Author: ireneg

Go ahead, judge a book by it’s cover. A lot went into that cover, so go ahead and give your opinion. Everyone else will, so why not you?

Some covers work very well. Others miss the mark. But some thought and work went into all of them. They are not generally thrown together, like Sunday night homework.

Covers are a craft and an art form. They are put together by the Art Dept. and they are usually run by the author for cover consultation. I always insist that every contract include over consultation. But note that I’m saying consultation, not approval. I don’t believe that any author should have complete approval, unless maybe the author is Picasso.

That is because authors can get strange ideas about what their cover should look like. The purpose of the cover is to sell the book, and authors are not always connected to that aspect of it. In order to protect authors from their own naivete, we need to have some stopgaps.

Of course, it can go the other way. The publisher can come up with a cover that the author loathes. That’s where the cover consultation comes in. The author has every right to weigh in on her own cover, and if she is presented with something that is inappropriate or ugly or weird or even embarrassing, she has every right to say so. More than not, they will attempt to change the cover to her satisfaction. But bear in mind that they know what is in style, what else is selling, and what works.

Other aspects can factor in. If the main buyer at a major chain doesn’t like a proposed cover, that cover will be out the door. One time a buyer said doing it their way would spur them to order another 10,000 copies. Guess how fast the publisher changed that one?

Here’s a typical story about an author’s meeting in New York with his agent and publisher.

The author was in his 30’s and this was his first book. He was from Oregon and he was thrilled about the meeting, his first experience at this sort of thing. But his agent, an excellent former colleague of mine, was concerned. She told me that he was excited about the meeting–not because he would learn a lot, be in a place to freely talk about his journey as an author, ask questions, and make suggestions. No, he was excited because he had a fantasy version of what an agent does. He was expecting some kind of dramatic showdown, in which his agent would put on her helmet and shield and kick ass.

That’s not how it turned out.

First, the author saw how hard his publisher had worked on his book and how much they believed in him. He also came to realize, based on everything he saw around him, that he was not the only author they had. He and his agent had many questions and ideas, but none were accusations. The author wanted a prominent ad in the New York Times. The publisher explained that these ads are expensive and would eat up too much of the budget. They would get far more bang for their buck if they used the money more strategically. The agent asked about summer reading tables in bookstores. They said that they were unable to get that for the first book, but that book had done well enough that they would consider doing it for the second book. Those things are usually paid for by the publisher and they can’t do it for every single author. There is only so much room. Plus the bookstore has to agree to do it.

The publisher made useful suggestions about the author’s website, which wasn’t as up to date as it should be. They also asked about a pub date that might need to be moved. The author balked at that, and the agent backed him up with firm, logical and articulate arguments. But she didn’t shout or say anything nasty or expect the moon. Instead, they talked it out and reached a reasonable solution.

The author came away with a new understanding. He saw that publishing is a collaborative effort. He got some things he wanted, but not everything.

Of course, it doesn’t always go that way. I had a meeting where the author was so demanding and insulting that they canceled her contract. (I then dropped the author.) She landed back on her feet with a different publisher, but after that she was never heard from again. And there is another story about an agent who was so obnoxious that the publisher told the author they refused to work with that agent any longer. The author stayed with her agent and they went to another publisher, but she and the agent later parted company.

The point is that ideally, everyone is on the same team, with the same goal. And what is that goal? Guess:

A. Make the author happy

B. Keep the author in her place

C. Sell books.

D. Call out the publisher about what they’re doing wrong

I’m not going to tell you the answer. Think about it.

Not in my agency, they don’t. I can’t say what other agencies do, but here we might spin, we might embellish, or we might round off, but no one flat out lies.

Some people have the idea that lying is all done with a wink and a nudge and that’s it’s all just part of the business.

It isn’t.

Maybe that’s what they do in other businesses, but in publishing, lying might get you thrown out of the professional agents’ organization.

Say you only have one offer and you know they will go up if only you had a little competition. It would be easy to pretend you do and to lie about it, but we don’t. What I do instead is to negotiate with the one offer I have. Sometimes they balk (you’re asking us to bid against ourselves??!?), but I don’t recall a single time when they wouldn’t improve their offer without competition.

My reasons are good. If there is no movement, the author will feel dissed and that’s not a good way to begin a relationship. The publisher knows they were expecting to pay more, and I’m not going to let them run away with the spoon. All negotiations are a piece of psychology. If one side refuses to budge, it’s not a negotiation. It’s a dictatorship. The other side will feel let down, the dictator will feel like they should have offered less, and no one will be satisfied.

There is also this. Lying is wrong. You knew that, didn’t you? But maybe you thought it was all part of an expected game. But consider that no one likes to be lied to. No one wants to be made a fool of. That includes business. The basic rules of life do not cease to exist in a business transaction.

And one more thing. Publishing is a small business. Word gets around. Publishers almost always find out what went on behind the scenes. People talk, and gossip is not outlawed. And when word gets around that you are a liar, that will permanently affect what happens after that.

