Category Archives: Michael

December 04, 2009   DG&B   about us, Chasya, fun, Jane, Jim, Lauren, Michael, Miriam, subsidiary rights, why we are agents  
2

Why I Am an Agent (Lauren)

by Lauren

Since Jane, Chasya, and Rachel have already weighed in on why they are agents, I thought I’d take my turn.

I came to agenting as many people do in publishing, somewhat by accident. When I finished grad school I moved home: jobless, apartment-less, and broke. I’d worked in bookstores in college and grad school and at a non-profit between, so I was pretty confident that I’d be happy in either field. As with many of the uninitiated, the only real jobs in publishing I could think of were editorial, marketing, and publicity, and I didn’t think the latter two were for me. Neither the editorial job I wanted nor a position at a non-profit were especially easy to find. Out for dinner with friends one evening, having borrowed money from my mother to come into the city from the suburbs, I whined as usual that I wasn’t finding a job and was going a little stir crazy. My friend Beth, fortunately, threw me a lifeline: two of her college friends, Michael and Jim, worked at an agency, and she knew they sometimes hired freelance readers. It’d be a foot in the door, an excuse to come into the city, and a bit of money to make it happen. The next day she put me in touch with Michael, and I luckily applied for a reader position just as Jane’s assistant Leslie was moving off to Peru. Michael asked me if I was looking for a full-time position and wanted him to pass on my resume, and the rest is history!

So that’s how I got to DGLM, but 4 1/2 years later, why am I still here when my plan had been to work in editorial? Because it turned out to be a perfect fit. Not only did Jane encourage me to take on my first client as soon as she felt I was ready while still assisting her, but working for her that first year gave me invaluable experience in just how agenting works. Most of us at DGLM started in our first job in publishing as an intern or as Jane’s assistant, and it has made a tremendous difference. Jane knows the business inside and out having worked on both sides of the desk, and while the office is run on a complex set of systems (and anyone who has seen me work knows I love systems more than almost anything in the world), once you have a hang of them you have a real leg up on managing your time and serving your clients’ best interests. And even though Jane’s constantly busy, her door is literally always open–we don’t even have to knock.  Jane makes a point of explaining how things work and why.  Just before my anniversary with the company, I was offered the chance to move up–take on more clients and work junior to Michael in our rights department. I was able to continue learning, not just from Michael, who taught me the ins and outs of subrights and patiently gave me advice and answers probably more often than he had time to do. I also got to move desks to sit just below the loft Miriam works from, and just from hearing her do her thing I’ve learned a great deal in the last few years about how to put out fires, give editorial feedback, and make sure clients are on the right track and feel supported. When another year or so later the time came for Michael to give up rights selling to focus on his ever expanding client list, Jane and Miriam once again trusted me to climb another rung of the ladder.  Jim might’ve regretted being so easily accessible at the next desk when I couldn’t wrap my mind around a contract clause or royalty statement—or when my job, regrettably, called for me to use numbers. As an agent, my list overlaps slightly with just about every other agent’s, so there’s always someone to give me an informed second opinion, to suggest an editor who’d be perfect for my submission list, and to give me feedback on my pitches.

As the agency’s Subsidiary Rights Director and an agent, I still learn new things all the time, but I’ve also had the pleasure of being the one who sometimes knows the answers. It means a lot to me that others ask my advice now, even if it’s perhaps just rightful payback for the time spent at their desks with a confused look on my face. And I’ve gotten to see Chasya, who started as an intern back when I was Jane’s assistant and then took over the front desk from me, make a similar journey within the agency, even joining me in the back room at Jim’s old desk now that he’s got his own office.

So I’m an agent because I found myself in a supportive environment where I could grow, learn, and thrive, and where my obsession for detail and order would come in handy.  And yes, like everyone else really, I’m an agent because I love to read!

December 04, 2009   DG&B   about us, book club, Chasya, favorites, fun, great books, Jane, Jessica, Jim, Lauren, Michael, Miriam, Rachel, reading, Stacey  
3

Book Clubbing at DGLM

by Rachel

 
This week, the DGLM office talked more books, as another book club meeting was held around the all-purposes back office table.

The book club is a little different to any I’ve been involved with before because, for starters, we don’t all read the same book. The DGLM book club usually involves all of us reading a different book–this time we chose novels from the great books lists that were compiled over the summer by staff and interns. Another thing that makes this book club different is that we’re not only evaluating books as readers, but as people in the publishing industry. The reports we give involve ways we would pitch the book, offering our real opinions (some in praise, some…not so much in praise), and then talking about how they performed and whether we’d have picked them out of slush.

