That intimidating book proposal

by Jane

For the last several months, many of us here at DGLM have talked about the necessity of preparing solid book proposals. A strong proposal is so important because it not only helps the editor and publisher to know what you are doing, it actually helps you, the author, to focus on your subject and the market you are trying to reach.

Many feel that doing this work is an “unnatural” act, and I admit that it can be very difficult. Once it is done right, however, it can be a very effective tool for everyone.

We work very hard with our clients to help them create their proposals. We send them basic instructions, sample proposals and then we review and comment on each draft until we feel the material is ready to be submitted.

Because we think this part of the publishing process is so very important, I thought I would share our basic formula for putting together a non-fiction proposal.


The proposal is broken down into several parts:

The first is the Overview. This begins with a brief dramatic anecdote which is meant to get the reader, in this case the editor at the publishing company, into the material. Immediately after this anecdote, you should describe in two or three sentences—no more—what the book will be about. This is followed by another brief paragraph on why it is being written and then another on why you are qualified to write it.

After this, you need to describe the different groups of readers who will buy your book—both demographically and statistically. The more numbers you have here the better.

The final element of the overview is a comparative section where you compare your book to others that would be found in the same place in the bookstore. In each case, book by book you must provide the author, the title, the publisher and the year of initial publication and, book by book, you need to tell us how your proposed book will be as successful or more so.

The next element of the proposal is the Annotated Table of Contents. This consists of chapter heads and no more than a couple of sentences on what each chapter will contain.

Then we need at least One Sample Chapter that matches a chapter described in your annotated table of contents. (I always suggest an early chapter, but the contents cannot repeat anything that has previously appeared in the overview of the proposal.) The sample chapter is meant to do two things: show off the writing and tell us things we don’t already know.

Finally, there should be a more formal narrative Bio of the author.

This is followed by links that serve as Support Material—reviews of previous books, recent articles by and about you from national publications, a schedule of speaking appearance, any national media appearances, etc.


So there you have it—my holiday present to you. I know this isn’t easy, but as I said, once this is done right, it is incredibly helpful in not only selling the proposed book but also in writing it.

Naturally, as always, I am open to answering your questions.

And the winners are....

by Miriam

After much in-fighting and name calling, we’re ready to give you our top three picks for memoir pitches, following last week’s contest. This was a tough process because many of the pitches sounded like books we’d like to read (and/or represent). I hope you will actually send us your queries when you’re ready to tell these stories.

Now, without further ado, the winners:

First place: Ariana Richards
Second place: Ken Olsen
Third place: Tamara

Honorable mentions: February Grace and EHF for Suzan W

If the winners would e-mail me their addresses at Miriam@dystel.com, we’ll send you your prizes (Michael Tucker’s delightful Living in a Foreign Language, a DGLM water bottle, and a DGLM soup mug).


Thank you so much for playing along!

The biographer as fan

by John

Back when I was an editor at Putnam Young Readers, I had the pleasure of helping National Book Award-winner Nathaniel Philbrick adapt his adult bestseller In the Heart of the Sea for young readers. It’s often tricky to translate adult work for a younger audience, but In the Heart of the Sea had a clear hook: One of the two main characters from In the Heart of the Sea was 13-year-old Cabin Boy Thomas Nickerson, to whom any young reader could relate.

However, after reading Nat’s review of Geoffrey Wolff’s The Hard Way Around: The Passages of Joshua Slocum in this Sunday’s New York Times Book Review,  I realized there’s another key reason why his book translated so well for young readers: Nat’s a big fan of his material, and his personal feelings permeate the entire work. I love Nat’s idea that you can take a nonfiction topic and show what you think of the story, actively involving yourself rather than approaching it as a non-judgmental author/reporter. I also love his suggestions that a) you can work within the existing record, rather than having to dig up little new minutiae that don’t really add much to the basic plot, and b) that well-known stories are still worth telling, especially if you give them a personal slant.

This fan-boy narrative style is one that Russell Freedman and Elizabeth Partridge have used successfully in their nonfiction work for kids, and I wish I saw more of it out there. So to all you nonfiction writers, here’s a simple plea: Get off the sidelines and get into your books!

