Category Archives: Jim

August 16, 2010   DG&B   fun, Jim, opinion, optimism, why we are agents  
3

Jim waxes nostalgic

by Jim

Hello again, blogosphere. I got back from vacation today and as our dedicated readers know, yet another loyal DGLM intern, Stephanie DeVita, has gone full time. We trapped another one! (I kid, I kid).

Stephanie’s shift to full time makes me feel one thing: old. Okay, two things: it also make me feel nostalgic. It’s now been more than eight years since I went from intern to full-time employee. And I realize as I write this that this week actually marks exactly 11 years since I first set foot in the door.

The first day I was supposed to work here, I was out in the ‘burbs, and a storm dumped so much rain that train lines flooded, and I couldn’t make it in. I figured this was a sign from the weather gods that working here was a bad idea. But with the end of flooding the next day, I was able to make it in. And I was scaaaaared. I had worked about 17 jobs in high school, but this was my first employment in the big city, and I was convinced that everyone was going to be terrifying. Sure, that was true. But I stuck it out anyway.

Nah, everyone was great. And I went from not knowing what a literary agent was to BEING one. The best thing about working here, in my opinion, has always been the opportunity to experiment and grow. I really grew up here. As Jane and Miriam can attest, the exceedingly weird teenager I started was left deep in the past. The world thanks them.

Nothing about becoming an agent is easy. It takes time to find clients, more time to sell books by them, and a lot more time to build them. There was a lot of trial and error along the way. But again, there was room for that. I could sign on books that might not have had much of a chance. I worked on them because I loved them. Some early defeats still sting. There’s a novel that I tried to sell in 2003 that I still think deserved publication. Urination played a large role. It was…less than commercial. I’m still teased about that one sometimes, but you know what? It was GOOD.

Mostly though, I’m just in a happy reflective place. Finding a great book to work on is still the most exciting part of the job. I am thrilled by the successes of my clients but never satisfied until I’ve helped them achieve more. What I love about this job is that it’s never “done.” You don’t punch a time clock and leave it behind at the end of the day. There is always more to be read, more to explore, more to think about. Once that stops being overwhelming (give it about five years, Steph), the ongoing nature of the business is its own reward.

Things change: markets go up and down, new ways of reading are developed, different trends hit while others sink. But great books will always be read. And I’m delighted to play a small role in making that happen.

This concludes the most grossly earnest post I will ever write: promise.

August 09, 2010   DG&B   about us, advice, From the Vault, Jim, queries, reading, submissions  
5

From the Vault: Reading explained

Happy summer, everybody!  For the next while, there are going to be some absences from the blog as we take vacations, but we’d hate to leave you guys hanging.  It’s no secret that we blog much more now than when we started this baby, and there are far more of you reading than there were way back when.  So we thought we’d bring back some blog entries of days gone by that you may have missed if you just joined us in the last year.  We’ve cued up enough, but if you have any favorites you think your fellow readers might enjoy, give us a shout below!

by Jim

Choosing what projects to take on can be a tricky thing. Given the number of manuscripts I usually have waiting to be read and how few of those I’ll actually be able to work on, I start each one assuming that I’ll be passing on it. For about 50 pages, I keep an eye out for the specific reasons I’ll be rejecting. I’m looking for overwrought writing, character inconsistency, sloppy plotting, and/or any reason to put the pages down and move on to something else.

Let’s say I pass page 50 and haven’t found a reason to definitely say no. I hit my optimistic reading phase and for the next 100 or so pages, I’m thinking, “Hook me!” I’ve invested just enough time that I won’t be upset if I end up deciding to pass, but I’m starting to think, “Hey, this could be my next new client.”

At page 150, my mood shifts entirely to, “Don’t let me down now.” Pessimism sneaks back in a bit. Even if I like this, I start to wonder, can I sell it? This is where I bust out the super handy trick that Jane taught me when I was starting out: if you can think of five editors you know who this could be right for, then it’s probably worth a shot. I ride the manuscript out keeping that in mind and also thinking about the competition. What similar books have done well? Are there too many similar books? Does this read like what’s working now, or does it read like what might be working a year from now when it would come out?

Of course, every so often, a manuscript comes along that shuttles my reading rules right out the window. And that is what I live for.

Let’s flash back to last summer. I drag a bag of manuscripts up to my roof, yank out the first one, open to the first page, read the first paragraph…and stop. It sounds so corny and over the top to say that you were hooked on something from the first page except that when it happens, it’s transporting. I read until the sun went down, and the next morning, I handed the manuscript to a colleague.

“Read a page and tell me if I’m crazy,” I requested. “I mean—this is really as good as I think it is, right?”

I fell so head over heels for the novel that I actually wanted confirmation I hadn’t just lost my mind. I felt stupidly luck to even have the project in hand. When the first page was read, I got the affirmation I needed: “It’s really that good.”

