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If you do something so horrendous as to provoke your agent to declare, "Life is too short," you'd better start looking for someone else to handle your work. It means you have tried his or her patience beyond its limit. You're a walking dead author.
We recently described good timing as one of the most important virtues a literary agent can bring to the job. There's another that most good agents possess, and that's patience. If timing is the art of "when to," patience is the art of "when not to." Unfortunately, that often means when not to knock my head against a wall, wring an author's throat, or hop in a taxi, race over to a publisher's office and trash it.
Although some people are born patient, for most of us it's an acquired quality. We attain it only with experience, and it is arguably the only significant benefit of aging.
If you are constitutionally incapable of practicing patience, you are definitely not cut out to become a literary agent. Despite the appearance of furious activity, and notwithstanding such timesaving innovations as multiple submissions, computers, email, laser printers, cell phones, high-speed printers, overnight mail, instant books, and quickie releases, the truth is that just about anything of importance that happens in our industry happens slowly. Good books are written at a snail's pace, submissions take ages, negotiations drag on, money flows like cold lard, and the building of an author's career from first sale to bestselling masterpiece is about as dramatic as watching a lake evaporate. Difficult publishers test our patience, as do difficult authors. If agents seem to have a higher per capita ratio of weekend homes than other professionals, have pity on them: they must have a place to go to chop wood, bay at the moon, and otherwise relieve the strain of holding their natural impulses in check during the other five days a week.
I do not own a weekend home, but I do have a set of molars that have been ground down close to the nerve endings from restraining the desire to commit a variety of felonies in order to make things move faster. Behind a demeanor that one of my clients once described as "judicious" (it was not a compliment) seethes a cauldron of emotions, energy, grievances, and heroic fantasies. I smile, I speak moderately, I behave politely, I move deliberately. I polish my buckler and hone my sword, ear cocked for the call to arms. It may come in the form of a letter, a phone call, an offer, an opportunity, an insult. But I am ready for action.
Meanwhile, I wait.
I wait, for instance, for you to finish your book. Because my agency does a lot of business in paperback original series, I have to wait only a month or two for many books. For most mainstream ones, however, I have to wait nine months, a year, or longer. The potential in these books presses heavily on my consciousness; I'm dying to wheel and deal. But with few exceptions there is little to be done to convert that potential until the manuscript has been turned in, reviewed, critiqued, and revised (once, if I'm lucky). However much I am dying to go into action with that book, I cannot advance the calendar by one day, the clock by one minute. I grind my teeth and wait.
I wait for publishers to make up their minds about my submissions. Decisions on manuscripts can be forced by means of the auction, and when agents have to move fast they can elicit decisions virtually overnight. But most material does not command that kind of attention. The more conventional approach of one submission at a time, or at best two or three simultaneously, is what is usually called for. Like most agencies, we have a reminder calendar and regularly write or phone publishers prodding them to keep the property in question at the top of the pile.
Despite every measure taken to make editors respond to submissions promptly, it is unrealistic to expect decisions in less than six weeks, and quite realistic to expect none in less than three months (at the end of which you discover the manuscript has been lost). If a work isn't placed on the first or second round of submissions, therefore, a year or more can pass with relatively few responses to show for all one's investment of time. So we wait.
We wait to make deals. Deals can be struck in a matter of minutes, but many negotiations take days, weeks, or even months to unfold. With the evolution of publishing from an individual entrepreneurial enterprise to a bureaucratized corporate one, seldom do agents end up negotiating with the principals of a publishing company. Instead we discuss terms with editors, who refer them to superior officers or editorial boards. Several weeks may pass if the appropriate executives are not available to formulate offers or counteroffers. Often, figures have to be worked up by a variety of departments to help the company determine its negotiating strategy. During which time we wait.
We wait for contracts. The people who work in the contract departments of most publishing houses are among the most professional in our industry. Nevertheless, it is seldom possible for them to produce contracts for signature in less than six or eight weeks. After the editor reaches agreement with the author or agent, he prepares a deal memo summarizing the terms of the contract for approval by the head of the company. After approval has been rendered the deal memo goes to the contract department where it serves as the basis for the formal agreement. This agreement is reviewed by the acquiring editor and an officer of the company, then returned to the contract department for final issuance to the agent. After signed contracts are returned to the publisher, they are circulated for signature and a voucher is issued directing the accounts payable department to prepare the check. We now wait for the check.
We wait a long time for the check because in many cases the accounts payable department is not in the same building or even the same state as the contracts department. After receiving the voucher from the contracts department, accounts payable prepares a check that must be reviewed and signed by the treasurer or other officer of the company. It is then forwarded to the contracts department to be issued with the contracts, or sent to the payee directly from the accounts payable office.
If form follows function, publishers could not conceive of a better structure for attenuating the time it takes to release money. Even with all hands working at maximum efficiency - not a very desirable state from the publisher's viewpoint, you must realize, when there is interest to be earned - I figure two to three months is now the industry average for payout from the time check vouchers are issued (add thirty days if it's an emergency). Agents who have managed to map and penetrate the system can keep things moving with phone calls to various departments along the paperwork routes goading delinquent bookkeepers to press on with their tasks. (I am not afraid to alienate the CEO of a publishing company, but I never, ever speak unkindly to clerks in accounting offices.)
And of course, we wait for books to be published and...well, you get the idea; just about everything concerning publishing is a test of an agent's patience. I wish that didn't include authors but why should they be exempted? One of my colleagues in a fit of pique wailed, "Publishing would be great if it weren't for authors." And another, with tongue somewhat in cheek I suspect, created an index for rating his clients. He calls it the PITA factor.
PITA stands for "Pain In The Ass." He assigns his clients a rating from one to ten, depending on such factors as how often they hit him up for loans, how many times they call him at home at six o'clock on Sunday mornings, how many editors they insult, and in general how much maintenance they require beyond routine care and feeding. Their PITA factor is then divided into the commissions earned on their sales. Applying his criteria, an author who earns only $1,000 annually in commissions but is a model client with a PITA factor of 1 is as valuable to his agent as one who earns $10,000 in commissions but, rated at 10, is a raving lunatic. "Life," says my friend, "is too short to have to deal with 10s."
Well, I don't know.As I said at the outset, if you do feel that way, the literary agent's trade is not for you and you should go into something less aggravating, like sewage management or emergency room administration. When it comes to dealing with artists, irritating behavior comes with the territory. And, far more important, think of what they have to put up with. With the rare exception of the author whose first book stuns the critics, sweeps the public off its feet, and soars to the top of the bestseller list, success for most writers is won only after decades of economic struggle, mental anguish, crushing loneliness and obscurity, and the consumption of murderous doses of pride. They spend a lifetime practicing patience, and if they do not always practice it very well, if conditions are difficult when they start out, difficult when they begin to make it, and difficult even when they finally arrive, a larger degree of tolerance is called for on the part of those who serve them, particularly if they've never tried that life themselves. And most agents haven't.
