, and I can’t help myself.

For those who don’t know, when the finalists were announced for the Young People’s Literature Award last week, they had to go back and add a sixth nominee because something had been included in error. No one actually said what book wasn’t supposed to be on the list, but it was pretty quickly deduced that Lauren Myracle’s SHINE wasn’t intended as a finalist. So there are six books up for the award instead of five and one author being forced to look like an idiot. “Congratulation on your nomina….PSYCH!”

According to Myracle, at the end of last week, it was decided that she should withdraw from the running in order to protect the integrity of the award. The integrity of an award that couldn’t even get its nominees listed correctly in the official announcement.

Hindsight is 20/20, but let’s imagine how this would have gone under slightly different circumstances: five finalists are named. A sixth finalist is added and we’re told that there was an error: usually only five books are up for the award but the judges selected six this year. Because of the unusual circumstances, one accidentally got left off the official announcement. The sixth book is added, and everyone goes about their days. No authors are publicly acknowledged as NOT finalists thus reducing the potential for humiliating someone through no fault of their own.

Much to her credit, Myracle has handled the situation with aplomb. And the $5K that she would have received as a finalist has been donated to the Matthew Shephard Foundation. AND…free publicity! After reading so much about her book SHINE, which deals with a girl whose best friend falls victim to a vicious hate crime, I actually ordered a copy. Maybe others have as well? It sounds like a stunning novel, so I’m now really looking forward to diving in. I mean…as much as you “look forward” to reading really sad-sounding things.

Still, while Myracle could get some new sales out of this, I’m pretty sure she would have traded some sales for not having to be put through the ringer for the past week. Poorly played, former employer. Poorly played.

October 04, 2011   Jim   art, authors, commercial, Jim  
11

You Can’t Always Get What You Want

Presuming you’re all authors or aspiring authors, let me ask you an ugly question: what are you in the game for—the art or the money?

My lovely and wonderful client Saundra Mitchell loves to be unlovely and unwonderful sometimes and sends me links to publishing stories that she knows will rile me up. It’s very: Give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day; give a man a soapbox, he’ll rant for hours. That’s the saying, right?

Point is: Saundra sent me a story about an author who, by the sounds of it, breached their contract’s non-compete clause and then let out an unholy caterwaul when her publisher took issue. She lives for her writing, you see, but she also has to earn a living. So she should be able to publish whatever she wants whenever she wants. Otherwise, it’s censorship! It’s the blocking of free trade! She all but cried, “Word genocide.”

Here’s my thing: if the terms of an agreement are so disagreeable…disagree. No one has ever been forced to publish their book. It’s not like publishers are breaking down people’s doors and stealing their manuscripts because there’s not enough supply out there. This author hated the terms of her agreement. So she shouldn’t have signed the contracts. She could have kept on writing and spreading her work however she wanted to with no one stopping her. As we know, there’s an ever increasingly diverse number of platforms authors can use to move their material. And as she said, this author lived to write.

But she also needed the money. And that’s where things get tricky. Bottom line: she was offered an amount of money to allow someone to publish her books for profit. And she took it. Once she realized that taking the money meant agreeing to the terms on which she took it, that’s where it got ugly for all involved.

Listen, I’m not saying every writer needs to sell their soul to the devil. Just the published ones.

I kid, I kid. Publishing is a business, as I’ve said over and again. There is a corporate machine that authors are part of, and there is a bottom line. Is that an ideal system in which to create art? No. But it’s a pretty solid one to make money in.

Now, I know I’m being snarky and that, realistically, this isn’t a simple binary where you choose integrity versus cold, hard cash. Which is something that we also face as agents. Let’s say a book comes across my desk and I know I can sell it for a million dollars, but I don’t personally think it’s something that needs to be out there in the world. Do I sign it anyway, take my commission and run? I’d love to say no, but if there was that kind of financial guarantee there, could I turn away? If I was offended by the book, sure. If I just thought it was unnecessary or unrewarding…the question gets a lot slipperier. Which is simply to say that it’s a constant struggle to figure out how to balance art vs. commerce and that I know I’m being reductive, but sometimes you do need to be able to put your foot down about what you can and will do for certain financial rewards.

Acknowledging that, I wonder: as authors and writers, how do you (or how do you plan to) strike that balance between integrity and the ability to put food on the table?

September 26, 2011   Jim   blurbs, Jim  
22

Do blurbs matter?

Your manuscript is edited and off to copyediting. It won’t come out for another six or seven months, so it’s too soon to do much marketing. So you go for that traditional next step: sending it to any and every author acquaintance you have and occasionally some complete and total strangers in the hopes that they’ll offer a blurb that can go on your cover.

