Beverly Swerling's Blog: I Was Thinking...
June 21, 2014
BACK TO THE FUTURE
Happens that since 1996 my husband has run an online consultancy that helps writers find new (and sometimes a first) agent. He got into it because years ago I was unhappy with my then agent, but that's a whole n'other story. Getting back to this one, recently it fell to me to update the site's bestseller page http://www.agentresearch.com/bestsell...
Turned out the longer I worked, the more it felt as if I were in a time warp.
The page is a simple who-represents-whom feature – a list of bestselling books with the addition of the name of the agent who sold same. For most readers it’s why-should I-care information, and the short answer is you shouldn’t (and you should stop reading here). But if you're a writer it’s a vital bit of business knowledge.
When the page was started the Internet was in its infancy, there were maybe two hundred literary agents worth having, and tidbits of hard info based on first class research were nuggets of pure gold.
Nowadays? Not so much.
That being the case, the AR&E bestseller page isn’t updated as frequently as it might be. But a short while ago I had an attack of housekeeper’s remorse and decided to devote a couple of hours to cleaning it up.
I soon felt as if I’d gotten into my DeLorean and floored it.
Book after book had been sold by an agent who’s been around the business forever. Binky Urban, Merilee Heifetz, Al Zuckerman, Stuart Krichevsky, Esther Newberg… Stellar names? Absolutely. But another of the many things that changed in publishing over the past few decades was the explosion of literary agents. A small, highly select (and selective) group had, by the turn of the millennium, become an army approaching four figures. And all of them entirely legitimate.
Brief digression: One of the absolute plusses the net has brought to writers is the demise of the scam agents. The information age pretty much killed off the parasites with no record of sales who once preyed on new writers, peddling upfront charges and odious contracts. Snake oil doesn’t sell when everyone knows about antibiotics.
Why then – using composite lists of hard covers, paperbacks, and e-books – was I having to hunt so hard for bestsellers sold by agents I’d call “middle-aged” in terms of length of time in the business? Much less the young and hungry.
My first thought was that the lists themselves were skewed. Only the long established writers were getting on them, and such writers had their agents since way back when. But I didn’t bother listing books written by Stephen King or James Patterson or others of their ilk. Everyone who is interested knows the agent history of such writers. I was deliberately choosing books by authors who breathe the same air as the rest of us. Talented folks with a healthy oeuvre and a lot of cred within their genres, but not necessarily supernovas.
Nonetheless, the data kept throwing up the same agent names, and it was all back to the future in terms of who was selling the books that made the lists. Because I dug deep to create a more informative set of facts for visitors to the site, the newly refreshed Bestseller page is not as skewed to oldies but goodies as it might have been. But trust me, the phenomenon I’m reporting truly exists.
If I were plotting a novel I would expose the denouement about here. Ta Da! Here’s the explanation and aren’t you surprised? In this instance I can work no such magic. I have a couple of facts and a theory and I’ll share them, but I can’t claim any of it is definitive.
One fact is that in at least one case the data indicate an author started with one of the lesser known agents, and after achieving some success switched to someone with star power. That’s a story as old as the lists themselves and frequently replicated, so it doesn’t shed a lot of light. Another fact, one I think more enlightening, is that as publishing adjusts to a digital world, the profound upheaval and resultant shakeout has driven many of those newer agents into other work. We’re back to a smaller pool. Okay, but the same goes for mill workers. And everyone knows books are different…
Thinking about all this I’ve come up with a theory that is perhaps a bit more revelatory: The newer agents tended to come from publishing. A good many had been editors, maybe junior editors, and in the late 90’s, as the great downsizing of publishing staff took hold, many switched to the other side of the desk. They did not learn their trade from the older agents, but rather understood the labor of making a book, and hopefully a bestseller, from the publisher’s pov.
That could be seen as a strength, but I suspect it is not so from the pov of the writer. In the old days, the ones that gave rise to those long established agents I was so surprised to encounter in such numbers, literary representation was seen as essentially the job of providing support for talent.
If the agent correctly evaluated the talent part, eventually the client would produce something that would make a living – possibly a good one – for both agent and author. Back then an author could count on the agent to do more than simply sell the book. The agent was the author’s confidante, not an extension of the publishing behemoth. Such an agent expected to run interference with a stroppy editor, discuss issues to do with work in progress, hand-hold when necessary, and once in a while do lunch. (Not to mention always returning phone calls.) Moreover, the agent’s office could if necessary provide information about legal needs, suggest an accountant, give advice about media consultants, maybe even get involved in what to wear on a book tour.
Frankly, becoming that sort of agent requires a number of not common things: superb literary taste so you frequently guess right about the talent part, superior negotiating skills, infinite patience with fragile writing egos, and – maybe most difficult of all – sufficient capitalization to be able to run such an operation long enough to allow it to become profitable. In other words, the kind of deep pockets you acquire when you’ve been a star agent for a lot of years…
And once you get there, even the newer bestselling authors want you rather than anyone from their own generation in the business. Not such a mystery after all.
Turned out the longer I worked, the more it felt as if I were in a time warp.
The page is a simple who-represents-whom feature – a list of bestselling books with the addition of the name of the agent who sold same. For most readers it’s why-should I-care information, and the short answer is you shouldn’t (and you should stop reading here). But if you're a writer it’s a vital bit of business knowledge.
When the page was started the Internet was in its infancy, there were maybe two hundred literary agents worth having, and tidbits of hard info based on first class research were nuggets of pure gold.
Nowadays? Not so much.
That being the case, the AR&E bestseller page isn’t updated as frequently as it might be. But a short while ago I had an attack of housekeeper’s remorse and decided to devote a couple of hours to cleaning it up.
I soon felt as if I’d gotten into my DeLorean and floored it.
