Category Archives: Miriam

June 20, 2012   Miriam   authors, controversy, culture, media, Miriam  
10

Content pressure

A friend of mine alerted me to this story about Jonah Lehrer’s self-plagiarism (which turned into a story of him plagiarizing others) and it made me sad.  This kind of thing keeps coming up (whether it’s plagiarizing or making things up, a la Frey and Mortenson) and it’s disappointing, sure, but it’s also puzzling.

Rather than opting for knee-jerk demonizing, I find myself wondering if it’s possible that these talented people are just cracking under the pressure to produce content at a speed that is unsustainable in order to catch the miniscule attention span of readers used to having 17 websites open at once and getting their information in McNugget bites.   Or, as in the case of those who “embellish,” if it’s the trying to make their stories bigger, shinier, funnier, more tragic, more more in order to grab your and my interest.

Is any of this excusable?  Are we collectively putting too much pressure on our writers and thinkers and pushing them over the edge into the ethical abyss?  What do you all think?

 

 

June 06, 2012   Miriam   BEA, fun, Miriam  
3

It’s BEA week…

…and, since all anyone’s doing is trying to find a comfortable seat somewhere on the floor of the Javits Center and thinking ahead to their drink order at one of the cocktail parties happening around town, I thought I’d ask you guys to make up a story involving these three pictures I took while making the rounds at BEA yesterday (yes, that’s Jim sporting an Afro). Go!

 

 

 

 

 

May 23, 2012   Miriam   e-books, editing, future of publishing, Miriam, word count  
10

The long…and the long of it

For a literature major it’s somewhat shameful to have to confess that I find really long books  daunting.  From the Steve Jobs biography to the Game of Thrones series (both of which are on my “what I want to read next” list) page counts north of 400 pages give me pause.  So many words, so little time.

Inveterate bookworm that I’ve always been, I remember the days when nothing was as exciting as having a giant doorstop of a book at hand and a school vacation (or even a sick day) providing unfettered hours of reading.  Now, with manuscripts, proposals, blogs, articles, e-mails and all the other content fighting for attention, a really long book produces something akin to apprehension, maybe anxiety.  Which is why I found Marc Wortman’s piece in The Daily Beast so interesting.

Of course, I’ve always been aware of the economics of publishing long books—we have, on occasion, advised authors to trim unwieldy manuscripts with the warning that editors are sometimes scared of fat tomes and not just because they take so much time to edit but because they are more expensive to produce.  Wortman’s argument that e-book pricing is encouraging authors to write more and publishers to cut less is, therefore, intriguing and not altogether surprising.

Dickens and other serial writers of the 19th century got paid for content, so more was definitely more.  Now, according to Wortman, publishers want to charge more for e-books and feel they can justify doing so by offering longer books.    Interesting theory.   Not sure there’s sufficient evidence to support it, but I wouldn’t be shocked if there’s some truth to it.

How do you all feel about long books?  And, does it make a difference whether you’re reading them in print or on your e-reader?

May 09, 2012   Miriam   e-books, hand-selling, marketing/publicity, Miriam, self-publishing  
3

Longevity

One of the things I like about e-books is the fact that they have longer “shelf” lives than print books.  I like that I can think of an obscure title that I read and loved back in the Dark Ages—when Reagan was president and I still thought a flat iron was a good idea on my hair—and have it in my e-reader within seconds.  As much as I love physical books, I relish the convenience of accessing information or pleasure reading without waiting for half an hour while a surly bookstore clerk goes digging in his computer to see on what shelf there might or might not be a copy to be found.

Personally, if I love an e-book, I’ll more than likely find a way to buy a physical copy.  But, what my own e-buying trends (and those of my friends and colleagues) tell me is that digital books can sell more and longer than print copies that have to fight for shelf space, if marketed correctly, and can tap into ever-renewing markets with ease.

This Galleycat piece about how to re-energize sales of old titles is worth checking out by authors thinking of self-publishing, or digitizing their backlist, or helping their publishers promote their titles.

