Agent eat agent

by Jim

Holy animosity, Batman! In one of the more unexpected blog posts I’ve read lately, agent Betsy Lerner took aim at people she hates: namely, literary agents. Including (it seems) herself!

Betsy equates the publishing tradition of agent/editor lunches to having someone shit on her face. Now, I’ve had some bad lunches, but… She then goes on to describe agenting as “being a professional sleaze bag.”

I’m not gonna lie. When I first read this, my hackles raised, and I muttered something like, “What a load of [string of expletives].” But that was defensive me talking. (Defensive me has a really dirty mouth). I quickly settled down, but I still don’t really agree with Betsy’s take.

I’m sure there are editors who hate agents and agents who hate editors, and I know there are terrible people in every business. But for the most part, I enjoy my colleagues on both sides of the divide. More importantly, I love being an agent. Which is why I do it!

My take is that if you feel like you’re being a sleazebag, maybe you’re doing something wrong. Or maybe you’re just approaching things in the wrong way. The interests of client and publisher are often very similar: let’s get the best book out there and make the most money. There are differences of agreement, rights to battle over, and money to beg for (the best part!), but in the end, there aren’t two oppositional sides in this business. At least, there certainly shouldn’t be.

Which is all to say, I think it’s possible to agent with dignity and respect. Yes, agents are often the bad guys—we send out the most rejections, we’re pushy on behalf of our authors, and some of us can be aggressive as hell, but it’s being done for the good of authors and in support of books. I can’t find fault with that.

As delightful agent Ginger Clark passionately stated in the comments, Cobb salads are delicious. Still, I wouldn’t be overly concerned if someone was tired of eating them. In terms of an agent cracking a joke that they can figure out what 15% of any number is…okay, I’ve totally used the same joke a ton of times. I thought it was funny! But apparently I was shitting on people’s faces. Oops!

So what do you say? You hate us when we reject you, but sometimes you secretly love us, right? Some of us are super nice and totally respectful. Pinkie swear.

Grumpy old man

by Jim

Little known fact: I love crotchety old people. One of my goals in life is to survive to an age where I can angrily mutter, “Kids these days!” It’s just the kind of righteous anger that I find endlessly entertaining and endearing.

So imagine my pleasure when reading Jonathan Yardley’s “Best of 2010” list from the Washington Post. Yardley has included only two novels on his list this year which “reflects [his] disenchantment with what passes for American literary fiction these days.” Interestingly, both novels are historical and deal with the impact of the political on the personal. He then recommends three nonfiction books about World War II. So…he has his specific interests.

“Kids these days!” I imagine him muttering to his computer. “With their fakakta ideas about writing about the present! When I was their age…”

It’s a charmingly inane piece that reeks of snobbery and is deeply out of touch. Such a cloistered consideration indicates a man who is very cozy living within his self-proscribed boundaries. Or maybe he has a real argument and I’m just being ageist. Thoughts?

One thing that makes me grumpy in the present is the news that Jersey Shore’s JWoww landed a book deal—the third for a cast member of the show. I thought we all knew that the only book that needed to come out of this show was Snooki’s!

So tell me: is American fiction dead? And what makes you grumpy about the current publishing environment?

Teen poetry web-wide

by Jim

Some folks may have seen the article in the NY Times yesterday about new teen website Figment. It’s a forum for teenagers to post their own writing and be advertised to…I mean, get the chance to read chapters of works that will be published. The site is now live, and there’s already ample teen writing to browse through, if you’re into that sort of thing.  I’ll just say this: I do feel bad for a generation whose teenage poetry will have life on the internet long after they’ve become embarrassed by it.

That said, I think there’s a lot to love about this idea. It has the same sort of feel as Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s HitRECord. That site is about creating user generated creative content that can be worked on by a larger online community. HitRECord feels purer because there isn’t a component allowing advertising to crop up. After all, it’s doesn’t seem as profit-motivated as Figment.

However you look at it, I think efforts to create communities around writing are great things. Something about this site, though, seems to be especially artificial. “ZOMG we’ve launched!” What do we think? Nifty place for teens to find a creative outlet or shameless attempt to cash in on YA market growth?

