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: nonfiction
December 16, 2009 
DG&B 
guilty pleasures, Jim, Miriam, nonfiction, opinion, scandal, what we're looking for Chasing ambulances
Every once in a while a celebrity news story morphs into a veritable hydra-headed monster of a tabloid saga. And, given my love for that particular brand of infotainment, I am usually sucked in right along with the other readers of Us Weekly, People, and, yes, Star. So, you know I’ve been bouncing from one blog to another for the last couple of weeks following the supernova of a meltdown that is the Tiger Woods saga. Same thing happened with the Eliot Spitzer, Mark Sanford and John Edwards gossip fests. The rubber necking fascination for grown men behaving badly never seems to wane, despite the fact that at this point it seems more the norm than the exception. Fame/Money + Unbridled Ego = Tabloid story in the making.
So, whenever one of these events turns into the usual circus, my colleagues and I immediately think “Is there a book in this?” And, of course, there usually is. In fact, there are usually 10 books. So, how do you decide whether to jump on the ambulance chasing wagon, track down a writer and loose them on the story or take a chance on the “insider” account by one of the members of the disgraced figure’s entourage, his ex-whatever, or his second grade teacher or simply keep watching from afar. The answer is tricky and it depends on what kind of agent/agency you are.
Generally speaking, we take on books that we think we’re going to be able to sell because we don’t get paid for our efforts unless we do. Given that simple premise, it doesn’t make sense to run through hoops in order to try to make a book about one of these scandals happen unless (a) that book is going to offer revelations that are truly not to be found in the 24/7 coverage by blogs, magazines, newspapers, and tv shows (b) there is serious analysis of the situation and its more universal implications by a writer who has strong credentials and who is not just going to do a clip job restating the obvious and (c) one of the main players is willing to sell out his mother for a book deal and really does know where the bodies are buried. Ultimately, though, it’s one thing to be titillated by these kinds of stories while eating your Cheerios and quite another to spend the time, energy and dedication it takes to get a book published on a narrative that will soon be supplanted by the next celebrity/politician/sports star behaving badly. And, sometimes, despite the potential monetary windfall, the subject is just too distasteful to pursue–I don’t think anyone here would have repped OJ Simpson’s book (except perhaps Jim), even though we all would strenuously defend an agent’s choice to do so.
If you were agents would you try to sell a Tiger Woods book right now?
November 18, 2009 DG&B advice, future of publishing, marketing/publicity, nonfiction, platform, sports, Stacey Platform Building 101
I think there are some lessons to be learned from the Bill Simmons school of publishing. This recent article from the New York Times talks about how his unconventional (and relatively rapid) rise to fame might just become the most conventional approach to successful platform-building out there. And it also zeros in on at least one reason why he is so popular: he’s just a fan like the rest of us, so he’s very relatable. I am a big baseball fan (I don’t want to mention I root for the Mets, but as a season ticket holder, I’m bound to be found out sooner or later) and represent a number of great sports writers. When it comes to selling sports books and nonfiction books in general, platform becomes a big discussion point. How Simmons has grown his in a grassroots way by blogging and using the Internet, and moving away from print, is pretty telling. And his rabid fans can’t seem to get enough. It’s amazing that his new book about all things basketball is a #1 NY Times bestseller (when was the last time a book about basketball hit #1, and it’s over 700 pages?!), and really illustrates the power of a successful platform. This article also offers some good easy-to-know, but hard-to-follow advice on how to build your platform by blogging and how to keep people coming back once you get there.
All Palin’s Eve
Here we are on the eve of Going Rogue publication, and I know how excited we all are. Harper reportedly plunked down $5 million for the book, which I initially thought was crazy but now think was crazy genius.
Some people love Sarah Palin. I mean…well, I’ve heard that some people do. I live in New York where Republicans are mythical creatures that people report spotting but can never empirically prove the existence of. But the point is, the success of Palin’s book isn’t going to be based on whether the people who love her turn out to buy it. It’s going to have to do with just how much vitriol the people who hate her can muster up against the book.
Let’s face it: liberal columnists and bloggers looooove to hate Sarah Palin. She’s a go-to whipping post, and the articles lambasting the book are already hitting the web faster than you can say, “Gotcha!”
Tomorrow promises to be a full media pile-on, and that’s going to send thousands upon thousands of readers to the book store. Palin’s got an Ann Coulter-ish appeal. She’s brash enough that the people who love her admire her spunk and the people who don’t are terrified.
