Category Archives: Jim

July 18, 2011   Jim   Jim, opinion, pet peeves, reading  
43

Throwing Books

Awhile back, I was hiding out from the aspiring authors at a writers’ conference (social as I am, I need SOME breaks), and reading the ARC for a much hyped young adult novel that was yet to be published. It was one of those novels with a huge six-figure advance, oodles of promotion, and people lined up ready to call it the second coming of great literature.

It started off strong, and I was pretty hooked. About 100 pages in, I started to have questions. So. Many. Questions. It was a fantasy novel set in a universe entirely created by the author. A world in which nothing made any sense. The world-building was scattershot at best, but based on the beginning of the book, I was ready to stick it out. After all, everyone loved this book, so I was sure it would get better.

It didn’t. Around 200 pages in, I was so frustrated that I hurled the book across the hotel room. I’ve heard people say they threw a book across the room. I had never believed people actually did it. And I had certainly never done so myself.

What killed me was the wasted promise. It’s one thing for a book to just be terrible. But for something to start out fantastic and devolve into stupidity is infuriating. For it to happen in a book getting a ginormous push? That made me want to start throwing pies at all involved—the author, the editor, the agent. Somebody should have realized that the book was constructed on a foundation of sand. And yet. And yet.

Imagine my delight when the book came out and became a bestseller. I mean, it’s possible I’m wrong about its qualities… No, you’re right. I couldn’t be wrong. Too unlike me!

What about all of you? Have you ever gotten so mad you literally threw a book across the room? And do name names–just because I have to be discreet doesn’t mean you do!

July 11, 2011   Jim   agents, deals, Jim, timing, truth  
5

The Publishing Summer

Between vacation and three day weekends and the like, it’s been ages since I’ve dropped in to blog. I’m sure you all missed me terribly and are much relieved that I’m back in the rotation.

And since the Dystel vacation rotation is in full swing, I thought I’d take the chance to chat about one of my favorite publishing myths: nothing happens during the summer.  It’s all lies.

Let me just do a little boasting here for a second (I loooooove to flatter myself): I got back from vacation last Tuesday and since then have submitted three projects and closed two deals. I know, I know. I’m awesome. But this happened in the season when publishing is supposed to shut down so we can all jaunt off to our summer homes and sun by the pool.

Spoiler alert: most of us don’t have summer homes.

The reality of the situation is that things in summer may be quieter than other seasons because most people take their vacations at this time of year and as an industry we embrace the incredibly rewarding concept of summer hours, aka half-day Fridays. Again, this is presumably so we can get to our beach houses. In practice, when I leave early on Fridays, it’s to go home or go to a park and do reading. I told myself I was actually going to head home and nap last Friday, and I ended up getting through two manuscripts in a row.

In any case, the bottom line is that things slow down the slightest of bits in the summer, but people who aren’t on vacation are probably working just as hard as ever. I know there are authors who really panic about the timing of material going out and convince themselves that if they don’t have deals in place by the end of May, it’s going to be a slog to September, but as far as I can tell, nothing changes all that terribly much from season to season. Much as we might sometimes want it to.

June 22, 2011   Jim   agents, Jim, opinion  
9

Can You Be a Nice Agent?

Awhile back, someone I was trying to sign as a client was on the phone asking me questions about what I was like to work with—how I liked to stay in touch, what houses I sold to most often, what degree of editorial involvement I have, etc. The usual. Then came a question I never thought I’d get.

“Your reputation is for being really nice,” she started. At this point, I’m feeling pretty good about where things are going. She continued, “So how can I trust that if I need you to fight for me, you actually will?”

Well, I never.

I kid. It was a huge surprise, but looking back, it’s a fair question. We’re in the business of being demanding. In some ways, our jobs are as professional advocates willing to do the dirty work so that the author doesn’t have to go through the nitty-gritty business side of things and can focus on their writing.

On the other hand, it’s a business of relationships. Authors also count on us to have a stable of editors who know and trust our taste…and actually want to work with us.

I like to think I’ve struck a balance over the years. At the start of my agenting career, I admit that I was tentative to ask for things. I still did it, but I was perhaps a bit meeker than I should have been. Growing as an agent, at least in part, has meant locating the balance between authoritative and rude, demanding and pushy.

Have I hit that sweet spot? You can ask the person who wanted to know if I was too nice to be an agent. She signed on. I still got it!

As a side note, the reason my blog entry is later than usual this week is that the first one I wrote was struck down by two people here. The reason? They thought I was too mean. Those bitches.