Book after book had been sold by an agent who’s been around the business forever. Binky Urban, Merilee Heifetz, Al Zuckerman, Stuart Krichevsky, Esther Newberg… Stellar names? Absolutely. But another of the many things that changed in publishing over the past few decades was the explosion of literary agents. A small, highly select (and selective) group had, by the turn of the millennium, become an army approaching four figures. And all of them entirely legitimate.
Brief digression: One of the absolute plusses the net has brought to writers is the demise of the scam agents. The information age pretty much killed off the parasites with no record of sales who once preyed on new writers, peddling upfront charges and odious contracts. Snake oil doesn’t sell when everyone knows about antibiotics.
Why then – using composite lists of hard covers, paperbacks, and e-books – was I having to hunt so hard for bestsellers sold by agents I’d call “middle-aged” in terms of length of time in the business? Much less the young and hungry.
My first thought was that the lists themselves were skewed. Only the long established writers were getting on them, and such writers had their agents since way back when. But I didn’t bother listing books written by Stephen King or James Patterson or others of their ilk. Everyone who is interested knows the agent history of such writers. I was deliberately choosing books by authors who breathe the same air as the rest of us. Talented folks with a healthy oeuvre and a lot of cred within their genres, but not necessarily supernovas.
Nonetheless, the data kept throwing up the same agent names, and it was all back to the future in terms of who was selling the books that made the lists. Because I dug deep to create a more informative set of facts for visitors to the site, the newly refreshed Bestseller page is not as skewed to oldies but goodies as it might have been. But trust me, the phenomenon I’m reporting truly exists.
If I were plotting a novel I would expose the denouement about here. Ta Da! Here’s the explanation and aren’t you surprised? In this instance I can work no such magic. I have a couple of facts and a theory and I’ll share them, but I can’t claim any of it is definitive.
One fact is that in at least one case the data indicate an author started with one of the lesser known agents, and after achieving some success switched to someone with star power. That’s a story as old as the lists themselves and frequently replicated, so it doesn’t shed a lot of light. Another fact, one I think more enlightening, is that as publishing adjusts to a digital world, the profound upheaval and resultant shakeout has driven many of those newer agents into other work. We’re back to a smaller pool. Okay, but the same goes for mill workers. And everyone knows books are different…
Thinking about all this I’ve come up with a theory that is perhaps a bit more revelatory: The newer agents tended to come from publishing. A good many had been editors, maybe junior editors, and in the late 90’s, as the great downsizing of publishing staff took hold, many switched to the other side of the desk. They did not learn their trade from the older agents, but rather understood the labor of making a book, and hopefully a bestseller, from the publisher’s pov.
That could be seen as a strength, but I suspect it is not so from the pov of the writer. In the old days, the ones that gave rise to those long established agents I was so surprised to encounter in such numbers, literary representation was seen as essentially the job of providing support for talent.
If the agent correctly evaluated the talent part, eventually the client would produce something that would make a living – possibly a good one – for both agent and author. Back then an author could count on the agent to do more than simply sell the book. The agent was the author’s confidante, not an extension of the publishing behemoth. Such an agent expected to run interference with a stroppy editor, discuss issues to do with work in progress, hand-hold when necessary, and once in a while do lunch. (Not to mention always returning phone calls.) Moreover, the agent’s office could if necessary provide information about legal needs, suggest an accountant, give advice about media consultants, maybe even get involved in what to wear on a book tour.
Frankly, becoming that sort of agent requires a number of not common things: superb literary taste so you frequently guess right about the talent part, superior negotiating skills, infinite patience with fragile writing egos, and – maybe most difficult of all – sufficient capitalization to be able to run such an operation long enough to allow it to become profitable. In other words, the kind of deep pockets you acquire when you’ve been a star agent for a lot of years…
And once you get there, even the newer bestselling authors want you rather than anyone from their own generation in the business. Not such a mystery after all.
October 5, 2013
ENCORE! ENCORE! BUT LESS SEX, PLEASE, IT’S 2013.
Posted on October 5, 2013 by Beverly
This is not my first rodeo.
Not theirs either.
Mollie Pride and Juffie Kane were bestsellers written by me (under a different name, but that’s a whole n’other story) before e-books were a gleam in the eye of either Jeff Bezos or Steve Jobs. They’re now in second editions in my E-book Encore Collection. I’m very excited about that collection; not least because by long literary convention, a second edition means the author can make changes.
As I prepared these two novels for their encores I found myself cutting things that seemed to make the stories too leisurely for modern sensibilities, things that in 2013 felt too wordy or too much like padding… I deleted like mad and loved it.
Leading to the question: What else can I take out? Well, there’s sex.
Which probably should be written SEX.
Generally I’m all for it. If you write stories about adults who are intimately involved, that involvement has to be discussed because it impacts all else. (Even in the sense of mattering not a great deal if both partners are happy with how it’s going, and mattering hugely otherwise.) Certainly characters in the first flush of romance are driven by their hormones. In Mollie Pride, for instance, Mollie elopes when she’s sixteen and it’s okay for about ten minutes, then it’s a disaster. Soon her husband is cheating on her and she’s devastated. It’s hard to avoid the bedroom when that’s so much a part of what’s happening. Still, that book never had what I think of as explicit sex scenes, so the issue wasn’t joined.
Juffie Kane, on the other hand… “Steamily sexy,” according to Kirkus. “Sensual,” was a key word in the reviews of both The Chicago Tribune and Publishers Weekly. And these were raves, I should point out. The New York Times Book Review liked Juffie a lot, and didn’t even feel it necessary to mention that there was a good bit of fairly graphic sex.
But that was then. Back in the 20th century, when readers and writers and reviewers inhabited a book world where there yet lingered the faint echo of bestselling novels by Harold Robbins or Jacqueline Susann. Reading Juffie Kane now, with my editor’s pencil in hand, those “steamy” scenes felt passé.