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?

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.

From the Vault: A model for memoirs

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 Jessica

Recently I was poking about on the website for This American Life, the altogether brilliant public radio show and now HBO television show that is one of the only things that tempts me toward faithlessness--in thought if not deed--toward book publishing. (Book publishing and public radio—apparently I don’t even fantasize about career-cheating with a high-paying job). In any case, I happened upon their submission guidelines. Although these are tailored to the demands of a radio show with a very distinctive sensibility (anyone who’s never listened should give it a try) they struck me as pertinent to book projects, especially memoir.

Memoir is a tricky category, one that I love but one in which the bar for writing is high and the demand for platform still higher. If you’re not already famous, or a participant in the Real Housewives/Dancing with Stars/America’s Top Model franchises, persuading a publisher to take a chance on your own story can be challenging. Despite the ubiquity of reality shows, not every person poised to write a personal narrative has a tv deal (yet), which means that for those people brave enough to wade into a sodden market that editors politely call “saturated,” not only had you better write very, very, very well, but do so in service of a story in which the whole is somehow greater than the sum of its parts. So how, exactly, does this mathemagical equation work?

I thought This American Life’s submission guidelines came up with a pretty good answer: They write:

"The material we most often reject is writing that lacks a narrative. A lot of it is good, vivid writing, but without a real story to it. Often it's recollections about some person the writer knew, or some time in their own lives. Often there are interesting anecdotes, but without any driving question, or real conflict. There's nothing bigger at issue and nothing surprising revealed. In many of these stories, the characters are all the same at the end of the story as they were at the beginning. No one learns anything. No one changes.”

Why yes, I thought.

Elsewhere on the site, in an amusing essay in which she talks about having her own work rejected repeatedly from This American Life, regular contributor Hilary Frank writes; “Specifically, This American Life is looking for stories with two main elements: the narrative action, or plot (in which one thing happens to the characters, and then another, and then another), and moments of reflection (where someone says something surprising about what the story might mean).”

Yes again.

Like most every piece of writing featured on the show, this is well said. They want work that has drama, that surprises, that toggles between the personal and the universal, and is also very, very well written. The fact that many of their contributors—David Sedaris, Sarah Vowell, Shalom Auslander—are successful published writers seems to indicate that these parameters translate well to the printed page.

Perhaps the model above is not the only one that works for memoirs, but the advice seemed to me well worth sharing. You can check it out in greater (perhaps excruciating) detail at http://www.thislife.org/About_Submissions.aspx.


Originally posted in May 2009.

Letting go

by Jane

One of the really nice customs in publishing is that when an agent is invited to lunch by an editor or a publisher, the editor or publisher usually brings along a book or two from their list for the agent. Sometimes the books are bestsellers, sometimes they represent new voices the publisher is proud of and wants to show off.

Recently, though, an old friend, an editor with a major publishing house, gave me a particularly thoughtful book at our lunch, The iConnected Parent: Staying Close to Your Kids in College(and Beyond)While Letting Them Grow Up.  The book was written with research done at Middlebury and The University of Michigan and discusses how much or little parents should stay connected to their children as they leave the nest. 

The book was a particularly lovely gift as my son is going off to the University of Michigan next week where he will begin his college career. It has been difficult contemplating this separation even though my husband and I of course knew it was coming. Having friends and colleagues who are as thoughtful as this editor was at this time is helping us all to get through this experience far more smoothly.

I have no doubt that reading The iConnected Parent will be instructional and comforting and I am looking forward to it. I wonder if you have any other suggestions for books to help us empty nesters move forward.

Let's talk true crime

by Jane

The other day Lauren Abramo pointed out this piece to me and it brought to mind how much the category of true crime non-fiction has changed over the last twenty or more years.

When I began representing books in this category, they were almost always published initially in hardcover and you could be sure once a high-profile crime was committed and someone arrested for it, there would be three or four authors rushing proposals out to publishers through their agents. I can actually remember one of my true crime writers coming through my office door with the proposal he had stayed up all night to finish just to beat out the next writer. When the Amy Fisher murder case happened, for example, my client’s book was one of three made-for-TV movies that aired.