But does it ever really make a difference?

I don’t really know. Anecdotally, yes. Booksellers care, and if they’re excited by the blurbs, they’ll be more excited about the book. That’s what I hear, at least. I’ve never seen terribly compelling evidence that it’s true.

This came up because after I finished Vanessa Diffenbaugh’s The Language of Flowers (which was lovely), I read the blurbs on the back and saw that a couple of authors I think are tremendously overrated* had given their praise. If I had seen them before picking the book up, I wonder if I might actually have been less inclined to pick it up.

So really, by titling this post with a question, I’m wondering: when you’re book shopping, do you ever notice blurbs affecting you one way or another?

*No, I will not say which ones.

September 19, 2011   Jim   Jim, what we're looking for  
12

Underrepresented voices

Okay folks, it’s time for me to clarify something in my bio. It says that I’m looking for “underrepresented voices,” and that’s totally true. However, it seems that line has caused some confusion.

Here are the two most common reactions I have to that line as evidenced in my slush.

Number 1: “You say you want underrepresented voices. I wrote a zombie thriller!” This is a lovely effort to convince me that the thing you’ve written is exactly what I want, but it tends not to work.

Number 2: “You say you want underrepresented voices. What’s more underrepresented than the middle class white male? What happened to our point of view?” To those, I now simply respond with an mp3 of me hitting my head against my desk.

So to clarify, by underrepresented, I basically mean racial, religious, ethnic, or sexual minorities. Here’s the tricky part: why should people writing those books come to me? I’m so white I’m translucent, and it’s not like I can speak for all religious or sexual minorities either. The honest answer is simply that I’m interested. Whether or not that’s enough to qualify me to sell those books is totally up to the author to decide.

To further clarify, I DO still love zombie thrillers. They’re just not what I was referring to here.

September 12, 2011   Jim   Jim, opinion, production, why we are agents  
3

Ten Years On (don’t worry, it’s not really about 9/11)

I don’t know about you all, but I’m pretty 9/11’d out. I’m looking forward to New York’s newspapers returning to non-remembrance cover stories—you know, the heartwarming stuff like the previous week’s “24 Shot in 24 Hours.” Certainly, those of us who were here don’t need a reminder in order to remember. That said, with all the talk of “ten years” later and the general consensus that publishing is in a time of CATASTROPHIC CHANGE!!!!, I admit to feeling mildly reflective. But maybe it’s just an autumn thing since just last week, Michael’s nostalgia-meter was set off by the back to school season.

As Michael mentioned, the more things change, the more they stay the same. We’ve heard repeatedly about the oncoming death of publishing. Audio books were declared dead. Fiction was declared dead. And the printed word in general? That’s died and come back more times than I can count. Publishers shuffled and reshuffled their imprints. Hundreds of people were laid off. Many of them abandoned publishing as it was going to pot. They were replaced by younger versions of themselves, some of whom are already abandoning ship to get into a more secure industry. Others will stick around forever. Erotica was going to be the next big thing for about half a second. Vampires were declared “over” before Twilight even hit the shelves. Chick-lit was all anyone was buying until no one would touch it. Several books that went to auction for six-figures were called “the last of a dying breed.” The plight of the midlist author was talked about endlessly by any midlist author whose books weren’t succeeding. And in this exact moment, ebooks are changing everything about everything. Except that they aren’t. The publishing industry has always existed to get work from authors to readers in its best and most profitable form. The heart of the industry was never in printing costs and paper stock—it was in the distribution of words and ideas. And listen, while I trust the internet for a lot of things, I don’t think crowdsourcing slush piles will be an effective way of deciding what books break out and what gets lost to the ether.

Long story short, I work in an industry that looks and feels different than it did ten years ago, but the essentials remain the same. I’ll keep looking for great books and working with authors to build the most creatively and financially successful careers that they can have.

August 22, 2011   Jim   advice, Jim, reading, writing  
5

Write On

I’m going to take today’s blog post to direct you to a wonderful online resource in case any of y’all missed it.

Last week, I had a chance to take part in the WriteOnCon in two ways. I contributed a quick blog on writing queries and also took part in a delightful live panel on Tuesday with two editors and another agent.

I wanted to direct everyone there just because I found the people so delightful and was really impressed by the content, including posts from DGLM’s own Saundra Mitchell, Carrie Ryan, Nova Ren Suma, and Sara Zarr. Worth noting: I decided to alphabetize those authors so as not to appear to favor my own clients, but mine ended up coming first anyway!