A PITA scale that does not factor in the emotional satisfactions of midwifing first books, of nurturing authors careers as they gain skill and confidence and stretch to realize their visions, and the joy of attending their graduation ceremonies featuring smashing reviews and sales by the trainload, requires some serious rethinking.
Life is not too short if an agent's patience is rewarded with such satisfactions as these. And so, when tried, the wise agent will count to ten, then - realizing things could be worse, that we've heard horror stories of agent-killers with PITA Factors of 20 or worse - we count another ten, sigh and go back to work.
Everything You Need to Know About the Net Generation is in Your Kid's Bedroom with the Door Closed
They came out of the womb with keypads grafted to their hands, monitor cables trailing from their optical nerves, thumbs hyperdeveloped for texting, and umbilical cords terminating in USB's ready to interface immediately after weaning. They passed up electric trains for video war games, dolls for Facebook accounts, and Little League participation for YouTube and Craigslist.
They are the Net Generation, also known as Millennials. And if you don't understand them, or aren't sure you like them even if they belong to you, thank your stars that Don Tapscott does. And if you're a businessperson hoping to make a market on them, you'd be smart to listen very, very carefully to him. For proof of this assertion, ask the President of the United States. Barack Obama's juggernaut political campaign drew its power from the social networking values of Net Gen youth the way a hurricane sucks up energy and momentum from warm open ocean water. Here's a blurb on the book:
Poised to transform every social institution, the Net Generation is reshaping the form and functions of school, work, and even democracy. Simply put, the wave of youth, aged 12-30, the first truly global generation, is impacting all institutions. Particularly, employers, instructors, parents, marketers and political leaders are finding it necessary to adapt to the changing social fabric due to this generation’s unique characteristics. Within its comprehensive examination of the Net Generation, and based on a 4.5 million dollar study, Don Tapscott’s Grown Up Digital offers valuable insight and concrete takeaways for leaders across all social institutions.
Harry Hurt, who has written many an entertaining New York Times feature, is grateful to Tapscott for decoding his 11-year-old son. "How can an otherwise healthy boy like mine spend a sunny day playing World of Warcraft for five consecutive hours instead of playing soccer or baseball outdoors?" Hurt asks. His answer? Tapscott's book, Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation Is Changing Your World, "gives parents from the baby boom generation — like me — reason for optimism."
Tapscott, an adjunct professor of management at the University of Toronto, writes a really interesting blog about the Net Gen, drawn in some measure from his observations of youngsters like his own children. His book cogently summarizes those observations, and for anyone hoping to bottle and monetize the Millennial zeitgeist, Tapscott's points are worth committing to memory. As Hurt summarizes them:
* They prize freedom * They want to customize things * They enjoy collaboration * They scrutinize everything * They insist on integrity in institutions and corporations * They want to have fun even at school or work * They believe that speed in technology and all else is normal * They regard constant innovation as a fact of life
Paul Lynde's "Bye Bye Birdie" lyric asks, "What's the matter with kids today?" Actually, it sounds like the Millennials have their heads screwed on pretty tightly.
Obama Health Plan Prescribes Tablets at $50 Billion a Pop
I've been carrying the torch for Tablet PCs from my very first glimpse a decade or so ago, but like the object of a crush who's just not that into you, my passion has been unrequited. Despite a huge array of potential applications - education alone is as rich in possibilities as Alaska's fabulous El Dorado Gold Mine - developers and manufacturers have stubbornly resisted commitment to tablets. It's a big relief to find out I'm not alone, to learn in fact that I'm in such august company as Bill Gates. I urge you to read Conrad Blickstorfer's expert analysis of just why, for all its superb qualities, the "slate" (another term for tablets) has not yielded to our protestations of abiding love.
One sector of the computer-using community that has kept the embers burning, however, is the medical profession. As soon as Microsoft released the first version of Tablet PC, doctors seized on it as the answer to their prayers. At last they were liberated from the bondage of paperwork that cost them one hour of clerical duties for every hour spent attending to patients. With its portability, handwriting recognition and easy interfaceability with centralized databases, doctors could make their rounds with Tablet in hand and enter information in real time. Tablets even recognized the traditionally execrable handwriting of doctors, but e-ink and virtual keyboards have replaced the pen and all but eliminated the possibility that the computer could read "atropine" for "aspirin."
And now, with President Elect determined to create a $50 billion national computerized medical archive at the heart of his health care initiative, the tablet will at last find its place in the sun.
A microcosm of this world to come can be seen in Steve Lohr's New York Times examination of a small Wisconsin clinic that in 2003 introduced wireless tablet computers to its medical staff and required it use them. Lohr describes the many virtues of the program:
A paper record is a passive, historical document. An electronic health record can be a vibrant tool that reminds and advises doctors. It can hold information on a patient’s visits, treatments and conditions, going back years, even decades. It can be summoned with a mouse click, not hidden in a file drawer in a remote location and thus useless in medical emergencies.
Modern computerized systems have links to online information on best practices, treatment recommendations and harmful drug interactions. The potential benefits include fewer unnecessary tests, reduced medical errors and better care so patients are less likely to require costly treatment in hospitals.
The widespread adoption of electronic health records might also greatly increase evidence-based medicine. Each patient’s records add to a real-time, ever-growing database of evidence showing what works and what does not. The goal is to harness health information from individuals and populations, share it across networks, sift it and analyze it to make the practice of medicine more of a science and less an art.
The E-Book Celebrates its Coming of Age, with the Times Reciting the Benedition
Hallelujah! The New York Times has blessed the e-book.
In Turning Page, E-Books Start To Take Hold, a full-dress, front page treatment by Brad Stone and Motoko Rich, the "Gray Lady" (as the flagship of the printed word is affectionately nicknamed) recognizes that downloadable books are here to stay.
The article summarizes technological and commercial advances made by the Kindle and Sony Reader and foretells new devices and programs on the way including Plastic Logic and Polymer Vision, Blackberry and iPhone. We've written up all of these items and more, but if I hotlinked every reference this blog would glow as orange as a tropical sunset.
Do we forgive the New York Times for taking ten years to get with the e-book program? Are we okay with them telling us stuff we've known and written about for months or even years? Do we care that the official information organ of the establishment has finally given our band of visionaries its imprimatur?
The answer to all of the above is an unequivocal YES. On behalf of all the futurists, technologists, programmers, geeks, freaks and early adopters who saw it coming ten, fifteen, twenty years ago, I can say that recognition is sweet and very welcome.
As the Times points out, we're really just at the end of the beginning. As cool as the Kindle and Sony are, they are really the Gutenberg printing presses of the digital revolution, and there are many refinements on the way. In fact, if you do check out some of the reading devices we've heralded here, you'll see that the game is far from over. A number of would-be Kindle- and Sony-killers have the the prize in their sights, and a year or two from now could see more miracles than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
But for now, we'll take a day to rest on our laurels.
