February 05, 2010 
DG&B 
Galleycat reports on the launch of Beast Books from Tina Brown’s Daily Beast, with books that will be longer than articles but shorter than most nonfiction books. One of the common publishing rejections (from us to authors and from editors to us) is: “It’s fascinating, but it’s more of a magazine article.” Often, though, the truth is more that the idea falls in between: it requires greater explication than magazine space allows, but there’s not enough to it to support a book. This model could make for a good home for such ideas. It’s an interesting concept, and I’ll be paying attention to how well it works–particularly since my level of personal commitment to well crafted nonfiction on subjects I don’t find naturally interesting is often longer than an article, but shorter than a book.
Category Archives: Lauren
Congratulations, Robert Kent!
Thanks to all who competed and voted in DGLM’s first competition! Robert Kent (of Robertkent.net fame, naturally) is the winner of our contest and this pretty blue DGLM water bottle!
Robert’s winning entry in the hilariously bad titles contest was ATLAS HUGGED: A Guide to Encouraging Charity in Your Community.
Congratulations also to runners up Scott Martelle’s TWEET JESUS: Bible Passages for the Twitter Age and D. Antone’s WHAT WAS THE NAME OF THAT BOOK? Everything Known and Forgotten about Alzheimer’s Disease. Your prize is the (dubious) glory of knowing you made us laugh!
Robert, write to me at labramo@dystel.com to send your mailing address and claim your prize!
Free
I know we talk about e-books a lot around here (and around the publishing world in general), but two of the issues we haven’t touched on quite as much as other subjects are free e-books and piracy. Two blog entries this week made me think more carefully about both issues.
First, free e-books. Mike Shatzkin over at the IdeaLogical blog dissected the question of free. As he points out, it’s generally fairly accepted by those on the publishing and agenting sides that free e-books engender more sales than they endanger, at least in the short term. (Anecdotally, back when it was available, I downloaded the free e-book from oprah.com of the absolutely stunning Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann, who regular readers will know we’re quite fond of around here. Half way through reading the free e-book, I bought a hard copy, because it’s amazing; he deserves my money and so do his publisher and agent for making it possible for me to experience it. Plus, I need to share it with people who don’t have e-readers and ultimately give it pride of place on my shelf. Noticing the really reasonable price, I also told all my friends to go buy it ASAP. I know at least some of them did.) Do you lose some sales? Absolutely. But popular consensus seems to be that you gain more than you lose, and I fundamentally agree.
Shatzkin also goes into the separate questions of how we count free downloads vis-à-vis sales, and, more important, what impact the free download has on sales and the industry overall. We know it helps that book in the short term and probably in the long run, but does it hurt all books and publishers and retailers, etc., at the same time? It’s an interesting argument—and the sort of question that always makes me worry. How do you put the genie back in the bottle, and how do you know when it’s too late? If you’re not reading Shatzkin’s blog, you should, because even when I disagree with his conclusions, he always seems to take the conversation that extra step further and never fails to look at the big picture.
And second, a different kind of free: piracy. Sure, this piece on hard copy piracy through a nefarious chain of libraries is tongue-in-cheek, but it’s an interesting counterpoint to the people whose fear of piracy prevents them from embracing a technological revolution. I understand the concern of authors who feel that they’re losing money on piracy—in a time when they’re losing money on everything else (advances, royalties, returns, self-promotion), it must be aggravating to add to the list. However, we don’t ban libraries just because someone who took the book out of the library might otherwise have bought it. I don’t know that many avid library fans even though I know a lot of readers, but the people I do know who are addicted to their library cards don’t buy a whole lot of books. If libraries didn’t exist, they probably would buy more books a year because they are big readers, but we don’t use them as a reason to ban libraries. We also don’t count every book we lend to our friends as a loss of sales, and I actually think if my friends lost their library cards, they’d probably just spend more time looking at my bookshelves. If you create something worth experiencing, some people are probably going to experience it for free. If you think you should stop that, you’re sort of missing the point, but if you think you can just by not going digital, you’re really misunderstanding how the digital world works. Piracy still exists when it’s the only option in the digital format. (Plenty of illegal e-books are not generated from hacked e-books, so not creating an e-book does not prevent piracy.) A library reader will probably not go steal the book from their local bookstore if it’s not available at the library, but a digital reader might just download the file elsewhere if it’s not available legally. For people who find that distressing rather than just the way of the world, it might help to know that the lesson of the music industry has been: if you don’t give a potential customer what they want, how they want it, when they want it, they will find a way to get it anyway. If you can figure out how to give them what they want, how they want it, and for a price they’re willing to pay, plenty of people will buy it rather than steal it. Don’t believe me? Ask Apple.