I don’t know whether or not I’m going to buy the book, but I know that I could be swept away by the media frenzy. Whether or not I actually read it, I do know for sure that I’m going to spend more time on the book’s Amazon page watching the frequently hysterical freak-outs from Palin’s most disturbed supporters and detractors. What can I say–I love a good fight.
So who already bought it? Who is boycotting? And better yet–who’s going to the book tour?!
Is a story just a story?
Recently, former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair, addressed the W&L Journalism Ethics Institute for its 48th anniversary. This prompted a debate around the water cooler and on blogs and made its way to discussions on news programs. For, if you remember, Blair resigned from the New York Times in 2003 following an investigation that found he had plagiarized and fabricated a lot of the stories he had written for the paper. Some of his reporting was on the Iraq war and the Beltway sniper attacks. It was understandable that people were surprised that Blair would be addressing the Journalism Ethics Institute because we trust reporters to tell us the truth. We don’t expect them to fabricate or edit stories to make them more entertaining, as Blair did.
What about memoir authors who fabricate stories? James Frey and the debacle involving A Million Little Pieces comes to mind. Frey received a lot of attention from his book when it was published–Oprah praised him, A Million Little Pieces was in a million little bookstores, everyone talked highly of this new talented writer. But upon investigation, Frey’s story was proven to be inaccurate in parts, and some readers who had once been fans of the memoir wanted their money back.
Some authors don’t really care about the difference between fiction and nonfiction. A story might just be a story. But is it unfair to truthful memoir writers when an author, such as James Frey, fabricates tales to sell books? Does it prove that Frey is a talented writer that we believed his tales? Or is it infuriating to have loved a book as a memoir and find parts of it to be complete fiction?
How much tweaking should be allowed in memoirs to make them entertaining these days, and do you care about the difference between fiction and nonfiction storytelling?
-Rachel
Nothing out there like it?
In working on prescriptive non-fiction, I’ve noted a phenomenon among authors that I’ll call the “there’s nothing out there like it” fallacy. Interestingly, it seems to affect a disproportionately expert population—physicians, nutritionists, psychologists, trainers, counselors, and attorneys—writers with professional credentials whose proposed book emerges from a considerable knowledge of their target market. Indeed, the fact that these people come in daily contact with their would-be book buyers should mean that they have a better sense than anyone of the information their patients/clients lack. In theory, these experts are ideally positioned to perceive a book-shaped hole in the market. But interestingly enough, this is not always the case.
There are a few reasons; because the general public may be demonstrably in need of information (or perhaps just reluctant to implement it) it does not always follow that there’s a dearth of books on the topic. In my experience, experts may know their audience inside and out, but they don’t necessarily have a clear sense of the competition. Acquiring editors, meanwhile, have an overdeveloped sense of the books in the field; usually they’ve published them. (Agents do too, which, apropos of the recent discussion, is another reason why we’re handy). Busy professionals, even those who assiduously keep up with the relevant journals, rarely have the time to read books aimed at a general audience. They do, however, hear their clients/patients complain that there is a shortage of reliable information “out there.” They field the same questions again and again. They rightly perceive their clients’ points of confusion, and may be especially gifted at untangling complex information, or perhaps they’ve created a program that gets amazing results. It is not so very difficult to therefore imagine that all this would merit, even demand, a new book.
Maybe so. But in order to test this premise, writers need to do significant research, not only on Amazon.com, B&N.com, Booklist, Publishers Weekly, or Publishers Marketplace, but also in multiple bookstores and libraries. No single source is especially reliable: on-line searches may be too broad or too narrow; looking at the bookstore shelf may not give an accurate sense of all that’s actually on offer; libraries don’t necessarily reflect all the newest entrees. Ideally, aspiring authors should read, or at least skim, the likely competition, with a dispassionate eye (does the world really need another book on this subject) and in hopes of spotting an opening. If “nothing out there” really means “there’s nothing out there written by me,” bear in mind that publishing houses find this a persuasive argument only insofar as the “me” in question has one or more of the following: a national platform; a media profile; conducted groundbreaking research; a fresh approach to the subject at hand. It is this last aspect that is most tractable. It is true that most nonfiction is platform driven, but it is also concept-driven, and teasing out a hook—which is not so much a gimmick as a clever, easily-grasped, organizing principle—is essential. Finding a way into your subject that has not been done and done again is difficult, but not, I think, so difficult as acquiring the MD, MBA or PhD to begin with!
-Jessica