More Banned Books Week

by Michael

As Jim pointed out earlier this week, it’s time to celebrate those books that others have tried to silence. I’m excited by the response that readers and authors have had to the situation with Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, and by the fact that the attention garnered by book-banning tends to help raise the profile of said book. While keeping a book out of a library or school is a terrible thing (especially an important and amazing book like Speak), I’m grateful that the ensuing controversy makes the book all the more prominent.

One of the bigger controversies of the past few months was the one surrounding Ellen Hopkins and the Humble, Texas Teen Lit Festival. When Ellen was “disinvited” from the festival, her fellow authors decided not to appear, and the festival was cancelled. It’s terrible for the teens who didn’t get to have the event. Representing teen authors, I’ve seen first-hand how important these authors are to the readers. I’ve seen more than one kid crying and thanking an author for what they’ve written, how their life has been changed for the better. It’s hard not to get emotional about the impact books can have. But it’s important to make a stand, and I hope the teens understood the difficult decision those authors made.

But, this post was really an excuse to link to Ellen’s fantastic Anti-Censorship “Manifesto,” which you can find here. It’s short, powerful, and well worth the read.

Congratulations, Jessica!

by DGLM

Our warm congratulations go out to Jessica on the birth of her son! As you might imagine, she’s got her hands a bit too full to be blogging, but you’ll see her back here soon!

Ironic…and not in the Alanis Morrissette way…

by Miriam

If you’re not from the New York area, you probably are not regularly delighted as we are by the screechy, often offensive and occasionally befuddling articles and opinions featured in the New York Post. Personally, I love the cringe-worthy, punny and sometimes genius headlines.

So, this article about Jonathan Lethem, Brooklyn writer, skipping town for California amused me in that “slow news day?” kind of way. The fact that Jeremy Olsham compares this footnote of an event to the Dodgers going Hollywood in 1958 is laughable (except perhaps not in the heightened emotional world of Rupert Murdoch’s rag).

Am I missing something or should I be devastated that Lethem is leaving the borough he mined for so much literary gold?

Advice from a published author

by Stacey

While reading today's AOL headlines, I came across this concise summary about getting published written by Lisa Johnson Mandell, a published nonfiction author. I don't think she says anything we haven't heard before, but it still bears repeating, and she does sum it up pretty nicely for the novice author. Plus she offers some direct advice from her reputable agent, which is valuable and right on target. The title of her piece is a bit misleading since she talks at the beginning about self-publishing a book, which she's right might be easier than you'd think, but the suggestion that going the more traditional agent and publisher route is easier than you think is a bit of a stretch. It's harder than ever in many ways with the market being so competitive, and finding an agent and publisher requires a lot of things to go write (a pun, not a typo). Enjoy!

The best page you've ever written (you hope)

by Stephanie

In the interest of adding to my formal list entitled Things I Think Are Genius, I submit the soon-to-be-launched website called page99test.com, as spotlighted in this piece from the Guardian. The website takes the recommendation once given by English novelist Ford Madox Ford that readers “open the book to page ninety-nine and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you” and puts it into practice. The development of page99test.com aims to examine this concept by challenging authors to submit the ninety-ninth page of their work for readers to assess.

The concept seems alternately fantastic and flawed. By the ninety-ninth page, most if not all of a book’s central characters and plot lines should be established. But at the same time, is one page enough of a snapshot to make the reader want to dive in, start to finish? It just might be that the ninety-ninth page of any given book happens to be the one page wherein absolutely nothing constructive occurs. Then what? Definitely something to ponder as your typing finally breaks on to page ninety-nine in Microsoft Word.

Better off dead?

by John

I was heartened to read Leila Sales’ piece in last week’s Publishers Weekly about the inordinate number of dead parents in children’s literature, for it’s a subject I used to bring up myself when talking to writers’ groups. My lame attempt at a laugh-line was always that if YA novels were the real world, no-one would become parents, because the chances of survival were minimal at best. Leila does a wonderful job of identifying why writers tend to kill off parents—lazy writing, instant sympathy, parents are dull—while also offering some practical solutions for how to keep the parents alive without making them major characters.