I know that may sound odd in this age of 50 Shades of Grey, but I’ve come to realize that’s precisely the point. Twenty-plus years ago it was daring and sophisticated to write explicit sex in a mainstream novel. Today we’ve legitimized a category of women’s fiction called erotica, and it’s right out there on the public bookshelves. I don’t believe in censorship, so in my opinion that’s a good thing. But it also means anything not claiming to be erotic fiction needs to avoid blurring the edges. Readers should not be blindsided. They need and deserve clarity and knowing what to expect. So I toned the sex way down for these two second editions.
It wasn’t hard to do. The sex was always the icing, never the cake.
Both Juffie Kane and Mollie Pride are set in the first half of the turbulent 20th century. In each a young woman is called on to find her way against very tough odds. Both are stories about gutsy, strong females who want love, but also want to be valued for themselves. Women who decide not to be pushed around. In Mollie’s case she has to stand up to the Nazi terror, and do it in London during the blitz. Juffie conquers Broadway—if you love the theater, I promise you will love this book—but the mob has an unbreakable hold on her, and they’re standing in the wings pointing a gun at her head. Until she decides to take it away.
Nothing is lost if I close the bedroom doors a few paragraphs sooner.
So, all right, Mr. DeMille (Mr. Bezos? Mr. Jobs?), they’re ready for their e-close-ups now…
This is not my first rodeo.
Not theirs either.
Mollie Pride and Juffie Kane were bestsellers written by me (under a different name, but that’s a whole n’other story) before e-books were a gleam in the eye of either Jeff Bezos or Steve Jobs. They’re now in second editions in my E-book Encore Collection. I’m very excited about that collection; not least because by long literary convention, a second edition means the author can make changes.
As I prepared these two novels for their encores I found myself cutting things that seemed to make the stories too leisurely for modern sensibilities, things that in 2013 felt too wordy or too much like padding… I deleted like mad and loved it.
Leading to the question: What else can I take out? Well, there’s sex.
Which probably should be written SEX.
Generally I’m all for it. If you write stories about adults who are intimately involved, that involvement has to be discussed because it impacts all else. (Even in the sense of mattering not a great deal if both partners are happy with how it’s going, and mattering hugely otherwise.) Certainly characters in the first flush of romance are driven by their hormones. In Mollie Pride, for instance, Mollie elopes when she’s sixteen and it’s okay for about ten minutes, then it’s a disaster. Soon her husband is cheating on her and she’s devastated. It’s hard to avoid the bedroom when that’s so much a part of what’s happening. Still, that book never had what I think of as explicit sex scenes, so the issue wasn’t joined.
Juffie Kane, on the other hand… “Steamily sexy,” according to Kirkus. “Sensual,” was a key word in the reviews of both The Chicago Tribune and Publishers Weekly. And these were raves, I should point out. The New York Times Book Review liked Juffie a lot, and didn’t even feel it necessary to mention that there was a good bit of fairly graphic sex.
But that was then. Back in the 20th century, when readers and writers and reviewers inhabited a book world where there yet lingered the faint echo of bestselling novels by Harold Robbins or Jacqueline Susann. Reading Juffie Kane now, with my editor’s pencil in hand, those “steamy” scenes felt passé.
I know that may sound odd in this age of 50 Shades of Grey, but I’ve come to realize that’s precisely the point. Twenty-plus years ago it was daring and sophisticated to write explicit sex in a mainstream novel. Today we’ve legitimized a category of women’s fiction called erotica, and it’s right out there on the public bookshelves. I don’t believe in censorship, so in my opinion that’s a good thing. But it also means anything not claiming to be erotic fiction needs to avoid blurring the edges. Readers should not be blindsided. They need and deserve clarity and knowing what to expect. So I toned the sex way down for these two second editions.
It wasn’t hard to do. The sex was always the icing, never the cake.
Both Juffie Kane and Mollie Pride are set in the first half of the turbulent 20th century. In each a young woman is called on to find her way against very tough odds. Both are stories about gutsy, strong females who want love, but also want to be valued for themselves. Women who decide not to be pushed around. In Mollie’s case she has to stand up to the Nazi terror, and do it in London during the blitz. Juffie conquers Broadway—if you love the theater, I promise you will love this book—but the mob has an unbreakable hold on her, and they’re standing in the wings pointing a gun at her head. Until she decides to take it away.
Nothing is lost if I close the bedroom doors a few paragraphs sooner.
So, all right, Mr. DeMille (Mr. Bezos? Mr. Jobs?), they’re ready for their e-close-ups now…
August 14, 2013
One Great Overnight Sensation!
I hope you can hear the music behind that title. (What show was that, anyway?) And get the big happy chuckle in my voice.
But it’s true. As of this morning, and probably for about the next five minutes, I am the number one novelist on all of Amazon.com, and I’ve got the screen shots to prove it. Here’s what happened.
If you’re reading this you probably know that my latest novel is BRISTOL HOUSE from Viking Penguin, published last April. And maybe you also know that three weeks ago I self-published my novel MOLLIE PRIDE, which is now out of print in hard copy so I brought it out as an e-book, the first of what I’m calling my E-pub Encore collection. Well, yesterday morning, Tuesday, August 13th, I woke up and checked where MOLLIE PRIDE was in the Amazon ratings (the author’s Dow Jones as it’s been called). A very disappointing high eighties number. It’s really hard to gain visibility and traction when you don’t have a big publishing house behind you. I knew that going in, but hey, it’s a really good book. I’m proud of it, and I figured it was worth a shot.
