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MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH THE GODFATHER

To me, THE GODFATHER (meaning the book and the first two movies) is an unparalleled masterpiece. It is operatic in its intensity, Shakespearian in scope, and Mozartian in its ability to take something maddeningly simple and make it brilliant.

Al Pacino was once interviewed about it. He said it is mythological. It’s a story about a powerful king with three sons. Each son inherits one thing from the father, but none of them inherits everything. Sonny inherits the brutality. Fredo inherits the sweetness. And Michael gets the intelligence. Eventually the life they lead destroys all of them.

There are also great business lessons to be learned from this saga. The Corleones are, after all, in business.

There are far too many to list all of them, so I will list just a few modest examples here.

One of the ones I like best is when Michael tells his coterie that all business is personal. He says that every piece of crap you have to take every day adds up. If you treat someone with respect, they will not want to do you in. Disrespecting someone is about the worst thing you can do. They will feel resentful and humiliated and they will want your head on a platter. Many people miss this, because it’s not in either movie, but it’s in the book.

Another aspect of this is to add a personal touch to things that could be farmed out. Tom Hagen is impressed when Johnny Fontane personally drives him to the airport. When someone makes an appointment and comes to see you at your office, don’t send an assistant to fetch the visitor in the waiting area. Go out and greet them yourself.

Keep your friends close but keep your enemies closer. Most people have heard that one. But what does it actually mean? It means being aware of everything your enemies are doing so that you are prepared. But it also means having enough respect for them so that you don’t underestimate them. You wouldn’t mind them so much if they hadn’t done something that devastated you. They will do it again—if you let them. Be prepared.

If you haven’t read the book, I urge you to do so. Some people think it can’t possibly be that great because it was so enormously popular. But a book can be both, and this one is. When you combine it with the movies, you have a saga that transcends its own popularity.

I have a thing about audio rights. Here’s a short history:

Audio rights used to be easily retainable by the author, because no one thought they were that big a deal. But then they went digital, and all of a sudden, publishers woke up. They not only demanded that they keep audio rights, but some refused to even offer without them.

That was a big change, one that I never fully accepted. Here’s why.

If the author retains audio, I can sell the rights to an audio publisher and the author gets all the money. She gets it promptly and it goes directly into her pocket, where it belongs. If the publisher retains audio, they can either publish audio themselves, which is often the case, or they can sell those rights to an audio publisher. And take half. HALF. If I sell the rights, I take my standard 15%. But the publisher wants half. It has been that way since I’ve been in the business and no one has ever seriously challenged it.

Except me.

I don’t see why they should get half for selling something that I can sell. Moreover, they will charge it against the author’s royalty account and the author will probably wait for years to get it—or maybe never.

I’m okay with the publisher’s audio division publishing the title. At least that way, the author gets a fair royalty. But even then, it will be charged against the royalty account, and the proceeds may never make it into the author’s pocket.

The worst part is they tend to offer for everything in a lump sum. If they buy a book for say $100,000, the audio is included. It used to be that they would pay $100,000 and I would sell the audio, bringing in an extra sum. Of course, they don’t differentiate between print and audio rights. It’s all lumped in together. Which means they are basically STEALING the audio rights. It’s assumed they get those rights as part of a package, without breaking down the package.
I continue to fight this, but it has become an uphill battle. I would be happy to consider other methods that are fair, but the current system of them grabbing rights is not fair.

How many of you agree with me?

When my daughter was in second grade, she wrote a story. The first line was “It all started with ordinary carrots”.

Why does that work? Because it makes you want to read on. It could have started with “Once there were some carrots.” But that leads you nowhere. What could possibly happen to plain old carrots that would create a story? If you want to know, you’ll have to keep reading!

I don’t remember the rest of it, but I’ll always remember that first sentence. I don’t think my 7-year-old knew at time that she got it right. Sometimes we stumble into something that just works.

But we can learn from this. You don’t have to stumble into it. Learn to do it consciously. Write in a way that makes us want to keep going. That is called narrative drive. When you have narrative drive, you have a page-turner. It could be in any genre. It can be literary or commercial. Whatever it is, the skill of hooking our attention and keeping it should never be underrated. It can be applied to anything—a business report, a school paper, a news story, or a bestselling novel.

Homework assignment: Take one of your favorite books off the shelf and read the first page. Why does it work? Break it down piece by piece to see how it flows. How does it make ordinary carrots come alive?

1. The font is tiny and single-spaced and the margins are miniscule. That lacks professionalism and tells me that you expect me to wade through something that is not quite legible.

2. There are mechanical errors from the get-go.

3. It’s boring. When something is boring, it’s usually because it lacks pacing. Give me something, anything, to worry about.

4. It doesn’t fit the genre it’s supposed to be in.

5. It’s too slow. Which is boring.

6. The characters are dull. Boring.

7. It doesn’t appear to be about anything in particular. Where’s the story? When you don’t introduce a story promptly, it gets boring,

8. It lacks voice, which makes it boring.

9. The cover letter is hostile or tries to crack inappropriate jokes or is disrespectful. One once called me “an arrogant gatekeeper”.

10. It doesn’t know what it is. Where would it fit on the shelf? 

The word I used most here is “boring”. That is the number one reason something gets declined. Hook me right away and keep me there.

I did a book a few years ago called BRAIN REBOOT: New Treatments for Healing Depression. Where did I find that book? In the slush pile? No. Through a referral? No. Because I knew the author? No.
New projects came in an infinite variety of ways. In this case, I wanted to do a book on this subject, because I had heard a lot about it and new that new treatments had helped many, many people. But I needed an author.