Okay, hotshot, we all know you're smarter than your agent. At least, that's what you're always telling your friends. So let's see how well you can do at second-guessing him or her in a few hypothetical situations. For every correct answer, you get a free power lunch in the Grill Room of the Four Seasons with any publisher of your choice; for every one you get wrong, same prize but you treat.
* Your client has had twelve genre novels published in paperback. They've sold about fifty thousand copies each. She thinks the time has come to be published in hardcover. You tell her: a) She's absolutely right and you're getting on the phone at once. b) She should write another dozen paperbacks that sell fifty thousand copies each, then you'll move her. c) Wait till her paperbacks start selling in the hundreds of thousands of copies each. d) She's crazy to want to be published in hardcover.
* Your client has just turned in the manuscript of a book that has good film possibilities. The time to start contacting producers is: a) When the book is in bound proofs. b) When finished copies come off the presses. c) When the book starts getting good reviews. d) Yesterday.
* You recently sold a client's first novel to a publisher for $5,000. The client has an idea for a new novel that he thinks has big money potential, and he wants a much bigger advance. The best time to ask for it is: a) Now. b) Six months from now. c) Around the time the first novel is published. d) A year after the first novel has been published.
In case you haven't noticed, all the questions in this quiz have to do with timing. Few authors realize it, but one of the most important reasons for hiring agents is that they have a superior sense of timing. "Timing is everything" might almost be called the agent's motto ("Patience is everything else" might be considered the agent's second motto). The most successful agents are those who understand that there is a season to push and a season to ease up, a season to fight and a season to turn the back, a season to watch and wait and a season to strike. Sometimes the moment presents itself on a platter; sometimes it has to be worked with brute force like steel on a smithy's anvil. And there are times when, for all an agent's scheming, for all his exertions, for all his manipulations, he simply cannot make the thing happen. (That's usually a signal for me to go shopping.)
Most authors are impatient. It's a forgivable character trait, for it often goes hand in hand with ambition. But because authors cannot possibly be as objective about the progress of their careers as their agents are, their impatience can make them their own worst enemies. A goodly part of an agent's day is spent restraining authors.
Although we usually associate timing with the moment when an agent pulls off some million-dollar coup, many of its applications are far more prosaic. A couple of years ago a literary agent wrote a piece for Publishers Weekly complaining about rude editors who do not return agents' phone calls. Her broadside elicited a chorus of cheers from fellow agents, and from writers who'd had similarly unpleasant experiences.
I had a different reaction, though. Her article made me wonder whether the telephone is not greatly overused by agents, and whether there are many occasions when a note would do instead of a call. This is particularly true in the conduct of routine business such as inquiries about submissions, contracts, and checks. Editors are usually harried with paperwork, urgent business, and other phone calls, and so there is an odds-on probability that a scribbled note taken down during a phone call will presently be buried beneath the day's alluvial deposit of emails, snail-mail correspondence, internal memos, manuscripts, catalogues, contracts, and junk mail. I've noticed, however, that editors seem to place more significance upon written inquiries, and they move on them more promptly. More importantly, underuse of the phone by agents may motivate editors to take their calls when they really need to get through. If an editor doesn't want to talk to an agent because she thinks the agent is calling about that overdue check, when actually the agent is calling to pitch a hot new property, a vital opportunity will have been missed for both of them.
The preceding is not a particularly glamorous example of timing, but in the last analysis it's the daily employment of wise timing that makes a good agent effective.
But then there is that dramatic application that makes an agent feel he's been waiting all his life to yank the ripcord, and the decisive moment has come. Not long ago a fellow agent called me for consultation on a particularly delicate timing problem involving a star author. This author had a very big book scheduled for publication about nine months from that time, but because he was very unhappy with his publisher, he had asked his agent to seek another one. His agent had done so and lined up a terrific deal. In order to get out of his option with his current publisher, the author merely had to submit an outline and reject whatever was offered. When to do that - that was the problem.
The new publisher was pressing the agent to finalize their deal. Publishers get very nervous about leaving big offers open for too long, since agents have been known to use those offers to solicit even higher ones. Despite the possibility that the offer would be withdrawn, the agent was dragging his heels. By breaking with the current publisher too early, the agent could demoralize the sales people and cause the company to pull some of its advertising and promotional money from the upcoming book; a publisher that is losing an author may not work as hard for him as one that looks forward to a long association.
What did I advise my colleague to do? I'll let you brood about it for a minute or two in the security of your armchair, but remember that in this real-life situation, millions of dollars, the agent's relationship with his client, the agent's relationship with two publishers, the fate of a book on which the author had spent a year, the fate of many books to come, and a lot of egos and reputations were on the line. To appreciate the precariousness of such situations, perhaps it would better if you get out of your armchair and read the rest of this chapter while standing on a rickety stool with a hangman's noose around your neck.
Although I try to demystify the publishing business for authors, I have to confess that the instincts governing the sense of timing are wonderfully and impenetrably mysterious to me. I am fairly certain that they are of a piece with artistic inspiration. Most of the time, if you ask agents to articulate the reasons why they chose a certain moment to demand a dramatic raise in an author's pay, or to go from a book-by-book arrangement to a multibook package deal, or to move a client out of paperback originals and into hardcover, they can express them fairly coherently. But then there are those inexplicable revelations, blazing across the mind when one least expects it, that illuminate a situation with dazzling clarity and put one in touch with some very profound impulses.
I take pride in handling most business matters expeditiously, but occasionally something will come along that I frankly don't know what to do about. It will sit on my desk glowering at me, mocking me, demanding attention but eluding solution. I gaze back at it, mutter an oath, but am paralyzed with uncertainty. You might call the condition "agent's block." The client and the publisher are pressing for a decision. I offer feeble excuses that sound very much like procrastination or, worse, timidity. In truth, I'm simply waiting for the green light to go on in my brain. Inevitably it switches on, but when I least anticipate it, such as awaking from a nap or glomming a midnight snack. The answer is suddenly printed in bright headlines before me, and what was so difficult suddenly becomes ridiculously easy. The time, at last, has come.
Lest I start to sound as if agenting is a variety of religious experience, allow me to let you in on a little secret. Some of the things agents do that civilians think are brilliantly timed are in truth matters of dumb luck. An author writes a book and I sell it to precisely the right editor and it goes on to become a bestseller. I would love for you to think that I selected that editor the way a handicapper selects a winning horse. And perhaps I did. But sometimes, finding the perfect editor for a book is a matter of who is not out to lunch, in a meeting, or in the bathroom when an agent starts making phone calls.
Now, about that quiz.
* Situation Number 1: The paperback author who wants to be published in hardcover. Despite the evidence that you can make a much better living writing original paperbacks than you can hardcover books, most authors feel an uneasy sense of illegitimacy about paperbacks. And it is true that hardcover books have a better chance of being reviewed (negatively as well as favorably, don't forget) and selling to the movies. But if an author's paperbacks are selling in routine numbers, as in this example, the time may not be propitious for the leap into hardcover, for the author hasn't built an audience prepared to follow her into the more prestigious and expensive format. On many occasions a premature debut in hardcover can be catastrophic and the author may forever lose the opportunity to be published in boards again.