June 13, 2011   Jim   conferences, Jim, pitch sessions  
5

Two Nights in Austin

I spent the weekend at the Writer’s League of Texas conference in Austin this past weekend and thought I’d share some thoughts about what the conference experience is like from an agent’s perspective.

First of all, I was unreasonably fond of Austin. It’s rare that I really flip for a city that requires much driving, but I can happily report that Austin is approximately one million times more pedestrian friendly than, say…Dallas. Or Houston. And while June in Texas proved, unsurprisingly, to be quite hot, downtown Austin basically just proved to be super-awesome enough that I was happy to sweat it out. Literally.

After lunch and some shopping with a local client, I got down to conference business with an all-attendee cocktail party. There’s nothing like being one of ten agents in a room of 250 writers to confuse your sense of self-worth. I parked it at a table and chatted with a cast of characters that legitimately rotated seats so everyone could have their chance next to me. It was like the universe suddenly realized how awesome I was. There are good and bad things to this: one the one hand, you don’t have to worry about awkward small talk because all anyone wants to know is whether you’ll read their book. On the other hand, if you need to escape to the restroom, folks will actually block your path and want to know that you’re coming back, when you’re coming back, and (again) whether you’ll read their book.

Happily, it was a charmingly aggressive bunch of authors, and while it’s sometimes disconcerting to have things you wrote on a blog three years ago quoted back to you verbatim, it is not entirely unflattering.

That was followed by an agents and editors dinner overlooking the Congress Avenue bridge, under which 1.5 million bats reside, all taking flight at dusk out into the city. Which is basically the coolest thing ever to watch. After dinner, I took the chance to go see Super 8 (such a good start; such a bad end), and then headed to bed.

Pitches began on Saturday morning, and in a series of back-to-back appointments, writers tried to convince me in 10 minutes that they’ve written the best book of all time. This rarely works. And I don’t mean that in a bad way. The fact of the matter is that there is only so much you can know about a book from talking about it. There’s no way to know for sure until you’ve had the chance to read some pages. Pitches aren’t as terrible as people think. I believe that for the most part, unless you have a project that’s really wrong for someone, they usually are willing to take a look at a query or some sample material. I did hear one pitch that sounded EXACTLY like something I would love, but it will all come down to the writing. I also heard about a bunch of stuff that I didn’t have a strong opinion on, and that’s fine. In the end, the pitch is the smallest piece of the puzzle. The material has to be able to prove itself.

Amidst the pitches, I did two panels. One was on the basics of getting started in your search for an agent. I tried to crack a joke or two. Afterwards, some people told me I was hysterical. Either I’m a comedic genius, or some authors are really willing to flatter me in order to win my favor. I suspect it’s the former. The second panel was three agents listening to queries and interrupting the reader at the point they would have stopped reading. This is becoming a more and more common feature of conferences these days. I think we’ve all just seen a bit too much American Idol. Here’s the thing: it’s really tempting to be the Simon. And, frankly, really easy. A lot of people default to that position. Happily, the three of us (including agents Susanna Einstein and Ryan Fischer-Harbage) seemed to be more constructive and kind than that. Still, you just have to wonder who in the audience is going to be pissed when you say no to their material. Of course, in some rare occurrences, that person may choose to fight back on your decision. This is what I like to call counter-productive.

In the end, I met a whole ton of writers this weekend, and I asked for a lot of material. My summer vacation isn’t too far off, so I’m pretty sure this means I’m going to have a reading backlog in 3…2… Regardless, it seems like the people who get the most out of conferences are the ones who are there to learn rather than the ones focused solely on getting an agent. Ideally, yes, you will find the person who will be able to usher you into the next stage of your career. But you may also meet new critique partners, learn tricks of the trade, or simply gain advice on how to approach specific aspects of your writing.

At most conferences, I usually encounter some bitter person who complains about not getting enough time to pitch their book or finds some way to blame the conference for their not having landed an agent. Those people suck. Happily, this weekend, I didn’t meet any terrible people. Or, at least, no obviously terrible people. No one whose terribleness radiated off of them. Actually, in the end, it was just a wonderful conference overall—not overly taxing, incredibly well organized, really friendly people, and a seriousness among the attendees about their craft that I always am heartened to see. And people kept telling me how fantastic I am. What’s not to love?

June 06, 2011   Jim   fiction, Jim, what we're looking for  
12

Send me good stuff!

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted what I’m looking for, so it seems like as good a time as any. Because let’s be honest, the idea that publishing shuts down in the summer is more or less a fiction. Things might happen at a slightly slower pace because vacations interrupt things and we have the option of cutting out a little earlier on Fridays, but the volume of work, judging by my inbox and Kindle certainly, never slows down all that much. And I’m always on the lookout for new talent.