Advances for true crime in those days could be substantial, which is why so many people wanted to get in the game, so to speak.

Over the years though, these books came to be published only in a mass market paperback format and advances went way, way down. That was the bad news; the good news is that full proposals are no longer necessary, especially for writers who have previously published in the category. Even when there needs to be some kind of a proposal, it nowhere near as complete as it once had to be.

True crime today is fairly formulaic. It must have a sensational murder; the characters need to be people whom the reader can truly relate to and it doesn’t hurt if there is lots of money and sex involved.

We are still handling several true crime titles every year and, though the advances are low, they very often earn out and so the writers earn royalties (which they generally didn’t when the advances were higher). Still, this is a very difficult category to succeed in. It takes someone who is persevering, energetic and patient enough to search out just the right cases.

If you have any questions about this category, I am happy to try to answer them.

Relevant much?

by Miriam

Amidst the usual panicky, hyperbolic, and sometimes comical publishing headlines to be found throughout the blogosphere—“Is Fiction Culturally Irrelevant?” “Holly Golightly Is a Call Girl…” (for reals?); “Are Publishers More Worried about eReaders Than Readers?”—the one that caught my eye yesterday was “Where Have All the Mailers Gone?” In this piece, Lee Siegel essentially argues that fiction has no contemporary giants who push the artistic envelope, no rabblerousers who shine their penlights on dark and murky social issues, no literary prodigies able to hold their own against ascendant nonfiction writers who are telling true tales in stylish and entertaining ways (what fiction writers used to do during their glorious heyday).

Ridiculous!

This is the kind of piece that makes me think someone’s more interested in being provocative than making sense (and, really, the piece itself is somewhat incoherent). I love reading Michael Lewis’ work and thoroughly enjoy the political narratives that pass for nonfiction these days (Game Change comes readily to mind) as well as all the Gladwellian theory-of-everything books and the edge-of-your-seat adventures that routinely dot the bestseller lists. But c’mon! What about Dave Eggers? Jonathan Franzen? Jhumpa Lahiri? Joshua Ferris? Junot Diaz? What about Stieg Larsson and Alexander McCall Smith? Is Mr. Siegel really saying that to be “culturally relevant” you have to live your life in the press and stir up more controversy because of your public bouts of immaturity than your writings? (As far as I’m concerned, Norman Mailer’s art was all too often obscured by his life.)

In an age when reality is too much with us, today’s great fiction writers allow us to escape the oppressiveness of the literal while putting our life and times into digestible and often brilliantly entertaining context. What’s more culturally relevant than that?

Sizing up the competition

by Jessica

 

“Know your market” is surely one of the Publishing world’s commandments—the “Though shalt” omitted but implied. When I go to conferences, when I read query letters, when I speak to writers about their books, I am always keen to get to the comparison titles, and understand from the author where she sees her book fitting in to the present marketplace. (FYI: Comparison titles, “comp titles” for short, are the books you come up with in answer to the question: “Readers of what books/writers might enjoy your work?”) I encounter such a wide variety of responses to what I believe is a softball of a question that I thought I’d pass on a few thoughts.

 