* Situation Number 2: What is the best time to start soliciting movie rights to a book with promising film potential? The answer is, immediately if not sooner. Movie and television people need to feel they are getting in on something hot. By the time a book is published it will have been circulated among all the key studios, networks, and producers owing to Hollywood's highly efficient system for obtaining early looks at anything that sounds interesting. "A published book," a film producer once said to me, "is very dead meat." There are of course exceptions to this rule, and examples of books made into successful movies decades after publication. But if you have a hot movie property, there's not a moment to lose. And remember, it's a good idea to prepare a brief synopsis of the book, highlighting its cinematic qualities, to accompany the submission for those in Hollywood who don't have the time (or the ability) to read.
* Situation Number 3: When is it appropriate to ask for a higher advance? The answer is, it's always appropriate to ask, but not always appropriate to expect. For new authors, the period of time between the sale of the first novel and publication is an extremely perilous one. Assuming an author is of average productivity, he will have ideas, outlines, or even completed manuscripts of new works long before that first book has been published. Until that first book has been published, however, the publisher will have no basis for calculating the value of the author's work and will therefore resist offering him more than a token raise in price. Indeed, because publishers don't formulate a clear picture of a book's sales for about a year after publication, owing to the time it takes for unsold copies to be returned, it may be two or three years from the time you sell your first book before you are justified in requesting prices bigger than starting pay. So if you answered (d) on the quiz you may have been closest to the truth.
You can't, of course, afford to sit around for several years waiting for the results on your first book, so there are several strategies for bridging the gap. One is to become more prolific (including writing books under pseudonyms for other publishers if your first publisher can't absorb your entire output). Another is to write your second, third, and even fourth novel on speculation rather than trying to line up contracts for them on the basis of outlines or portions-and-outlines. (But it might not be a good idea to write sequels to that first book on spec until you see if your publisher wants them.) As I've said before, publishers are able to make much faster judgments about finished books than partial ones, and usually pay higher prices.
Finally, we return to the quandary of the agent torn between responsibility for his client's forthcoming book and eagerness to nail down a deal with another publisher before the first publisher backs out. The situation was, as I pointed out, quite treacherous, but I advised the agent to wait until the very last moment, a few weeks before publication of the book, before informing the current publishers that they weren't going to get the author's next book. By that time the advertising was set, the author's tour locked in, the books were in the stores, and the publishers were committed to doing everything possible to make it a success and recover their investment.
As for the publishers threatening to withdraw their offer if the agent delayed, the agent visited the head of the company and persuaded him to leave his offer on the table. "Look," said my friend, "you have my word of honor that I will not use your offer to seek other bids. I cannot afford to offend a rich and powerful publisher like you. Please bear in mind that if we announce the author's decision too soon, the other publisher may pull its advertising and promotion and their book will flop. And that will make it much harder for you to sell the author's next book."
Happily, the publisher saw the wisdom of this argument and held his offer open. It all worked out happily, even for the publisher who lost the big-name author. Oh, the publisher was sore for a few weeks, but then the agent phoned him and told him that another client was unhappy with her publisher and wanted to move to another house. "Interested?" he asked. Of course he was interested!
Now, that's what I call an agent with an exquisite sense of timing.
For seven or eight years in the mid 1980s and early '90s Publisher's Weekly ran literary agent Richard Curtis's end-of-the-year summary, in tongue-in-cheek verse, of the highlights of the year in the publishing industry. The annual rhymes carried such titles as, "Merger, He Wrote," (1986), "Wedding Bells Are Breaking Up That Old Industry of Mine" (1989) and "Stop the Millennium, I Want to Get Off" (1990).
After a hiatus of some fifteen years, the verse-atile agent returned to PW in 2007 with "The Year of the Platform," which boasted such lines as,
But are our values turning asswards When opening books requires passwords?
PW's 2008 year-end issue is out and carries Curtis's latest poetic effusion, "The Coming of the POD People". Here's a taste:
Just when you feared you would be fired Or simply forcibly retired, Wait! Belay robe and pajamas -- Acquire books about Obamas! First Puppy, Guppy, Daughter, Spouse, A veritable Obama House. Success? One thing alone is vital: Just put the Big O in the title.
Borders To Try Nonreturnable - Possibility World Will Not End
A combination of fresh thinking by a publisher and hardship at a book chain have produced a breach in the facade of a tradition that at least one observer asserts is at the heart of trade publishing's woes. According to the Wall Street Journal, Borders has agreed to buy books from the Harper Studio imprint, recently founded by Robert Miller, at a deep discount of 58 percent to 63 percent off, on a nonreturnable basis. A typical hardcover discount runs 50% to 56% depending on quantity purchased.
When Miller launched HarperStudio he expressed determination to find a way to break the vicious cycle by which bookstores may return unsold inventory for full credit, a practice that has proven ruinous for many a publisher. Skeptics, familiar with previous efforts including deep discounting, ironically wished him "Lots of luck". But desperate times call for desperate measures. Rob Gruen, a Borders executive, stated, "The idea of taking inventory and then shipping it back isn't a good idea for anybody. We're open to all publishers to discuss alternatives to the traditional return model."
We wish Miller and Borders lots of luck too, but without a trace of smirk on our faces.
Traduttore, Traditore ("The translator is a traitor") - Italian proverb
One of the critical roles literary agents play is that of translator. We perform the task on several levels. The most obvious and fundamental is explaining the nomenclature of publishing to the uninitiated author. Writers who sell their first book to a publisher and read their first contract are plunged into a sea of words that may be totally unfamiliar to them, or that are used in a totally unfamiliar way. "Force majeure," "net proceeds," "matching option," "warranty," "discount"—these need to be defined for the novice author. There are many difficult concepts to be grasped, such as "advance sale," "midlist," "fair use," "reserve against returns," "pass-through," and "hard-soft deals." The language has its own slang, too, and our initiate hears bewildering references to who handles the "sub rights," what is the tentative "pub date," and what happens when the book is "o.p.'d."
Agents patiently try to demystify these terms, but it may take many years of experience before our clients are completely at ease with them. It may well be true that what distinguishes professional authors from their amateur brothers and sisters is that the pros have undergone this linguistic rite of passage and are now able to sling around "pre-empts," "first proceeds," and "escalators" with the best of 'em.
But there is another, and profoundly more important, job for the agent-translator to perform beyond explaining to his clients the terminology of the book industry. I'm talking about using language to forge and strengthen the bonds between authors and publishers. For, while the goals of both may ultimately be identical, they are usually achievable only after many conflicting viewpoints and interests have been reconciled. Sometimes those conflicts become intense, and if allowed to go unresolved can cause serious if not fatal breakdowns in the relationship. An agent, standing between these potential adversaries, must find common ground for them to stand on, else all - including his commission - is lost. And though their differences may be genuine, sometimes they are semantic, and if an agent can pinpoint and settle the linguistic problems, perhaps the more substantive ones will not seem quite so insuperable. Although it's a stimulating challenge, not all of us enjoy sticking our heads up in this no-man's land.
