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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?

Let’s say you have a character who is stuck at the bottom of a well in the middle of nowhere. Her phone is dead. What is she going to do? What are her options?

She can sit there and wait to be rescued.

She can scream for help.

She can say her prayers and wait to die.

Or she can take an action.

Is it possible for her to climb out? Are there rocks or branches in the walls that she can grab? Is there something she can throw? Is there any kind of object she can use to help herself? Is it narrow enough for her to “walk” her way up?

Whatever she does, as long as she does something, she is now an active character instead of a passive character.

And that makes all the difference. A resourceful character is a character we can admire and take interest in, even if that character is a villain. You rarely see an inactive villain.

A passive character is not interesting. But a character who initiates action is a character who can take control. And that is the kind of character who makes for a good protagonist. If the story is about George, then George should be the one taking most of the action. If something is being done to him, he must react accordingly. He cannot just sit there complaining. We will quickly get tired of him unless he tries to help himself. Worse, the story will lose interest. If George doesn’t do or say anything, whatever his problem is, then there really isn’t much of a story.

Sure, we can see his family doing something. Or the police. Or whoever. But they are all peripheral. if you want George to be a character we can love and root for, he has to be at the helm. He has to be resourceful. Otherwise, it’s not really a book about George. It’s just a situation with various people doing various things, but without a real center.

Setting is one of my favorite topics, because so many writers don’t use it well. Some don’t use it at all, which is a terrible waste of an opportunity.

Try to imagine CATCHER IN THE RYE being set anywhere other than New York City. Try imagining TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD set anywhere else but Maycomb,Alabama. It just doesn’t work. Think of all the best books you have ever read and picture the setting. More often than not, the setting played a big part, if not an essential part.

Not only does the setting let us know where we are by using all of the senses, but it helps to ground the story and define the characters. Sometimes the smallest details jump off the page and bring the entire scene into view. Like the etched glass swan double doors on a Victorian house. Or a liveried doorman walking backwards on W. 57th St. in New York with one arm up and a whistle, hailing a cab. Or the metal Coca Cola sign on an old screen door that slams on rusty hinges. All those things bring a strong sense of place, which means we are that much more transported.

Let’s break those examples down. A Victorian house can seem vague in your mind without those doors. Suddenly, you are picturing a real house, not just a blur of a house. Who would live in such a house? Who are these people and what are their lives like?

That doorman on W. 57th St. brings with him a wealth of information. It tells us we’re in an upscale neighborhood. The people who live there are comfortable and urbane. I see his cap and his white gloves. I can see the hem of his coat flapping as he walks along. I can hear the piercing shriek of the whistle over the constant noise of the traffic. I can see a cab whizzing to a halt just past the avenue at his bidding. All that from one doorman!

Oh, and that screen door. I’m picturing a café in the deep South, with ceiling fans and stools at a lunch counter. I’m seeing old-fashioned autos from the 50’s or maybe even the 20’s. I am sensing the aroma of freshly baked peach pie.

Think of all these places and ask yourself what kind of person would live there? How would that setting affect who they are, how they see the world, how they talk, and how they live? Even if that character has moved somewhere else, he or she is going to bring that background along. If you have a well-dressed businessman in Chicago, maybe he grew up in Butte, Montana. How would that affect how he talks or does business? How would he dress and style his hair? He might look like any other Chicago businessman, but if we know he’s from a craggy mountain, maybe he’s a bit craggy too.

You can’t go wrong using setting for all it’s worth. Your story will be better for it and you will have succeeded in taking your reader on a magic carpet ride to another place and time.

If I were asked what is the one thing authors get wrong, it’s this. They don’t understand that publishing is a business. The second thing is they don’t know what a plot is, but let’s stick with the business.

The purpose of a business—any business—is to make money. If it doesn’t, it will soon go out of business and that will be the end of that. It is not the job of a trade publisher to encourage literature or keep the fires burning. The only job of a trade publisher is to make money. If they fail at that, they won’t be able to publish any books at all. (I’m talking about trade publishing here—the realm of bestsellers and popular books that may be literary or not. I am not talking about university presses or small places that look for avant garde material.)

They make money where they can find it. It might be a big, important novel that becomes a classic. Or it might be a book of Sudoku puzzles. Or both. But they are always looking at the bottom line, because they have to.

So the first question you should ask yourself is how will this book make money. Are there others like it that did well and so maybe this one will too? Is it something fresh and different that catches a lot of interest? Is it a memoir about something interesting and new? Has it been told a zillion times before? If so, do you have a new twist?

Many authors think the way to write a book is to get an idea, write the book, and hope it sells. That is a backwards way of doing it.

First, look around and see what’s out there. Your task is to write something that fits in and yet has a new angle of some kind. It can be the book of your heart about your eccentric family in India or it can be a fun mystery novel because you have read many of those and you like them.

Maybe you thought writing was going to be all about being creative, baring your soul, or adding to the progress of literature. And it can be all those things. Just as long as it sells.

This happened to a younger colleague of mine. It was one of the first sales she made, but it was a doozy.
She discovered a well written urban fantasy novel.

She received an offer of one book for $6000. Okay, it was modest, but it was something.

Then someone else made an offer for three books for $10,000 each.

Competition set in and the amounts continued to climb. Some publishers dropped out when it became more than they wanted to spend.

This kept going until there were only two publishers left. One of them got on the phone with me and remarked that the young agent had a tiger by the tail. I could tell she was surprised. She thought this would be easier, and that she could snap this up for little money. After all, the agent was a beginner and so was the author. I smiled and replied that yes, she was doing very well.

The auction ended after three days at three books for $125,000 each. A far cry from the opening offer of $6000 for one book. All three books made the NY Times Bestseller list.

I love this story because it shows that you should be ready for anything. You might be bitterly disappointed, or you might get a lovely surprise, but anything is possible. You never know what the day will bring. But the bottom line is that the agent was very well versed in the genre. She knew exactly how good the material was–and how valuable. She was going to let the market dictate the price, but on her terms.