The happiest time of the year

by Jim

Now that we’ve passed Thanksgiving, we’ve entered my absolute favorite time of the year. I’m not talking about the Christmas season which totally clogs New York streets with shoppers (though we love all the additional book sales!). It’s something much more magical than the holiday season: December means it’s officially time to rank things. And I looooove a good list.

Largehearted Boy has launched his annual Best-of compendium which includes lists as general as “Best of 2010” and as specific as “Best Hockey Coffee Table Books.” You just know there’s one hockey coffee table book out there that didn’t make the cut, and it’s author is pissed.

I haven’t started compiling my lists yet, though yes, I’m totally nerdy enough to do so. I can, however, easily pick my favorite novel, memoir, and YA novel of the year pretty easily. They are:


A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan: I just don’t understand how Egan does it. Each of her books feels like a revelation, and she gets away with things no one should be able to. 75 pages of this book are a Powerpoint presentation for gods’ sake! Goon Squad is funny, moving, and brilliant. It’s even a quick read!

Just Kids by Patti Smith: I do wonder if my reaction to this book is a bit biased. I love New York stories, and Smith transforms the city into a magical place filled with strange, wonderful, beautiful people. She romanticizes everything which could become grating in lesser hands, but to me just reveals a depth of spirit and wonder.

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins: Okay. I know that there are those who didn’t care for how the Hunger Games trilogy ended. I also know that when I last brought this up, there were those who balked that the series is a Battle Royale rip-off (though I’d argue that novel had its own direct antecedents). But here’s what I have to say: Collins took the trilogy down the darkest of all possible roads, showing us that even the strongest among us have our breaking points and that everyone will at times crumble. At the same time, she ended the series with just the right glimmer of hope—sometimes it’s enough just to believe there’s a reason to try. And that, to me, was beautiful.


So those are my three. And hey, they all happen to be by female authors. Take that, Michiko Kakutani.

Anyone else ready to disclose their top picks for the year?

UPDATE: In the time it took me to send this to Lauren to check for typos, I realized that there was another novel that I actually loved even more than the Egan this year. ROOM by Emma Donoghue was simply exceptional. Written in the voice of a five-year-old who has grown up imprisoned in a single room with his mother, it is a virtuoso feat of storytelling and voice. It's simply mesmerizing. I haven't cried as hard at a book in ages, but in the end it's hugely uplifting and deeply special. But the Egan is still amazing!

Where's the love?

by Jim

On Friday, our commenter Jennifer asked the following question:

I have often heard agents discuss the fact that you need to "be in love" with a book in order to represent it…let's say you take on a client because you're in love with their first book, but you only like the next, or even the next few? Even my favorite writers are about 50% hit or miss for me. Some I love, some I just like, and some I even outright dislike. I imagine it would be unusual to really love every book someone wrote.

So I guess my question is two-fold. One, as an agent, do you often find yourself liking some stories more than others, or are you so passionate about a writer's style that you tend to love them all, and two, what do you do if you aren't feeling the same passion for subsequent books?

Tricky one, Jennifer! I think it’s completely fair to say that when we work with someone on multiple books, we won’t have an equally passionate reaction to each and every project they work on. If someone writes twelve novels, we won’t be equally fond of all twelve. Of course, chances are the author also won’t be.

The reason we always say that we need to fall in love with something in order to take it on is that we’re diving headfirst into a long, involved process with someone we haven’t worked with before. If you don’t love the book wholeheartedly, it’s a lot of dedication and time to offer something (and someone) without any guaranteed results. As we continue working with clients, we still want to love every book, but the dynamic has changed—we know how we work with these particular authors, how comfortable the fit is, what happened with that first novel, what shape their career might take. We’re still responsible for making sure that the best product possible gets out there, but we also have to make sure that our clients wishes and best interests are well represented.

Sometimes the situation can get tricky. Let’s say we don’t just not love a project; let’s say we actively dislike it. If our feeling is that the audience will have the same reaction, we have to say something. No one is helped by glad-handing. So there have been times when projects need to be set aside, or we make recommendations for other ideas that might be pursued. It’s not the most comfortable thing to bring up, but it’s necessary to be able to offer that kind of feedback. Our authors depend on our honesty and feedback. And we likewise depend on them, not to do everything we say, but to take our thoughts into account. The best agent/client relations are built on an ability to share thoughts and find compromise.

