We’ve learned a tremendous amount from these authors about how to successfully self-publish and these lessons have  direct and significant application to traditional publishing.  The smarter houses have committed to a partnership with us and our clients, showing tremendous vision and flexibility in the way they have modified their systems to accommodate the special needs of people who can sell oodles of books on their own, thank you very much.

Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Grand Central, and PenguinUSA have all been aggressive in offering huge deals that are enticing to our authors not just because of the money involved but because of their afore-mentioned flexibility in terms of publishing schedules, contractual terms (including options and non-compete clauses), marketing and promotion, and their genuine desire to help grow these writers’ careers.  And, here’s where the partnership aspect is important.

Some Indie authors are looking at what these publishers are offering and scoffing, especially if the advances being discussed are less than seven figures.  They think, and rightly so in most cases, that they can make that money themselves without giving such a huge percentage to a third party.  They also feel (again, rightly so in most cases) that they can market themselves more effectively than a house that is publishing hundreds, if not thousands, of books per year.   But, as we’ve often discussed on this blog, that’s a shortsighted view because of the intangibles.

The beauty of and frustrating thing about publishing is that it has never been an exact science—and given how many English majors work in this business, that’s hardly surprising.  So much of what succeeds in our world is due to serendipity and that most fickle of all phenomena, taste, that it’s impossible for a publishing “formula” to  show  a higher rate of success than, say, Derek Jeter’s batting average.    But, despite that, publishers offer a wealth of intangibles that are actually quite measurable over the course of a career, among them editorial support, an understanding of the book buying marketplace that is more macro than micro, a team of professionals whose job it is to make the author look good, a belief in books that is almost evangelical, and a brand identity that has evolved over centuries and that will continue to do so.

So, when an Indie client says to us, what can Publisher X do for me that I can’t do for myself, my answer would be, they can help you establish and grow your career with a goal toward longevity.  Given our success with negotiating non-compete and option clauses that allow Indie authors to continue to self-publish while they are working with a traditional house, I honestly don’t see the downside to also having a publisher’s imprimatur as an adjunct to your own publishing efforts.  I do, however, see how having books published by S&S or HC or GCP can enhance your brand and raise your visibility among readers.  Given how crowded and competitive the Indie marketplace has become, I would be heartened to see that an author has been or is published traditionally when deciding whether to buy his/her book.  I think many readers feel the same.

The bottom line, of course, is that as with all of our clients, we want our Indie authors to have long, prosperous publishing lives and we feel that, under the right conditions, a trade house can be an invaluable partner in achieving that goal.    I’d love to hear what you all think about this because it is a subject that I’m becoming very passionate about.

Problem is, that I’m reading a downer of a book.  Breasts by Florence Williams is a smart, well-written (although badly copyedited), lively discussion about our most objectified and misunderstood of body parts.  Unfortunately, the book has more in common with Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring than a Jackie Collins novel.   Basically, Ms. Williams argues that this most intelligent and adaptive of glands is also the most vulnerable to environmental toxins and the chemical stew that we are all bathing in 24/7.  Well, that was not the escapist literature I needed to take my mind off current events.

So, I eagerly accepted my son’s invitation to watch a movie with him.  But, he’s currently obsessed with all things Harry Potter and wanted to watch The Goblet of Fire.  You know, the one where that cute kid from Twilight dies and Voldemort is getting more and more powerful and evil.  What the….

By the end of that movie, I was desperately looking around my bookshelves for the happiest, peppiest, most life affirming book I could find.  Note to self, get more light reading in the house.  I finally settled on Nora Ephron and David Sedaris.  No, they’re not all that happy, but they reliably make me laugh and after that kind of week, humor is definitely healing.

What do you read when you feel like everything’s going to hell in a handbasket?  Share your upbeat choices…puhleeeze!

I’ve always been drawn to dark literature about unimaginable suffering—I remember reading Night by Elie Wiesel when I was probably too young to fully comprehend the scale of the horror he depicted, but the starkness of the images has stayed with me across the decades.  Periodically, because life is full of breathtaking tragedy, a writer is skilled enough to present his or her experience of his or her own unimaginable suffering in a way that sheds light on our sorrows and losses and the process by which we cope (well or badly) with them.

The most successful of these narratives tend to be lean and unvarnished and the authors of these books are unsparing of themselves and their readers.  They tend to be short books and completely engrossing—playing on that thing that compels human beings to stop and watch a train wreck even if we will have nightmares forever after.  So, why am I as loath to pick up a copy of Wave as I am compelled to read it?  And, which impulse should I give in to.

How do you guys feel about this kind of grief narrative?  Do you find that you force yourselves to read these books or do you pass them by on the bookshelves out of an instinct for self-preservation (emotional, that is)?

So, why is there such a flap over bookstore placement of Young Adult vs. New Adult titles?  It all comes down to sex, of course.  The older the protagonists the more sexually explicit the books has always been the rule of thumb.  But, is that still true?  Was the New Adult category created so that everyone involved was of legal age but still playing varsity, emotionally speaking?  Or is there more to this in-between genre that makes it deserving of its own place on store shelves?

I get not putting sexually explicit material next to middle grade or picture book offerings.  But what’s so hard about sliding over a couple of bookcases and hanging a sign saying “New Adult”?  If the problem is that you don’t want kids exposed to inappropriate content, then clear labeling is a tried and true way of dealing with the issue.  Clearly this is a category that is extremely popular for both older teens and adults but one that is having a hard time finding its way into the hands of print consumers because of what seems to me like simple orneriness on the part of booksellers.

Am I missing something here?  What do you all think?

Me: “We want X, Y, Z.”

Contracts director: “No.  We can’t agree to that.”

Me: “If you don’t give it to us, we’ll walk.”