This time around, here is what we read:

  • Jane read The Giant’s House by Elizabeth McCracken
  • Miriam read Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
  • Chasya read The Shipping News by Annie Proulx
  • Jessica read What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver
  • Jim read The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
  • Lauren read The Secret History by Donna Tartt
  • Stacey read Ordinary People by Judith Guest
  • I read After All These Years by Susan Isaacs

Following the DGLM book club this week, a few of us were eager to get our hands on books others had reported on, so the idea of a book club where everyone reads a different book is especially great because it allows us to hear about books we might not have heard of or seen in bookstores, and it also introduces us to amazing new authors. I really like this concept because bookstores can sometimes be overwhelming with all those titles on display, and it can be difficult to know what or who to start reading.

  

And, believe it or not, we’ve already chosen books to read for our next book club meeting next month. This time we’ll be reading books from the New York Times Notable Books of 2009, which Jim wrote about recently. I’m excited about this because I’ll be reading from an author I’ve never heard of, and discovering new writers is a passion of mine. Have you discovered amazing authors from book clubs? 

December 03, 2009   DG&B   future of publishing, marketing/publicity, Michael, opinion, Twitter  
6

Moody Tweets

by Michael

There’s an excellent post up on the Vroman’s blog today about the failed Rick Moody story-tweeting experiment. The piece makes very good points about the insularity of publishing, which is something I’ve given much thought to, especially as I’ve headed out West. If the same group of people has the same conversations in the same spaces over and over again, what good is it really doing us? How do we reach new readers? How do we hear what book-buyers really want?

For me, this isn’t about the failure of Twitter to promote books (as some who have picked up on the story have been highlighting), but rather about publishing never looking outside itself for ideas, both about how to promote books and what kinds of books people want to read. It definitely got me thinking this morning. What do you think? Is Twitter just a bad way to promote books, or is there something more to be learned here?

December 02, 2009   DG&B   Chasya, DGLM Recommends, favorites, fun, Jane, Jessica, Jim, Lauren, lists, Michael, Miriam, our website, Rachel, reading, Stacey  
0

DGLM Recommends

by DGLM

Just in time for the holidays, new staff recommendations from us here at DGLM to add to your shopping or wish lists!  Check ’em out!

November 23, 2009   DG&B   about us, Chasya, Jane, Jessica, Jim, Lauren, Michael, Miriam, Rachel, Stacey, Thanksgiving  
3

What I’m thankful for

by Jane

It’s Thanksgiving and every year at this time especially, I think about what I am thankful for.

One of the main things I am thankful for is our team at Dystel & Goderich Literary Management. They really are the best at what they do:

Miriam Goderich–Partner, Senior Vice President and Editorial Director: The foundation of our company, a great editorial and administrative mind with an awesome sense of humor. I am so thankful that she is my partner and very close friend.

Michael Bourret–Vice President: A tireless agent; an incredibly hard worker and a risk taker. Michael is setting up a California office of DGLM. I have such admiration for him and am rooting for his success.

Jim McCarthy: A brilliant editorial mind and a superb agent, Jim has incredibly good taste and a wonderful sense of humor. I am constantly astounded by Jim’s insights and so proud of his enormous growth over the years and his recent successes.

Stacey Glick–Vice President: A terrific agent with a growing list of practical non-fiction, Stacey has a very good nose and is incredibly persistent. I am constantly amazed at all that Stacey accomplishes in her increasingly busy life and thankful to have her as part of our team.

Jessica Papin: Jessica is a passionate and amazingly hard working agent who is building a very exciting client list; we are so lucky to have her back.

Lauren Abramo: Our Rights Director and in-house techie as well as an agent in her own right, Lauren is always on top of everything. With a small list of clients, which she is growing carefully, we are very lucky to have her.

Chasya Milgrom: Our Royalties Manager and newest agent, Chasya is building a list and growing beautifully with the agency. I am so thankful to have her with us and to watch her develop as an agent.

Rachel Oakley: My assistant and our newest staff member–I am thrilled to have her here and know she is going to be a huge and important member of our team.

Thank you all for your support, your tenaciousness, your good taste and your wisdom; you all add to my life and to DGLM in enormously important and meaningful ways.