So no, we don’t love every single project the same, but ideally the base of every relationship with a client is deep admiration of their work. Even if you don’t love every single thing they do, you can still support and guide them.

Blog Chat Stew with Jim McCarthy starts at 3 p.m.!

Crossing the line

by Jim

I crossed my first picket line yesterday! I had tickets to see the new musical The Scottsboro Boys by the same folks who wrote Cabaret and Chicago. It’s a musical retelling of the story of nine black men who were wrongfully imprisoned for the rape of two white women in Alabama in the 1930s. The framing device is a minstrel show. Blackface is employed. The writers and director are all white. Yikes! Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised to enter past dozens of protesters chanting that the show was racist, that turning this tragic story into a minstrel show was akin to using Borscht Belt humor to talk about the Holocaust. For a show that deals with liberal white guilt, getting shouted at for being racist was actually kind of an affective prelude (more on this in a minute).

I’m appreciative of both the protestors and the show’s writers for this: together, they raised a really interesting question about what stories need to be told and who has the right to do the telling. I remember a former coworker (not here) ranting about Jonathan Franzen’s novel The Twenty-Seventh City and his lead character being Indian. She took great offense at his decision to “talk about something he knows nothing about.” At the Romantic Times convention this year in Columbus, I met a group of really wonderful women who wrote gay male erotica, and I won’t lie: that totally confused me. And I think everyone here has read at least one first person narrative where the author writes from the perspective of someone of a different gender and the whole thing feels inauthentic.

Of course, limiting authors to only writing about what they know would prevent things like, say, historical fiction. It would have blocked my client Mindi Scott from beautifully capturing a teen male’s voice in her debut Freefall. It would have reduced Colum McCann’s glorious array of first person narratives across racial, gender and class lines in Let the Great World Spin (have I mentioned lately how brilliant that book is?). But do the rules change when the character’s identity is so integral to the story being told? What about if the story is about the injustice done to a particular group of people?

I’m inclined to say that it’s simply a matter of quality. The Scottsboro Boys was a brilliant show. At once devastating and hopeful, it was about how far we have (and haven’t) come as a nation and our collective history of racial intolerance. I believe that. But I also question my response since I’m, y’know…really white.

I’d love to hear people’s thoughts on this. Are there stories that “belong” to one group of people? Are there perspectives that you just wouldn’t trust? Have you attempted a first person narration from a perspective radically different from your own?

Blog chat live!

by Jim

Next week, you’ll all have the opportunity to join the agency’s first live chat. Yours truly will be available for an hour from 3:00-4:00 Eastern on Thursday the 18th to answer any questions you might have about pretty much anything—how to write a query letter, the state of the marketplace, what we’re looking for, what makes us run away screaming, and pretty much anything you can come up with. The one thing it won’t be is a place to pitch your book—that’s what email’s for.

This is going to be a test run for the chat system. We’re not really sure how many of you will be able to make it, so we’re going to keep it general and see how it goes. If it’s a hit, we’ll be looking to do it regularly and maybe add more specifically themed chats in the future. (If you have requests for particular themed chats, please let us know below!) So be sure to stop by and make me feel popular!

The chat will be live right here, and if you want to sign up now for a reminder, you can do so in the box below!

Books I couldn't sell

by Jim

For a conference I’m going to next year, I was asked to answer a series of questions about myself and agenting—what the most exciting part of the job is, how I landed in publishing, and what my first sale was. Those were easy. Then I hit the question about who the first client I ever signed on was. That was less easy. Not that I didn’t know the answer. It just required me to publicly admit that the first project I signed on never sold. You know what? Eight years later, it still stings.

I thought about lying, but that’s really not my style, so I answered instead that I had signed on a wonderfully fun novel in a Valley of the Dolls vein that I still think deserved to be published. It was really good! And then in a slightly defensive moment, I jotted down that I almost immediately thereafter signed on Victoria Laurie who has sold 24 books with me since then. Well, it’s TRUE.