• When looking for comp titles, choose successful books. Pointing out books similar to yours that had low or disappointing sales is the best argument against your project. Most houses will interpret the cluster of bad sales as a commentary on the weakness of the category/subject matter.
• But not so monumentally successful that their track record is sui generis. For example, EAT PRAY LOVE is so often used as a comp that it has become meaningless.
• Be cognizant of the delayed publishing timeline. I run into many writers who, after studying the competition, tell me that their own writing is at least as good as (insert name of published author here) and if that (name of book sold) surely their own can too. Unfortunately, such reasoning seldom works. Bear in mind that what is being published today was likely acquired the better part of two years ago, and the lackluster reception/performance of the titles in question may be the very reason that your book (or query letter) is rejected. For example, memoir is now an exceedingly difficult category, thanks in part to the sheer quantity of memoirs that have been published. Booksellers are being very, very, choosy about what they buy. So a cursory survey of recently published personal narratives is not necessarily going to tell you what publishers are buying now, and in fact, may reveal why your book faces an uphill battle. For this, you need a subscription to Publishers Marketplace. Remember, most books do not earn back their advances, or sell in any significant numbers, so the odds are stacked against you from the get-go.
• I thought that name sounded familiar.  Pay particular attention to who the author is. Even in narrative (as opposed to prescriptive non-fiction, where the emphasis is on the writing as much as the information) platform is all. All things being equal, a publishing house is far more likely to take on a book from someone with an established public profile than an unknown author. In some cases, understanding the author’s marketing abilities helps explain why a particular book was bought.
• Think twice when there’s no competition at all. Every so often, I hear a pitch in which an author is absolutely correct when she tells me that there is no book like hers out there. This may be a terrific opportunity, the oft-looked for “hole” in the market. But it also may be because publishers are convinced that a particular subject won’t work. An editor I know recently bought a book on dealing with bedbugs, a widespread and awful scourge about which no book had been published. It may be that the book will go on to sell thousands upon thousands of copies to the itchy and unhappy victims of bedbug infestations, or it might be that this is info that people can get from the internet, or via their exterminator—I suppose we’ll wait and see.
• Too close for comfort? In surveying the competition, be mindful that a book need not be exactly like yours to constitute competition. Despite the fact that you have your own distinct take on doing business in China or parenting oppositional children, baking vegan cupcakes or greening the work-place, houses with similar books under contract or on their backlists see little reason to cannibalize their own lists. If you are wading into a crowded marketplace, then it is incumbent on you to: actually read the competition; make certain that your book is both different and better; communicate that difference; and bear in mind that most consumers rarely but multiple titles on a single subject. (Note, this applies almost exclusively to nonfiction).

The right match....

by Miriam

One of the myriad things we do around here is come up with book ideas. Then, we try to match those ideas with the appropriate writers, help them develop the concept, and hopefully sell the resulting proposal to a publisher for big buckaroos.

“Well, duh!” you might be thinking right about now. “That’s what you agent types are supposed to do.”

And, yes…well, yes. But creating this perfect match between idea and writer is harder than you might think. It can be immensely frustrating to come up with an idea that could be the next Tipping Point only to come up empty in terms of who will be the next Malcolm Gladwell. When we look to our client list to create a match, we often fail. The client in mind might have the right credentials but is probably working on his/her own book and won’t be available until that is delivered. He or she might also just have no interest in the subject we’re so excited about. The other approach is to go out and find journalists, professors, bloggers, etc., and pitch the idea to them in the hopes that it sparks their interest. And, of course, they have to be available – not represented by another agent or busy with another book project.

This type of matchmaking is time consuming and often fruitless but when it works, it’s immensely gratifying. There’s nothing better than seeing your brain child go out into the world and make good.

Right now, for instance, I’m looking for someone who can write lucidly and anecdotally about mathematics and philosophy to do a book on “guesswork”. Any takers?

On writing manuals

by Jessica

At long last I have seized the opportunity to read the Atlantic fiction issue, which has sat neglected on my coffee table, patiently awaiting my attention, for far too many days. Much as I hate the fact that the Atlantic no longer serves up a short story a month, their dedicated fiction issue almost makes up for it . This year’s line-up does not disappoint: there’s a refreshingly cranky piece by Paul Theroux on e-books and the future of reading, a creepy T.C. Boyle story and a piece by Joyce Carol Oates (one blogger waggishly wondered if including stories by Boyle and Oates is some kind of lit-mag requirement), and Richard Bausch’s essay “How to Write in 700 Easy Lessons: The Case Against Writing Manuals.”  In it, Bausch argues that despite the success and proliferation of books that promise to teach you how to write a [fill-in-genre-here] novel in 15 easy steps or offer to share the “secrets” of successful novelists, writing is not a skill that can be taught in the manner of model airplane construction or home repair. The whole essay is well worth a read, but I’ll cut to the chase:

“My advice? Put the manuals and the how-to books away. Read the writers themselves, whose work and example are all you really need if you want to write. And wanting to write is so much more than a pose. To my mind, nothing is as important as good writing, because in literature, the walls between people and cultures are broken down, and the things that plague us most—suspicion and fear of the other, and the tendency to see whole groups of people as objects, as monoliths of one cultural stereotype or another—are defeated.”