So please don’t expect us to lie. We won’t invent offers that don’t exist, we won’t double the amount that was legitimately offered, and we don’t lie about how many books sold. Ultimately the truth will come out, and where does that leave you?

Successful authors have many qualities that can be learned, but there is one that isn’t a question of learning. It’s a question of discipline.

If you publish a book every two years, readers come to expect a new book from you every two years. Your publisher is counting on that too. It creates a level sense of expectation. You deliver on time and you’re not letting anyone down.

Some authors fail to understand this. They think they can write a new book any old time, which offsets the regularity and becomes confusing. This is especially true when a book is too late to be published when it was scheduled and it has to be moved. That upsets the production team at the publisher, it disappoints the booksellers, and it creates a senses that the author is not reliable. If you get on a roll and then take time off and start again, only to stop again and then start again, you are creating a roller coaster that drives everyone else crazy.

If the readers don’t get the book they expect, they are not going to hang around and wait. They will find other authors to read and may or may not get to your book when it finally appears, but the apple cart is now unsteady. You will unquesti0nably lose some readers, because you weren’t there when they were expecting you.

Let’s look further. You sign a contract with a publisher and they schedule the book. This schedule is shared with the entire company, so that each stage of production can proceed accordingly. When the book is late, it throws everything off.

But the worst part is when it’s so late that it has to be moved. Not only does it upset the production, but now they must find another book to put in its place. And where are they going to put your book? Since most months are scheduled a year in advance and already taken, they may need to bump someone else’s book to accommodate yours. It’s like a house of cards and someone just tapped the first card. All the other cards fall down.

Life happens. Sometimes you need more time or you have a disaster or the economy changes in such a way that schedules change. None of these things may be your fault, but they nevertheless have an effect.

So the moral of this story is to be on time. A deadline is a normal part of business and of life. Take it seriously. I promise that if you take it seriously, your publisher will take you more seriously. You need to be able to trust them and they need to be able to trust you.

Your journey is yours and no one else’s. You can’t really compare yourself to anyone else because you are two different people and you are influenced, educated, and motivated by different things.

When an author complains that she is not doing as well as her author friend, I always point out what is usually obvious. My author suffered from a debilitating illness that shut her down for a while. She lost ground and her book had to be moved (which publishers never want to have to do). How can she possibly compare herself to someone who published with regularity and didn’t miss a beat?

That’s an obvious example. I know someone who lost her husband on 9/11. He worked at Windows on the World at the top of the World Trade Center. It was very hard for her to be in New York after that. She owned a house in another state and went to live there. Then she lost her rent-stabilized apartment in New York because she wasn’t there enough. They actually counted the days she was there, because they wanted to unload a rent-stabilized tenant. This experience affected everything she did. It influenced her expectations of a home, it caused her to meet many new people with differing views in her new place, it changed where she voted. . .I could go on and on. Now people ask her what she thinks of the current mayoral race in New York. What she answers today is not the same as what she would have said years ago. Her circumstances changed her.

Which is why authors should keep their eyes on the prize and look straight ahead. Of course you can and should befriend other authors. Just don’t compete with them. They are not you and you are not them.

The Jewish new year is upon us.

To me, the beginning of the year is really in September. That’s when everyone comes back from wherever they were. It’s when vacations end and people get back to work. It’s when the school year starts. The new seasons in the arts come alive again. By October, things are in full swing, and summer is truly over.

It’s a time to look back and see where you’ve been, and it’s a time to look ahead. If there is any one message to Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, I think it’s that you never know what might happen. It could be a very good year, or fate may deliver disaster. Expect the unexpected. You don’t know which year will be your last, so embrace every moment. Savor the fleeting moments of this precious life.

So Happy New Year to everyone. May the coming year bring you health, prosperity, and peace.

Chicago calls itself the “second city”. Ostensibly, the first city in America is New York, and Chicago comes in second.

That is a terrible way to look at things. Why should you imply that you are second best, or worse, not good enough?

Futhermore, no one thinks of Chicago as the #2 city in the country. Maybe they did once, but not now. If there is a second city, it would be Los Angeles.

But why does there have to be a second city? Why identify like that? Chicago is our premiere midwestern city, and that is something to be proud of. It has a special vibe and pace of its own. It’s useless to try to compete with something that is too different to even attempt a comparison.

This applies to you, too. Don’t try to be like anyone else. Just do you. No one else can do it as well as you can. Look what Garrison Keillor did for small town Minnesota. He made it into a very familiar and yet almost magical place.