So, just to add my own two cents: if you’re a teen writer struggling with parent characters, instead of killing them off, get ‘em divorced. First, it’s more believable to kids who are typically aware of divorce issues they or their friends may have in their real lives. And second, divorce offers tons of deliciously messy plot possibilities, while death usually leads to the standard scenes of mourning, loss, regret—and a big yawn from readers.
However you handle parents, though, it’s worth putting in the effort to keep them alive not only for the health of your manuscript, but also for your success at the submission stage. For me, announcing in chapter one that dad’s in the ground almost always leads to the rejection pile, regardless of the rest of the story—it’s a pet peeve right up there with spunky, redheaded middle-grade heroines. But that’s another blog post….

Banned Books Week

by Jim

Two things I love: controversy and online quizzes. As we kick off annual Banned Books Week, the Guardian has a quiz on the subject. I confess, I only got 7 of 12 right.

But it’s the Independent which has far more interesting things to say about Banned Books Week. As they note, it’s pretty easy to laugh off people who think Harry Potter will make kids Satanists or that Judy Blume will destroy the moral fabric of a nation. Boyd Tonkin, though, digs a little deeper and presents a list of ten books that make the question of book banning a little trickier: Holocaust deniers, pedophiles, racists…should they ever be banned? Or, a different way to look at it: do they deserve to be published?

For me, the latter question is infinitely more difficult to answer. Because I’m solidly on the side that no books should be banned. At the same time, there are plenty of titles I would never represent. Take Richard Howard’s Did Six Million Really Die? He had every right to publish it, but I wouldn’t have touched it in a hazmat suit. I’m curious whether that would make me, in a manner of speaking, complicit in the “banning” of books. I’m not saying I wouldn’t represent an author I don’t agree with—there are just different levels of disagreement, you know?

Would love to know your thoughts on the issue. And whether folks think they’d be able to work with authors they thought were reprehensible in order to make money on their books.


P.S.  Just after writing this, I learned that my very own client Richelle Mead has had her entire Vampire Academy series banned at a junior high in Texas. The most striking thing about this is that the sixth book in the series, Last Sacrifice, isn’t even out yet. So it’s been banned…in the future. Magical.

The "curse" of the trade paperback

by Jane

Over the years, there has been a kind of stigma attached to a book if the publisher’s plan is to issue it originally as a trade paperback. In fact, this is something I have never understood.

Sure, the royalty rate to the author is lower if it is published as a trade paperback, but if the hardcover doesn’t sell—or sells a fraction of what the trade paperback will sell—the difference between the hardcover and the trade paperback royalty rate really doesn’t matter.

And then there is the thought that trade paperbacks aren’t reviewed to the same extent hardcovers are. While this was once true, I believe this is something that is beginning to change with the rise of book blogs and online publications. Last week there was a very interesting piece in the Wall Street Journal which addresses all of this.

Interestingly, I rarely think it important that we stipulate in a contract that a book be published initially in hardcover; and that is more true today than ever before. More and more, I am finding that when the hardcover doesn’t sell up to expectations, the publisher is choosing not to do a trade paperback at all—and that really limits the book’s sales and hurts the author’s reputation overall. So, I almost always let the publisher lead the way in terms of the format they will publish a book in and when I disagree with what they want to do, I present my arguments and hope they will be heard.

One example that we at Dystel & Goderich have seen of the success of the trade paperback format after good but not spectacular sales in hardcover is Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen, which is represented here by Michael Bourret. The trade paperback has been on the New York Times non-fiction trade paperback bestsellers list for 23 weeks and has sold over a quarter of a million copies. As a result of this, Rhoda’s next book will be far more successful in the hardcover format than this one was.

So, my advice to those authors who object to having their books initially published in trade paperback is to listen to their publisher’s reasons for doing this very carefully. Beginning in this format, which always means a lower cover price, will help increase sales and if the book is successful, the author’s name will be “out there” and a hardcover publication for subsequent books will become more likely.

Of course, I would love to hear your thoughts on this.

How to be rejected

by Rachel

Back in May, Jane asked you guys what your biggest query mistakes were, and many of you were quite eager to share your horror submission stories with us. Hopefully reading those horror stories gave you a bit of advice on how to improve your queries.