Those numbers I was checking are graded on a curve. They indicate how the book is selling in regards to all other books. (Over-all and in various categories, in my case historical fiction.) Thanks to technology they change every hour. And like most authors I can’t resist frequent checks. Around noon yesterday when I looked again, MOLLIE PRIDE had suddenly jumped to the low teens. An hour later it was in four figures… I was, to use that great British phrase, gob-smacked.
Then I scrolled down the page and saw that my author ranking, something I look at much less frequently and which is usually in the thousands had also changed dramatically. I was number 9 in Historical Fiction. The ninth best selling author in my genre on the site of the great god Amazon. Are you kidding me???
I called downstairs to my husband.
I went online and shared the news with a bunch of author buddies.
And I Skyped my daughter-in-law. And a few other friends and family.
Because I am an idiot and not a natural self-marketer, I forgot to Tweet. Or to let my agent know. Much less my publisher.
Of course I kept checking. MOLLIE PRIDE was doing better and better. BRISTOL HOUSE was doing better. It did not occur to me to check any other book… By bedtime I was number four among authors.
When I woke up this a.m. I found two astonishing facts. (You’re not surprised that I checked first thing, are you?) I was number one across the board. The number one ranked author. I could not figure it out. Then I picked up my e-mail and thank you, thank you Alice Tucci, the explanation was waiting.
I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting Alice online or off, but she did me the enormous kindness of writing to tell me that earlier the previous day she had seen a special promotion of my novel CITY OF DREAMS, (thank you, too, Simon & Schuster) and she had bought it and it then occupied her for the rest of the day. She just wanted to tell me how much she’d enjoyed it. I am always thrilled to get such correspondence. This one was truly a revelation. My AHA! moment.
I looked at the CITY OF DREAMS page and there it was. This novel that I began writing in the late 1990′s, and that was published with great enthusiasm in 2001 (unfortunately a few days after 9/11, when Simon & Schuster and I and everyone else had many more serious things to be concerned about), that novel is the reason I have shot to the top of the rankings. At this moment CITY OF DREAMS is the number one selling novel on the site of the biggest retailer of books in the world.
I have been telling stories literally since I could talk. Great long and involved recountings of things I swore really happened when of course everyone knew I was making stuff up. Fortunately I became a novelist rather than a pathological liar. And over the years I’ve learned to make my stories a bit more believable than the tales I wove at the age of six. I would never, never, make up a story like the one I’m relating here. No one would believe it. Least of all me. But sweet, sweet, sweet… for however long it lasts, it’s true.
Thank you one and all. And dreams really do come true… That one is down to Judy Garland in the Wizard of Oz. If you can remember the origins of the line of song I used for the title of this blog, please e-mail me at Beverly@BeverlySwerling.com. I’ll send a free copy of the Kindle e-book edition of MOLLIE PRIDE to five of you who do.
But it’s true. As of this morning, and probably for about the next five minutes, I am the number one novelist on all of Amazon.com, and I’ve got the screen shots to prove it. Here’s what happened.
If you’re reading this you probably know that my latest novel is BRISTOL HOUSE from Viking Penguin, published last April. And maybe you also know that three weeks ago I self-published my novel MOLLIE PRIDE, which is now out of print in hard copy so I brought it out as an e-book, the first of what I’m calling my E-pub Encore collection. Well, yesterday morning, Tuesday, August 13th, I woke up and checked where MOLLIE PRIDE was in the Amazon ratings (the author’s Dow Jones as it’s been called). A very disappointing high eighties number. It’s really hard to gain visibility and traction when you don’t have a big publishing house behind you. I knew that going in, but hey, it’s a really good book. I’m proud of it, and I figured it was worth a shot.
Those numbers I was checking are graded on a curve. They indicate how the book is selling in regards to all other books. (Over-all and in various categories, in my case historical fiction.) Thanks to technology they change every hour. And like most authors I can’t resist frequent checks. Around noon yesterday when I looked again, MOLLIE PRIDE had suddenly jumped to the low teens. An hour later it was in four figures… I was, to use that great British phrase, gob-smacked.
Then I scrolled down the page and saw that my author ranking, something I look at much less frequently and which is usually in the thousands had also changed dramatically. I was number 9 in Historical Fiction. The ninth best selling author in my genre on the site of the great god Amazon. Are you kidding me???
I called downstairs to my husband.
I went online and shared the news with a bunch of author buddies.
And I Skyped my daughter-in-law. And a few other friends and family.
Because I am an idiot and not a natural self-marketer, I forgot to Tweet. Or to let my agent know. Much less my publisher.
Of course I kept checking. MOLLIE PRIDE was doing better and better. BRISTOL HOUSE was doing better. It did not occur to me to check any other book… By bedtime I was number four among authors.
When I woke up this a.m. I found two astonishing facts. (You’re not surprised that I checked first thing, are you?) I was number one across the board. The number one ranked author. I could not figure it out. Then I picked up my e-mail and thank you, thank you Alice Tucci, the explanation was waiting.
I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting Alice online or off, but she did me the enormous kindness of writing to tell me that earlier the previous day she had seen a special promotion of my novel CITY OF DREAMS, (thank you, too, Simon & Schuster) and she had bought it and it then occupied her for the rest of the day. She just wanted to tell me how much she’d enjoyed it. I am always thrilled to get such correspondence. This one was truly a revelation. My AHA! moment.
I looked at the CITY OF DREAMS page and there it was. This novel that I began writing in the late 1990′s, and that was published with great enthusiasm in 2001 (unfortunately a few days after 9/11, when Simon & Schuster and I and everyone else had many more serious things to be concerned about), that novel is the reason I have shot to the top of the rankings. At this moment CITY OF DREAMS is the number one selling novel on the site of the biggest retailer of books in the world.