Contracts director: “Fine, we’ll give you X and Y, but you’ll have to pry Z out of our cold dead hands.”

Me: “What was Z again?”

Multiply this by three or four contracts a week, reams of e-mails, and some name calling, and you’ve got my life in a nutshell.  At this point, the process is so predictable, I could create a flowchart that pretty much tells you the probable outcome of any negotiation.  Which is what tickles me about this delightful infographic that Galleycat reposted yesterday.

As fast as the publishing industry is changing, some things remain wonderfully constant: Authors’ hopes and dreams either coming true or being crushed into oblivion; insiders trying to game the system; agents, editors and publishers working hard and failing roughly as much as professional baseball players; heavy drinking regardless.

You’d think we’d get bored.  But really, it’s such a thrill when all the stars align and the editorial and development work, the tedious nitpicking of contract terms, and the snarky, despairing, bombastic communications result in a book you’re proud of (and which is sometimes profitable), that you end up just feeling grateful to be part of the process.

What’s your favorite part of the flowchart?

The story has a happy ending, as you’ll see if you follow the link, but it got me thinking about how Dr. Seuss would have addressed some of the more controversial issues of our day.   What would Horton say about gay marriage?  How would the Cat in the Hat feel about the inability of our two major political parties to come to any kind of consensus about anything?  What kind of lectures would the Sneetches deliver to all the haters still clinging to racial and ethnic prejudices?

One of my favorite lines from the Seuss canon is:  “So be sure when you step, Step with care and great tact. And remember that life’s A Great Balancing Act.”  If more of us operated with care and tact, it would be a much more friendly world, no?

What are you favorite Dr. Seuss quotes and characters?

But, this isn’t the first time I’ve been led to an artist that I became infatuated with through a reference in a book.  The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love led me to explore the golden age of Cuban music (pre-Castro, pre-exodus), for instance.  And, novels like  A Visit from the Goon Squad  are veritable treasure troves of musical references while memoirs like Patti Smith’s, Keith Richards’ and Neil Young’s can keep you looking up song titles on iTunes for weeks.  Since I believe great songwriting is poetry and poetry is storytelling that rhymes (or doesn’t), I love the marriage of literature and music.

On this Valentine’s eve, what devastating, unforgettable songs have you come across in books?

The question on everyone’s mind seemed to be “Should we panic about the state of the book business in the wake of the digital revolution or do we dare be optimistic.”  Our job on the panel was to illuminate the big issues preoccupying publishers and authors while attempting not to freak anyone out.  Overall, my fellow panelists and I were quite optimistic about the opportunities digital publishing affords while still admitting to twinges of regret over the passing of the traditional, wood paneled, musty smelling industry we all came of age in.

The optimism on our end came down to “choice.”  Authors have more choices now than they ever did.  They can self-publish easily and relatively economically if they choose or they can go through the traditional channels and, if that doesn’t pan out, go back to the idea of self-publishing.  Before e-books, if an author was rejected by enough agents and publishers, the idea of printing and distributing his or her own work was a daunting one.  Now, it’s a relatively painless process.

So, how is this good news to us inside the industry?  Well, what empowers authors usually empowers agents and, perhaps to a lesser degree, publishers.  Publishers and agents still provide an invaluable service in terms of curating literary material.  We still bring experience, love of craft, and critical acumen to bear on the process of book making and we’re pretty good at it.  And, authors and readers know this.  While self-publishing is now a thriving business, traditional publishing continues to publish more (digital and print) books every year.   And readers continue to buy these curated products.   Despite the perception of the business as the Titanic wildly trying to skirt the iceberg, publishers are making real efforts to keep up with the changing times so that they can bring their traditional talents to bear on the work authors are producing today.

Not to get all Panglossian about it, but isn’t this the best of all possible worlds?

Any questions, suggestions, random commentary you have for us as we look forward to a new year?  What’s on your mind?  What industry issues do you find incomprehensible and need some insight into?  What are you going to be reading this year?  What are you going to be writing?

Let me know and I will answer if I can or make appropriately noncommittal noises if I can’t.

“What did you think about Gone Girl?” asks someone you just met at a friend’s house who, like everyone else who knows what you do for a living, assumes you’ve read all of the 500,000 or so books that are published each year (give or take a couple hundred thousand).

“Brilliant book!  Flynn is such a rare talent,” you say with conviction and then hope you can steer the conversation away from the topic before plot points are revealed that will spoil the book for you (when you finally get around to reading it) or that don’t actually exist and that will reveal your lack of familiarity with the narrative (few casual interrogators are that sinister, but they exist).

Thing is, why do we book people find it so necessary to pretend to have read something we didn’t.  No one knows better than we do that even speed readers will only get through, at most,  a few thousand books during their lifetime.  That’s what makes books so precious, in fact.  You have to spend time with them.  You can’t take in a 300-page novel in the way you take in a film or tv show.  The process of reading requires time, patience, and emotional readiness.   You don’t just read any old thing; you choose something based on mood, curiosity, intellectual questing, the desire to please a friend or mentor who really, really wants you to love their favorite book as much as you do, or particularly intriguing artwork on a cover.

It occurs to me that being well read is one of those things a certain segment of the population carries a big chip on its shoulder about.  There’s a competitiveness and a need to dazzle others with one’s breadth of literary knowledge that borders on the psychotic.  And, this impulse tracks across all categories (just start up a conversation about books with a sci-fi buff if you don’t believe me).  It seems to me that people in other professions aren’t quite so mendacious about their familiarity with every new development in their discipline.  But we book people just out and out lie constantly about what and how much we’ve read.

Am I wrong about this?  Are you thinking, “speak for yourself you pathological liar,” or do you agree that there’s something about books that brings out the braggart in us all?