But, if you’re looking for advice on how to turn an acceptance into a rejection, look no further than the staff over at Writer’s Relief, whose sarcastic tips for failing (or, succeeding—in receiving rejection letters!) are published on the Huffington Post.

My favorite tip for rejection has got to be taking it personally. There’s nothing like an author who gets politely turned down and then seeks payback!

Going through this list, what have you been most guilty of?

Romance is not a dirty word

by Lauren

 

Oh, Danielle Steel! First Nicholas Sparks, now you. How can we help you make peace with romance novels? It may be true that your novels are not romance, narrowly defined by some conventions of the genre. I'm not sure I agree, but I'll grant the premise isn’t completely without merit, not least because I’m not immune to the packaging efforts of publishers. Which is not to say your books are without their conventions—I hate to judge*, but formulaic is a word that comes to mind—but perhaps in some way those conventions are quite specific to you and your prolific output, possibly distinct enough to consider them in a separate category from other titles. However, I get the impression here, Ms. Steel, that you don't want people to think of you as an author of romance because it devalues your work, which it turns out is some kind of lofty thing about the human condition, and that is a problem. (To be fair, you handle the issue with quite a bit more grace than Mr. Sparks.)

Romance novels can be totally fabulous. Not all of them are, sure, but that's true in any category including whatever category you’d each like to be in. More than that, though, if you think a different label will change how seriously people take you, you’re being a bit naive. You're both giant targets, especially you, Ms. Steel, with your shelves and shelves of bright and shiny spines branded more thoroughly than any other set of books in any store. When I worked at Barnes & Noble, you took up half a bookcase all by yourself, even without duplicate copies of anything. Trust me when I tell you that that’s a noticeable amount of gold foil and fuchsia. When people notice success, they deride it. That, my friend, is the human condition.

But you're also massively successful with more readers than you can count and dedicated fan bases who come back for more every time it's on offer. Let the haters hate, as they say, and take a look at your bank statement when you're feeling insecure about what people think of you. Not because money matters more than respect or makes up for all the world's ills, but because it proves that people keep buying your books in droves, so you're doing something right.

Oh, and, don't make us link this blog to the Ducktales theme again, because you know we will.




*I love to judge.

Crystal balls

by Michael

I love the future. Not the actual future, but the idea of the future. I love watching footage from the old World's Fairs or reading about futurists like Buckminster Fuller, and my favorite part of Disneyworld was Epcot, where I learned that the “future” would be all about maglev. Predicting the future is a tricky thing, what with all the variables that life has, but that didn’t stop us in the past, and it’s not stopping us in the future of today!

But how does this relate to books, you ask? I stumbled across this Gizmodo post the other day that contains video from a company called IDEO. In it, there are three different approaches to the future of the book, all of them interactive and social. Some of what they present is very compelling, and I could see parts of it being implemented—for instance, being able to share books and documents within an organization or group in an easy, visual manner. In fact, the second concept (by far my favorite), “Coupland,” seemed almost organic to me. How convenient! And the first concept, “Nelson,” could be very helpful in an education context, with its ability to show commentary, criticism and the connection between works. The third, “Alice,” is a fun idea, but I don’t think it’s necessarily the future of the “book.” The level of interactive storytelling described here, while compelling, exciting and definitely futuristic, isn’t a linear, immersive reading experience. And with fiction, frankly, I think that’s what a lot of readers want. It’s not that there isn’t a place for this concept (though the costs needed to develop something like this makes me think this kind of storytelling would be tough), but I’m not sure I’d call it a book.

What do you think? I fear I’m suddenly sounding like a technophobe!

The persistence of memory?

by Jessica

Yesterday someone asked me what novels I’d read while on vacation. I thought for a moment and rattled off three: Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss; Zoe Ferraris’ City of Veils; Evelyn Waugh’s Men at Arms. Hours later, I realized that I’d completely forgotten two others: Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell and Aiding and Abetting by Muriel Spark. It’s true that I liked both and loved neither, but they were not so forgettable as to merit oblivion. I wish I could blame my literary amnesia on the impending arrival of a second baby (I am mightily pregnant and soon to deliver) but my ability to forget plotlines, characters, surprise endings, etc. predates the lethe-like mix of hormones now coursing through my bloodstream, and indeed motherhood period.
The year I moved to Cairo, I kept a journal that for some six months included a running tally of the books I read. Perusing the list, it is clear that the recall problem is not a recent one. It seems I’ve been forgetting books for much of my professional life. (Books I read as a child or in college/graduate school, however, have proven to be stickier.) And yet ironically, before I paused to remember all the books I forgot, I believed I had a good memory. Perhaps I’ve conveniently forgotten all evidence to the contrary.