The thing is, every time something doesn’t sell, it hurts a little. The happy fact of the matter is that the number of projects that don’t sell becomes smaller and smaller as you carry on as an agent—you learn what you’re better with, understand markets better, and come to know the perfect editors for certain projects. But sometimes things don’t work. And it suuuuucks. Especially when you’re head over heels for a project.

I was at a release party for Lee Houck’s Yield a few weeks back, and in his incredibly kind remarks, he mentioned the moment I called him to offer him representation. Apparently I told him something like, “I don’t know if I can sell this. But I can try.” Apparently I remembered to put on my honesty shoes that day! I didn’t remember that I had said it, but I remember that I had thought it! It was a literary novel about gay characters and themes that was at best going to be challenging to place. It was also amazingly heartfelt and beautifully written, so I gave it a shot knowing it would pain me if I didn’t place it. Happily, that one worked out.

The novel about a juvenile prostitute in Newark that was written in dialect? That one didn’t sell. It was just as brilliant as Lee’s novel but even more challenging. I still hate that it didn’t work. I also hate that an editor called me to ask if the author had been a hooker in Newark, adding that the novel would be more marketable if so. That led to the single most awkward phone calls of my entire career. “I was just wondering if maybe you ever happened to, ummm…”

In the end, no agent can guarantee a sale. The most they can ever promise you is their best efforts. But if it’s any consolation, they’ll still be kicking themselves years down the road if they aren’t able to usher you to success.

Halloween horror

by Jim

Less than a week to go until Halloween, the best holiday of all time. Keep your fireworks, July 4th. I don’t need your candy canes, Christmas. I just want some candy corn, a scary movie, and the chance to see people wear crazy costumes and wander around.

I love a good scare. Admittedly, I go from zero to terrified pretty quickly and have been known to sleep with the lights on for days at a time when something really gets to me. But that’s never stopped me from going back for more.

I’ve said before (and maintain) that I’m looking for great horror novels. They’re not easy to find for a few reasons. There are no cheap scares in books—you can’t have a “gotcha” moment. So the suspense needs to be built, the discomfort seeded, and the terrifying aspects need to develop fully enough to stay with you as you turn each page.

As many folks know, House of Leaves is one of my favorite books. As the narrator begins to come apart, the narrative itself does as well. The author removes the safety net, and you realize that anything could happen. I still remember the act of reading one passage—how scared I was, and how hard it was to shake the feeling of being watched that the book implanted.

I’m also a big Shirley Jackson fan. Whether it’s the horror that people do in The Lottery or how convincingly spooky We Have Always Lived in the Castle is, she’s a master of unsettling.

Stephen King was pretty much my hero growing up. Looking back, some of his books don’t hold together as well as others. Let us never speak of Gerald’s Game. But when he’s on, no one can come near him. He has such an exceptional eye for what people are afraid of, and he can zero in on the most disturbing of our feelings. Whether it’s the viral fallout of The Stand, the killer clown of It, or the psychopathic fan of Misery, his great talent is in exploring (and exploiting) just what it is about these things that we find so terrifying.

What are your favorite scary books? And what’s the scariest?

Better titles!

by Jim

Jessica Regel tweeted this wonderfully entertaining blog today that gives some books slightly more accurate titles. Can anyone argue that Franny and Zooey could be retitled Wealthy and Mopey?

And wouldn’t it be easier to choose books if their titles were pithier and more to the point? British Battle Royale…that’s not just a title—that’s a book pitch!

Of course, there’s the immortal My Teacher Ruined This, which here stands in for Wuthering Heights. But don’t we all have a book that a well-meaning English teacher somehow overanalyzed to the point where the reading of it became a deep, dark slog? I still need to try reading The Great Gatsby again outside of the tortured process of high school English class. How about you? Any books that were tortured beyond recognition in your past?

Bleak afternoons

by Jim

It’s a rainy, cold October afternoon in NY. With the rain streaming down the slanted windows next to my desk, I feel like I’m trapped in a bad music video for a sappy mid-90s ballad. Maybe Michael Bolton can shoot a video here about his early dismissal from Dancing with the Stars (which—did you see it? most amazingly cringeworthy performance ever, right?).

In any case, it’s a bummer of a day which had me thinking about all things terrible. And led me to wonder what the worst book I’ve ever read is.