In any case, lots of great stuff to check out over there. And since I wrote about how to write a great query letter and made quick note of how you obviously need to address your submission to the correct person, I’d like to offer a brief rundown of how the queries I received were addressed today:

Dear Mr. Maccarty, (close!)

“Dear James,” (not even my mother calls me James)

“Dear Sir/Madam,” (hedging your bets, don’t want to assume I prefer one over the other—I get it)

“Dear Sir,” (well, it’s an improvement)

“To whom it may concern,” (well, that’s definitely not me in this case)

“Dear Ms. Rennert,” (I’ll bet you a million dollars I know who else got queried)

And my personal favorite: “Dear Mr./Ms. Agent’s Last Name,”

August 15, 2011   Jim   editing, Jim, reading  
15

Do you ever get tired of reading?

I was on the phone with one of my sisters lately, talking about something or other I was reading, and she asked me a question that I just don’t think about that often: “Don’t you ever get tired of reading?”

My response? “Of course not! Well, I mean…sometimes. But only the bad stuff. I mean, not REALLY tired, but sometimes you need a break. But I pretty much love it.” Or something to that effect.

Let me try to answer slightly more eloquently now.

I don’t actually get tired of reading in general. That’s like getting tired of eating or watching reality television! Sometimes though, sure, reading can become a bit of a chore.

When it’s Thursday night, and you just want to eat Thai food and watch Project Runway, but you look at your Kindle and see 17 manuscripts waiting to be read, it can be kind of a bummer. And sometimes when you’re reading the third draft of something and still can’t put your finger on exactly how to direct an author to solve a problem, it can be frustrating.

As I’m sure everyone realizes, nothing about writing (or agenting or editing) is an exact science. When that unknowable factor starts to needle me, it’s usually time to put down the manuscript and refocus.

Over the past (mumble) years I’ve been here, I’ve found that the best way to keep a fresh eye on the manuscripts I’m reading is to make sure that I’m regularly reading published books. I try to read a book a week (some months go better than others) because when I don’t I find that I lose perspective a bit. Reading published books clears my mind and lets me go back to new material feeling a bit refreshed. It keeps me from always reading as though I’m looking to find problems in material which is often unproductive. I’d rather simply read, and then let problems uncover themselves if that makes any sense.

In the long run, I’ve always felt best about editing material when I’ve just finished something I loved.

Does the same hold true for you, dear readers? Do you write best when you make sure to read things you love regularly? Or is the flip side true that if you get stuck in the writing of something, the best thing to do is try to work on something different to clear your system a bit?

August 08, 2011   Jim   advice, Jim, Q&A, questions  
45

Bring It On

Alrighty, folks. Here we go again: it’s a Monday in summer, things are actually decently quiet, and I have no idea what to blog about.

So let’s try an oldie but a goodie. Ask me ANYTHING. If you get a question in between now and 9:00 tomorrow morning, I’ll answer to the best of my abilities.

Go ahead: do your worst.

August 01, 2011   Jim   agents, authors, Jim  
25

Hate On Me, Hater

It’s so easy as an agent who blogs to delve into horror stories or just list things we hate it when authors do. I hate when authors send really mean responses to rejections. I hate people who address me as Dear Sir/Ma’am. I hate when every single piece of slush I receive in a day seems to be describing the exact same book. I could go on. But I won’t! Why?

Well, first of all, I love getting lots of comments on my blog entries, and asking people to name books they hated really seemed to capture your attention. Also, someone responded to a “Dear Author,” letter this morning to tell me I’m an asshole. So clearly, there’s some hate on the other side of the fence.

So without naming names (especially if they’re ours!), go ahead and exorcise those demons: what do you hate about agents? Share your horror stories. I KNOW you have them.

July 25, 2011   Jim   fun, Jim, opinion, reading  
2

Cannibalism, Cage Matches, and Torrid Affairs

A few months ago, my delightful client Saundra Mitchell sent me an email explaining that she and three of my other clients were snowed in at a writers’ retreat, and they needed my advice: if they remained trapped, and one of them needed to be killed and eaten, who should it be?

A more diplomatic agent would have said that they were all indispensable and no one could pick between them. I, however, chose to take this question at face value and rationalized an answer. Happily, the client I dispensed to be eaten has a sense of humor.

In any case, it’s sometimes tough to come up with things to blog about, so I decided to employ Saundra’s help coming up with some topics. What follows are the first two questions she sent me along with my responses.

Saundra asks: “If you could put two modern classics (to hell with Dickens and Tolstoy) into a cage match, and only one would emerge, which two and why the victor?”

To make things difficult for myself, I’ll go with two of my favorite books of all time—Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon versus Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love.