I have been telling stories literally since I could talk. Great long and involved recountings of things I swore really happened when of course everyone knew I was making stuff up. Fortunately I became a novelist rather than a pathological liar. And over the years I’ve learned to make my stories a bit more believable than the tales I wove at the age of six. I would never, never, make up a story like the one I’m relating here. No one would believe it. Least of all me. But sweet, sweet, sweet… for however long it lasts, it’s true.
Thank you one and all. And dreams really do come true… That one is down to Judy Garland in the Wizard of Oz. If you can remember the origins of the line of song I used for the title of this blog, please e-mail me at Beverly@BeverlySwerling.com. I’ll send a free copy of the Kindle e-book edition of MOLLIE PRIDE to five of you who do.
July 31, 2013
TRUMPET FANFARE, PLEASE…
Posted on July 31, 2013 by Beverly
Excited to report I have launched my Encore E-Pub Collection, with MOLLIE PRIDE. Meaning that after being out of print for fifteen years, this book is again available for readers. Since sharing my stories is what I live to do, that’s a really big deal. And the most astonishing thing of all, I did it myself.
Here’s the skinny.
MOLLIE PRIDE is the tale of a young woman born in 1920 who is the youngest member of her family’s vaudeville act. At the age of five she’s dancing onto the stage at fairs and carnivals from Maine to Texas—dressed like a flapper and doing the Charleston. Of course, being one of my stories this picture isn’t exactly what it seems. There’s a dip back into the world of 1896, when Mollie’s mother is born, and the tale hurtles on from there to Mollie becoming first a child star on radio, the new entertainment craze that all America cannot live without, to her marrying a radio engineer at age sixteen, and four years later hosting Mornings With Mollie, a daily talk show listened to by pretty much every woman in the country. By then it’s the late 1930′s, and the drums of war begin to beat so loudly they cannot be ignored.
In an age when a woman cannot open a bank account without a man’s signature, Mollie’s success is a threat to her marriage. Meanwhile she begins to have ugly suspicions about her sister, who has married a millionaire and is living what looks like a picture perfect life on New York’s Upper East Side. But Hitler and the Nazis change everything for everyone, Mollie included.
President Roosevelt and a guy known as Wild Bill Donovan are quickly and secretly crafting a network of spies—their OSS will eventually become the CIA—and draw Mollie into their orbit. She is sent to London on one of the original Pan American Clipper ships (sixteen hours and two stops to refuel), and eventually reports the horrors of the blitz to her listeners back home. By then not only is her personal life a disaster, terror and treason have come to stalk her every word.
I wrote the book in the late 1980′s, and while it was published and popular all over Europe, it never came out in the States. (A quirk having to do with my changing publishers.) So I’m hoping readers here will get to know Mollie and fall in love with her.
Remember I said I did it myself? Here’s what I meant. Though my new work is published by the randy penguins, otherwise known as Penguin Random, I re-issued this second edition of MOLLIE PRIDE as a Kindle e-book. And if you don’t have a Kindle you can download a free app for your computer, tablet, or phone here http://tinyurl.com/43r6l4m See how untechy I am? I know I should be able to make that a nice neat little hot “here,” but I don’t know how to do it. And I don’t know how to tell you that for the special introductory price of $2.99 you can get your own copy of MOLLIE PRIDE to read on your Kindle or Kindle App with another of those hot “heres.” I have to say please click on http://tinyurl.com/MolliePride
Excited to report I have launched my Encore E-Pub Collection, with MOLLIE PRIDE. Meaning that after being out of print for fifteen years, this book is again available for readers. Since sharing my stories is what I live to do, that’s a really big deal. And the most astonishing thing of all, I did it myself.
Here’s the skinny.
MOLLIE PRIDE is the tale of a young woman born in 1920 who is the youngest member of her family’s vaudeville act. At the age of five she’s dancing onto the stage at fairs and carnivals from Maine to Texas—dressed like a flapper and doing the Charleston. Of course, being one of my stories this picture isn’t exactly what it seems. There’s a dip back into the world of 1896, when Mollie’s mother is born, and the tale hurtles on from there to Mollie becoming first a child star on radio, the new entertainment craze that all America cannot live without, to her marrying a radio engineer at age sixteen, and four years later hosting Mornings With Mollie, a daily talk show listened to by pretty much every woman in the country. By then it’s the late 1930′s, and the drums of war begin to beat so loudly they cannot be ignored.
In an age when a woman cannot open a bank account without a man’s signature, Mollie’s success is a threat to her marriage. Meanwhile she begins to have ugly suspicions about her sister, who has married a millionaire and is living what looks like a picture perfect life on New York’s Upper East Side. But Hitler and the Nazis change everything for everyone, Mollie included.
President Roosevelt and a guy known as Wild Bill Donovan are quickly and secretly crafting a network of spies—their OSS will eventually become the CIA—and draw Mollie into their orbit. She is sent to London on one of the original Pan American Clipper ships (sixteen hours and two stops to refuel), and eventually reports the horrors of the blitz to her listeners back home. By then not only is her personal life a disaster, terror and treason have come to stalk her every word.
I wrote the book in the late 1980′s, and while it was published and popular all over Europe, it never came out in the States. (A quirk having to do with my changing publishers.) So I’m hoping readers here will get to know Mollie and fall in love with her.
Remember I said I did it myself? Here’s what I meant. Though my new work is published by the randy penguins, otherwise known as Penguin Random, I re-issued this second edition of MOLLIE PRIDE as a Kindle e-book. And if you don’t have a Kindle you can download a free app for your computer, tablet, or phone here http://tinyurl.com/43r6l4m See how untechy I am? I know I should be able to make that a nice neat little hot “here,” but I don’t know how to do it. And I don’t know how to tell you that for the special introductory price of $2.99 you can get your own copy of MOLLIE PRIDE to read on your Kindle or Kindle App with another of those hot “heres.” I have to say please click on http://tinyurl.com/MolliePride
May 19, 2013
The Kindertransport - Where History Meets Fiction
THE KINDERTRANSPORT – WHERE HISTORY MEETS FICTION
Posted on May 17, 2013 by Beverly
In 1934, as Adolph Hitler began his second year as the democratically elected chancellor of Germany, there were some 500,000 Jews in the entire country. Less than 1% of the population, they were nonetheless highly visible because most lived in Berlin.