I’ve read some terrible stuff in my day—published, unpublished, desperately wanting to be published but destined not to make it. But what would make something the WORST? So bad I couldn’t read past a page? 50 pages? Something I actually made it to the end of and THEN realized how bad it was? I admit I’m not one to finish books I loathe. So the worst book I’ve ever finished is probably still not atrocious.

What should my criteria be? Give me some ideas, and I’ll let you know next time what sticks out like a sore thumb. And what’s the worst book YOU have ever read?

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.

What Makes a Good Memoir?

So let’s just get this out of the way. I’m a big enough fan of Patti LuPone that I was at the bookstore on the day her memoir came out itching to buy a copy. When she was at Book Expo America (on the one day I didn’t go!), I politely texted three of our other agents asking if they might be able to get her to sign something for me (they did!). I’m a drama nerd, and while I’ve seen LuPone deliver some astonishing performances, the real reason I couldn’t wait to read the book is that she’s a bit of a…um…well, let’s say she’s a character. She has lots of personality. Lots. I mean, check her out stopping the show during a performance of Gypsy if you haven’t already.



Point is: she’s bigger than life, so she should have turned out a magnificent memoir. Right? Well, yes, she should have. So why didn’t she?

Turns out LuPone stumbled into the same traps that a lot of memoir writers do. Living an interesting life does not mean you’ll be able to write an interesting memoir. And relating facts chronologically does not an interesting narrative make. You need to be incredibly self-aware to write about yourself successfully. You need to set vanity aside: if you’re always trying to portray yourself in a positive light, you’re just posturing. You need to have a story to tell. A story. Having lots of little stories doesn’t count. There has to be something linking what you’re telling us, and we need to progress from beginning to middle to end. Otherwise, even the most interesting material can start to get dry (I’m looking at you, Bill Clinton). You also need to be a great writer. People sometimes seem to think that memoirs are easier to write than fiction. They shouldn’t be. If anything, the writing should be even better in a memoir than in a novel since you can’t just change the facts to make the story more interesting (I’m looking at you, James Frey).

Long story short: memoirs are harder than they look. And remember: never bore your readers.

Incoming Amish

by Jim

This blog post from Entertainment Weekly is just the latest in a series of articles about Amish romance novels that are breaking out all over the place.
I can see why the chaste world of the Amish could be a fascinating place to set a romance novel. All that restrained passion. All those longing looks. And sure enough, there are enough “bonnet books” creeping into bestseller status to indicate the beginning of a trend. But could it actually happen?

Call me crazy, but I can’t see this becoming a full-blown trend. And EW’s comparison to vampire books is off base. Part of what made that so sustainable is that the genre naturally allows for people to bend mythology and create entirely different sorts of worlds. But with the Amish...I mean, there are only so many ways to not use electricity.

My prediction: one as yet unpublished bestseller followed by a slew of copycats flooding the marketplace and never becoming as successful again.

But what about if the Amish WERE vampires….

Jim talks about himself (and books)

by Jim

Another summer’s drawing to a close, and we in publishing only have one more summer Friday left. Post-Labor Day, submissions will be kicking off in a big way, and we enter the busiest season of our year. Before then…well, let’s just say it isn’t the most stressful week of the year. Half the DGLM staff is on vacation. Every other email sent is greeted by an out-of-office reply. Phone calls are going straight to voicemail. And for the first time in months I feel really, truly, almost caught up on reading. I left my Kindle at work yesterday! On purpose!

Which just means that instead of talking about anything terribly serious like the future of publishing, the agency model, or potential sexism at the New York Times, I’m going to talk about something more fun: me. Well…me and books I like and what I want to find.

Without going into a lengthy discourse on the merits of Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins which I read last Tuesday night (yeah, I was one of those), I will say that despite some initial quibbles, I came around on the book and ultimately loved what Collins accomplished. I would fall all over myself trying to get at a new young adult series that blended the commercial and literary worlds as well as she did. Katniss Everdeen is a genius heroine—flawed and conflicted but tough as nails and with a powerful sense of morality. You love her not because she’s perfect but because she’s trying, against all the odds, to do the right thing. Any author who can make their characters’ motivations feel this honest and deeply considered is a-okay in my book.