Let’s start with character names. In one corner we have Milkman Dead and his sisters First Corinthians and “Magdalene called Lena”. In the other corner, we have Olympia Binewski with her siblings Arturo, Electra, Iphegenia, and Fortunato, called Chick. Neither Morrison nor Dunn is afraid to get really explicit with their references, so they’re pretty balanced here. For sheer memorabilty, this category goes to Morrison.

Let’s stay on the surface of those characters and go with crazy physical traits: Arty has flippers instead of arms and legs. Iphy and Elly are conjoined twins. Olympia is an albino hunchback dwarf. What do you have, Ms. Morrison? A washerwoman born without a belly button? Point: Dunn.

How about opening lines? Dunn: “’When your mama was the geek, my dreamlets,’ Papa would say, ‘she made the nipping off of noggins such a crystal mystery that the hens themselves yearned toward her, waltzing around her, hypnotized with yearning.’” Morrison: “The North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance agent promised to fly from Mercy to the other side of Lake Superior at three o’clock.” I’m gonna call this one a draw. In looking at them, Dunn’s is the more immediately captivating. There’s so much information tucked in that sentence about where we are, who we might be dealing with, and what kind of tone this strange, wonderful book will take. Morrison’s first line is, I would say, less immediately rewarding, but in the long run, it feels just perfect, tying so neatly into the book as a whole and forecasting what’s to come so subtly that you don’t know until you re-read the book just how tightly constructed it was from the get go.

Geek Love would be a scrappy fighter. It would play dirty; its moves would be unexpected; it would get in many a surprise blow. Song of Solomon would be a graceful fighter, standing solid but moving deftly and loosely when necessary. It would fight clean, and…while I do love Geek Love, it would deliver a knockout punch just as Dunn’s book began to tire itself out.

No one can outwrite Toni Morrison line by line. Some of her books aren’t perfect (though I’d argue heartily in support of the under-appreciated Love), but for my money, she’s probably the best living American novelist. But if you want to know what it feels like to have your soul stabbed, go read the one star reviews of her work on Amazon where people say she’s only famous because Oprah picked her. Killmenowplease.
Saundra asks:
“Do you know how to play Cliff, Marry, Shag? You get three options, and you have to pick which one you would throw off a cliff, which one you would marry, and which one you’d have a dirty nasty affair with. Sooooooooo… Cliff, Marry, Shag : Genre Edition: Paranormal, Dystopian, Historical? (I also think Cliff, Marry, Shag: Classic Novels and Cliff, Marry, Shag: New York Times Bestsellers editions would be hilarious.”

Let’s take the genres first. Also, does anyone else know this game under a different, less polite name? I’m used to “marry,” but the others are…different. So I’m going to have to marry paranormal. Yes, it’s a trend, and yes, it’s overpublished, and no, it can’t last forever in the same way it exists now. But by the same token, this is not a category that’s ever going away, and if I’m staying with one of these three forever, this is an incredibly easy choice for me as it’s where I’ve had my biggest success and it’s just a ton of fun. I’ll shag dystopian. Talk about trends! Listen, The Handmaid’s Tale is one of my favorite books of all time. And there are so many brilliant tales set after the apocalypse. I may be the ONLY person who watched the few episodes of a sitcom called Whoops! back in the day—it was a comedy about the post-apocalypse, and it was my jam. But on a whole, way too many people are writing books that are too similar and too familiar right now. This is a category that I think needs to be left to the masters (and they’re out there in spades) and too many folks are jumping on board and failing to understand the worldbuilding aspect. So, dear history, you’re going over a cliff. Historicals are, by and large, not my thing. There are periods in the past that I love to read about, and I love plenty of books in this category, but if one of these had to stop existing, I’d let nonfiction cover my need to know about the past and keep around the categories that show me alternatives to the present and possibilities for the future.

As for bestsellers, I’ll grab the highest three trade paperback novels that I’ve read: Room, A Visit from the Goon Squad, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Again, it’s almost too easy. Jennifer Egan is one of my favorite writers, and she pulls off a piece of her book narrated in Powerpoint, for God’s sake. This is the kind of gimmick that drives me insane, but not only is it incredibly well done, it feels necessary. Amazing. I’d shag Room. Which sounds so, so wrong, all things considered. I adored this book so I couldn’t throw it off a cliff, but neither would I want it for a life partner. Too many tears over too, too long. And that means that Salander’s going cliff-diving. I liked the book quite a bit, actually, but I found it formally clunky and more curiously interesting than actually fascinating. Sorry, my ass-kicking, tattooed badass.

« Older posts
Newer posts »