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There is no license. There is no exam you have to take. There is no certificate of validation or achievement. So what qualifies me to do this work?

It began in childhood, when I could be quite content to play by myself. Not all the time, but people would remark on how self-sufficient I could be. That’s Clue #1. You have to like working on your own.

I read all the time because I loved reading. That’s Clue #2.

At home, I was taught to stand up for what I thought was right, even if no one else agreed. Clue #3.

I always loved negotiating, to see if I could get, either by the powers of persuasion or logic or a tradeoff or pure passion, one more little thing. Or even a big thing. Clue #4.

Attention to detail became important to me as I got older. One comma out of place can drive me crazy. When you’re doing a contract, you don’t want to miss anything because those things can turn around and bite you a year later–or 20 years later. Clue #5.

So it wasn’t any one thing. It was a lot of things. I just had the personality for it. And a deep, fierce desire to succeed. When I first started, failure simply wasn’t an option. I never even considered it. There was no Plan B.

Of course I learned a lot along the way. And there were mistakes, but mistakes can usually be fixed. But I haven’t changed much. I still like to play alone. I love to negotiate things. I can still be the one oddball in the room who refuses to back down. And a misplaced comma still drives me crazy.

 

 

First They Came by Pastor Martin Niemöller

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me

When you do this work for as long as I’ve been doing it, you learn a lot about what makes a book salable. It’s all about telling a good story.

Because of everything I learned, I started auctioning critiques of partial manuscripts for charity once a month. I found this surprisingly rewarding to do.

The craft of writing is not easy, but every single story needs the same elements:

1. What is the plot? This is the number one mistake that people make. They don’t understand what a plot is. It’s harder than you think, but once you get the hang of it, it gets easier.

2. Are the characters both vulnerable and resourceful? If they are not, they will be dull.

3. Where are we? A story with a strong setting is so much better than a story that takes place in a vacuum.

4. Pacing is everything. You can write about watching paint dry if you have good pacing. This comes naturally to some people, but it can also be learned. The trick is to never be boring.

 

That’s about it. I review manuscripts with these things in mind. Some people have great writing, but no real story. Others have a great story, but the writing is faulty. Sometimes there are wonderful characters who jump off the page. Other times the characters are forgettable.

You can’t get away with having some but not all of these elements. We need the whole package.

The auctions are fun to watch, especially on the last day or even the last few minutes. If you’ve ever participated in an auction on eBay, you know what it’s like. People often wait until the last few seconds so as not to be outbid. It can get quite exciting to see something jump from $1500 to $4000 in the space of 15 seconds.  Sometimes they go for a relatively small amount. Other times they run into five figures. But the important thing is to show up. You can’t know until you put your toe in the water.

What happens when an author has to choose between two equal offers and can’t decide?

Usually there is a call or Zoom between her and her two suitors, but one time something else happened.

One publisher offered to fly her to New York, put her up in a hotel, and fly her back the next day. While she was in town, we were invited to the publisher’s office for afternoon tea. The editor was there. So were the editorial director and someone from sales.

You can believe what a difference that made. She was charmed by the attention and ended up going with them.

But when the other publisher found out about it–I don’t know who told them, but it’s a very small business–they were livid. The editor called me and remarked in biting tones that I had been “busy”. Yes, that was true. I had indeed been busy. They thought that as long as the author was going to be in town, it was only fair that she see them as well.

I did not agree. They weren’t the ones who flew her in and they came up with no strategy–not even money–to change her mind.

I’m not sure what the moral is here, but it does conform to one of THE GODFATHER’s business rules: Always use a personal touch.

Louisa May Alcott, the beloved author of the great classic, LITTLE WOMEN, was born on November 29.

So was I.

She was the second of four sisters.

I am the third of four sisters.

Every girl who reads LITTLE WOMEN identifies with Jo, its heroine. I am no exception. And I am not alone. Many notable women, including Hillary Clinton, Nora and Delia Ephron, Joyce Carol Oates, Susan Cheever, and rocker Patti Smith, have cited Jo as their favorite literary character.

What is it about Jo that is so endlessly appealing? Her appeal has crossed centuries, and is available in just about every language. Why does every girl around the world want to be Jo?

She is certainly not perfect. She has many flaws. But she’s real. Her flaws are part of who she is, and they make her all the more real.

She is smart, determined, she has a great sense of humor, and a very strong sense of family. But I think what resonates most about her is her great need for independence. Many girls want to find a loving husband and start a family. Jo isn’t against those things, but they are not her top priority. She does eventually marry and has two boys, but that’s not what she’s really about. She is a writer and she wants to sell her stories and make money for her family more than she wants anything else.

Let’s take a look at the real Alcotts. LITTLE WOMEN glosses over their poverty, which was truly miserable.  Louisa abhorred the poverty in which she was forced to live, mostly because her father, the transcendentalist Bronson Alcott, thought he was too noble to work. She was angry all her life and resolved to do something about it.

She did. She wrote unfailingly, insistently, until someone paid attention. At first she wrote the potboilers that were popular in her day, but when she started to write LITTLE WOMEN, something happened. She forgot all about the niceties for girls that she was expected to include, and instead wrote from her heart. She wrote about her family, wisely leaving her father out of the picture. She said if she had included him, he would have taken over the book, just as he took over everything in life. She didn’t want him interfering, so she sent him off to war in her most famous novel and kept him out of the way.

