The One Rule to Rule them All

I don't usually blog on the submission process. I don't think it's a terribly effective use of space. But I was reading a blog of a soon to be self-publishing author, and in it I saw something I see a lot--on author blogs, on Absolute Write, on twitter, etc. And that is the idea that agents, editors, the publishing industry as a whole are in the business of making rules and hoops and hurdles for authors to jump through in order to get their books published. 

And I can understand where it comes from, to a degree. Yes, agents have ideas about how to pitch things. And they have ideas about what is popular. And they have ideas about what sounds like good writing. And for heaven's sake, yes,  put two agents in a room together and they may disagree on all but one thing that they both prefer to see. (Want evidence of that, mosey on over to WriteOnCon and visit the live chat transcripts from this last year's conference.) But all those things they say work? They're things they've seen work.  When you view 100 queries a day—and I can't fathom that, the most I ever saw as the slushpile reader was ten!—you have a sense of what is going to make an individual query stand out in those 100. They aren't "rules." As someone who sat on first one side of the desk and is now sitting in a tiny kid's chair on the other, as near as I can tell, there is only one rule:

Write an awesome and marketable book.

Take the time to pitch it well.

And then, be ready to keep pitching, and to keep revising, and to keep working.

That's all. Yeah, you can get caught up in write the query this way, write the query that way, don't use a penname, do use a penname, don't ever send an email with an attachment, don't double-space in an e-mail, do double space in an email, yadda yadda. But in the end, I've found that it's more about just using common sense, and being professional, and first and foremost, having a good book.

Of course, I'm not agented yet, so, take that with the requisite canister of salt. But in the meantime, I'm holding fast to a great piece of advice I stumbled across just as I was starting on this whole adventure (and I wish I could remember the source, but I don't--if someone knows, please help!):

There's a term for writers who don't give up: Published.

In Brief: I'm Judging By a Cover!

From the perspective of a bookseller with a scan gun, this is quite possibly the best spine design ever invented. (sorry for the darkness...on a bottom shelf and wanted to get it in its "habitat")

And it's a National Book Award finalist, too. Who said great design and great writing don't go together?

I am judging this book by its cover and it gets two thumbs up.

Only Revolutions by Mark Z. Danielewski at:

Powell's
Amazon
B&N

How Dare There Be a Bottom Line!

I've been lurking in, and participating in, several discussions of late on the self-publishing, e-publishing, commercial publishing debate (and I'm not going to put "versus" in there, because I really feel that all these things are important and no one is actually diametrically opposed to any of the others). One thing I keep see being brought up is the scare that "commercial publishers just publish what they can sell!" They aren't worried about quality, just look at some of the typos or the horrific writing of [Dan Brown, Stephenie Meyer, John Grisham, pick your poison of the day].

And here's the thing. That is absolutely true. Publishers want stuff they can sell. Why? Because when it's your book they're trying to sell, they're going to put a lot of money into it, and do their darndest to make sure it makes them (and you) money.

Here's a short story. My first two years out of college, I worked for a small publisher who shall remain nameless (mainly because I'm about to talk about acquisitions). Most of the staff were involved in acquisitions: the editors, the publisher, the marketing and sales staff, and me, the office manager and profit-and-loss statement generator.

There was a day when a book came to us. It had been previously self-published (no, self-publishing has never been the end of the road for any good book), the author had gained a good following for it, she had a niche, she had a blog with lots of followers—and this was almost ten years ago when almost no one was on blogs—the book itself was funny, fresh, and interesting. She sent two copies of the book for our consideration, and we shared it around the lunch table. And then we got to the acquisitions meeting.

Do we love this book? we asked ourselves.

We love this book, we agreed.

Is it a good book?

It's a great book. It's funny; it approaches its topic in a way no other book does; it's appealing.

Does the author have a platform?

A super platform.

And then came the moment of truth.

Are we going to be able to sell this book?

We looked at the P&L. It was in the black, provided we made some changes to the book itself--took away the fun four-color process in favor of maybe a single signature of four-color photos. The book was a outside our usual genres--in fact, we didn't have anything else like it on our list for the next eighteen months. Would the sales staff at our distributors be able to make the kind of sell-in that would justify the numbers on the P&L? Or were we overestimating, since they'd never seen a book like that from us before?

We talked, and talked. And crunched numbers, and crunched them again. And it all led to one conclusion--as much as we loved the book, and as good as we thought it was going to be--our house was not the right house. Given the other things we published, given the funds we had available to us to print, given the kinds of sell-in we could expect, we were simply not the right place for it.

It was not a judgment on the book. We loved the book. It was not a personal judgment on the author. We thought she was doing a stellar job.

It was because we couldn't make the bottom line work. And that, ultimately, would've meant that book wouldn't do as well as it would with another house.

The end of the story? We rejected, the book was eventually picked up by an imprint of S&S (I found this out four years later when I was no longer working in publishing), and near as I can tell on Amazon, it is still backlisting well six years later.

If we'd published it? It would be out of print.

That publishers are in the game to make money isn't about some dirty thing designed to be exclusionary. A lot of times, it's about what's in the best interest of the book.

In Brief: You Know Who

So sometimes I am a barista instead of a bookseller. Today was one of those days. It's generally not very fun--I have my job because I like to sell books, not because I like to make coffee. However, there are a number of distinct advantages to being a barista in a bookstore instead of a regular Starbucks:

Me: Can I have a name for the order?
Customer: Voldemort. Lord Voldemort.
(I write "He Who Must Not Be Named" on the cup.)
Coworker, after making the latte: Lord Voldemort?
Customer: Did you dare use my name?
Coworker: Fear of the name only increases fear of the thing itself. Have a nice day, Mr. Riddle.

I love working in books.

In Brief: Redface Moment

So, while at the store Saturday, I saw a gentleman and his wife talking a bit about Isaacson's Steve Jobs. There's a huge display next to the digital sales desk where I work. I've been enjoying Jobs since acquiring a personally signed copy from Isaacson several weeks ago when he visited the store. So I usually mention to everyone who picks it up that it's a great read, seeing as it's a hefty book and fairly pricey.

I mentioned this to the gentleman and his wife, and he gave me an odd look, and countered, "You should try the book about Jack Kennedy over there. Been on the New York Times Bestseller List for weeks. I wrote it."

And then he and his wife left, leaving me completely tongue-tied at having just unknowingly recommended Isaacson's book to CHRIS MATTHEWS.

Head, meet desk.