Hitler and his chief propagandist, Josef Goebbels, knew that nothing unites a people like a common enemy. They systematically began blaming German Jews (along with German Gypsies, an even smaller percentage of the population) for all the country’s post WWI economic woes.
One after another the rights of German Jews were stripped away. They were forbidden to work in the Civil Service and then in a variety of other professions. They were denied the right to vote. They were forbidden to marry non-Jews. Soon they would be forbidden to send their children to state schools. Jews, the Nazis said, should go to Palestine. But the British, who were overseeing Palestine under a League of Nations mandate, refused to allow more Jews in for fear of upsetting the Arab population of the always explosive Middle-East.
Soon bands of black- and brown-shirted thugs – member of the paramilitary Gestapo and SA (storm troopers) – roamed the streets and attacked anyone suspected of being a Jew, while the civilian police and pretty much everyone else stood by and watched and did nothing.
Large numbers of German Jews tried to emigrate. They quickly discovered no one wanted them. As the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann put it: “The world seemed to be divided into two parts—those places where the Jews could not live and those where they could not enter.”
In August 1938 Jews with Polish sounding names were told they had to “return” to Poland. That country, however, refused them enterance. One night in October these so-called Polish Jews were rounded up, told they could take one suitcase of belongings, and trucked to the well-guarded Polish border and left in the cold and the rain. And there they stayed, without shelter or any sort of provisions. One woman managed to send a postcard to her seventeen-year-old son in Paris. “We haven’t a penny. Could you send us something?”
The boy bought a gun and went to the German embassy and asked to see an official. He was shown into the office of one of the German diplomats and proceeded to shoot him three times in the stomach. The young assassin made no attempt to escape the French police. “May God forgive me … I must protest so that the whole world hears…”
Three days later the diplomat died of his wounds. Goebbels declared: “…the Führer has decided that… demonstrations should not be prepared or organized by the party, but insofar as they erupt spontaneously, they are not to be hampered.”
That night, November 9th 1938, thousands of men in civilian clothes – most were Gestapo or SA – took to the streets armed with clubs and axes. They broke the windows of every Jewish-owned business, ransacked Jewish homes, and destroyed and burned nearly two hundred synagogues. Some 30,000 Jewish men and boys were arrested and sent to concentration camps. Some were beaten to death while their families were forced to watch. There were a number of suicides. All the shattered glass caused the riots to be called Kristallnacht (Crystal Night).
In BRISTOL HOUSE a character called Maggie Harris, modeled on the mother of an old friend brought to England from Germany thanks to the Kindertransport, tells of watching out her bedroom window while the medieval synagogue of her town is set afire, and how soon after a Gentile friend came and took her into hiding. In my novel she never sees her parents again. In real life that story was repeated many hundreds – nay thousands – of times. On Kristallnacht what the world would come to know as the Holocaust had begun.
Five days after that terrible night the British parliament approved a rescue mission for German Jewish children. It was officially called the Refugee Children Movement. It was soon called the Kindertransport. Over a period of nine months desperate parents sent 10,000 unaccompanied Jewish children, ranging in age from infancy to seventeen, to safety in Britain. The program ended on September 1, 1939 when the Nazis invaded Poland and England declared war on Germany. By that time the Kindertransport had rescued Jewish children from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. America in that same period made no such rescue attempt for children or adults, neither did it increase the availability of visas. Congress was dominated by men (there were no women in either the House or the Senate in those days) who were convinced it was imperative that the United States not involve itself in “foreign wars.”
Posted on May 17, 2013 by Beverly
In 1934, as Adolph Hitler began his second year as the democratically elected chancellor of Germany, there were some 500,000 Jews in the entire country. Less than 1% of the population, they were nonetheless highly visible because most lived in Berlin.
Hitler and his chief propagandist, Josef Goebbels, knew that nothing unites a people like a common enemy. They systematically began blaming German Jews (along with German Gypsies, an even smaller percentage of the population) for all the country’s post WWI economic woes.
One after another the rights of German Jews were stripped away. They were forbidden to work in the Civil Service and then in a variety of other professions. They were denied the right to vote. They were forbidden to marry non-Jews. Soon they would be forbidden to send their children to state schools. Jews, the Nazis said, should go to Palestine. But the British, who were overseeing Palestine under a League of Nations mandate, refused to allow more Jews in for fear of upsetting the Arab population of the always explosive Middle-East.
Soon bands of black- and brown-shirted thugs – member of the paramilitary Gestapo and SA (storm troopers) – roamed the streets and attacked anyone suspected of being a Jew, while the civilian police and pretty much everyone else stood by and watched and did nothing.
Large numbers of German Jews tried to emigrate. They quickly discovered no one wanted them. As the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann put it: “The world seemed to be divided into two parts—those places where the Jews could not live and those where they could not enter.”
In August 1938 Jews with Polish sounding names were told they had to “return” to Poland. That country, however, refused them enterance. One night in October these so-called Polish Jews were rounded up, told they could take one suitcase of belongings, and trucked to the well-guarded Polish border and left in the cold and the rain. And there they stayed, without shelter or any sort of provisions. One woman managed to send a postcard to her seventeen-year-old son in Paris. “We haven’t a penny. Could you send us something?”