I’ve long said that I’m not especially interested in historical fiction. Then a year or so back, I signed on a delightful historical romance author. And at BEA a couple weeks back, I snagged a copy of Amor Towles 1937-set novel Rules of Civility which I read in one sitting and tumbled head over heels in love with. It’s not that I’m not interested in novels set in the past, it seems. I’m just not interested in novels about history. Which is to say that if someone novelizes Napoleon’s life, I’ll still not be interested. If, however, someone writes a rollicking murder mystery set in an interesting past, then I’m right on board. So now I’m thinking I’d particularly love to find something rich and exciting set in an exciting period. My personal taste would lead more urban and plot focused than rural and ruminative. Think more The Alienist than The Girl with the Pearl Earring.

It would be a delight for me to find some young adult fiction set in the real world. I adore the paranormal, fantasy, and sci-fi novelists I work with, and I’m certainly open to more, but with very few exceptions, I don’t have much real life fiction. I’d love to find some more—think Sarah Dessen or Lauren Myracle. Basically, I love what I do, but I’m always interested in expanding my boundaries and trying new things.

Has anyone read Swamplandia? I loved that book—the author depicts really unusual characters whose lives aren’t remotely mainstream, but she never relies on quirk or absurd humor to render them. It’s a beautiful book about people whose story isn’t necessarily relatable but whose feelings and thoughts are. It reminded me of Geek Love and made me want to find a novel about a bunch of misfits to call my own. Want to get started on a specific idea? In the early 20th Century, Coney Island was the home of “Lilliputia, the Midget City,” a self-contained village for little people that charged admission for visitors. I once gathered about 100 pages of information on this fascinating place thinking I’d use it some day before I remembered that I don’t write. So someone else: hop to!

And then, of course, I want to find the next astounding, jaw-dropping, brilliant, wonderful, high concept, bestselling, award winning novel in any category, adult or young adult. So if you have that, by all means, send it along!

Anything that you all would give your right arm to see on the shelves right now?

On a side note, an orange randomly appeared on the roof outside my window last week, and I’ve checked on it every day, waiting for decay to inevitably set in. I anticipated long weeks of IM’ing my colleagues updates on the state of the orange. If I’m being honest, I probably would have included State of the Orange updates in my blog entries. In fact, I just went to the window to photograph it—the beginning of the long saga of a lonely fruit. Alas, the orange has disappeared. I’m suspecting foul play. Now I’m going to need to come up with more new blog ideas. This is all very alarming.

May 16, 2011   Jim   Jim, libraries, technology  
5

Librarians of the Future

People love Seth Godin. He’s ever so mildly inflammatory (without ever saying anything particularly daring) and always willing to predict what’s going to happen 30 seconds into the future. His new blog post fits in pretty cleanly with everything he usually writes. The internet is the future! Everything will eventually cost less than the button on your shirt! Things are happening faster than you can imagine! Okay, to be fair, he doesn’t use that many exclamation points. He just uses tons and tons of italics.

I don’t mean this as a takedown of Godin—promise. I think he’s well-intentioned and often on the right track. But I always react badly to something in each of his posts. Let us take this example:

“Want to watch a movie? Netflix is a better librarian, with a better library, than any library in the country. The Netflix librarian knows about every movie, knows what you’ve seen and what you’re likely to want to see. If the goal is to connect viewers with movies, Netflix wins.”

That makes my brain itch a little. Let’s unpack this: does Netflix have access to more DVD’s than any library out there? Possibly in terms of sheer variety, yes it does. And they’re very easily searchable. But in terms of the service knowing what you’ve seen “and what you’re likely to want to see,” Netflix depends on a sort of group-think and law of averages that, while often right, cannot factor in the individual. To wit, for every ten movies that Netflix think I’ll love (and I do), there’s at least one baffling choice that people with similar taste to mine appreciated because they were wrong.

It’s like saying that Wikipedia is a better encyclopedia than any other because of the sheer breadth of topics and variety of information. Which…holy crap! Back to Godin: “Wikipedia and the huge databanks of information have basically eliminated the library as the best resource for anyone doing amateur research (grade school, middle school, even undergrad).”

To be fair, like most of Godin’s posts, he comes around to a solid point: yes, the freer flow of information and data is making the role of the librarian different than it was in the past. Which I’m pretty sure anyone who has spoken to a librarian in the past five years was already aware of. (Why can’t I avoid being snarky any time I talk about him?) But here’s my thing: while there is cause to celebrate the ongoing spread of accessible and affordable literature and information, is the role of the librarian really being able to shepherd people through various ways of acquiring information? Or is it helping people identify what information is actually valuable?



