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Veterans of Publishing Campaigns Speak, and a Good Listener Records
Jofie Ferrari-Adler, an editor with Grove Atlantic Publishers, has taken it upon himself to conduct, for Poets & Writers, a series of lengthy Q&A's with distinguished editors and literary agents whose careers exemplify values and virtues that are rapidly fading from the daily discourse of the publishing business. It is absolutely incumbent on every member of our community 40 years old or younger to listen to their voices and imbibe their experiences so that you can understand what publishing was like when men and women of charm, taste and integrity walked the earth.
Ferrari-Adler's most recent interview is with literary agent Georges Borchardt, who has represented and in some cases discovered such towering figures as Marguerite Duras, Eugène Ionesco, Jean-Paul Sartre, Michel Foucault, Samuel Beckett, Elie Wiesel, John Gardner, Charles Johnson, and even General de Gaulle.
A brief excerpt or two...
J F-A: Let's talk a little about the industry. You've been in it for several decades, over the course of which it's changed a lot, or at least that's what people seem to say. What's your take on that?
GB: It has changed. Mainly it's the shift from individual ownership to corporate ownership. The individuals who owned the firms were, for the most part, the sons of millionaires. They didn't need to take money out of the firm. They lived well before, they lived well during, and they had something very valuable afterward. Knopf became very valuable. Farrar, Straus became very valuable. So the heirs, I suppose, got a good amount of money. But the purpose [of founding those firms] wasn't really to make money. The purpose was the excitement of publishing. It's totally different now. Not so much at Grove/Atlantic or Norton—those are two firms for which what I'm saying doesn't apply—except that they are competing against these giants. So if Grove/Atlantic has a book that becomes a major best-seller, it can't hold on to the author, even if the author has made lots of protestations about how he will never leave the firm because he's in love with all the people who work there. Either he, or his agent, or both, will decide that rather than taking a million from little Grove/Atlantic, they're better off taking six million from somebody bigger. So they are affected by it too. The corporate thing has sort of poisoned the whole industry.
J F-A: What has that meant for writers?
GB: It's mainly meant that they've become products. And that their main relationship is more with their literary agent. In a way it has worked well for the agents. Their main relationship is much more seldom with the editor because the editor's position is very precarious. You've already changed jobs like four times. That was most unusual when I started in publishing. If you were an editor at Knopf, you stayed an editor at Knopf. There are still editors at Knopf who have been there forever: Judith Jones; Ash Green, who just retired; Bill Koshland, who was not an editor but more the business person. When Bill was chairman emeritus, well after Alfred had died and Bob Gottlieb had taken over, he would still take all the royalty statements home and look at them to be sure they were right. Now there's no one on the editorial side of a publishing house who even sees the royalty statements. They have no idea what's on them. They have no idea whether the reserve for returns is outrageous or justified. The person who decides on the reserve doesn't know either. The whole climate has changed.
When did book clubs become book clubs? That is, how did the book industry evolve from a business model defined by commercial reprinters like Book of the Month Club and The Literary Guild, to one heavily dependent on groups of book-loving - and book-buying - amateurs?
At whatever point we crossed the line from definition #1 to definition #2, the reading circle has become a driving force in book marketing, and the author who knows how to work the clubs has become a formidable promotional machine.
"The focus on book clubs has spurred the evolution of a new breed: the author-hustler, the writer who succeeds in large part because of door-to-door salesmanship," says Mickey Pearlman, a "professional book club facilitator" as Francesca Mari, blogging in The Daily Beast, describes him. In The Book-Club Hustlers Mari details Pearlman's very professional approach to what most of us thing of as an informal and loosely organized activity.
Pearlman offers four-hour book-marketing seminars (for $500), focusing on "how to creatively market your book on the Web and in other outlets"—one of those outlets being, of course, book groups. "You’re building an interest in you," Pearlman says, “so they’ll be very likely to buy your next book."
Mari cites the activity of a typical self-promoter, Joshua Henkin, who has made the rounds of more than 175 groups. “With 10 people in each group, that’s 1,750 books sold right there.” Another, Adriana Trigiani, works the clubs by phone, as does Chris Bohjalian. Laura Dave even does hers via Skype.
You can't fault authors for wanting to hustle their goods. But you might get a little squeamish to think that authors and publishers may deliberately be shaping books to appeal to book clubs. Mari reports how one author, Robert Alexander, hired an editor after his novel had been turned down fifteen times.