Here’s my Chicago story. It shows what needless comparison can do to a city:

I was in Chicago on business and I got on a city bus. I asked the driver if the bus was going to the art museum. He didn’t seem to know. So I turned to the people on the bus, and in my NY mode of zip-zip timing so as not to hold up the passengers, asked them if this bus went to the art museum. No one answered. Finally, I asked “How do I get to the art museum?” No one answered, but one man yelled out “Get off and walk!” Okay, that was it. I no longer cared if I was holding anyone up. I turned to face the passengers and announced “I’m from New York and I’m going to remember this.” The moment they heard the words “New York”, they all started jeering. Chicago resents New York for being the #1 city–a moniker I reject. I got off the bus and got into a taxi.

An executive once called me from Amazon. She was coming to New York and wanted to set up a meeting at the end of August.

I gently explained to her that I wouldn’t be around in late August–and neither would anyone else. That is a dead time in publishing, although I prefer to think of it as a renewal time.

It’s important to know the rhythms of the world in which you are working. Amazon is in Seattle. Maybe August is different for them. On the east coast, it’s pretty much acknowledged that “after Labor Day” is a given. It’s like the end of December. Not a great time to set things up.

January-April is a solid block of working time. But then people start to go on vacations, which can slow things down. Summer is possible, but there are more vacations. It takes a week or two after Labor Day for everyone to be back in gear, and then it’s in full gear until Thanksgiving. By mid-December, it’s time to wait until after the 1st.

I naively thought everyone knew this. But apparently the Amazon executive did not, so I’m just spelling it out. To everything there is a season.

 

An author’s career needs consistency. If you thought you could write a fun mystery and then a Young Adult romcom and then a literary novel about Henry VIII, and then a nonfiction book about the inner workings of a snail, you are jumping around too much for a publisher to know what to do with you. Pick one thing and stick with it. They want to build you. They don’t want to have to start over each time. Your next book should be a suitable followup to your last book.

Authors may protest that they have more range and want the freedom to do other things. You can do that, but consider that you will lose readers, and you won’t be known for any one thing. That matters simply because that’s how the publishing business works. If Taylor Swift suddenly decided to start singing opera, she would lose fans. She might gain new ones, but not enough. And your audience wants to know they can rely on you. If everyone is looking forward to Taylor’s new album, they don’t want to find out that she went off and did something weird. They want more of the same. Of course you can expand on what you’re doing. Just keep it in the same wheelhouse. Sgt. Pepper was a far cry from the early Beatles. They grew and changed. A lot. But they still sounded like the same band. They stayed true to themselves. And it’s part of the reason they are still around.

 

This is a term I invented. It is a comprehensive meeting with the author, the editor, the agent, possibly the editorial director, and people from sales, marketing, and publicity.

It’s powerful because it gets to the heart of things and then things get done. I love these meetings because they are cordial but thoughtful. We go over what is working and what is not. If something isn’t working, we talk about how to fix or replace it. It’s important to go in with a positive attitude instead of looking for trouble. If there is trouble, you will find out in this meeting. Say they promised to do summer reading tables, and that never happened. You can find out why. It could be that they dropped the ball. Or it could be that the last two didn’t increase sales, and Barnes & Noble decided not to continue. That is not what you want to hear, but it’s valuable information. And like it or not, it’s what you came for.

It’s a good time to make suggestions and toss around ideas with everyone in the same place (or virtually). If possible, I prefer to have them in person, because that requires a greater level of commitment. It’s easier to slide by on a Zoom call, but you have to be prepared when you’re looking into someone’s eyeballs. I always bring an agenda with questions and ideas and I expect everyone else to do the same. Also, it usually means the author has flown in, which makes it a much bigger deal.

The tone of all this should be upbeat. Everyone wants the same thing, which is for the books to make money, so there is no need for contention. If you feel they are doing little to nothing, you can point that out in a polite but firm way. Ask them why their commitment feels light to you. Have reasonable expectations. If you thought they were going to do national TV ads for your second mystery novel, that is not reasonable.

Be prepared for honesty. This is not a time to hype or exaggerate. It’s a time for truth. If your last book didn’t do well, everyone is disappointed. But why? Why didn’t it do well? Was it too much of a departure from your usual brand? Was the publisher’s support less than the last book? Why? Are they thinking outside the box? Are you? Maybe you chose a difficult topic that put the readers off. Maybe your website and social media are not engaging enough. Maybe you need a video or a blog. Maybe they dropped the ball somewhere, or maybe they didn’t drop the ball but there was a good reason for whatever you are curious about. Sometimes they try to accomplish something and don’t, but they don’t want to tell you. For example, they tried to get several radio spots, but no one was interested. They don’t want to tell you that because it’s  disappointing and they think it’s better to leave it unsaid. But it isn’t. You still want to know, because maybe there is something you can do about it. Or maybe not. Better to know and then you can move on.

When do we have these kinds of meetings? When the time feels right to have one. It could be once a year, it could be next week, or it could be never. There is no rule about this. It usually happens either when things are going very well, or when something has gone wrong that can be fixed.

I have never had one that went badly. Publishers are people too, and they want you to be happy. They get a  lot of complaints, so it’s always a good idea to show some gratitude. They should do that too. That is basic business and it works every time.