Get drunk militantly
Because it is Friday and the short weeks always somehow feel longest, today seems like a nice day for a slideshow of literary drunks and junkies. Life magazine put this together, complete with not-so-fun facts about the authors’ addictions. It is both troubling and somehow understandable that we almost instinctually feel genius and addiction go hand in hand–though undeniably tragic, what clearer manifestation of mental struggle than to spend your life at the bottom of a bottle? If nothing else, the slideshow taught me some things: in spite of my love for Little Women, I know little about Louisa May Alcott and had no idea she was an opium addict. Also, F. Scott Fitzgerald, who I swear I must’ve seen pictures of before but somehow hadn’t noticed–pretty hot!
I’m not equipped to judge the seeming correlation between genius and addiction (and not entirely sure whether there’s actually a relationship–what percentage of brilliant artists of all stripes are perfectly sane and sober? What percentage of addicts have no discernible artistic ability?). But if we assume for a moment there is one, I wonder how many of these authors would have taken the trade of sobriety for a lack of a legacy.
(via Book Bench)
Titling, and DGLM’s first contest!
The Ghostbusters theme has been ringing through my head this morning, because of a charmingly named article I’ve been corresponding about written by one of the agency’s clients. I’ve had “Paperback Writer” stuck in my head for days because of my own foolish blog post title from Friday. And I was once tormented for months by two projects I had on submission at the same time that had song lyrics as working titles.
Titles can certainly stick with us, especially when they’re allusions to something else. In college I took a class on literature of the “transition” with a professor who was fond of irrelevant tangents, so I often entertained myself by picking out book titles from the poetry course pack. WB Yeats’s “The Second Coming” alone is owed a debt of gratitude from the classics Things Fall Apart and Slouching Towards Bethlehem, and if you search the poem’s key phrases you can find a surprising number of others. WWI era poetry has also provided authors quite a bit of inspiration.
And beyond songs and poetry, puns and movie titles provide a treasure trove of opportunities for books, especially series fiction. Our own Victoria Laurie’s two mystery series are a perfect example.
Unfortunately, titling books is often much, much harder than just coming up with something to reference. As agents, we often have a hand in helping to come up with great titles for our books—and brainstorming lists of options for each others’ clients can be both a fun and trying experience. Recently, after hundreds of choices were suggested and nixed for a particular book, I decided to consult the internet for help and stumbled upon a great and also hysterical tool for authors: author MD Benoit’s Random Title Generator (note: there are words that might offend some, so use with caution). We actually found a handful of really good titles—though none quite right for the book—and some that were so delightfully unfortunate we had to share those with each other, too. Click on over to the title generator and get yourself a new title for your masterpiece or a working title so atrocious it’ll help lighten the mood whenever you get frustrated with writers’ block.
But we think that you, our faithful blog readers, can do better than a random word combiner. So come up with the best bad fake book title you can and leave it in the comments—bonus points for giving us a logline or subtitle to give us context. We’ll take entries until the end of the day on Friday, select our favorites as finalists, and let you fine folks pick the winner here on the blog. Winner gets a shiny new DGLM water bottle!
Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book?
I’ve been on a bit of a Beatles kick lately, and–rather than my usual method of creating playlists of songs I already love by various artists–I decided to actually listen to some albums in full. Much to my surprise, I’ve discovered that a song I never liked is actually pretty fun: “Paperback Writer.”
I wonder if my opinion has changed since I probably last really listened to it before I spent so much time with the slush pile: a song that’s actually a query letter is truly a delight. (It bears an unfortunate resemblance to some of the more misguided queries that come our way!) I can certainly think of songs about books or about writers or about trying to write, but I can’t think of any other songs about the business of publishing.
There must be some, and I love a good themed playlist, so can anyone think of any other songs about the publishing industry? Songs about writing, books, and authors also welcome.