Case in point: Through DGLM’s e-book program (which we’ve blogged about here) we recently put up the late John Comer’s Combat Crew, a gripping memoir of the 25 combat missions Comer flew over Europe during WWII.  The book had been out of print for some time and Jim Comer, John’s son wanted to get it back out there for a new generation of readers and for the veterans and military personnel who would doubtlessly be fascinated by his father’s stories.  Reaching these specific markets and having hit the pricing sweet spot, the e-book has been an unqualified success.  And, indeed, a new generation of readers is discovering this classic narrative.

So, before you e-publish think about what markets you want to reach and how, think about pricing and don’t over- or under-price, and read as much as you can about internet marketing.  It will pay dividends and give your work an extra-long life.

 

April 25, 2012   Miriam   classics, favorites, fun, great books, Miriam  
11

The second time around

The stack of new books perched precariously on a child’s stool by the door in my bedroom is taller than my six-year-old and gaining on my 5’4” height fast.  My e-reader is full to bursting with books, manuscripts, my renewed subscriptions to The New Yorker  and Vanity Fair (which will be less entertaining and provocative now that Christopher Hitchens is gone), episodes of Mad Men I never seem to be able to watch when they run on TV and the awesomely addictive Words With Friends app.  So, perversely, I’m thinking about books I’ve loved or that have been game changers for me that I want to re-read.

I think I’d start with The Good Soldier, Ford Maddox Ford’s perennially underrated masterpiece, move on to some lighter reading with the deliciously unsettling Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier, and, if I’m still in re-tread mode after that, dive into the prodigiously brilliant One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  Thing is, if I go down this road, Jeffrey Eugenides will have finished another novel before I go back to my tottering pile.

What is it that makes us have to go back and re-read, sometimes obsessively so, our favorite book(s)?  What magic or comfort or insight do we find there the second of fifteenth time around?  Most book lovers I know have at least one title they revisit time and again and clearly it’s a widespread phenomenon.

So, what books do you find you go back to over and over again?  Maybe your choices will inspire my own.

April 11, 2012   Miriam   bestsellers, book club, buzz, fun, Miriam, opinion  
25

50 Shades of Dumb?*

As those of you who read our rambling posts might remember, I belong to a neighborhood book club (because, yes, I don’t have enough reading in my work life).   Ordinarily, the choices we make for said club are solid—sometimes challenging, sometimes brilliant, sometimes just okay, but solid.

I am struggling with our latest pick, however, and not in the usual, I-have-no-time-to-read-for-fun-when-I-have-3,000-manuscript-pages-staring-at-me-balefully-from-the-piles-on-my-floor way.

This month, we’re reading 50 Shades of Grey (as you deduced from the title above) and initially I was excited to find out what all the buzz was about.  Certainly, this is one of the biggest publishing stories of the year and my colleagues and I like to keep up with what’s selling and why.  I’ve  also been hearing about this book at the supermarket, the library, the waiting room at the pediatrician’s office…so here, I thought, was the perfect opportunity to satisfy my curiosity and have something intelligent to say when someone asks me about this runaway bestseller.

Sadly, this story does not have a happy ending.  Oh, I don’t mean the Grey series.  I have no idea how that ends and I suspect I won’t find out first-hand.  I mean the story of my reading the first book in the trilogy, which ended badly almost as soon as it began.  I think this is a dumb book [she ducks under her desk].  No, I’m not offended by the mind-numbingly repetitive sex (there’s a lot of it).  I am bemused by the success of a book whose female protagonist has the personality of a moody fruit fly, whose hero is a creepy stalker, and which features a relationship that’s supposed to embody passion and mystery but that seems to have sprung from the feverish imaginings of a hormonal 15-year-old.   To me the book is a hot mess—emphasis on mess.

So, how has it become such a phenomenon?  Is it the kinky sex?  The innocent-virgin-seduced-by-the-tormented-cute-guy premise?  The money porn elements (the hero is filthy rich)?  Is this really a collective female fantasy or just really clever marketing?

I’m not a snob about commercial fiction (really!).  I didn’t think Twilight was particularly well written or plotted but I enjoyed it and I got it.  This, I don’t really get.