You must not think, however, that editors cannot be seriously wounded. And it is important to know that fact, because a hurt editor (or art director or royalty bookkeeper) may not want to work as hard for an author who has irked him or her as for one who has been supportive, tolerant, and forgiving. This is not to say that editors are so thin-skinned they fold the first time someone criticizes them. But I do know that if an author or agent injures an editor's feelings seriously enough, it can undercut his or her initiative, and that may eventually redound to an author's detriment. Some years ago I phoned a bookkeeper who had been verbally abused by an author a few months earlier. This author was owed another check, and I wanted to know where it was. "Funny thing about that check," she said, deadpan, "it keeps falling to the bottom of my pile. Must be gravity or something."
It is therefore vital that editors and their colleagues in other departments of publishing companies be handled with a certain degree of diplomacy, and it is in the language of that diplomacy that most agents are adept. We have learned that "a soft answer turneth away wrath." And most of the time, we are able to rephrase or paraphrase the blunt demands, the raw needs, the hard feelings, the hostile remarks, of our clients into gracious packages of civility that convey everything the author intended without damaging the fragile sensibilities of the person at whom they were directed.
I've been keeping some notes about discussions recently conducted with editors and am happy to offer herewith a few examples of this process in action. Some of them are tongue in cheek, others are deliberately exaggerated. Still others will sound stilted, and that is because, unfortunately, that is the way I speak.
Let's take one of the commonest problems in our business, that of getting editors to make up their minds about submissions. Editors are burdened with a great many tasks that curtail their reading time. They may be inundated with manuscripts to read. They may be on the fence about a submission and wish to postpone a decision for a while. They may be soliciting opinions or sales estimates from colleagues in their company. They have many legitimate reasons for taking a long time to read submissions.
At the same time, some editors seem to have a considerably dimmer sense of the passage of time than people in other fields, such as airline management or television programming. So, one of the first lessons one learns in the agenting profession is how to translate an editor's promises about time. "I'll read it overnight" too often means, "I'll get around to it in a week." "I'll read it in a week" means, "I'll be back to you in a month." And "I'll read it in a month" may well mean that the manuscript is lost.
In order to reasonably hold editors to their promised schedules, agents use the elegant phraseology of coercion. "As I'm loath to keep manuscripts out of circulation," I might write, "may I trouble you for a decision?" If this fails to yield a reply, I might escalate to something more pointed, like, "My client is getting restless," or, "I'm under some pressure to determine where we stand."
Sometimes a humorous approach is in order. I'm a great believer in the power of teasing to accomplish that which solemnity cannot, and I'm not above a little sarcasm under the appropriate circumstances: "When I submitted that manuscript to you, the oceans were two inches lower."
If an editor has sat on a submission for an unconscionably long time, I will invariably get a phone call from my client saying, "You tell that sonofabitch that if we don't have a decision by Friday, I'm personally gonna come down there and rearrange his prefrontal lobes with an ax haft! " Justified though that ultimatum may be, it is couched in language this is terminally infelicitous. By the time I'm through modifying it, it may sound something closer to this: "As you don't seem able to make up your mind, suppose we say that if I haven't heard from you by Friday, I'll put another copy of the manuscript into play elsewhere, and you may take as much time thereafter as you wish." And sometimes I'll put a finer point on my message with this veiled warning: "Do let me know when your work load is down to a more reasonable size so that our agency can resume submitting books to you."
I'm certain that you must be saying to yourself, "How is an editor going to get these messages if the agent pussyfoots around that way?" The answer is, editors get these messages loudly and clearly, for unless one is incredibly dense, he pr she will have little doubt that a knife has been placed against the throat.
Another common problem for agents is, of course, overdue checks. Authors are remarkably articulate when it comes to expressing the discomforts of financial deprivation and to depicting the character and ancestry of those who conspire to keep them in that condition. Unfortunately, most editors would go through the roof if exposed to the authors' invective. Enter the honey-tongued agent, and though that agent might love nothing better than to say, "Pay up or we'll vaporize you," it's more likely he or she will say something a bit more subdued. Perhaps a subtle form of extortion: "It would be to your advantage to remit payment promptly so as to avoid scheduling delays," In plain English, this informs the editor that unless his company ponies up the dough, the agent isn't going to deliver certain manuscripts that the publisher desperately needs to put into production. Because a late manuscript can wreck a production schedule at fearful cost to a publisher, the wise editor will undoubtedly give the check-processing machinery an extra-hard spin when he or she gets a message like that from an agent.
I can think of lots of other ways that agents refine the harsh language of their clients without sacrificing effectiveness. For instance, though we may be thinking, "My client just turned in a real turkey," what we are telling an editor is that, "My client thought you might like to see a first draft of his book before he starts polishing it."
Or, "My client is going to sue you into Rice Krispie-sized pieces" becomes, "My client is contemplating contacting his attorney, at which point the matter will be out of my control." Or, "My client thinks your editor is so incompetent, he couldn't spell "cat" if you spotted him the C and the T!" becomes, "I'm not certain that the author's and editor's views about the book are entirely compatible."
* "My client is so upset he's taking big bites out of his living room sofa" translates into, "My client is finding it hard to understand why . . ."
* "You'll use that cover on my client's book over his dead body!" may be altered to, "My client is pretty determined."
* Here's a brief glossary of other agently euphemisms commonly employed when tempers start to overheat:
* You: "I'm thoroughly disgusted with those people." Agent: "My client is somewhat disenchanted."
* You: "If I had that editor's throat in my hands . . ." Agent: "I'm not sure my client is completely comfortable working with you."
* You: "They're lying and cheating." Agent: "My client feels he may have detected some discrepancies.
* "You: "What a crummy deal?" Agent: "Some of the terms leave something to be desired."
* You: "I wouldn't sell another book to that butcher if he were the last editor on earth." Agent: "Let's have lunch."
The transmutation of hurtful language works the other way around, too, so that when we have to tell a client that his publishers hate his book so much they want to manure a cornfield with it, we may say something like, "It didn't live up to their expectations," or, "They found it lacking in certain respects." Or an editor's remark to the effect that a certain author couldn't write his way out of a trash can liner becomes, "They don't feel you've reached your potential quite yet." Here are a few others.
*Editor: "This material is simply lousy." Agent: "Your editor is disappointed."
* Editor: "What language is your client writing in, anyway?" Agent: "Your editor pointed out some obscure passages."
* Editor: "Your client is the rudest person I've ever had the misfortune to work with." Agent: "Your editor seems to have overreacted to what he perceives as a slight."
* Editor: "Is your client crazy, or what?" Agent: "I'm not sure your editor appreciates your sense of humor."