“Crap. Who else has this?” Luckily for me, though other agents did have and did want to represent the novel, its author, in her infinite wisdom, decided to work with me. The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan is an astonishing novel for the young adult market that blends the literary and the commercial, stunning writing with rich characters and brilliant plotting. I eagerly look forward to its publication by Delacorte next spring.

The point I always come back to is that people who work in publishing do so because they’re readers. Yes, I read with an eye toward market and potential profit. This is a business, and when you work on commission, you can bet that there’s always an eye on the bottom line. The most thrilling part of the job, though, is playing some role in ushering a book you feel passionately about into another reader’s hands.

At the delightful (and not just because you can gamble there) Las Vegas Writers’ Conference last year, someone asked a panel I sat on, “Would you rather have something come across your desk that has great writing or a great plot?” It’s an unanswerable question. Because I’m not looking for pieces of a good book. I’m looking for the whole package, or for someone who inspires me to believe in their ability to create the whole package.

In responses to rejection letters, understandably upset writers sometimes ask, “Who are you to judge me? What right do you have to say who’s good enough?” All I can answer is that I’m a reader. I’m an audience. And I want you to win me over as much as you want me to be won. It can’t happen always, but we hope it happens enough.

Originally posted in April 2008.

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 26, 2010   DG&B   fun, graphic novels, Jim, reading  
14

Jim reads comic books

by Jim

I remember first becoming aware of the concept that a comic book could also be a “real” book around the time that Maus hit Entertainment Weekly’s best of the year list about a million years ago. In the years since I started working at DGLM, graphic novels have gained more and more traction in sales and become increasingly respectable.

I’ve been thinking a lot about them for one incredibly obvious reason: I’ve started selling them. In the coming years, adaptations of a few of the novels I’ve sold will be hitting stores in graphic novel form. And as we move forward with these projects, I’m reading more and more books in the format and also becoming increasingly intrigued about how readers crossover from one format to the other. Take Laurell K. Hamilton: I’d guess that most of the folks buying her graphic novels were already fans looking forward to a different approach to the stories and characters they loved. But I have to imagine that there’s also a dedicated comic readership whose first exposure to Hamilton’s Anita Blake came through the adaptations.

While pondering this all, I also finally read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon. If anyone else still hasn’t read it, you totally have to. It’s, well…amazing (truth in advertising!). and it relates here because it’s about two cousins who participate in the birth of the comics boom in the States in the 40s. It made me want to read more comic books and graphic novels. So I have.

I dug into Watchmen and was blown away by the richness of it all. Emboldened, I kept going. From memoirs of Iranian girlhood (Persepolis) to the biography of a mathematical philosopher (Logicomix) to tales of a dorky Canadian battling his girlfriends seven evil exes (Scott Pilgrim Saves the World), I’ve been incredibly impressed by the integration of art and language. It’s incredibly encouraging that so many artists and writers are committed to growing the format as its own art form.

Of course, the fact that it took me this long to really get behind the movement in full force probably speaks to a bit of snobbishness that I held onto until now.

I’d love to hear if any of our readers are graphic novel obsessives. And I’m completely open to suggestions for what to read next!

July 19, 2010   DG&B   great books, Jim, opinion, writing  
15

Great writing

by Jim

A few weeks back, one of our commenters asked me a completely unanswerable question: “What is great writing?”

He may have been talking about porn, but I think Supreme Court Justice Potter Smith nailed it when he said, “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it.”

For me, the phrase “great writing” brings to mind authors who can devastate you with a sentence, whose ability to find distinctive, rich, unique ways to use language are stunning in their own right. I think of people like Toni Morrison who blew my high school mind with this sentence in Song of Solomon: “When the little boy discovered, at four, the same thing Mr. Smith had learned earlier — that only birds and airplanes could fly — he lost all interest in himself.” Morrison is one of my favorite novelists. But the phrase great writing also makes me think of someone like Ian McEwan whose prose is always gorgeous and whose books I find tedious and overworked.

Really, the only thing I can say for sure about what great writing is is that it’s only a piece of the puzzle. Some of the finest crafters of prose can’t tell a story to save their life. And some brilliant storytellers can’t make their way through a paragraph without a total dud of a sentence. Take a look at Dan Brown. I don’t think anyone sees him as the most artful writer, but he tells a great story.

Though the tendency is to think that literary fiction is about great writing and commercial fiction is about great storytelling, I think the truth is that all good books blend both. Category divisions crop up based on how the balance between the two is achieved, but what we want to find, in any category, is a book that tells a great story, in wonderful language, with rich characters, fantastic narrative momentum, and an eye for detail.

Is that so much to ask?

What about you folks? Any other writers you feel are particularly “great writers?” I’d also throw out Marilynne Robinson, Steven Millhauser, Andrew Holleran, Margaret Atwood, Colum McCann…there are so many!