May 09, 2011   Jim   fun, Jim, romance  
1

Working for Love

I stumbled upon what clearly seems to be the most awesome book ever: Sai Gaddam and Ogi Ogas’s A BILLION WICKED THOUGHTS, in which the two neuroscientists studied thousands of Harlequin romance novels to study “social expectations.”

First thing’s first: Sai and Ogi have clearly mastered academia if they found a way to get paid to do “research” by reading thousands of Harlequin romance novels. This makes me think I should have stayed in school forever and “studied” horror movies so that I had an excuse to hang out on the couch all day “working.”

But beyond that, their findings are all interesting and often quite funny. This link shows the ten most popular jobs for romance novel heroes.

The link within that article leads you to some racier material on Psychology Today—the brain doctors are always the dirty ones, aren’t they?

I have to admit: I’m a little shocked that doctors are more prevalent than cowboys. I wonder if this is because cowboys and ranchers were separated into two distinct categories. And maybe this will just expose how much of a city boy I am, but…is there really a difference?

If one thing is clear from the list, positions of power are apparently a turn on for romance readers. But the real question is this. Who’s going to write the novel about a time-traveling cowboy prince in medical school?

May 02, 2011   Jim   fun, Jim, polls, questions  
14

I wish I represented…

Stumped for blog entries today and not wanting to turn to you folks to tell me what to write, I simply turned to my colleagues and made them do some of the heavy lifting for me! Every so often, someone will ask, “If you could have represented any book in the world, what would it have been?” And I always answer TWILIGHT. Because COME ON! That book made roughly a trillion dollars. It’s a silly answer, though, as it’s likely much more interesting to choose books that we would have loved to represent not only because they made a bunch of money. Here’s what we came up with.

Michael went for Ann Dee Ellis’ realistic YA novel THIS IS WHAT I DID citing it as “an amazing example of both voice and storytelling.” Unrelated: in looking the book up, I laughed out loud when I saw that the final line of the Booklist review, where they usually tell people whether or not the book is worthwhile, is instead a warning: “Caution: there’s a slang term for scrotum on page 1.”

Stephanie went with Garth Stein’s major bestseller THE ART OF RACING IN THE RAIN. When asked why, she replied, “Besides the fact that it made a bajillion dollars?” Fair question. It also is, “beautifully written, compelling, and accessible.”

Miriam chose Ann Patchett’s stunning novel BEL CANTO because she notes that besides being a “gorgeous writer,” Patchett always comes off as a sweet person. She then went on to name an author whose work she loves but thought might be super difficult to work with. I won’t name names. But it sounds like Shmonanthan Shmanzen.

It was Joshua Ferris’s THEN WE CAME TO THE END for Lauren.  She notes that, “Joshua Ferris’s voice and sensibility are very much in the spirit of the sort of accessible literary novels that I tend to go for on a personal and professional level.”

Me? I’ll pick two. It’s my entry after all. On the YA side, I’ll choose Stephen Chbosky’s THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER because it made me cry, it’s a true life story (which I’d love to find more of), and it’s the sort of novel you can imagine really being a life-changer for teens who read it. On the adult side, I’ll pick Gillian Flynn’s DARK PLACES because it’s a super-dark thriller with some really twisted stuff going on, and I can really get behind some bleak, bleak stuff.

Rachel also picked a book that made her cry: Ian McEwan’s ATONEMENT was the first book to make her sob uncontrollably. I will personally note that I don’t understand why the universe loved this book. I file Ian McEwan among those people whose work everyone but me loves, leaving me feeling a little dazed and confused by my own apathy. (See also: Spielberg)

Jane picked an altogether different type of weeper: THE EMPEROR OF ALL MALADIES by Siddhartha Mukherjee, a stunning “biography of cancer” that could have been dull or difficult or simply too dark to read if it weren’t for Mukherjee’s incredible compassion.

What about you, dear readers? Let’s say you could slap your name on some already published book and claim it as your own? What would you have chosen to write?

April 25, 2011   Jim   advice, feuds, Jim, marketing/publicity  
9

Don’t be a moron.

These are dangerous times to be a writer. The internet makes spreading information waaaaay too easy sometimes. Not when you want to, of course. Try to make your book trailer go viral, and you start to feel like Sisyphus. But say something mean about someone, and you can step back and watch the wildfire grow.