Of course, not all agents approach matters as delicately as this. Some of us are in fact quite plainspoken, and even the most tactful among us realizes that there are unavoidable occasions when we must unsheath a steel fist from the velvet glove. Still, it is gratifying to know that at least when it comes to the language one may still find reminders of the time when publishing was a profession for civilized ladies and gentlemen.
Among the few special interest groups not petitioning the government for a bailout these days are writers. Paul Greenberg, in the New York Sunday Times Book Review, speculates on what such a rescue package would look like. The bulge of his tongue in cheek is apparent, but underlying his geniality is an important reminder that although the official (according to National Endowment for the Arts) ranks of professional writers are modest at 185,000, their combined voice represents a significant influence on American culture and needs to be heard.
Unlike the crybabies in the financial and automotive sectors of our economy pleading with Congress to compensate them for their own greed and stupidity, writers are a proud and independent lot, and though they're not above pocketing the occasional windfall - an unexpected movie option or foreign sale - I don't know of many who would go hat in hand to their legislature to lobby for a bailout just because their agent can't find a publisher for their latest novel.
No, writers don't want a bailout. What writers want is work, and Greenberg reminds us that in 1935 at the height of the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt acknowledged the value of their profession by creating the Federal Writers' Project. Over 6,500 writers were put to work writing guidebooks, local and regional histories, photographic essays, oral memoirs and the like. (A film about this era, Soul of a People, is currently in development.) "The most well-known of these publications," Wikipedia tells us, "were the 48 state guides to America (plus Alaska Territory, Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C.) known as the American Guide Series."
President Elect Obama has established, at the heart of his economic recovery program, a plan to rebuild our nation's long-neglected infrastructure of rutted roads, crumbling dams, rusting bridges and leaking sewers. A student of American history and in particular of President Roosevelt's New Deal, Obama sees parallels between Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration and Obama's own determination to put Americans back to work on meaningful projects that will restore pride to its wounded citizens.
I'm relatively certain that the crumbling infrastructure of the publishing business will not be found on the list of federal projects requiring urgent attention. But as our community of writers, journalists and poets surveys the landscape, we see newspaper, magazine and book publishers on a precipitously downward slope. Some of their decline is self-inflicted, through failure to envision, understand, and take advantage of the revolutionary power of digital delivery of information. And some of it is their unavoidable blindsiding by market and technological forces. But whether writers are witting or unwitting victims of upheaval, we find our profession upheaved, and we lift our eyes to our new leader for help.
Luckily for us, our new leader is a writer (and a damned good one, too). He's one of us. So, perhaps, as he and his cultured and literate brain-trust set out to repair America's physical plant, they will recognize that there's a lot of writing to be done to support and celebrate our nation's reconstruction and to give it a voice and intellectual underpinning. We'll need artists, too, and musicians, just as we did when President Roosevelt launched his program to haul his country's citizens up by their own bootstraps.
President Obama, when you open up those envelopes from your publishers and shake out the handsome royalty checks rewarding you for your inspiring words, remember your fellow writers. They are a priceless resource. Put them to work. They will cost a fraction of what the government is paying to bail out banks and insurance companies and automobile manufacturers (the secret is out - writers will do it for love), and they will reward you and the American people a thousandfold.
As the publishing industry reels the day after announcements of layoffs by major publishers, you can expect lots of ink to be spilled about the underlying reasons. I doubt if they will drill down to what's really at the heart of these upheavals.
I'm going to ask you to read my comments twice. When you get to the end you'll understand why.
Richard Curtis ******************** The American trade book industry is undergoing the most serious recession in its history, and though it has rebounded from other down cycles in the past, anyone who thinks it will return to boom times is living in a fool's paradise.
Trade book publishing has been in decline since the end of World War II. Industry boosters cite increased sales volume over that period to support the view that all is well, but much of the growth can be attributed to normal population increases and inflation. For the real story, one has but to look at the long roll call of publishers that have been forced to sell themselves to conglomerates, merge with larger publishing houses, or go out of business entirely. I am not speaking about mom-and-pop publishers operating on a shoestring; I'm referring to giants like Simon and Schuster, Doubleday, Bantam, Putnam, Macmillan, Scribner, Penguin, St. Martin's Press, and Harper and Row. Today, we are left with only seven or eight major trade book combines. Presumably, in this publisher-eat-publisher jungle, these survivors are the fittest. But are they any healthier than the weaklings they acquired?
From the viewpoint of literary agents, whose jobs include monitoring the fiscal well-being of publishers, the answer is a resounding no. Most of the agents I have spoken to confirm my observation: The current economic downturn has revealed that just about every major American publisher is hurting. And what they're hurting for is cash.
There's not enough cash in publishing. There never has been, and there never will be. Why? Because the consignment system of selling books is bleeding the publishing industry to death. Try as they might, the smartest people in our field have failed to find a way to make money under an arrangement that makes books returnable to publishers.
Publishing is one of the few industries that sell merchandise on a fully returnable basis. The custom was initiated to overcome booksellers' wariness toward the work of authors who were unfamiliar to them. If the customers didn't buy those books, booksellers had the right to return the merchandise for credit. The practice was eventually extended to all books, whether by new authors or old, and it really took off with the paperback revolution. Paperback publishers discovered that the easiest way to ship their books was through magazine distributors. As most periodicals are monthly, the distributors simply collected unsold books along with unsold magazines at the end of every month.
Perhaps this setup worked a decade or two ago when returns were more modest, but with returns of 50 percent or more as the norm today, it is virtually impossible for a publisher to earn profits in trade books, or at least earn them on a sustained basis. Despite decades of ruinous experience, it still doesn't seem to have sunk into the minds of many publishers that returns are a form of currency. Like any other kind of currency, returns can be manipulated. All bookstore people understand this concept perfectly: When times get tough, stores that don't have cash "spend" their returns, buying new titles with credits on books that aren't moving fast enough in order to keep cash flowing. Publishers, like anybody else, can only live so long on credit—then they start to bleed.
Large houses can afford to hemorrhage longer than small ones because they seem to have more cash. But that's only an illusion: their losses are obscured on the balance sheets of their conglomerate owners. How long will those owners be willing to go on infusing their ailing publishing divisions with cash? As a rule, sick companies get dumped by healthy ones, and in a recession, sick companies get dumped faster. What never fails to amaze me, though, is why anyone would want to buy into an industry founded on such lousy economics. Though statistics are hard to come by because accountants for conglomerates don't always separate the profits of their publishing divisions from those of their other divisions, the average return on investment in trade books seems to be 2 or 3 percent.
I have spent years advocating the abandonment of the consignment system. For one thing, it is a horrifying waste of paper and other resources. For another, it has forced all of us into negative, defensive, and ofttimes bizarre ways of speaking and thinking about books. Nobody talks about how many copies of a book were sold, but rather how many did not get returned. Royalty statements are designed to deceive by the omission of critical information. Returns data are buried in a column called "Cumulative Net Sales," and the concept of holding back royalties against returns is so inflammatory to authors that publishers have built their royalty statements around hiding that information.