I don’t disagree with Bausch’s recommendation that aspiring writers should be broad and assiduous readers, and I nearly stood and cheered at his last line; good writing does undermine cultural stereotypes. But on further reflection, the whole polemic, well-crafted and funny as it was, rang a bit hollow. I somehow doubt that books that peddle “shortcuts” to being a good writer are exerting an especially malign influence on the world of letters. It’s unlikely that novels written solely according to the literary equivalent of paint-by-numbers get published, much less endure (though there are, I realize, exceptions to every rule). Most aspiring writers are readers (right?) and most writers figure out that the path they’ve chosen is not only devoid of the kind of shortcuts Bausch deplores, it’s uphill over brutal terrain. If books on writing are useful triggers to imagination/discipline, are they deserving of scorn?
Since the vast majority of the folks who read this blog are writers, I’m interested to know what you think: are there writing guides that you swear by? Manuals you recommend? Do you agree with Bausch that that how-to books foster cookie cutter writing? Do you think, more broadly, that good writing can be taught at all?

Memoirs of scorned wives

by Miriam

Tina Brown is someone whose successes and failures as a journalist, magazine publisher, book author and media pundit have made her a sometimes controversial celebrity. Personally, I always find her new ventures and her ability to reinvent herself fascinating (she’s the Madonna of the publishing biz) and I usually get a kick out of her insights on current events.

This week, I’ve been thinking of how annoying Jenny Sanford’s new book and the attendant media blitz surrounding it are. After dealing with her public humiliation with dignity and elegance at first, she’s now flogging a book that makes her sound self-righteous, vindictive and petty. Given what a jerk her ex-husband was, it’s no small feat to write a tell-all that makes you seem almost as unsympathetic. But, as Tina says in this NPR piece, that seems to be the trend among the “he-done-me-wrong” memoirists:

"The men they're married to are utter snakes and worms, but these women — they do buy into this stuff, and then they are so humorless about it at the end. Jenny Sanford's book is such a pious document. At some point, I really wish one of these women would begin their book and say, 'I am writing this book out of sweet revenge; my husband was a total worm, and this is payback time.' It would be a little more honest."


Instead, Brown complains, political spouses often retreat to platitudes: 'You know, 'I'm doing this for the children,' " or some such. "It is all nonsense. It is about one of two things: money or revenge. Very often both."

When the Sanford story broke, we here at DGLM discussed the inevitable book deal and the consensus was that this was not a book we were interested in reading (or repping). Are we missing something? What do you think?

Real love

by Jim

In one of those ideas so simple that you can’t figure out why no one else thought of it sooner, publisher HCI is launching a real life romance series. Actual love stories will be turned into romance novels—it’s sort of the book version of reality TV.

There’s something kind of fantastic about the idea of reading romance novels where what happens between the covers not only CAN happen but already did.

Or am I wrong? Will the real life couple out there ruin the fantasy of it all? I personally think it could be a super idea.

Beast Books

by Lauren

Galleycat reports on the launch of Beast Books from Tina Brown’s Daily Beast, with books that will be longer than articles but shorter than most nonfiction books. One of the common publishing rejections (from us to authors and from editors to us) is: “It’s fascinating, but it's more of a magazine article.” Often, though, the truth is more that the idea falls in between: it requires greater explication than magazine space allows, but there’s not enough to it to support a book. This model could make for a good home for such ideas. It’s an interesting concept, and I’ll be paying attention to how well it works--particularly since my level of personal commitment to well crafted nonfiction on subjects I don’t find naturally interesting is often longer than an article, but shorter than a book.

Chasing ambulances

by Miriam

Every once in a while a celebrity news story morphs into a veritable hydra-headed monster of a tabloid saga. And, given my love for that particular brand of infotainment, I am usually sucked in right along with the other readers of Us Weekly, People, and, yes, Star. So, you know I’ve been bouncing from one blog to another for the last couple of weeks following the supernova of a meltdown that is the Tiger Woods saga. Same thing happened with the Eliot Spitzer, Mark Sanford and John Edwards gossip fests. The rubber necking fascination for grown men behaving badly never seems to wane, despite the fact that at this point it seems more the norm than the exception. Fame/Money + Unbridled Ego = Tabloid story in the making.

