Category Archives: seasons

October 24, 2016   Jane   competition, politics, polls, seasons  
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The changing seasons

I was up in the country this weekend, which for me means the Berkshire mountains, and the seasons are clearly changing. It was just beautiful up there and I usually love this time of year.

 

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This fall, though, is different, very different than I remember in a very long time. Over the last several weeks, my colleagues on the publishing side of the business have been saying that business is way off. The more I’ve heard this, the more I’ve wondered why. When it gets cooler, people tend to be inside and read more, not less. Why not this year?

The answer actually is quite simple—and very disturbing (at least to me). We are all reading about and watching what is going on in our very own reality show: the U.S. presidential election. We are doing this virtually in every spare moment. There are very few days that go by without a major development and I, for one, am afraid that if I miss one, the wrong candidate will win. We cannot stop watching and listening and, as a result, we have no time or interest for anything else. It seems that this phenomenon is especially true of book buyers.

As I said, this is a disturbing phenomenon, but the good news is that it will soon come to an end—our election is only two weeks away (thank goodness!). Hopefully, after November 8th, readers will be back in book stores, the first woman president will have been elected and our lives will return to where they were when all of this began. We can only hope!

September 06, 2016   sharon   creativity, optimism, organizing, process, seasons  
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Back to School!

The week after Labor Day has a bit of a back-to-school feeling in publishing. Agents and editors are settling back into their desks after the long weekend, saying goodbye to Summer Fridays and getting going on submissions again after the quiet, vacation-heavy month of August. There’s excitement in the air about all the big fall books coming out—DGLM has seven books out today alone!—and everyone is looking forward to the busy, productive three months between now and the winter holidays. My inbox is full of manuscripts from clients who’ve been busy bees over the summer!

As an aspiring Kathleen Kelly, back-to-school season also gets me hankering after new pens and pencils, new notebooks and binders. Even if I don’t strictly neeeeeeeed them, it’s fun to kick off fall with a trip to the office store—convincing myself, of course, that new post-its will be the key to staying organized and efficient during the busy weeks to come.  And DGLM is lucky enough to be located directly above a Staples, so this is an easy whim to indulge!

Anyone else find themselves picking out new office supplies long after their school days are over? What are your favorite tools for staying organized when you hit your busy season?

 

July 18, 2016   Jane   editor/agent lunches, Jane, relationships, seasons, timing  
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What do we do when things get slow?

 

It’s summer, and things have really slowed down in the business.  Editors are away, authors are away—so it’s difficult to actually get books sold and contracts moving forward at anything but a glacial pace.  So what does an agent do at this time?

I actually think this is great opportunity to read whatever I can in order to identify new writers and new ideas.  I also go through our client list and find those I can contact and discuss what they are thinking about doing next.

“Quiet” times are when proposals can be developed well rather than rushed to get to market.

I also spend more time with editors at this time of year to discover what they are looking for, whether they have holes in their lists, what they have read recently that they loved.

This is a great opportunity to plan for the very busy fall selling season so I will develop the list of titles that we will be presenting beginning right after Labor Day.  I contact those clients whose books should be ready to submit at that time and make sure they are on track—this is me in the role of cheerleader J.

This is also a time when I can evaluate carefully my current list of titles on submission and see where I should make changes – either continuing to pursue selling a book or advising the client to move on to something new.

So, though it’s “quiet”, or seemingly so at this time of year, it is a time to review and renew and move forward.

I’d love to hear what you do during your “quiet” times of the year?