This is a 19th century woman with only a talent and a desire to sell. As an agent, I have to love her attitude. It was elbows out, don’t get in my way, I’m going to do this whether you like it or not. Think of the obstacles she must have faced. But she didn’t think about the obstacles. She kept her eyes on the prize. She became the top selling author of her day, eclipsing even Mark Twain. Not too shabby.

When you sell a book to a publisher, they give you an advance against future royalties. Where does that money come from?

A publisher has a long history and a long list of titles that continue to sell many years after they were originally published. So when you get a huge advance from Random House, where do you think they get that money? They get it from Louis L’Amour and authors from the past. L’Amour was such a huge moneymaker for them that one of their conferences rooms is named for him.

That is the magic of the backlist. While L’Amour may no longer top bestseller lists, he has been a steady presence for a long, long time and he continues to sell.

If I were an author and I had a choice between a flash in the pan bestseller or a solid backlist title, I would go for the solid backlist title. It means you continue to get income for years, and that income adds up. If you wrote a classic, it may even support you for the rest of your life.

Okay, most book don’t fall into that category, but instead of focusing only on current trends, try to think ahead. What might resonate 10 or 20 or 50 years from now? Think about the recent 50th anniversary of Saturday Night Live. Sabrina Carpenter was on. She remarked that SNL began before she was born, and before her parents were born. And yet they all can still enjoy Steve Martin’s King Tut, Belushi’s samurai, and Dan Ackroyd’s Jimmy Carter. Those are a part of their backlist.

Most books are on the shelves for a few months, and then they are gone. Unless they continue to sell. Before GPS, one title that always made the lists was the Rand McNally Road Atlas. Maybe not glamorous, but steady.

Slow and steady wins the race. Sure, you’d prefer to have both–the major bestseller that lasts for decades. Who wouldn’t? But just think about the other side of it. The book that refuses to leave is a hidden gem.

Here’s a story about releasing money that was owed to the author.

An author called me to ask why her royalties were so low. She had been told by her editor that her sales were very good, but the royalties she received did not reflect that. This was a book that had been sold before she came to me, so I knew nothing about it.

But I did know that publishers deliberately withhold a certain percentage against future returns. That means booksellers can return what doesn’t sell. They order the number they want, and if the copies don’t all sell, they can send them back. The number they ship is based on the orders–not on what actually sells. They don’t know exactly how a book will sell until it’s out there.

I called the editor and she referred me a guy in Operations. That’s where they decide what to print and how much to withhold. I spoke to a very nice guy and told him the problem. He looked up the title. And lo and behold, he agreed that too much had been withheld, and he agreed to release $11,000. The author received a check, all because of one phone call.

Most people accept royalties as they are, but royalties are in fact a form of fiction. That’s because the math will usually add up, but you never know exactly how much is being withheld. Unless you ask. It’s generally around 20%, but as my example shows, not always.

 

Sometimes a publisher will announce, following a normal period of negotiation, that this is their final offer.

As Huck Finn would have said, that ain’t no matter.

It’s not over til it’s over. Nothing is really final until an offer is accepted or the deal falls through. If it does fall through, I’ve seen it come back to life later on.

It can’t be final until both sides agree it’s final.

The most important sentence in a book is the first sentence. If you don’t like the first sentence, you may not read any further. You could argue that this would be lazy and short-sighted and you might be right, but that is not what you’re going for when you want to sell a book.

Let’s take a look at some of my favorite first sentences:

Guido Maffeo was castrated when he was six years old and sent to study with the finest singing masters in Naples.

–Anne Rice, CRY TO HEAVEN

Captain Ahab was neither my first husband nor my last.

–Sena Jeter Naslund, AHAB’S WIFE

We have been lost to each other for so long.

–Anita Diamant, THE RED TENT

You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but that ain’t no matter.

This first sentence follows a warning to the reader:

NOTICE

PERSONS attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted;

persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons

attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.

–Mark Twain, THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.

J.D. Salinger, THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

 

Read these over and think about why they work. Do you want to keep reading? That’s the main question. What are some of your favorite examples? Why did they speak to you so compellingly? What made you want to read on?

Let’s talk about THE CATCHER IN THE RYE, a book that most people have read. I never heard of anyone who didn’t like it. It is considered a great work of American literature.

But will its place continue to hold up? After all, all of its characters are white, there is homophobia, and it shows a teenager drinking. Terrible, huh?

That is the problem with too much wokeness. If you are going to cancel THE CATCHER IN THE RYE, you might as well cancel all the great works of American literature. HUCKLEBERRY FINN has already been criticized for showing an enslaved man and the south’s general attitude toward slavery. Never mind that Huck, the hero, stands up to it and says “I’ll go to hell” rather than turn Jim in.

Yes, CATCHER has elements of which we don’t approve today. But it wasn’t written today. It was written more than 75 years ago, when such attitudes were very accepted. Drinking was cool, homophobia was common, and just about every novel or TV show or movie featured only white people. We can look back at that as a time of ignorance or oppression or very limited exposure. But for God’s sake, do not throw this book out the window. It is a masterpiece.

Every person lives in a time that will fade and go away. And after a while, no one will remember having lived in it. Today, we cannot ever really know what it was like to live in the U.S. (either north or south) during the Civil War, but it scarred the souls of everyone who experienced it. That’s for them to remember, but they are gone now. Some people still can remember what things were like during the time of THE CATCHER IN THE RYE. Maybe it gives them better insight to the novel, but nothing can detract from its ultimate message. It is the quintessential novel about adolescence. It is about the cost of growing up and the cost of refusing to grow up. That is universal, and despite the references or images that are now considered distasteful, it will always ring true.