So, whenever one of these events turns into the usual circus, my colleagues and I immediately think “Is there a book in this?” And, of course, there usually is. In fact, there are usually 10 books. So, how do you decide whether to jump on the ambulance chasing wagon, track down a writer and loose them on the story or take a chance on the “insider” account by one of the members of the disgraced figure’s entourage, his ex-whatever, or his second grade teacher or simply keep watching from afar. The answer is tricky and it depends on what kind of agent/agency you are.

Generally speaking, we take on books that we think we’re going to be able to sell because we don’t get paid for our efforts unless we do. Given that simple premise, it doesn’t make sense to run through hoops in order to try to make a book about one of these scandals happen unless (a) that book is going to offer revelations that are truly not to be found in the 24/7 coverage by blogs, magazines, newspapers, and tv shows (b) there is serious analysis of the situation and its more universal implications by a writer who has strong credentials and who is not just going to do a clip job restating the obvious and (c) one of the main players is willing to sell out his mother for a book deal and really does know where the bodies are buried. Ultimately, though, it’s one thing to be titillated by these kinds of stories while eating your Cheerios and quite another to spend the time, energy and dedication it takes to get a book published on a narrative that will soon be supplanted by the next celebrity/politician/sports star behaving badly. And, sometimes, despite the potential monetary windfall, the subject is just too distasteful to pursue--I don’t think anyone here would have repped OJ Simpson’s book (except perhaps Jim), even though we all would strenuously defend an agent’s choice to do so.

If you were agents would you try to sell a Tiger Woods book right now?

Platform Building 101

by Stacey

I think there are some lessons to be learned from the Bill Simmons school of publishing. This recent article from the New York Times talks about how his unconventional (and relatively rapid) rise to fame might just become the most conventional approach to successful platform-building out there. And it also zeros in on at least one reason why he is so popular: he's just a fan like the rest of us, so he's very relatable. I am a big baseball fan (I don't want to mention I root for the Mets, but as a season ticket holder, I'm bound to be found out sooner or later) and represent a number of great sports writers. When it comes to selling sports books and nonfiction books in general, platform becomes a big discussion point. How Simmons has grown his in a grassroots way by blogging and using the Internet, and moving away from print, is pretty telling. And his rabid fans can't seem to get enough. It's amazing that his new book about all things basketball is a #1 NY Times bestseller (when was the last time a book about basketball hit #1, and it's over 700 pages?!), and really illustrates the power of a successful platform. This article also offers some good easy-to-know, but hard-to-follow advice on how to build your platform by blogging and how to keep people coming back once you get there.

All Palin's Eve

by Jim

Here we are on the eve of Going Rogue publication, and I know how excited we all are. Harper reportedly plunked down $5 million for the book, which I initially thought was crazy but now think was crazy genius.

Some people love Sarah Palin. I mean...well, I’ve heard that some people do. I live in New York where Republicans are mythical creatures that people report spotting but can never empirically prove the existence of. But the point is, the success of Palin’s book isn’t going to be based on whether the people who love her turn out to buy it. It’s going to have to do with just how much vitriol the people who hate her can muster up against the book.

Let’s face it: liberal columnists and bloggers looooove to hate Sarah Palin. She’s a go-to whipping post, and the articles lambasting the book are already hitting the web faster than you can say, “Gotcha!”

Tomorrow promises to be a full media pile-on, and that’s going to send thousands upon thousands of readers to the book store. Palin’s got an Ann Coulter-ish appeal. She’s brash enough that the people who love her admire her spunk and the people who don’t are terrified.

I don’t know whether or not I’m going to buy the book, but I know that I could be swept away by the media frenzy. Whether or not I actually read it, I do know for sure that I’m going to spend more time on the book’s Amazon page watching the frequently hysterical freak-outs from Palin’s most disturbed supporters and detractors. What can I say--I love a good fight.