I know for a fact that authors love to witness the public meltdowns of other authors (I have the emails to prove it!). And I totally understand. There’s something really comforting about being able to stand back and look at someone’s breakdown over bad reviews, losing an award, not getting enough money, etc., and just think, “Thank God it isn’t me.” It’s not pure schadenfreude. I suspect that each of us possesses the ability to turn into a shrieking harpy on the internet, so each time we see someone else do it instead, there’s a degree of real comfort.

One piece of advice I share (too often) is simple: Don’t be an asshole. It’s advice I need to remind myself of sometimes when someone gets mean and all I can think is, “I can take care of this with a delicate combination of cutting wit and pure rage.” It’s just a bad idea. You always end up looking worse.

The easiest way to prevent yourself from looking like a tool on the interwebs is just to have someone trustworthy who you can run responses by. Someone who will be able to respond to your saying, “Really, I just think I have some perfectly rational explanations for why this reviewer is a toad, and I’d like to share them,” by telling you, “Shut up, or you’ll look like a moron.” I’m happy to report that there are several people in DGLM’s employ who are happy to tell me when I’m being an idiot. All. Too. Happy. Everyone needs one of these people that they can trust. A yes-man is lovely, but an honest opinion is vastly more useful.

The point is: publishing is a teeny tiny world and connections matter. People will forget that you got a bad review on your debut novel. They are much more likely to remember that you threw a hissy fit and threatened to TP the reviewer’s home.

April 18, 2011   Jim   advice, Jim, queries, writing  
10

Synopsis Hell

I mentioned last week that I was at the Romantic Times convention in LA. While there, I led a workshop on how to write “a sensational synopsis.” Before the class, I panicked that I wouldn’t have enough to say to fill my two and a half hour time slot. You know what? I can TALK. I ended up barreling through those hours and actually ran out of time at the end. And that was in spite of nattering on right through a fire alarm. It turns out people in other places pay attention to alarms. Dean Koontz’s class got cleared right out. No one even stopped in to check on us. Apparently folks are totally content to let the agents burn. I see how it is…

What I loved about the workshop (other than the opportunity to hear myself talk for several hours) was that it gave me an insight not only into how much people freak out about trying to synopsize their books, but also the ways in which they trip themselves up. A synopsis seems to be the new query letter. Everyone hates them, panics about them, and then writes a bad one. With so much information out there about writing queries, the quality has gone up astronomically over the past ten years. Most synopses on the other hand still kind of suck.

It probably has to do with the conflicting advice: Tell us everything, but be concise. Write the details as plainly as possible, but make sure the writing is still great. Don’t be jokey, but I love to laugh. (That last one might just be me). After working through a few valiant volunteers’ samples, I realized that the single thing people have the hardest time with is choosing what to include. One of my most common questions when reading a synopsis is a simple, “Hrrh?” Because when you’re cramming 100K words into a page, things tend to get confusing and I often find that authors lose track of what they have shared in a synopsis and what they need to lay out more plainly.

The synopsis, happily, isn’t the most important part of any submission. It still can only hope to have a good one. To that end, if you’ve been asked to submit one, my advice is this:

Chart the action of your novel. Actually map it out and identify the key points. Identify cause and effect between those key points. Then narrate it so that you tell us A which leads directly to B, how B then leads to C, and so on. If you can map it out in a straight line in front of you, it will read cleanly. This isn’t where you get to dazzle us with your subplots, your thematic resonance, or your brilliant character descriptions. Usually, we’re only reading this to make sure you know how to tell an actual story. The synopsis is ONLY about the plot. People get bogged down trying to encompass everything about their novels in a handful of pages. If that was possible to do, you wouldn’t have written a novel. You’d have a short story with too many words.

And then read it back trying to pretend you know nothing about the story. Can you still follow the action without knowing what you know of the book’s content? It’s tricky to be able to remove your knowledge of your own book, but try to think critically. “Here I say that Dave shoots Donna. Has Dave been introduced? Has Donna?” And only introduce new knowledge when it is absolutely critical for the reader to know it. There’s no foreshadowing in a synopsis—it’s just too confusing.

One piece of advice I garnered just by running the class itself: have other people read your synopsis back to you. Once we got going, writers would stop me and say that though they had read their own pages over and over, there was something about hearing me read it out loud that made them realize how extraneous some information was. Or how awkward some phrasing was. So if you can force a friend or family member to read it back at you, that can only help. Go ahead—exploit them. That’s what they’re there for!

And the last piece of advice makes it counterintuitive that I spoke on the subject for two and a half hours: don’t worry too much about them. Don’t overthink them. They really aren’t THAT important.

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