The boy bought a gun and went to the German embassy and asked to see an official. He was shown into the office of one of the German diplomats and proceeded to shoot him three times in the stomach. The young assassin made no attempt to escape the French police. “May God forgive me … I must protest so that the whole world hears…”
Three days later the diplomat died of his wounds. Goebbels declared: “…the Führer has decided that… demonstrations should not be prepared or organized by the party, but insofar as they erupt spontaneously, they are not to be hampered.”
That night, November 9th 1938, thousands of men in civilian clothes – most were Gestapo or SA – took to the streets armed with clubs and axes. They broke the windows of every Jewish-owned business, ransacked Jewish homes, and destroyed and burned nearly two hundred synagogues. Some 30,000 Jewish men and boys were arrested and sent to concentration camps. Some were beaten to death while their families were forced to watch. There were a number of suicides. All the shattered glass caused the riots to be called Kristallnacht (Crystal Night).
In BRISTOL HOUSE a character called Maggie Harris, modeled on the mother of an old friend brought to England from Germany thanks to the Kindertransport, tells of watching out her bedroom window while the medieval synagogue of her town is set afire, and how soon after a Gentile friend came and took her into hiding. In my novel she never sees her parents again. In real life that story was repeated many hundreds – nay thousands – of times. On Kristallnacht what the world would come to know as the Holocaust had begun.
Five days after that terrible night the British parliament approved a rescue mission for German Jewish children. It was officially called the Refugee Children Movement. It was soon called the Kindertransport. Over a period of nine months desperate parents sent 10,000 unaccompanied Jewish children, ranging in age from infancy to seventeen, to safety in Britain. The program ended on September 1, 1939 when the Nazis invaded Poland and England declared war on Germany. By that time the Kindertransport had rescued Jewish children from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. America in that same period made no such rescue attempt for children or adults, neither did it increase the availability of visas. Congress was dominated by men (there were no women in either the House or the Senate in those days) who were convinced it was imperative that the United States not involve itself in “foreign wars.”
February 10, 2013
But Did It Really Happen Like That?
We saw Argo last night – terrific movie – and it made me think again about the differences between history and historical fiction. (And no, it doesn’t matter if you’re telling the story as a script or a novel.)
Because the film is high profile and nominated for a number of awards, there have been any number of people prepared to take aim at its claim to be based on a true story. The disputed facts are: The group of six were hidden in the homes of two separate Canadian officials rather than one. The Iranian housekeeper who in the film keeps their secret was a composite character and they didn’t really perceive any threat from the local help. They didn’t do a location run, deciding it would be too dangerous. They were neither interrogated nor almost stopped at the airport, but in fact walked through the security checks and boarded with no difficulty. There are other quibbles, but those are the main ones.
As a writer of historical fiction who takes enormous pains to be accurate, I look at this and say, bravo, Ben Affleck and co. You did a great job. At no point does Chris Terrio’s script (written with the real Tony Mendez, the CIA operative who led them out) distort reality in a way that gives a false impression of what actually happened.
The emotional roller coaster endured by those whom the Canadians called the Houseguests is absolutely accurate; how could it be otherwise? And no way there must not have at least been some concern about the Iranians with whom they were in daily contact. (Making the salute to the composite character’s ultimate courage – not to mention that of the Canadian diplomats – entirely accurate and emotionally honest.) As for what happened during the escape: no one could have known how it would play out when they began that early morning ride to the airport. Argo tells it as it may have been, leaving in place the fact that they got away; and, as the Houseguests themselves tell us, the moment of exquisite relief when the Swissair stewards announced they had cleared Iranian airspace and alcohol could be served. (Apparently the round ordered by Mendez was bloody Mary’s rather than Champagne, but hey we’re talking Hollywood.)
I have more than a passing interest in this argument. In the Tudor section of my new novel BRISTOL HOUSE I write about a group of separatist Christians who consider themselves the keepers of true Catholicism, and the official church led from Rome to be impostors. Such claimants have been around since at least the third century. I made up the True Obedience of Avignon, the group in my story, and I have them infiltrate the very real order of hermit-monks known as Carthusians. Not true, obviously, but it could have been. More important, I’ve worked hard to be accurate about the life of the monks – saints and sinners – and their London monastery known as the Charterhouse.
Thomas Cromwell plays a big part in my story, and I have less sympathy for him than Hilary Mantel does in her novels. I paint Cromwell in black and white terms and save my shades of gray for the two characters I created out of whole cloth: Dom Justin the monk and Giacomo the Lombard, a jeweler, also known as the Jew of Holborn. That two novelists looking at the same historical facts come up with different interpretations of why things happened as they did is not just okay, it’s what fiction is all about. It’s what makes it “true” rather than factual.
In the contemporary sections of BRISTOL HOUSE (the story goes back and forth between the two eras) I made up Annie my heroine, and Geoff the TV pundit who is drawn into her mystery. But the world they inhabit, the politics, the London streets, the museums and their collections, that’s all real. And those secret tunnels and their incredible origins, absolutely real.
As for whether the monk and the jeweler could speak their truths loud enough for us to hear… you’ll have to decide for yourself. Personally, I have no doubt whatever.
Because the film is high profile and nominated for a number of awards, there have been any number of people prepared to take aim at its claim to be based on a true story. The disputed facts are: The group of six were hidden in the homes of two separate Canadian officials rather than one. The Iranian housekeeper who in the film keeps their secret was a composite character and they didn’t really perceive any threat from the local help. They didn’t do a location run, deciding it would be too dangerous. They were neither interrogated nor almost stopped at the airport, but in fact walked through the security checks and boarded with no difficulty. There are other quibbles, but those are the main ones.
As a writer of historical fiction who takes enormous pains to be accurate, I look at this and say, bravo, Ben Affleck and co. You did a great job. At no point does Chris Terrio’s script (written with the real Tony Mendez, the CIA operative who led them out) distort reality in a way that gives a false impression of what actually happened.