Reading Mockingjay put me in mind of another YA dystopian novel that I recently read, one which I will not name because I’m about to be less than friendly. Suffice to say, it’s getting a huge push for its pending release and has lots of buzz. I read it in galley form while at a conference in Pennsylvania. I was hyper-invested for 75 pages then felt myself growing away from it. At around 200 pages, I hurled the book across my hotel room. Literally. It was a book of squandered potential. One of the hardest things to do in a fantastical world, especially a dystopian one, is establish laws and rules that make complete sense. And this book’s central logic disintegrated line by line. When I’m reading a fantasy novel of any sort, the last thing I want to do is sit around pondering whether the universe it’s set in makes sense. It pulls you out of the action and makes you question the author’s grasp on their own material. Without a solid structure, you’ve got nothing.

On the adult, non-fantastical front (which I’d love to see more of), I just read Tony O’Neill’s Sick City. Check out the tagline for this book: “One legendary sex tape. Two desperate dope fiends. Three million dollars. Welcome to…Sick City.” First of all, I hope whoever wrote that copy got a raise. But also, I’m just a sucker for gritty urban realism combined with a unique thriller-ish hook. I like my crime fiction pitch black with a light undertone of humor: Chelsea Cain, Charlie Huston, early Dennis Lehane (his late stuff is also brilliant, just different), Gillian Flynn. There’s a lot to be said for someone who can be legitimately unsettling who also keeps you reading, who can write overpowering scenes but knows just when to pull you back in with a touch of comfort.

I blogged before about reading more graphic novels. Since then, I finished the Scott Pilgrim series and read Allison Bechdel’s Fun Home, Jhonen Vasquez’s Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, and Craig Thompson’s Blankets. I haven’t worked on anything in this category before, but it’s something I’d love to try if I can find the right first project. For me, that would need to be something that wasn’t serialized first and was intended either specifically for a young adult audience or was something that, like the Bechdel, was targeted at a decidedly adult readership. Which is not to say that all of the in-between isn’t fantastic. Things particularly pitched at 20-somethings probably sell best in this arena, but I just don’t know that would be a good starting place for me.

Right now, I’m about two-thirds of the way through The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon. Can I just say…this man crafts sentences with a precision and beauty that so few can rival. Check out this description: “He took Rora home in his Bentley, large as a house, the seats made of leather so fine that you could hear the spirits of the slaughtered calves sigh.” I’m digging this novel, but I’m not in love with it. There are moments where I feel a real disconnect between the storytelling and the action. But I’m so obsessed with parts of it that I’ve actually busted out the pen to underline sections to read to people later. So if you can make that happen, GAME ON!

And blah, blah, blah, like always I want brilliant commercial fiction across categories. I want to find anything that can provoke a physiological response—novels that make me laugh, cry, shiver, flinch. I want books that are escapes from the world and books that make you understand it better. I work with a lot of great authors who write great books. And I want more. I’m selfish that way.

Picking your battles

by Jim

As Jessica discussed last week, authors Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Weiner have been vocally irritated by the raves for Jonathan Franzen’s new book, Freedom. They’ve lashed out at the New York Times for focusing too much on white male authors but also for their almost complete discounting of all commercial fiction. These are points that lend themselves to ample debate. I’ve mentioned before that I think fiction across categories and types can be brilliant. And I have ample concerns about the blinding whiteness of the literary landscape (which is a topic for a whooooole other post). So why do I find myself so irritated by the articles coming out?

First of all, it’s a little tough to stomach the argument when it’s coming from two of the bestselling authors in the country. Why are they so angry they aren’t getting reviews? Can’t they just dive into their money a la Scrooge McDuck whenever they need to feel loved? I’d find this a lot easier to stomach coming from someone straddling the commercial/literary divide who hadn’t broken out and needed reviews to break through.