The author had to be a doctor. And it had to be someone with a pedigree. A book by your local physician may have merit, but it’s not going to garner as much attention as someone affilated with a famous hospital or school.

So I called up Harvard and asked for the Psych Dept. I told whoever answered the phone what I was looking for. I suggested that perhaps it could be posted somewhere. Then I hung up.

I did not expect a response to this. I didn’t know anyone at the Harvard Psych Dept. and didn’t think my request would land anywhere or even be taken seriously. Harvard gets a lot of calls, some of them from crackpots. Well, she probably didn’t think I was a crackpot, but I had no reason to believe that a random call from a stranger would make a dent.

The next day, I heard from Dr. Michael Henry, head of the bipolar clinic at Mass General, which is affiliated with Harvard. He also lectures at Harvard Medical School. He wanted to write the book. I told him how to write a proposal, and the book sold soon after.

If only life were always that easy! This kind of process usually takes more than one simple call. It can even take years to get a project off the ground. In another post, I will tell a much more usual story about how this process can play out. But I wanted to tell this story, because it illustrates the point I would like to make.

Try. That’s all. Don’t assume anything. Pick up that phone. Send that email. Do not expect failure. Do not expect anything. Just put it all out there and see what happens.

I got lucky that time. Maybe you will get lucky too. The more you put out there, the “luckier” you will get.

This is one of my more delightful memories of my years in book publishing.

My author Leslie Carroll (writing as Juliet Grey) sold a trilogy of books about Marie Antoinette (who never said “let ‘em eat cake”, by the way.)

We set up a meeting with the publisher, which also included the editorial director, the editor, the publicist, and the marketing people. This was held in a conference room in the Random House building across from Times Square. There we were in the heart of New York City, about to time travel to the 18th century.

While the publishing people waited in the conference room, the author was in her editor’s office, carefully dressing as Marie Antoinette. I don’t mean the cheap costume shop variety. I mean a very authentic 18th century gown, shoes, a fan, and earrings.

I walked into the conference room and introduced the queen of France–in French. In strolled the author, resplendent in her outfit and smiling as everyone gasped in delight and applauded.

The meeting went very well. Really, how could it not?

All meetings should be like that. I don’t mean that everyone should dress in a costume, but they should get creative, think outside the box, and let ideas fly.

I never tell people to work hard. I tell them to have fun. Hard work is fun when you love it.

“Ceaseless work, analysis, reflection, writing much, endless self-correction, that is my secret.”
— JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH

That is my post for today. Bach is considered to be a genius, but look how hard that genius worked. It didn’t come easy.

Manners matter. Here’s a story about that.

When I first started in publishing, I worked with an elderly agent who was from the South. He was extremely successful in his day. His clients called him The Count. He had impeccable southern manners. Some of them were old-fashioned, but they were elegant and always appreciated. He never raised his voice, never resorted to sarcasm or insults, and he got fantastic deals for his authors.

Then an author accused him of being too nice with publishers. The author snarked that the agent went to publishers “hat in hand”. How do you think the agent responded to that?

He said, “Yes, I always do go hat in hand. Courtesy is not dead.”

This story speaks for itself. Authors sometimes have the idea that it is necessary for an agent to be nasty, and to go into meetings sword in hand. That is a very naïve view. While yes, agents must be strong, passionate, have good arguments and be prepared, there is no need to do all of that with rudeness. Rudeness is a turnoff, and it’s a sign of weakness. A strong, confident agent doesn’t stoop to that level.

There was once a wonderful editor named Kate Duffy. She did genre fiction. A story about her began to circulate many years ago, and she confirmed to me that it was absolutely true. Sadly, Kate died some years after that, but the story lives on.
***
She was once at a writers conference. This was back in the days before there was an internet. Manuscripts were always on paper. There was no other way to do them.

Kate was very busy at this conference, and stopped into the ladies’ room for a moment and went inside a stall. While she was in there, someone shoved a manuscript under the door and said, “As long as you’re not busy”.

True story. I heard it from Kate herself.

What is the moral of this story?

Poor taste is ever present? Don’t be a jerk?

I don’t know, but I do know that today, there is an internet and everything should be sent that way. No one wants to go to a conference and have something shoved into their hands. Do you expect them to shlep it back with them? If someone shoved a full manuscript into my hands today, I would look for the nearest trash can, which is probably what Kate did.

More on manners in my next post. Manners count.

No one likes an agent hopper.

Someone who has had four agents in seven years is not attractive. It shows that they can’t stay put, they have no loyalty, and they probably have poor judgment. Sure, anyone can make a mistake and sometimes good relationships need to come to an end. But to hop around like a kangaroo shows instability. It looks like ill-placed opportunism.

The best agent relationships are more like partnerships. The agent and the author work together to build the author’s career. There may be times when the agent is the author’s only friend. Sometimes things don’t go as they should, and the easiest person to blame is the agent, because it’s not that hard to change agents. It’s much harder and more complicated to change publishers.

I’ve had authors leave, and then they find that their new situation may be a little different, but not really better. Sometimes they want to come back, and if they do, my answer would be no. The grass is always greener, and someone who gets restless is going to get restless again.

This does not mean, of course, that you should remain tethered to someone who is no longer what you need. Just look before you leap. If you jump out of the frying pan, you don’t want to land in the fire and burn up. If someone is negligent and truly not doing their job, that’s one thing. Unrealistic expectations on the part of the author is quite another. I’ve had people come to me saying their former agent did “nothing.” Then it turns out the former agent sent the material to 37 places and got no bites. Well, what does the author think I’m going to do? Pull out my magic wand? And 37 submissions is a lot of work. It’s definitely not “nothing”.

Are some agents better than others? Of course. But are they better for you?