The last time I felt so out of sync about a book was when The Bridges of Madison County was tearing up the bestseller lists.  I found myself giggling through most of that heartfelt narrative until it hit me that it wasn’t meant to be funny.  So, can you guys explain this latest phenomenon to me?  Why is it working?  Are there shades of grey I’m missing here?

 

*Apologies in advance to all of those who love, love, love this book.

March 28, 2012   Miriam   controversy, dead people, digital publishing, fun, great books, Miriam, self-publishing  
8

Necessary losses

Most of us who work in publishing are passionate about books.  Duh.

We are also passionate about the written word in its myriad forms and about the primacy of the creative process.  Even when working with prima donna “authors,” celebrities who are barely literate, and writers of all stripes whose work should probably be hurled across the room in homage to the great Dorothy Parker, many of us are easily star struck.  All it takes is a brilliant turn of phrase, a well crafted, ambitious novel, a surprising and daring narrative gambit and we’re in love.

But, most of us in the business know with utter certainty that there are books that should be shelved, put in a drawer, sent through the shredder or, in the case of the truly great writers, consigned to footnotes in fawning biographies.  In this era of e-books and the voracious need for content, whatever its worth, it’s hard to defend the position that some books just should not be published.  And yet, some books should not be published.

Reading this short piece in the HuffPost about “lost” early efforts by renowned authors, later found and brought out under the guise of offering additional glimpses into those authors’ psyches, reinforces my opinion that not everything deserves to be in print.  My contention that someone should have told Shakespeare to put aside Titus Andronicus and turn his talents to somewhat less bloody family dramas has gotten me in trouble in literature classes as well as cocktail parties but really, would that have been such a loss?

I think all of us need to recognize, especially now when it’s so easy to self-publish, when something is not ready for public consumption and be able to move on to the next project with an eye to applying the lessons learned and producing something stronger, better…publishable.  What do you think?  As writers, can you make the call on your own work?  Can you make the call on other peoples’?  Should everything be published, the good, the bad, and the badly written?

 

March 14, 2012   Miriam   bestsellers, buzz, covers, digital publishing, e-books, fun, Miriam, reading, romance  
8

Naughty books

A few weeks ago, someone who saw me reading on my Kindle while my son had his karate class asked me if I’d heard of a book called Fifty Shades of Grey.  As I usually am when anyone asks me if I’ve heard of a book and I haven’t, I was a little embarrassed (never mind that with a gazillion books published every year, it’s not possible to know about every last one of them or that my memory for titles and authors’ names is shockingly poor for someone who, well, works with titles and authors—do I sound a little defensive?).  I asked her what it was about and she told me it was a romance that she was trying to get a copy of without success.  I suggested Amazon and promptly forgot all about the discussion.

Of course, I now know that Fifty Shades of Grey is the latest publishing phenom (an allegedly not very well written kinky sex fest for Twilight fans who thought the vampire saga was too squeaky clean, according to Jezebel) and that Vintage has plopped down a ton of money for the print rights to a book that is currently selling like hotcakes…online.

Which raises a number of interesting questions.

As the Wall Street Journal  points out in a piece about the rise in sales of books that women have traditionally been embarrassed to be seen reading in public, e-readers have made sales of romance and erotica skyrocket precisely because of the privacy they afford.  So, how wise is a seven-figure investment for print rights to a book that people may not want others to see them reading?

And, does all of this mean that books in these categories will go exclusively digital in the near future?  I know lots of smart, professional women with a weakness for what we used to call “bodice rippers” in the good old days (before Kindles and romance branding) who didn’t want to be caught dead on the subway behind a cover of some buxom lass being ravished by a half-naked Fabio type.  I can also imagine all the soccer moms who don’t want their kids to know what kinds of books they’re devouring while they extol the virtues of Moby Dick and The Scarlet Letter.

Personally, I do think that e-readers are liberating in that way.  In my line of work, I occasionally have to read things that may be a little hard to explain to casual acquaintances or even my six-year-old.  What about you guys?  Do you find yourselves sneaking around reading naughty things on your e-readers?  And, do you think this is one of the “intangibles” that publishing people have overlooked when trying to figure out the value of e-books vs. print books?