November 19, 2009   DG&B   e-books, future of publishing, Michael, opinion, publishers, self-publishing  
12

Blurring the lines

by Michael

Yesterday, Harlequin announced their new Harlequin Horizons program, a joint venture with Author Solutions, “the world’s leading self-publisher.” Basically, you can now pay to have your unpublished romance novel published by Harlequin…Horizons. The reaction from authors, both aspiring and those published by Harlequin, has been fairly negative.

What seems to concern published authors the most is that this new venture actually uses the Harlequin name, and that associating Harlequin with self-publishing will hurt the brand. I’m not sure how legitimate this is, only because those self-published books aren’t going to be popping up at B&N or Borders any time soon. The Harlequin brand will still mean something to buyers. And as they’ve said, the books will have their own HH branding.

My personal concern, and one that is shared by unpublished authors, is about what seems like a conflict of interest. Are we moving to a place where authors will have to pay to play? In the follow-up FAQ to their original announcement, they say, “All standard/form/template rejection letters will include a short note about Harlequin Horizons as a self-publishing option for the aspiring author.” And in the first announcement, they describe Horizons as, “an innovative and original approach to discovering new authors to add to our traditional publishing programs.” It’s hard to say exactly how all of this will work until they start operating, but I’m very wary of this idea.

How do you feel about this? Is this just the future of publishing that we all have to deal with?

UPDATE:
Harlequin has sent out an announcement that they’ll be changing the name of their self-publishing program to something without “Harlequin” in the title.  The power of the internet at work.  Doesn’t quite solve the conflict of interest problem, though…

November 17, 2009   DG&B   advice, Chasya, Chasya's Questions Corner, credentials, debut fiction, Michael, queries, submissions, what we're looking for  
3

Chasya’s Questions Corner: On Fiction Credentials

by Chasya

One of our readers asks: “How important are previous publication credits to an agent? Do you prefer [to] receive queries from writers who were already published in a literary magazine/journal?”

Answer:
Having really good literary credentials may get you noticed, but it’s not the only thing we’re looking for. As Michael pointed out in his post about queries, we’re looking for a great many other things. Among them a strong voice, an original idea, etc….

It certainly can’t hurt you to get your work placed in literary journals, but being published in one is by no means the deciding factor in who we choose to represent. We’re on the lookout for all sorts of fiction, and limiting queries to authors who have any specific type of credentials really restricts our ability to search for great projects in a broad range of categories.

We hope you’ll continue to send questions! Please send us an email at news@dystel.com.

November 13, 2009   DG&B   advice, Lauren, Michael, queries, submissions  
3

Query spam

Recently, Michael encouraged you not to sweat the small stuff in queries and to understand that it’s more important to write a great query than to worry about individual agents’ pet peeves or assume that one false move will get you deleted without being read.

That’s excellent advice, and I fully support it. But I’ve noticed over the last year or so that there’s been an upsurge in the number of queries that seem to come through some company or program, rather than directly from the author. And that these queries tend to be sent to every agent here (and presumably every agent in some large database) and also tend to get filtered out as spam by our junk mail program. When I check my quarantined email, nearly every query in there has formatting that suggests to me they’re coming from the same place. Lately they’ve been emails that begin with a salutation, proceed to a block of text with title/author/logline, and then begin a letter below. At one point they were emails where the logline was in the subject of the email. I’ve discussed this with other agents here and at other agencies, and we’ve all had the same experience.

Will I reject an author on principle if they use such a tactic? No, not really. A great query is a great query, and they’re not always so easy to find. But while I have no problem with authors querying multiple agents, I don’t think this is a good way to do that. For one, if it’s getting trapped in our spam filters, it’s probably getting trapped in many other agents’, and that’s not a good way to get read. Beyond that, if I sense going in that all my colleagues and the entire rest of the publishing world has the same query, I’m already less inclined to get excited about it. But mostly, it suggests to me that the author hasn’t done any research and likely doesn’t understand that certain agents and certain editors and certain publishers work with certain types of books.

I do think it’s important to know where your book fits and to figure out particular agents you feel would be right for your book. I think that part of being a successful author is understanding the market and how it works. Much like when I submit a book to editors I carefully consider to whom I’m going to send based on what they’re looking for, I expect prospective clients to do the same.

