Publisher's Question Time, Vol. II

So, you may remember that last week we began to lift the veil from the face of publishing to reveal the beauty – and the monstrosity – beneath. In an effort to probe those murky depths, I solicited from my co-workers the most common questions that they get about their job, and their replies included queries covering everything from what editorial folks do all day to the correct pronunciation of Knopf. However, I saved the most common, and the most difficult, question for this week.

I have a manuscript—will you be my editor?
My [mother’s brother’s best friend’s daughter’s childhood crush’s dog] has a manuscript, will you take a look at it?
My dad, friend, grandpa, hairdresser etc is writing a book - can you help them get it published?

To someone who works in publishing, these words are akin to ragged nails screeching down a chalkboard. Not that this behavior is confined solely to aspiring writers: people who work in music, film, fashion, modeling, and sports get bombarded too. And it’s supremely awkward. You want to be nice; you want to help people and spread good karma. And you never know when someone might be proffering a hidden gem, the next best-seller that just needs one person to take a chance and believe in it. But the likelihood of that being the case is very small.

The issue here is the personal nature of the request, and the obligation it immediately creates. If a close friend who is serious about writing asks me to read something, I will do so because I genuinely want to help where I can. Hopefully, she will understand enough about my job to know that it’s not a question of me waving a magic wand to produce a book (I really have little power at all), and be comfortable with a respectful and honest exchange of ideas and suggestions. Most importantly, I can be sure that she’s approaching me as a friend and peer without any expectation of professional results.

However, the situation becomes very different if someone I don’t know well (or at all) asks for feedback. What do I say? They don’t know me well enough to value my opinion in and of itself or really care about what I have to say; they only want the possible connections I might have because of my job. It’s one thing to ask for neutral industry advice – for example, how best to select an agent or prepare a query, or even how to go about finding a job – and I’m always happy to provide that because it indicates that the person is professional and has a grip on the realities of publishing. There’s no inherent expectation of results, or the potential for an awkward dilemma about whether or not to be honest, and well-within the socially appropriate norms of networking and general goodwill. But it’s another thing to be cornered at a party by an acquaintance and asked point-blank if I can help her publish her boyfriend’s short story collection. Once, during a short-lived attempt to find a roommate through Craigslist, I went to see someone’s apartment; we were chatting about ourselves, and I mentioned what I do for a living. “Oh!” she said, eyes alight. “My mother writes romance novels! Can I put her in touch with you?”

You can call me grumpy and selfish and ungrateful if you want, but I think it’s rude for people to abuse social goodwill and demand an uncompensated investment of time and effort. For example, say you hurt your knee in an accident. You might ask your friend to talk to their mother who’s a doctor and see if she has any advice or recommendations, and maybe she’d suggest you see her colleague the orthopedic surgeon or visit a chiropractor. Perhaps she might even offer to look at it herself. But you wouldn’t, after meeting someone at a party and discovering he was a doctor, immediately whip off your trousers and ask him to examine your leg, would you? Or even entertain an expectation of free treatment from your friend’s mother? No, you would not. And that principle applies to all situations, whether you have a novel you want published or parking tickets you want voided. Please don’t send me your pastor’s self-published paranormal thriller unsolicited with a heavy-handed, hint-filled note; please don’t give my e-mail to your casual acquaintance without asking for my permission first; and please, whatever you do, DO NOT MESSAGE ME ON FACEBOOK just because you saw a comment I made on someone’s post that in some way casually referred to work (yes, that’s happened).

Phew! I feel so much better now.

Lessons from Launch: How a Book Gets Debuted

Caution: This is going to be one of those how-the-book-business-works posts, so it will probably be a bit too nerdy for some of you who just prefer to read about books themselves. If you’re the latter type, enjoy this lovely post from McSweeneys.

Every few months, I get to sit in on a really cool meeting called “launch”, which heralds the debut of a new season of titles to produce and promote. In a room of about 70 people (all of the publicity and art departments, a smattering of people from sales, production, marketing, and a handful of lucky assistants), each editor gets 10-15 minutes to present their list of books for an upcoming season. (This meeting usually goes 3-4 hours, but there are snacks and coffee to keep you going.) For a non-fiction title, the editor presents the basic premise of the book, comparable titles that have done reasonable well, the expertise/profile of the author, and why they think it’s going to have a fantastic life. For fiction titles, we learn a bit about the basic story, the style of the author’s writing, how their previous books have done, and who its potential audience might be.

This meeting is, without a doubt, the highlight of my job. Why? Because it is the one point in the book publishing process (apart from the acquisition process, which often happens behind closed doors) where you get to see the editor be unabashedly optimistic about a book’s future. Literally launching a book into its future life, the editor becomes a cheerleader for the book. As of launch, a book has everything possible, and as the editor explains why they bought the book and why they fell in love with it, it is hard not to fall in love with the book as well. There is nothing to kill the dream of the book’s promising future just yet: we haven’t seen any rejected jackets, no less-than-optimistic sales force, no bored or apathetic readers. We only see the good, the possible, and the promise.

This meeting is where you get to see why so many people want to become editors: speaking with clarity, humor, and confidence about their upcoming projects, the editors act like storytellers. They are deeply passionate about why they acquired a book, yet thorough and sincere in explaining the book’s strengths, challenges, and potentialities. (It is a tremendous test for a young editor, who has to adjust their presentation style to get just the right balance of extemporaneous enthusiasm and polished sobriety. The editor must also be well-read in the book’s context, especially when presenting works of non-fiction. The editor has to convince us that this book gives us something new to talk about, or that the author’s voice is fresh enough to bring blood to a supposedly dead subject. What does this book reveal that has never been revealed before? What reward does a book on ancient Egypt or the Revolutionary War provide to contemporary society? These are all important questions that the editor attempts to answer in their launch presentation.

“OK…so what’s the story?” This is ultimately the most important question the editor has to answer in their presentation. They have to tell you what the book is about, how they experienced the subject the way the author tells it, and how other people will appreciate, connect to, and benefit from this book. There is, of course, always some degree of concern about a book’s commercial viability, but this is not the meeting to confront the reality of the marketplace, or to even express doubts about the size of a book’s potential audience. An editor gets to discuss a book’s merits without denigrating other books, consumer tastes, or even the economy, ultimately making an argument about how the book can and should stand on its own strengths.”

Most importantly, in the middle of conveying all of their optimism for a book’s future, the editor has to also persuade the other launch attendees that they have to put aside their own skepticism. Even if the room is already predisposed to hate a given premise (i.e. yet another paranormal romance that rips off Wuthering Heights), the editor has to tell the story of how, by reading the book and speaking with the author and their agent, their own hesitations dissipated, and how they formed a solid admiration for and confidence in their new acquisition. Nothing kills a book’s future like doubt, and in launch, the editor has to dispel any hesitations and fill you with conviction.

My first week working in book publishing, I got to sit in on a launch meeting. The reaction this meeting produced in me may have been the product of my impressionable youth, or it may have been that it was my first meeting of this kind. Yet even 10+ launch meetings later, I can still see what so inspired me on that day: getting to see exceptionally brilliant and talented editors discuss their upcoming projects with an uninhibited degree of energy, hope, and possibility. They talk about each new title as if it were a newborn child, portending only good things and having tremendous impact on the world into which it will debut. Even in a publishing climate filled with anxiety, there's nothing like occasionally relaxing with the promise of a great new project.