She told him to shoot for a book-club 'gem', to cut the manuscript from 460 pages to 250 and hone in on the historical fiction. Alexander did and got three offers in eight days. His Viking and Penguin contracts, he says, even state that his books should be around 250 pages.The Kitchen Boy is now in its 22nd printing, and was optioned to be made into a movie by Glen Williamson, the man behind American Beauty and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Publishing Glass Half Empty, Half Full? Third Possibility: No Glass At All?
Douglas Rushkoff is author of Life Inc: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back and he's written a feel-good "Soapbox" guest editorial for Publishers Weekly telling us "why scaling down is good for publishing." I'm not sure the fired, laid-off, and otherwise redundanted victims of last winter's Wednesday of the Long Knives would characterize themselves as joyous forerunners of an upswing in the fortunes of our industry; nor do Rushkoff's opening comments evoke buoyant optimism: "Borders is verging on bankruptcy; Barnes & Noble is closing stores; and major media conglomerates are closing imprints and ejecting talent faster than they gobbled it up in the 1990s."
And how about this passage for making sure we know how dark it has become before the dawn:
Over the past year, we've watched venerable imprints fold into one another and great talent be almost randomly ejected. Knopf's revered name is now subject to the corporate-speak of “Knopf-Doubleday.” HarperCollins created Collins, then crossed it off the spreadsheet, in the process booting Brenda Bowen's children's imprint; one of the most talented publicists in the industry, Larry Hughes; and the brilliant Gillian Blake, whom they had just snatched from Bloomsbury. Doubleday closed Morgan Road and lost an irreplaceable asset: one-woman publishing-powerhouse Amy Hertz.
But if we forcibly restrain cynicism we'll come to his thesis: "While this makes for some bleak headlines in the short term, it bodes well for the future of a publishing industry that operates on a scale more appropriate to the medium we're all creating and selling."
We'll grant him this one: "Publishing is a sustainable industry—and a great one at that. The book business, however, was never a good fit for today's corporate behemoths. The corporations that went on spending sprees in the 1980s and '90s were not truly interested in the art of publishing."
Whether Rushkoff makes the case that the meltdown of the trade book publishing industry is a forerunner of the Age of Aquarius we'll leave to readers of his editorial, We'll Be Back. But some may take exception to his conclusion: "Now that publishing has revealed itself to be a bad growth industry, it is free to rebuild itself as the vibrant, scaled and sustainable business the reading public can support." Even Dr. Pangloss might shrink from such soaring wishful thinking.
All sneering aside, we join the editorialist in hoping that tomorrow will truly be a better day for our poor battered industry.
Where were they when, year after year and decade after decade, a treasure house of literary works was abandoned? Along comes Google with a plan to recover those treasures from the trash heap and now those who abandoned them have become passionate bibliophiles. Or have they just become jealous that someone figured out how to make a profit on properties in which they had no interest?
From where I sit it's not about books, it's about money. In the course of rescuing countless works from the public domain and adding value to works that publishers, agents and authors deemed commercially valueless, Google figured out how to monetize those works. And now those selfsame parties want a piece of something they so recently turned their backs on. It reminds me of the oil producers who abandoned tracts because they couldn't get oil from shale. Then someone figured out how to get oil from shale and now the oil companies claim they've been duped.
Perhaps a better analogy is the story of the Little Red Hen. None of her friends - the cat, the duck, the rat - offered to help her to sow the seeds, water the plants, till the soil, pull the weeds, harvest the wheat, thresh the grain, grind the flour or bake the bread. But when the bread was baked, all her friends wanted a piece.
The Little Red Hen said to them, "You shall have no bread." And the moral of this classic childrens tale is that she had every right to say it to them.
So - why do I smell a cat, a duck, and a rat?
Though Google has sown the seeds, watered the plants, tilled the soil, pulled the weeds, harvested the wheat, threshed the grain, ground the flour and baked the bread, it has, after a concerted effort by responsible author and publisher organizations, worked with our community to make sure that everybody gets a piece of bread. But that doesn't seem to be enough for some who have conveniently forgotten who did all the work, invested all the money, developed the technology, and embarked on a stupendous effort to identify the priceless treasures of civilization's literary heritage and see to it that they will never be lost.
Google also did it to make a profit. And for that they are under attack. Forgive me for wondering about the profit motives of these knights who belatedly ride into our midst with flags of righteous indignation unfurled.
Richard Curtis
Cover of The Little Red Hen, Usborne First Reading series,
How Lucky We Are That The Book Business Is Not Like The Movie Business!
Is the book business beginning to feel like the movie business? An article by the New York Times's Michael Cieply might reinforce the similarities.