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:

July 02, 2010   DG&B   advice, commercial, From the Vault, genre, Jim, literary, opinion, reading  
5

From the Vault: Literary v Commercial

Happy summer, everybody!  For the next while, there are going to be some absences from the blog as we take vacations, but we’d hate to leave you guys hanging.  It’s no secret that we blog much more now than when we started this baby, and there are far more of you reading than there were way back when.  So we thought we’d bring back some blog entries of days gone by that you may have missed if you just joined us in the last year.  If you have any favorites you think your fellow readers might enjoy, give us a shout below!

by Jim

It didn’t surprise me when someone asked me recently what the differences are in how I handle the projects I love and the projects I work on for money. It did, however, irritate me. The question came loaded with the insinuation that there are two kinds of books—the ones people should read and the ones they actually do. Often, I find that literary and commercial fiction are pitted against each other, as though they’re totally different beasts that serve entirely separate purposes. But is that really the case?

Too often, category fiction is treated like the bastard stepchild of the written word. But, frankly, I’m a whole lot more likely to pick up Stephen King’s new book than dive into Thomas Pynchon’s latest doorstop. Which isn’t to dismiss literary fiction, either.

Years ago, I was getting a ride to a train station from an MFA student in Massachusetts, and we talked about the challenges of fiction writing and writer’s block, not to mention how competitive the marketplace is. And then he unleashed this on me: “I could knock out the sort of mystery novels that sell hundreds of thousands of copies, but I’m better than that.” If he weren’t behind the wheel of the car, I would have smacked him upside the head. I mean, really. Do you honestly think the only thing holding people back from becoming bestselling authors is…integrity?

As I patiently explained to him (who am I kidding? I sounded like a howler monkey in heat), it takes a lot of talent to write a fantastic mystery, just as it does to write an amazing literary novel. They just happen to be very, very different talents. Anyone who thinks that just because someone is a wonderful writer means they can pull off working in other genres clearly hasn’t read Michael Cunningham’s Specimen Days. I recommend they keep it that way.

And let’s not get too far without mentioning that literary and commercial are not exact opposites. There are plenty of authors who mix the two forms freely. One can see this by reading the stunning, bleak mysteries of Dennis Lehane or the thrilling horror of Clive Barker. And is it just me, or is the award winning Cold Mountain as much a retelling of The Odyssey as it is a historical romance novel?

What I’m saying is, let’s let the snobbery go. Reading Madame Bovary can be as entertaining as reading Valley of the Dolls and vice versa, and there’s nothing wrong with that. To those people who consider genre fiction to be “guilty pleasures,” let it go. I grew up on a steady diet of Stephen King, Charles Dickens, Jackie Collins, and Victor Hugo, and I’ll happily debate the merits of Lucky Santangelo and Esmeralda any day. I’m the guy on the subway reading The New Yorker and Romantic Times.

The lines for me just aren’t that sharply drawn. So whether I’m pitching a new cozy mystery or a collection of interconnected stories previously published in literary journals, you can know one thing links them: I love both.

Originally posted in June 2007.

June 29, 2010   DG&B   advice, Jim, our clients, rejection, submissions  
17

Unsold

by Jim

Last week I admitted to having a case of blogger’s block and asked for suggestions for future topics. Thanks to those of you who offered suggestions! Two people wanted to know what happens when we don’t sell a book. And how can I avoid jumping on a topic as upbeat and positive as that?!

So…yes, sometimes agents sign on books and then cannot sell them—usually because the editors who review those submissions are bad and wrong. It’s true! So what happens then? Well…it depends.

Option 1: We recommend to a client that they revise their manuscript according to some specific feedback that we received during the submission process. Sometimes editors offer very constructive feedback. And doors can occasionally be left open by the editor for resubmission should the author rework. There’s nothing wrong with pausing a submission and taking stock of what changes need to be made. As much as we work with clients editorially, sometimes it takes another eye to see a different kind of potential in a manuscript.

Option 2: We recommend that a client table the current project and work on something new. Some books flat out don’t sell. Maybe they’re good novels but not good first novels. Maybe they’re in a genre that’s just glutted in the marketplace. Maybe editors are blind to the genius that we agents have clearly seen in the project and just need the time to recover their sight before we take a project back out at a later date. These things happen. And there’s no shame there. We’re looking to build long term relationships with our clients, and we sign folks on because we believe not just in their project but in them. I’ve had clients who didn’t get a sale until their second or third novel. That’s far from ideal! But it happens sometimes. And in the best agent/client relationships, there is a level of trust and mutual respect—if that is there and two people continue to have faith in each other, you just keep working until you get it right.

Option 3: The least happy of all options. Here’s the thing: the agent/client relationship is a really close one . It depends on a deep level of confidence being felt on both sides. If that confidence is shaken, it can be best to part ways. And that can happen on either side. A client might want to find a new agent to offer a different perspective. Or an agent might be concerned that their vision for how to break the author out has become too murky. You don’t always get it right on the first go, and that’s really unfortunate, but sometimes it just is.

In short, if a book doesn’t sell, you just keep evaluating and asking questions. Why didn’t it sell? Is it the content? Is it the market? Is it the timing? The important thing is that you learn from the experience and you go forward, still chasing publication, still fighting to be heard. This business can require nerves of steel, but the potential reward is great.

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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