Second, did you catch this in the Guardian article? “Picoult also criticised Kakutani's use of the word ‘lapidary.’ ‘Did you know what [it] meant when you read it in Kakutani's review? I think reviewers just like to look smart,’ she tweeted.” Oh no, she didn’t… Mocking someone for using a “smart” word is already ignorant. But coming from an author? That’s disgraceful. Working with language is what you DO. If you want to understand why people don’t take you seriously, you probably shouldn’t indicate that you yourself don’t take the language that seriously. Not knowing the word? Totally fine. It’s not like I don’t make regular stops at dictionary.com. But Picoult’s tweet is just anti-intellectual and insulting.

Mostly, though, I’m annoyed because these articles are linked to a novel by someone whose last effort, nine years ago, was a masterpiece. People aren’t excited about Freedom because it’s by a white man. They’re enthusiastic about getting to dive back into the landscapes of the person who created The Corrections, one of the best written, most deeply moving novels of the past decade. Pick on someone divisive like Jonathan Safran-Foer or someone whose output is uneven like Jonathan Lethem. Hell, they even have the same first names and all live in the same borough of New York City. But attacking Franzen…you’re just sabotaging your own arguments.

I’m probably exposing all sorts of biases here. What do you all think?

Books we love

by Jim

Are we all excited about the release of Mockingjay tomorrow? I’m sure there must be other fans of the Hunger Games trilogy out there. I can’t wait!! Right now I’m trying to talk myself out of going to a midnight release event tonight that author Suzanne Collins will be at. Because if I go, I probably won’t get home until 2, and then I’ll want to stay up and read, and then, well…I’d probably feel not so fresh tomorrow.

In any case, I’m nerding out pretty hard over this book. Watch me segway to the topic of my post here: I love the first two books in the trilogy. And we always talk about how we have to love something to sign it on. Is that actually true?

Lance Parkin, in the comments on Jessica’s most recent entry, had some interesting thoughts on this and came out pretty pro-agent! He sees us as an uncynical bunch who push products that we love versus giving a cold and calculating push to things we just think will earn money.

Oh, Lance. You may give some of us too much credit. I’m not going to lie—there were two times in the past that I can think of signing something on just because I thought I could make some money off of it. I just sucked at selling out. Neither book placed with a publisher. And I just walked away feeling a little bit bad about myself.

I think the biggest reason we have to only sign on things we love is that there’s so much investment of time and energy into each project. And it’s so much easier to stay motivated and really fight for something that you believe in. Besides which, if something you don’t love doesn’t place, you think, “See, I knew I should have trusted my gut.” Whereas if something you do love doesn’t sell, you can spend the next five or ten years talking about how you can’t believe no editors were perceptive enough to share your appreciation of genius. And that’s so much more satisfying!

Jim waxes nostalgic

by Jim

Hello again, blogosphere. I got back from vacation today and as our dedicated readers know, yet another loyal DGLM intern, Stephanie DeVita, has gone full time. We trapped another one! (I kid, I kid).

Stephanie’s shift to full time makes me feel one thing: old. Okay, two things: it also make me feel nostalgic. It’s now been more than eight years since I went from intern to full-time employee. And I realize as I write this that this week actually marks exactly 11 years since I first set foot in the door.

The first day I was supposed to work here, I was out in the ‘burbs, and a storm dumped so much rain that train lines flooded, and I couldn’t make it in. I figured this was a sign from the weather gods that working here was a bad idea. But with the end of flooding the next day, I was able to make it in. And I was scaaaaared. I had worked about 17 jobs in high school, but this was my first employment in the big city, and I was convinced that everyone was going to be terrifying. Sure, that was true. But I stuck it out anyway.

Nah, everyone was great. And I went from not knowing what a literary agent was to BEING one. The best thing about working here, in my opinion, has always been the opportunity to experiment and grow. I really grew up here. As Jane and Miriam can attest, the exceedingly weird teenager I started was left deep in the past. The world thanks them.

Nothing about becoming an agent is easy. It takes time to find clients, more time to sell books by them, and a lot more time to build them. There was a lot of trial and error along the way. But again, there was room for that. I could sign on books that might not have had much of a chance. I worked on them because I loved them. Some early defeats still sting. There’s a novel that I tried to sell in 2003 that I still think deserved publication. Urination played a large role. It was…less than commercial. I’m still teased about that one sometimes, but you know what? It was GOOD.