Cieply reports that, unlike filmmakers like Steven Soderbergh and Quentin Tarantino who landed huge studio deals at the Sundance Film Festival, today's aspiring young movie makers have got to finance everything, investing in themselves on the speculation that lightning will strike in the form of financing and distribution by a major studio. As more and more authors throw in the towel in despair of landing a book deal with a big publisher, they are publishing their own books and underwriting every step from editorial to publicity.
Are there other ways to compare Cieply's description of the film industry with the current state of publishing? Let us count them, and to help you, I've taken the liberty of extracting some of Cieply's descriptions and substituting language that might reinforce the idea that New York is a lot closer to L. A. than a five hour flight on the red-eye.
The glory days of independent film [first novels], when hot young directors [authors] like Steven Soderbergh and Mr. Tarantino had studio [publishing] executives tangled in fierce bidding wars at Sundance [Book Expo, Frankfurt] and other celebrity-studded festivals, are now barely a speck in the rearview mirror. And something new, something much odder, has taken their place.
Here is how it used to work: aspiring filmmakers [authors] playing the cool auteur [literary lion] in hopes of attracting the eye of a Hollywood power broker [major New York literary agent].
Here is the new way: filmmakers [authors] doing it themselves — paying for their own distribution [self-publication], marketing films [books] through social networking sites and Twitter blasts [social networking sites and Twitter blasts], putting their work up free on the Web to build a reputation, cozying up to concierges [maitre d's] at luxury hotels [chic publishing watering spots] in film festival cities [New York] to get them to whisper into the right ears.
The economic slowdown and tight credit have squeezed the entertainment [book] industry along with everybody else, resulting in significantly fewer big-studio [Big Publishing] films [bestsellers] in the pipeline and an even tougher road for smaller-budget independent [midlist books]. Independent distribution [Independent publishing] companies are much less likely to pull out the checkbook while many of the big studios [publishing houses] have all but gotten out of the indie film [midlist book] business.
Had enough? Oh, come on, how about one more for the road! This time, you fill in the right words:
“Everyone still dreams there’s going to be a conventional sale to a major studio,” said Kevin Iwashina, once an independent-film specialist with the Creative Artists Agency and now a partner at IP Advisors, a film sales and finance consulting company. But, he said, smart producers and directors are figuring out how to tap the value in projects on their own.
Richard Curtis Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by the New York Times.
Anyone who has lived through enough business cycles can predict that whenever there's a downturn in the economy book publishers are going to attempt to cancel contracts on overdue books. You can also bet they're going to step up pressure on authors of overdue books to repay advances issued when they signed contracts. Given the double plunge of the national economy and the trade book business, a story by Leon Neyfakh in the New York Observer, Note to Authors: Make Your Deadlines!, comes as no surprise. "Many literary agents are growing increasingly worried that publishers looking to trim their lists will start holding authors to deadlines and using lateness as an occasion to renegotiate advances and, in some cases, terminate contracts altogether," writes Neyfakh. Authors and agents will ignore Neyfakh's cautionary article at their peril: it is absolutely true that late authors are vulnerable to cancellations and demands for refunds. Though arbitrary or vindictive terminations are rare, a breach of deadline removes an author's most important legal defense against having a late book chopped arbitrarily. And though wholesale cancellations are equally rare, Neyfakh reminds us that the waters are still roiling from HarperCollins's termination of as many as 100 contracts for tardy books back in 1997. Another reason why authors must either deliver their books on time or work out deadline extensions with their editors - and get them in writing.
If you haven't taken these measures, don't despair. There's plenty you can do to defend yourself. This may be a good example of the saying that the best defense is a good offense. A little attitude might make publishers think twice before pulling the plug on the book you've worked on for years - for more years than you contract granted you.
The first thing you need to do remind yourself is that lateness is the medium in which the publishing process is bathed, and publishers are as guilty as authors are. "We breathe late manuscripts and eat late checks and drink late contracts," I observed on one of those occasions that publishers rattled their sabers about coming after delinquent authors.
However dearly publishers would like to turn authors into automatons, the fact is that they are artists, and artists just don't live in the same time zone as the suits who expect their publishing companies to generate the predictable cash flow generated by the pantyhose or shoe store divisions of their global conglomerates. It also behooves publishers to remember that professional authors are proud and conscientious people who would rather take a little extra time to get the work right than to turn in crap on deadline. Nor should it be forgotten that authors are as much motivated by self-interest as publishers are: writers don’t get paid until they deliver their manuscripts. So, publishers can rattle sabers all they want: their book will be turned in when it’s turned in, and if that means a day or week or even a month or longer past deadline, they’ll simply have to grin and bear it.