Worst of all, the consignment system is the principal cause of hostility between bookstore and publisher, and between publisher and author. Publishers condemn bookstores and chains for their profligate ordering. But why should bookstores restrain themselves? They have, after all, nothing to lose, as they can always invoke the privilege of sending back what they can't sell. To meet the demand of these bloated orders, publishers have no choice but to overprint. Then, when the books fail to move out of the stores, the publishers are compelled to eat huge returns. The only people who prosper from this insane process are the remainder jobbers or the shady characters who illegally sell stripped paperbacks. In their frenzy to keep stores from returning books, publishers are compelled to offer incentives, politely referred to as "slotting allowances," "display fees," and "co-op contributions,'' that border on institutionalized bribery.
Most of the resentment or suspicion that authors and agents feel toward publishers stems from royalty accounting based on returns. Authors, outraged that creative bookkeeping permits publishers to hold excessive royalties in the name of reserves against returns, consider the system fraudulent. Their viewpoint is easy to understand when you remember that returns are a manipulable form of currency. The temptation to manipulate them intensifies in recessionary or inflationary times when publishers seize upon royalty reserves as the most obvious source of cash to relieve their liquidity problems or earn some extra interest. Publishers cannot with impunity stop paying their printers, their landlords, their paper suppliers, or their employees. But by a stroke of the pen, raising the holdback on royalties from, say, 50 percent to 75 percent, a publisher can liberate enough cash to meet the urgent demands of all those other creditors - at the expense of authors. How, then, could authors, suffering liquidity problems of their own, not feel bitter? Nor is their mood improved to see their remaindered books, on which they receive little or no royalties, selling briskly in used-book stores.
Are there solutions to this dilemma? There are, but they all call for radical changes in the way we think about books, sell them, and account to each other for them. For any plan to succeed, it must: (1) allow publishers to print only as many copies as are necessary to fill orders, (2) put distribution on a nonreturnable basis, (3) enable publishers to make a profit, (4) encourage bookshops and chain stores to make money remaindering books on their own premises, and (5) provide authors with honest, easy-to-understand accounting. That's a tall order. Some gratifying attempts have been essayed, but they all failed because they were not radical enough, nor were they adopted on an industry-wide basis.
As a student of publishing history, I'm aware of all the "death-of-publishing" prophecies that have proven false in our time. But I don't think I'm risking much by stating that the publishing industry cannot endure much longer the way it is being run. The need to change our ways is particularly acute in light of revolutionary developments in electronic publishing.
In the coming era of "demand" publishing, we will see direct electronic delivery of text to reader-users without dependence on distributors, or even on paper. The technology for producing portable electronic books containing or accessing whole libraries is now at hand. By the start of the twenty-first century, thanks to computers, Nintendos, and Gameboys, a generation of children completely at ease with electronically delivered literature will make handheld electronic books the device of choice for reading. The awesome memory capacity of CDs, storing scores of volumes on miniature discs, may make bookstores and libraries obsolete. Thanks to the multimedia and interactive features of the new breed of computers, tomorrow's electronic books will entertain readers with audio and video displays that will make traditional books look as crude as cuneiform writing on stone tablets. Gone will be the disgustingly wasteful system of merchandising books, along with the creative bookkeeping that permits publishers to hold authors' money for years. Authors will be credited a royalty for each use of their property, and the purchase of books will be transacted by electronic debiting of consumers' charge accounts.
Until that day comes, we still have an industry to save.
******************************* The above essay was written around 1992, and it was drawn from a guest editorial I wrote for Publishers Weekly. If it sounds as if it could have been composed today instead of sixteen years ago, what conclusion can we draw except that publishers have not heeded the call to reform the unworkable business model that occasioned my editorial?
The difference between then and now, however, is Amazon.com, a company structured on a business model in which book purchases are prepaid and scarcely returnable at all (and when they're returned, Amazon makes money on used books as well). Amazon is the incarnation of all that I projected in 1992 and now it is crushing a system that has been cruising for a crushing for decades. Reread my essay again and ponder.
Most writers dream of leaving their day jobs (some have night jobs as well) and launching careers as full-time freelancers. In their eagerness to realize that goal, many of them quit as soon as they've made a few sales. This decision invariably turns out to be ill-advised if not catastrophic after the author discovers that he did not properly reckon the cost of independence, project the size and flow of earnings, or prepare himself psychologically. Even an author lucky enough to strike it rich on his first book should use the utmost restraint before quitting his job to become a writer. By the time he realizes he doesn't know what to write for an encore, he may have raised his lifestyle to an unsupportably high plateau.
The questions of whether and when writers should go full-time are among the most common and vexing that agents have to deal with, and if an agent ever had a notion to play God, here is his opportunity. The responsibility for this decision is awesome and demands ten times the prudence required to advise authors about such matters as selecting the right publisher for their books. The number of factors is large and their complexity intimidating. It's the kind of decision that should be reviewed with a great many people to collect as much input as possible.
An excellent idea is to make a list of pluses and minuses, what you stand to gain and what to lose. Often the right choice will jump out at you when you review this list. The secret is to make sure you have enumerated all the factors. Then you must be brutally honest with yourself. You do not want to subject yourself and your family to needless suffering because you erred on the side of wishful thinking when you drew up your scenario.
My first rule of thumb is to determine whether you have enough work lined up under contract to guarantee employment for one to two years; that probably means you have reached a level of skill and reliability your publisher can count on. I seldom permit an author to include in his expectations income that is not absolutely guaranteed—royalties, foreign rights sales, movie deals, and the like—unless there is a solid history of such windfalls in his track record. If you've never sold British rights to your previous books, if you only hope your next book will earn royalties, if your father-in-law thinks your book is a natural for the movies, I toss these items out of the equation, because they are only fodder for self-delusion and disappointment.
I do, however, include in the equation the renewal of current contracts after you have fulfilled them, particularly if you are a genre writer. If you have a three-book contract in an ongoing series, I tend to consider it a likelihood that you'll be given another contract at the expiration of this one. If you're an established mainstream writer with three or four books under your belt and a potful of good ideas for new ones, I'm disposed to take for granted that you'll land a new contract when you complete your present book.
The renewal of contracts means money payable on signature of those agreements, so that when you look down the road for money to be earned after fulfillment of your present commitments, you should be able to count on income from new deals. It is also reasonable to figure that you'll get more money per book than you're getting now, because it's likely the publisher will feel you're a better writer and there'll be more of a sales record to justify raises. There is also a tendency among publishers to give raises to their regular writers if for no other reasons than inflation, longevity, loyalty, faith in the future, and humane motivations. You have to ask for these raises, but there's a good chance that if you don't push it too hard, your publisher will give you a little more the next time around just because you're a nice person.
Another important factor I weigh when discussing with authors the decision to go full-time is increased productivity.