I don’t discount the possibility that some of the queries I’ve received in this way were carefully selected for me and not sent to the whole wide world since I don’t actually know how they’re being generated, but if so, why lump yourself in with those people who really are just spamming the publishing industry? As an agent who gets too many queries a day to count, I recommend you send your queries to the agents you’ve carefully selected one by one. (Not that you can’t submit queries simultaneously, because we expect that you will and I don’t know any agents who have a problem with it, but that each query should be sent in a separate email to a particular individual.) Sure it takes more time, but if your writing career is not worth investing time in, then why would you even bother? And, to be honest, why would we?

Or course, as Michael mentions in his post, I’m almost certainly preaching to the choir here! If you’re actively learning about the goings on of the publishing industry, this may well be advice you don’t need. But if you could shed any light on where these queries are actually coming from, I’m all ears!

-Lauren

November 12, 2009   DG&B   cell phone novels, deals, e-books, future of publishing, Michael, opinion  
19

Cell phone novels in English?

There’s long been a cell phone novel craze in Japan, and I’ve been rather fascinated by them. These are books written on cell phones, meant to be read on cell phones. Not even big iPhone or DROID screens, but on those little phone screens. Now, I know I’m the guy who loves gadgets and ebooks and all that, but this is one of those things I’ve never understood. And, I never thought they’d come to the English-speaking world. But lo and behold, I see an annoucement on Publisher’s Marketplace the other day: “Joseph Nassise and Jon Merz’s THE CERBERUS PROTOCOL – Book One in the HELLstalkers series, claiming to be the first English thriller series written exclusively for mobile phones…”

Is this the future of the novel? I don’t know. From the partnership agreement with Vodaphone, this doesn’t seem like something that’ll be in the US straight off the bat. I wonder how it’ll be distributed and how money will be made, and I wonder how large the audience will be. I’ll be watching this one closely!

What do you think? Would you read some sort of serialized novel on a small screen? Would you pay for it? Or would you sign with a particular carrier to get such exclusives? Anyone want to try writing such a thing?

-Michael

November 10, 2009   DG&B   advice, Michael, queries, voice  
17

Queries: It’s not about the details

In my agent travels, I find that most of the questions I get from aspiring authors are about queries. And that makes sense: everyone (including myself) will tell you that your query is an important weapon in your agent-getting arsenal. So, having been told that the difference between publishing superstardom and form-rejection comes down to one page, authors obsessively work on their queries. But that’s not quite right: what they do is obsess. And I think a lot of times they can’t see the forest for the trees. They ask agents what font or paper stock they should use, whether HTML email or plain text is better, or if their bio should be longer or shorter or more personal or more formal. They receive conflicting advice from different websites, agents, editors, author friends, and spouses. And then they have a nervous breakdown.

Ok, that last part may have been a bit of an exaggeration, but I don’t think it’s that far off. Writers, who tend to be obsessive anyway, get downright crazy about query details, and I really don’t blame them. We publishing professionals haven’t helped the situation, what with all of our dire warnings about doing it perfectly or else. So I want all of the writers out there to pay attention: if you’re reading this blog, if you’re paying attention when publishing pros give you advice, if you’re going to good, appropriate conferences, you don’t need to panic. This is the catch-22 of it all: when agents go on and on about bad queries and what-not-to-do, they’re preaching to the choir! Anyone savvy enough to be paying attention is probably doing it right in the first place. I don’t mean that all of you have winning queries that will score them an agent and publication, but I doubt any of your are going to wind up the cautionary query tale that you hear at conferences.

But, the question the remains: what am I looking for, if it’s not all of those little details? What I’m looking for is a unique idea and good writing. I’m looking for an authentic, interesting voice–yes, voice in your query. I’m looking to get a feel for your style in just a couple of paragraphs. I’m looking for you to describe your book, whether it’s commercial or literary or in between, in a way that makes me want to keep reading. In October, I linked to a great query example, the one that Lisa McMann had written for Wake that was recently in Writer’s Digest. It was exactly I’m looking for: it was unlike any query I’d received before (or since). How so, you ask? It was entirely unique to Lisa and her book. It didn’t follow any formula or template. It gave me the information I ask for, but it did so in a way that was different. And I can promise you, all of the successful queries I’ve read have done the same thing.

I’m sure this will spur many questions, but I’d like to have a saner, more humane query discussion with aspiring authors, one that focuses on ideas, narrative, and writing instead of on boring details like font and word count. A little common sense in putting together a presentable query, plus a killer idea and great writing, and you’re all set!

– Michael

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