Blog publicity dos and don’ts
Lauren pointed me to this excellent post about dos and don’ts for publicists from blogger Lindsay Robertson. The don’ts should be obvious, but sadly, it seems that they aren’t. What I found more interesting, and possibly surprising, were the dos. The rule that really caught my attention was “Pick Eight Blogs.” She suggests that publicists pick eight blogs to publicize to. Yep, just eight. By targeting the most appropriate outlets and building relationships with them, the contention is that coverage will be both better and wider. But how is that possible if you’re only pitching eight blogs? Because the bigger internet sites scan the smaller sites to find their content. And by not throwing things at everyone in sight, you can get higher-quality coverage that people actually pay attention to. Very savvy, very practical, and much more fulfilling for the publicist, I think.
It strikes me that there are lessons here for authors. By being smart and focused about submissions, whether when looking for an agent or promoting one’s own work, authors increase the likelihood of a hit. In a world where it’s easy to communicate broadly, who doesn’t appreciate a tailored message? I know that I more carefully consider the queries that are specifically tailored to me. By doing the research and narrowing the list, an author with an attractive project is more likely to find an agent.
The same is true when author goes to promote her own book. By selecting a limited number of bloggers to approach and tailoring the pitch to each blogger’s interests, an author is more likely to get serious attention. It likely takes the same amount of time as blindly contacting hundreds of people, but the quality of the hits you get will certainly make up for anything lost in numbers.
I know this is something I’ll have in mind when talking to authors and book publicists in the future, and I’m sure this concept can be applied to other aspects of book publishing and beyond.
"And this is a delight."
Aspiring authors, published authors, and non-authors alike, do yourselves a favor and take a moment to check out Ben Yagoda’s essay in the New York Times on readers’ access to writers in our technological age.
I can only think of one occasion that I’ve done it on a purely personal level: I was trying to recall the title of a beautiful novel I’d read in college (Bapsi Sidwha’s Cracking India) that had been titled one thing when originally published, another in the US, and a third when made into a film. Upon googling, I stumbled across the author’s website. Uncharacteristically, I took a moment to reach out to her and say how fantastic her book was and how much it had stuck with me. And I was delighted when, over a year later, she came across my email and realizing she had not thanked me, wrote back.
Since I haven’t done it again, apparently the reward of hearing back wasn’t enough to encourage me (though by that point I was an agent, and ethically it had become more complicated) to continue reaching out. Obviously the examples in the essay are the odd, amusing, or frustrating ones, but do any of you routinely contact authors of books you’ve read? And published authors, what emails do you get to rival Mary Karr’s love letters from the incarcerated?
Books I will hate
Yesterday, Jessica discussed Laura Miller’s book on CS Lewis, and today I bring you more of her wisdom, this time from Salon. Earlier this week, Miller recommended we all try something new in 2010: read a book we think we won’t like. I’ll admit that while I’ve grown much more open since I began working in publishing, with my personal reading, I invariably leap for the same sorts of books I’ve always loved. My “free time” reading piles at home have the same general character as the ones that were in my college dorm rooms. When taking the luxury of reading purely for my own enjoyment, I rarely think it’s worth reading trying something I’m not naturally excited about. But I know from my professional experience that sometimes wonderful books are hiding in categories we hesitate to touch or under plots that seem at first glance unappealing.
I’m not generally one for New Year’s resolutions (as it’s universally acknowledged that those are merely things we pretend we’re going to do or else we’d have begun them when we decided they were important rather than arbitrarily on January 1st…er, 7th…oh, by early February at the latest), but I’ll take Miller’s suggestion on in 2010: I will read, for my personal reading, at least one book I’m convinced I will hate.
Since I’m the naturally contrary sort, it shouldn’t be too hard to find something wonderful that I’d normally shove aside. And hey, if I do hate it, I might’ve wasted my time, but I’ll also feel totally vindicated.
Is anyone else prepared to take on this challenge? And does anyone have ground rules about what’s unreadable as delightful and random as Miller’s? If anyone has a graphic novel about 20-something magicians living on a ranch in Prague while working in the silent movie business and feeling disenchanted with their relationships with rabbis, they may want to suggest their publicist steer clear of Miller’s desk at review time. (But they should probably send that manuscript to me, because I bet it’s amazing!)