February 29, 2012   Miriam   Amazon, Apple, censorship, controversy, e-books, future of publishing, Miriam, news, retailers  
8

Censor censure

I’ve been on a bit of a Words With Friends kick lately (okay, more a debilitating obsession than a kick but no one’s kicked me off a plane yet) and one of the frustrating things I’ve found about the game is how it censors what it considers unacceptable words. Not sure what geniuses (or algorithms) decide what works and what doesn’t but when you’re behind by 15 points and you’ve got the letters to wipe your opponent out with a word you know is a word but that WWF won’t allow…well, it makes you a little short tempered.

Thing is, censorship is all around us and, by and large, we tend to overlook minor instances of it as long as the big freedoms aren’t compromised.   I can shake my head and keep playing WWF, say, because who cares about a silly app game.  But, is that the right attitude?  When you hear about Seth Godin’s experience with Apple refusing to carry one of his “manifestos” because there are links in it to the Amazon store, the whole Big Brother thing becomes a bit sinister.  This is censorship seasoned with monopolistic bullying, in my opinion.

How much freedom of speech can be guaranteed when behemoths like Apple and Amazon censor what is available to consumers for any reason other than that the work(s) in question poses a real physical threat to individuals?  Sure, a privately owned retailer may choose what goods and services it wants to offer, but when you have two or three entities responsible for the dissemination of vast amounts of information, it seems to me that it should not be morally, ethically, or legally okay for those entities to decide what consumers may or may not be able to buy.

Those of us in the publishing business have a rather bedeviled relationship with Apple, Amazon and B&N (especially the first two).  On the one hand, we need them in order to place our authors’ wares.  On the other, we are increasingly concerned with the practices of these soulless corporations whose only interest is the financial bottom line and for whom books and the entire publishing world are but a blip in their massive spreadsheets.  Is it time for the government to step in and regulate how content is served up?  What can we do as consumers (and book lovers) to safeguard our ability to buy any book (or story or manifesto) we want?  Should we be outraged or should we shrug our shoulders and lump this with the Word With Friends shenanigans?

What’s your take on all of this?  Am I over- or under-reacting?

February 08, 2012   Miriam   conferences, Miriam, why we are agents  
6

World traveler

All of us at DGLM travel to writers’ conferences several times a year.  I’ve gone to places as exciting and diverse as Wichita and Richmond, Chicago and Scottsdale, but last weekend was the first time I had to fly across the ocean to chat up authors.  I spent three days in frigid Geneva, which is as lovely as it was cold, attending the Geneva Writers Conference.  Typically, I groused and whined for months about the trip prior to boarding my Swiss Int’l flight.  I mean, really, why couldn’t a writers’ conference in February be held in Hawaii, Bermuda, even South Florida?  And, of course, as my trip got closer I obsessively checked weather reports that told of the deadly cold spell that has Europe in its grip.  Did I mention there was a lot of whining?

So, how thrilled was I to find myself in a gorgeous setting—cold, yes, but picturesque and charming, with views of the Alps and an icy Lake Geneva—among truly fascinating people who were as engaged, smart, and serious a bunch of writers as I’ve ever encountered.  Individuals from all over the world gathered at Webster University to attend panels and workshops by the likes of Colin Harrison of Scribner, author Dinty Moore, British agent Hannah Westland, novelist Nick Barlay, guerilla publisher and author David Applefield, and many other brilliant authors and publishing insiders who came together to share their insights and expertise with kindness, generosity, and intelligence.

I had a great time, but I also came away with a refreshed perspective on our business and the creative process so many of us are engaged in daily.  Seeing how the life experiences and the cultural backgrounds of those present informed their writing, their questions, their goals was incredibly edifying.  I was struck again by the fact that dedication to craft and love of language and ideas is something we all share, regardless of our national boundaries or personal circumstances.  A clichéd observation?  Perhaps.  But I did come back to New York with a renewed love and respect for the business I’m in and for the writers I work with as well as a determination to keep my own intellectual borders open.

My only complaint?  Not enough strong coffee!  But that’s a small price to pay for an experience that I’ll treasure.

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