Mostly though, I’m just in a happy reflective place. Finding a great book to work on is still the most exciting part of the job. I am thrilled by the successes of my clients but never satisfied until I’ve helped them achieve more. What I love about this job is that it’s never “done.” You don’t punch a time clock and leave it behind at the end of the day. There is always more to be read, more to explore, more to think about. Once that stops being overwhelming (give it about five years, Steph), the ongoing nature of the business is its own reward.

Things change: markets go up and down, new ways of reading are developed, different trends hit while others sink. But great books will always be read. And I’m delighted to play a small role in making that happen.

This concludes the most grossly earnest post I will ever write: promise.

From the Vault: Reading explained

Happy summer, everybody!  For the next while, there are going to be some absences from the blog as we take vacations, but we'd hate to leave you guys hanging.  It's no secret that we blog much more now than when we started this baby, and there are far more of you reading than there were way back when.  So we thought we'd bring back some blog entries of days gone by that you may have missed if you just joined us in the last year.  We've cued up enough, but if you have any favorites you think your fellow readers might enjoy, give us a shout below!

by Jim

Choosing what projects to take on can be a tricky thing. Given the number of manuscripts I usually have waiting to be read and how few of those I’ll actually be able to work on, I start each one assuming that I’ll be passing on it. For about 50 pages, I keep an eye out for the specific reasons I’ll be rejecting. I’m looking for overwrought writing, character inconsistency, sloppy plotting, and/or any reason to put the pages down and move on to something else.

Let’s say I pass page 50 and haven’t found a reason to definitely say no. I hit my optimistic reading phase and for the next 100 or so pages, I’m thinking, “Hook me!” I’ve invested just enough time that I won’t be upset if I end up deciding to pass, but I’m starting to think, “Hey, this could be my next new client.”

At page 150, my mood shifts entirely to, “Don’t let me down now.” Pessimism sneaks back in a bit. Even if I like this, I start to wonder, can I sell it? This is where I bust out the super handy trick that Jane taught me when I was starting out: if you can think of five editors you know who this could be right for, then it’s probably worth a shot. I ride the manuscript out keeping that in mind and also thinking about the competition. What similar books have done well? Are there too many similar books? Does this read like what’s working now, or does it read like what might be working a year from now when it would come out?

Of course, every so often, a manuscript comes along that shuttles my reading rules right out the window. And that is what I live for.

Let’s flash back to last summer. I drag a bag of manuscripts up to my roof, yank out the first one, open to the first page, read the first paragraph…and stop. It sounds so corny and over the top to say that you were hooked on something from the first page except that when it happens, it’s transporting. I read until the sun went down, and the next morning, I handed the manuscript to a colleague.

“Read a page and tell me if I’m crazy,” I requested. “I mean—this is really as good as I think it is, right?”

I fell so head over heels for the novel that I actually wanted confirmation I hadn’t just lost my mind. I felt stupidly luck to even have the project in hand. When the first page was read, I got the affirmation I needed: “It’s really that good.”

“Crap. Who else has this?” Luckily for me, though other agents did have and did want to represent the novel, its author, in her infinite wisdom, decided to work with me. The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan is an astonishing novel for the young adult market that blends the literary and the commercial, stunning writing with rich characters and brilliant plotting. I eagerly look forward to its publication by Delacorte next spring.

The point I always come back to is that people who work in publishing do so because they’re readers. Yes, I read with an eye toward market and potential profit. This is a business, and when you work on commission, you can bet that there’s always an eye on the bottom line. The most thrilling part of the job, though, is playing some role in ushering a book you feel passionately about into another reader’s hands.

At the delightful (and not just because you can gamble there) Las Vegas Writers’ Conference last year, someone asked a panel I sat on, “Would you rather have something come across your desk that has great writing or a great plot?” It’s an unanswerable question. Because I’m not looking for pieces of a good book. I’m looking for the whole package, or for someone who inspires me to believe in their ability to create the whole package.

In responses to rejection letters, understandably upset writers sometimes ask, “Who are you to judge me? What right do you have to say who’s good enough?” All I can answer is that I’m a reader. I’m an audience. And I want you to win me over as much as you want me to be won. It can’t happen always, but we hope it happens enough.

Originally posted in April 2008.