Which is why I was so relieved to read James Collins’ essay in this past Sunday’s NYTBR, “The Plot Escapes Me.”  Like Collins, there are books I clearly remember loving, and yet when I am called upon to reconstruct the storyline, or a particular character, I’m at a loss. The good news is that at least one expert believes that the experience of reading is not so evanescent as we might fear, that the books we devour, adore and forget are not simply lost. Collins quotes Marianne Wolf, professor of child development at Tufts, who says that although we may not have instant recall, “The information you get from a book is stored in networks. We have an extraordinary capacity for storage, and much more is there than you realize. It is in some way working on you even though you aren’t thinking about it.”

I’d like to believe this is true, that some legacy of what we read persists, but rather worry that it isn’t. What do you think? Do the books we read affect us, even if we can’t remember them?

The parenting shelf

by Stacey

I get a newsletter from The Skinny Scoop about all kinds of parenting topics, and this post made me think about parenting books and how many we buy and either don't read, or read a chapter of and file it away. In our new house which is sorely lacking bookshelf space (see Lauren's photo of my book closet), I took a precious shelf and dedicated it to parenting books I've bought or received over the years. It runs the gamut from fertility books to pregnancy books to baby naming books to taking care of baby books, and finally (lucky us!) to books about having and raising twins. Many didn't make a lasting impression, and some turned me off completely with their alarmist and ultra conservative advice, but there are definitely a few I've passed on (mostly about sleep training) like The Baby Sleep Solution, which helped us get our twins sleeping through the night in a flexible way, and Twinspiration, a smart, realistic guide for parents of twins which should get a prize for most clever title.

What are your favorite parenting books, and which ones did you hate?

Stephen King breaks it down

by Miriam

Our client and friend Kathryn Casey posted a link on Facebook the other day to a blog featuring a 2005 piece by Stephen King that promises to teach you everything you need to know about being a successful writer. Now, Stephen (if I may call him that) and I have always had a troubled relationship. No, not like that! I’ve never met the man. Even though I’ve only ever seen him in person across a crowded Javits Center at BEA back when it was the ABA, like many of you I’ve followed his literary peregrinations with great interest despite the fact that I find every new book by him increasingly impossible to wade through. My feeling is that his prodigious talent as a storyteller and prose stylist notwithstanding, he just misses being one of the “greats” (you know who they are). In recent years, however, I’ve become a fan of his EW columns and I always enjoy his quirky take on pop culture. The guy’s smart and successful and he obviously has a lot of wisdom to impart but he does it in an accessible manner and never seems to take himself too seriously.

Whether you’re a fan of Stephen King’s work or not, however, you have to admit that he has fashioned a brilliant career as a writer and these tips are both amusing and dead-on. Except for #11, of course. You do need an agent to turn everything else to gold—maybe not when SK was starting out, but definitely now that the business has become a multi-headed hydra.

What do you guys think of SK’s advice? Anything that especially jumps out at you here?

Brand and platform building basics

by Stacey

We talk about a wide array of publishing topics on our DGLM blog, and in thinking about what to write for my longer entry, I looked back at our marketing and publicity posts and realized there was an opportunity to cover some new ground by discussing brand or platform building for nonfiction authors. I feel like so much of my time lately is spent speaking with and/or writing to nonfiction aspiring authors who are interested in writing a book, but are working on building their brand or platform to get to the point in their career where a book is viable. We are not branding managers, but helping authors to build their brands and platforms has become an important part of our job, in particular for nonfiction authors—advising, coaching, and making suggestions about ways in which an author can build their brand effectively and across multiple platforms. I've begun describing the process as akin to making a pizza, with the book project being one piece of the bigger pie. In order for the pie to be complete, all of the other pieces need to be in place. This is a different model than it used to be. When I first started agenting twelve years ago, many authors were able to build their brand by starting with their book project if they had a great new idea, or a fresh twist on an existing one. The book then gave them the credibility and opportunity to branch out into other areas. That is no longer an option for authors and publishers. Instead, authors must present publishers with a publicity and marketing plan in their book proposals that rivals a pr firm's. It has to be professional, polished, and very, very thorough. It should list ways in which the author has established their brand or platform in three key areas: print, television, and online. Print consists primarily of magazines and newspapers; television can be anything from local or national tv segments (think the Today show) to hosting or co-hosting a reality show; and online has endless possibilities, from blogs to websites to Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, there are countless online opportunities to be mined.