So who already bought it? Who is boycotting? And better yet--who’s going to the book tour?!

Is a story just a story?

Recently, former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair, addressed the W&L Journalism Ethics Institute for its 48th anniversary. This prompted a debate around the water cooler and on blogs and made its way to discussions on news programs. For, if you remember, Blair resigned from the New York Times in 2003 following an investigation that found he had plagiarized and fabricated a lot of the stories he had written for the paper. Some of his reporting was on the Iraq war and the Beltway sniper attacks. It was understandable that people were surprised that Blair would be addressing the Journalism Ethics Institute because we trust reporters to tell us the truth. We don’t expect them to fabricate or edit stories to make them more entertaining, as Blair did.

What about memoir authors who fabricate stories? James Frey and the debacle involving A Million Little Pieces comes to mind. Frey received a lot of attention from his book when it was published--Oprah praised him, A Million Little Pieces was in a million little bookstores, everyone talked highly of this new talented writer. But upon investigation, Frey’s story was proven to be inaccurate in parts, and some readers who had once been fans of the memoir wanted their money back.

Some authors don’t really care about the difference between fiction and nonfiction. A story might just be a story. But is it unfair to truthful memoir writers when an author, such as James Frey, fabricates tales to sell books? Does it prove that Frey is a talented writer that we believed his tales? Or is it infuriating to have loved a book as a memoir and find parts of it to be complete fiction?

How much tweaking should be allowed in memoirs to make them entertaining these days, and do you care about the difference between fiction and nonfiction storytelling?


-Rachel

Nothing out there like it?

In working on prescriptive non-fiction, I’ve noted a phenomenon among authors that I’ll call the “there’s nothing out there like it” fallacy. Interestingly, it seems to affect a disproportionately expert population—physicians, nutritionists, psychologists, trainers, counselors, and attorneys—writers with professional credentials whose proposed book emerges from a considerable knowledge of their target market. Indeed, the fact that these people come in daily contact with their would-be book buyers should mean that they have a better sense than anyone of the information their patients/clients lack. In theory, these experts are ideally positioned to perceive a book-shaped hole in the market. But interestingly enough, this is not always the case.

There are a few reasons; because the general public may be demonstrably in need of information (or perhaps just reluctant to implement it) it does not always follow that there’s a dearth of books on the topic. In my experience, experts may know their audience inside and out, but they don’t necessarily have a clear sense of the competition. Acquiring editors, meanwhile, have an overdeveloped sense of the books in the field; usually they’ve published them. (Agents do too, which, apropos of the recent discussion, is another reason why we’re handy). Busy professionals, even those who assiduously keep up with the relevant journals, rarely have the time to read books aimed at a general audience. They do, however, hear their clients/patients complain that there is a shortage of reliable information “out there.” They field the same questions again and again. They rightly perceive their clients’ points of confusion, and may be especially gifted at untangling complex information, or perhaps they’ve created a program that gets amazing results. It is not so very difficult to therefore imagine that all this would merit, even demand, a new book.

Maybe so. But in order to test this premise, writers need to do significant research, not only on Amazon.com, B&N.com, Booklist, Publishers Weekly, or Publishers Marketplace, but also in multiple bookstores and libraries. No single source is especially reliable: on-line searches may be too broad or too narrow; looking at the bookstore shelf may not give an accurate sense of all that’s actually on offer; libraries don’t necessarily reflect all the newest entrees. Ideally, aspiring authors should read, or at least skim, the likely competition, with a dispassionate eye (does the world really need another book on this subject) and in hopes of spotting an opening. If “nothing out there” really means “there’s nothing out there written by me,” bear in mind that publishing houses find this a persuasive argument only insofar as the “me” in question has one or more of the following: a national platform; a media profile; conducted groundbreaking research; a fresh approach to the subject at hand. It is this last aspect that is most tractable. It is true that most nonfiction is platform driven, but it is also concept-driven, and teasing out a hook—which is not so much a gimmick as a clever, easily-grasped, organizing principle—is essential. Finding a way into your subject that has not been done and done again is difficult, but not, I think, so difficult as acquiring the MD, MBA or PhD to begin with!


-Jessica