Whatever the suits might expect, most editors understand that late books are more the rule than the exception, and these men and women are patient, tolerant, resigned and (most of the time) good natured about it. They realize that writers are creative people possessed of a somewhat atrophied internal clock. Writers also have lives to live, and stuff happens to them - the same stuff that happens to editors, except that editors collect their paychecks every week when stuff happens, and authors don't.
For most editors most of the time, a late book isn't the end of the world. Editors are resourceful; a book that falls out of the spring list will, with some muttering and scrambling, be replaced by another. Sure, there’ll be some awkward patches in their catalogs - "Postponed", "Delayed", etc., and some budget considerations will have to be reconfigured - but, short of a late James Patterson or Stephenie Meyer on whose shoulders a year's profit projections rest, few postponements make a dent in a publisher’s bottom line.
Lateness, then, is an understandable and forgivable quality in authors. In publishers, however, it is less excusable. The internal clocks of publishing companies are precisely calibrated – until it comes to paying money to authors. For most trade book houses, the time between the handshake and the arrival of a contract takes several months, as does the time from execution of that contract to the arrival of the advance due on signing. During which time the author is expected to be working in good faith on the manuscript.
Because the editorial departments of publishing companies are usually separated from the accounting departments (they are often located in different states), editors are seldom aware that their author is hurting for money, at least not until some plaintive cry (or homicidal rant or suicide threat) from that author sends them into a frenzy of phone calls and emails to accelerate the check and "walk it through" the corporate precincts. That the author may have been forced to take on other work to boil the pot until the the publisher finally got around to paying up does not always register on editors and their superior officers.
Though delays in processing contracts and payments are the products of normally slow-moving corporate machinery, those delays are sometimes the result of deliberate policies designed to hold onto money as long as possible. And that is simply deplorable, especially these days when the interest to be earned on withheld funds is neglible. I have never known an author to be deliberately late with a book, but I have known many a publisher to be deliberately, or at least suspiciously, late with a check. I have a standing bet with publishers that an author can write a book faster than the publisher can issue a check. Not surprisingly, nobody has taken me up on it.
And so, when publishers start talking about penalizing authors for late manuscripts, I start talking about charging publishers interest for late checks, or withholding the manuscript one week for every week the check is delayed.
Publishing attorneys are scarcely fountainheads of empathy for the hardships of writers and sympathy for the excuses offered by dilatory authors. So, if you don’t think you’re going to make your deadline, negotiate a comfortable contractual extension. And if you’re worried that your publisher is going to pull the plug on your book, it’s a good idea to keep a record of when checks became due and when they were actually received. That way, you have some recourse to fight back or at least plead that your publisher had some responsibility for your delayed book.
Publishers have a great many weapons at their disposal to recoup money paid to authors who fail to deliver their books on time. Contractual language gives them a kind of lien on the sale of the book to another publisher, and it is therefore hard for an author to get away scot-free even if he or she should manage to find another home for the book. Publishers harass authors with demand letters even though everyone knows the authors have long ago spent the money and don't have it to repay. And, though no responsible agent will ever condone it, there is some anecdotal support for the likelihood that if an author strings a publisher out long enough, the demand letters will eventually cease and the matter will fall to the bottom of the publisher's to-do box. For, if the truth be known, publishers realize that it is simply bad public relations to sue an author.
Still, the times being what they are, publishers are much more disposed to give delinquent authors a hard time, and in this regard Neyfakh makes a revealing slip. "Like so many other practices associated with the 'gentleman’s business' that the book business used to be", he writes, "eating advances in the service of good humor has become a luxury most publishers do not indulge in as readily as they once did."
It was not called the gentleman's business, Mr. Neyfakh. It was called the gentleman's profession, and in this incorrect choice of words is all the difference between what publishing was and what publishing has become. But if it truly is a business, publishers need to be more businesslike and pay authors promptly. They might be pleasantly surprised to see the delinquency rate for manuscripts plummet.
Richard Curtis Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by the New York Observer.
Jofie Ferrari-Adler, an editor with Grove Atlantic Publishers, has taken it upon himself to conduct, for Poets & Writers, a series of lengthy Q&A's with distinguished editors and literary agents whose careers exemplify values and virtues that are rapidly fading from the daily discourse of the publishing business. It is absolutely incumbent on every member of our community 40 years old or younger to listen to their voices and imbibe their experiences so that you can understand what publishing was like when men and women of charm, taste and integrity walked the earth.