To give you a couple of examples of very different authors who have worked hard on their brand building, and done it with some measure of success, there's Tori Spelling, who has a new book out, which talks on her book's promo copy about being her own brand: “It’s not every Hollywood starlet whose name greets you on a Virgin Airways flight into la-la land. But Tori Spelling has come to accept that her life is a spectacle. Her name is her brand, and business is booming. Too bad when your job is to be yourself, you can’t exactly take a break.” She's a celebrity (even if most would consider her C-list), so it's easier for someone like her, but she's still taken her celebrity and used it in a numbers of ways to expand her brand. Books, products, shows, etc. and she seems to be continuing to come up with new ideas all the time.

Another author who strikes me as having done effective brand building recently is Zac Bissonnette, author of Debt Free U. Here's a brief piece about him and his book that describes how he has been doing financial writing since high school. I've been seeing him and his message in all three key categories in recent weeks since his book's publication. He's no Suze Orman yet, but he's well on his way considering he's still in college!

In my own personal experience, a mother-daughter memoir I recently sold was the result of over two years of hard work the authors undertook after a branding/platform building conversation we had when I explained to them that I thought their story had merit (it's about the daughter's diagnosis of bipolar as a young adult), but that they needed to begin to speak about their story, and become prominent figures in the mental health community. Because they are so compelling and hard working, in a relatively short time, they've been able to do just that, and are now really changing the face of mental health. Their book when it is released in 2012 will be another piece of their pie.

Another story from my own list illustrates the brand/platform building concept. Allison Fishman is a well-known and respected chef and cooking school instructor who I know from high school. For years we talked about building her platform and the best timing for a book project for her. While I was on one of my maternity leaves, I saw that she was co-hosting a Lifetime show, Cook Yourself Thin, and that the accompanying book had become a #1 New York Times bestseller. I contacted her and told her the time was right to get a book proposal out for her with that piece of the pie in place, and we ultimately found her a good home for her first solo effort, which will release next spring. Years of hard work and dedicated platform building finally paid off in a book deal.

If you find you need help to build your brand, there are resources out there and a new industry is emerging as this type of brand building becomes more important in today's marketplace. Branding agents and managers, like publicists, work with not only authors, but celebrities and experts of all kinds, to help them manage the ways in which they can extend themselves into the marketplace in a positive and productive way, building on existing coverage and relationships without over saturating any one area of the marketplace. I'm hoping even more of these branding managers pop up because I think the need is there for these services, and from what I can tell, the pool of people out there doing this for authors is still pretty limited. I'd expect it to be a real growth area in the coming years. If there's anyone any of our readers have worked with or know of who you can recommend, let us know.

To a certain extent, the brand building needs to be strategic, and looked at from a short term and longer term perspective. I often ask authors if they have a plan for the next year, three years, and five years. Once they develop their goals, the work to get there can begin. All of that said, it's impossible to follow a straight path when things come up that could change the trajectory so it needs to be flexible. For example, if you are writing for several websites and blogs and get an opportunity to do a column at a national magazine, you jump at the chance, even if it means cutting back on other areas for a short time because the opportunity to gain major national exposure is an A-list brand building goal.

There are always a myriad of ways to get to where you want to go, and these are just a few basics for what to consider if you are embarking on this journey. We are always looking to find authors who have a positive, original message to share, and have managed to build their brand to a level that it can support a book. We'd love to hear about any brand building success stories out there if you'd like to share. There's a lot to learn from those who have managed to do it successfully.