At present, because you're only able to devote an hour or two to your writing in the evenings, and maybe twice that much on the weekends, you are not capable of turning out more than two books, say, per year. But if you launch a full-time writing career, you may be able to double or triple your annual output, meaning double or triple the revenue. There is also, I've observed, a tendency for writers to improve the quality of their work after they become full-timers, because they're exercising their skills to a greater degree, and (domestic distractions notwithstanding) their concentration increases. And if you do become a better, faster writer, the prospects for raises in pay from your publishers become even better. The process, in due time, becomes self-perpetuating.
Having painted the future in broad, and slightly rose-tinted, strokes, it's time to focus on the hard realities of budgeting your money after you make The Big Move. Get out that legal pad and set up two columns, Income and Expenditures. So far, so good. Unfortunately, that's about the only straightforward thing about setting up a budget, because when you start to analyze each item, you quickly see that simple concepts and definitions are elusive.
When you work for "the man," you most likely receive a regular paycheck from which certain mandatory deductions are withheld. Among these are federal and state income taxes, sometimes municipal ones as well. Social security contributions are also compulsory. Then there may also be deductions for disability insurance, worker's compensation, medical insurance, union dues, stock option purchases, pension contributions, and donations to the boss's pet charity. Your net take-home income has been 20, 40, even 50 percent or more of your gross salary.
When you become a full-time writer, however, you suddenly find yourself in the position of "taking home" a "paycheck" from which nothing (except commissions, if you have an agent) has been deducted. At first glance that's great. At second and third glances, you realize that the heavy burden of responsibility for many of those obligations, formerly taken care of by your boss, now rests on your own shoulders. You will have to set aside enough money to pay income taxes, social security, and other taxes such as unincorporated business taxes, occupancy taxes on your business property (your office, that is); medical and/or disability insurance premiums; pension contributions (you may now qualify for a Keogh Plan savings account); and whatever other "benefits" you wish to continue enjoying as carryovers from your erstwhile job. So, the $50,000 per annum that you project taking home when you go full-time may translate into less than $25,000 of disposable income after you set aside all the obligations your employer used to pay on your behalf.
To your projections of income from your writing, add income from your spouse's job if any, investment dividends and savings interest, and other sources of guaranteed revenue such as teaching, lecturing, or consulting income. And you must not rule out your savings as a potential source of income. Because delays are more the rule than the exception in the publishing game, it is entirely possible that you will have to tap the principal in your savings account or liquidate a long-term investment in order to tide yourself over between checks.
Because many major expenses are payable quarterly (such as estimated federal taxes), semiannually, or even annually, you might consider opening a savings account for those obligations only. You can then earn a little interest on the money you have set aside to pay those bills. Needless to say, you must never invest that money in speculative ventures.
When you try to tote up the "expenditures" side of your projections, you once again discover that nothing is as simple as it seemed to be when your boss took care of things. You will immediately see how costly medical insurance is, particularly when you are no longer participating in a group health care plan. The social security rate for self-employed people is higher than for those in "respectable" jobs (writing has not been a respectable job for twenty-five years).
And then there are those "bennies" and perks you took for granted when you worked for that company. If you had an expense account, you will now have to absorb that portion of the benefit that was formerly spent on yourself, in particular travel and entertainment. No longer can you charge the firm for your spouse's meal when you take clients or customers to dinner; no longer can you bill your boss for mileage incurred on that side visit to Disneyland during your business trip to Los Angeles. And because current tax law permits you to deduct only a percentage of legitimate entertainment expenses, you've also lost that part that your company absorbed in tax on the nondeductible part. Say good-bye to the free use of the postage machine when you mailed off your personal bills; to the telephone from which you called your publisher, your agent, your kid in college, your mother in Florida; to the photocopying machine on which you ran off copies of your manuscript after everyone had gone home; and to the office word processor, computer, coffee maker. Say good-bye to the paid vacation. You want a vacation, you now can take fifty-two weeks a year if you want, only you have to pay for them out of your own pocket. Say good-bye to sick days on salary. Say good-bye to the company car and the company jet and the company dining room. Buy your own car and jet and dining room.
I am not saying there aren't also many hidden benefits to leaving our job for a full-time writing career. But somehow, the savings on carfare or on the expensive wardrobe you're trading in for the freelancer's uniform of jeans and T-shirts don't seem to balance the hidden costs. And not everybody fervently believes that getting to see more of one's spouse or kids is a hidden benefit.
The biggest challenge to the newly independent is the large lump-sum payments due with unforgiving regularity throughout the year. Among these, as I've said, are quarterly estimated federal income and social security taxes, but there are also state and local taxes and estimates and medical insurance premiums. This is not to mention those other lump sums you have to pay whether you are self-employed or not, such as automobile and home insurance, private school or college tuition, summer camp fees, repair contracts on major appliances, and the like. And these all have a way of going up. Add to them the cost of occasional but inevitable contingencies, the kind that always seem to rear their heads hours after your warranties expire and moments after you have served notice to your boss of your intention to leave his employ; washing machines giving up the ghost, television picture tubes burning out, automobile engines seizing, wisdom teeth impacting.
Aside from being fiscally unprepared to deal with these aggravations, you may not be emotionally able to cope with them. This is by far the graver problem, for while you can often juggle your accounts or hustle up some money to cover short-term deficits, it is much, much harder to find the psychological resources for dealing with that condition of perpetual anxiety about money that is the lot of most freelance people.
The truth is that not everybody is constitutionally cut out to work for him- or herself. There are those who are incapable of preparing a budget or of staying within its rigid boundaries. There are those who cannot handle the loneliness of freelancing and the loss of the social support that comes from working with others. There are those who lack self-discipline, those who, after years of punching in and out at a time clock, reporting to a boss or supervisor, adhering to rules and regulations and work orders, are at a loss to structure their own time. There are those who cannot set short- and long-term goals or keep to them. There are those who cannot live with the distractions of full-time domesticity. There are those who go to pieces at the prospect of drawing on their savings or selling off an investment to cover an unexpected expense. There are those who indulge their newfound freedom by tackling that Great American Novel they've always dreamed of, instead of doing the commercial projects that have to be done to keep their finances on a steady course.
Having tried the freelance life for several years in my twenties, I can testify to having flunked most of the above tests. Though I did produce a goodly number of books during that period, and earned a decent living, I found the loneliness and isolation very hard to bear, and the budgeting of money impossible. I had some savings salted away, but having been raised to think of drawing money out of savings as tantamount to filing for bankruptcy, I suffered woefully. Every month, when the time came to pay my bills, I developed all sorts of neurasthenic symptoms ranging from vapors to hysterical pregnancy. So, be as candid with yourself as you can be when you contemplate making this critical career decision, and ask your spouse, your best friend, your accountant, your attorney, your shrink, and your agent to be so, too. If they vote yes, then all you'll need is a laptop, a pair of jeans, and a few T-shirts, and you're in business.
Oh yes—don't forget $100,000 worth of book contracts!
If you do something so horrendous as to provoke your agent to declare, "Life is too short," you'd better start looking for someone else to handle your work. It means you have tried his or her patience beyond its limit. You're a walking dead author.