The emotional roller coaster endured by those whom the Canadians called the Houseguests is absolutely accurate; how could it be otherwise? And no way there must not have at least been some concern about the Iranians with whom they were in daily contact. (Making the salute to the composite character’s ultimate courage – not to mention that of the Canadian diplomats – entirely accurate and emotionally honest.) As for what happened during the escape: no one could have known how it would play out when they began that early morning ride to the airport. Argo tells it as it may have been, leaving in place the fact that they got away; and, as the Houseguests themselves tell us, the moment of exquisite relief when the Swissair stewards announced they had cleared Iranian airspace and alcohol could be served. (Apparently the round ordered by Mendez was bloody Mary’s rather than Champagne, but hey we’re talking Hollywood.)
I have more than a passing interest in this argument. In the Tudor section of my new novel BRISTOL HOUSE I write about a group of separatist Christians who consider themselves the keepers of true Catholicism, and the official church led from Rome to be impostors. Such claimants have been around since at least the third century. I made up the True Obedience of Avignon, the group in my story, and I have them infiltrate the very real order of hermit-monks known as Carthusians. Not true, obviously, but it could have been. More important, I’ve worked hard to be accurate about the life of the monks – saints and sinners – and their London monastery known as the Charterhouse.
Thomas Cromwell plays a big part in my story, and I have less sympathy for him than Hilary Mantel does in her novels. I paint Cromwell in black and white terms and save my shades of gray for the two characters I created out of whole cloth: Dom Justin the monk and Giacomo the Lombard, a jeweler, also known as the Jew of Holborn. That two novelists looking at the same historical facts come up with different interpretations of why things happened as they did is not just okay, it’s what fiction is all about. It’s what makes it “true” rather than factual.
In the contemporary sections of BRISTOL HOUSE (the story goes back and forth between the two eras) I made up Annie my heroine, and Geoff the TV pundit who is drawn into her mystery. But the world they inhabit, the politics, the London streets, the museums and their collections, that’s all real. And those secret tunnels and their incredible origins, absolutely real.
As for whether the monk and the jeweler could speak their truths loud enough for us to hear… you’ll have to decide for yourself. Personally, I have no doubt whatever.
August 30, 2012
Selling Books 3.0
The New York Times Sunday Business section published a long article on a guy who made as much as $30k a week writing “favorable online book reviews” for authors. Not just paid to review, mind you. That’s a perfectly legitimate occupation. This fellow was paid to say loudly and in as many places as possible: This book – the vast majority of which he admits he never read – is absolutely terrific. http://tinyurl.com/98hrbv2
What enrages me is not this entrepreneurial individual of little integrity. I’m seeing red over the writers who think it’s okay to poison the well by destroying reader trust in this manner.
Look, in terms of how the world works, writing and reading books is a minority occupation.
I don’t know what percentage of the billions of people on the planet can write and read, but I know most are too busy surviving to be able to do so. If you add the further refinement of reading fiction, and throw in that such reading is for pleasure as well as possible enlightenment, you narrow the audience to a pretty small slice of available humans.
I’ve spent my entire professional life fighting for a share of those few readers, trying to create things that are worthy, that offer both substance and delight. (And wearing my mentoring hat, helping others do the same.)
Right now I have a new novel to be published in April 2013. Here’s an abbreviated history of what has gone into that:
I spent four years creating an original manuscript I call Bristol House.
An agent spent months working with me to get it into what she felt was a version she could recommend to editors.
In March of 2011 Viking Penguin agreed to publish it.
Two different highly placed/experienced editors (three if you count one who wasn’t a good fit) spent the next year working with me on making perfect the story and the telling. (I have published many novels before this one – believe me, getting it right is never easy.)
After that the ms was copy-edited by another experienced professional. Her job was to make sure there were no errors of fact or spelling or punctuation.
Then I proofed her work and a proofreader did the same, and created page proofs.
Then I proofed the page proofs.
I am yet engaged with the book designer as we work through issues of fonts and print styles, and the challenges of a map as well as a schematic drawing. Her job is to be both a creative artist and an organizer of technical realities. She’s spent years learning how to do that.
As for the cover… Don’t get me started. The publisher and the art department and I are on the fourth attempt to get that right.
(Incidentally, my agent remains engaged as well. She’s asked to weigh in on 99% of these discussions and decisions.)
Pretty soon we’ll start talking about Advance Reader Copies and other issues of marketing. I’m relying on the advice of still more professionals for that.
In a few months readers and reviewers will finally begin to have their say. What happens if they don’t like what I’ve written and so many others have worked so hard on? Game over. We lose.
Now you’re telling me some people think it’s acceptable not simply to compete but to do the dirty in the process? It’s fair to destroy readers’ trust by jury tampering? Because, after all, “that’s business.”
If doping gets athletes disqualified, and falsifying medical or legal credentials gets you a jail term, how can you – the writer paying to deceive readers – think this is okay?
What enrages me is not this entrepreneurial individual of little integrity. I’m seeing red over the writers who think it’s okay to poison the well by destroying reader trust in this manner.
Look, in terms of how the world works, writing and reading books is a minority occupation.
I don’t know what percentage of the billions of people on the planet can write and read, but I know most are too busy surviving to be able to do so. If you add the further refinement of reading fiction, and throw in that such reading is for pleasure as well as possible enlightenment, you narrow the audience to a pretty small slice of available humans.
I’ve spent my entire professional life fighting for a share of those few readers, trying to create things that are worthy, that offer both substance and delight. (And wearing my mentoring hat, helping others do the same.)
Right now I have a new novel to be published in April 2013. Here’s an abbreviated history of what has gone into that:
I spent four years creating an original manuscript I call Bristol House.
An agent spent months working with me to get it into what she felt was a version she could recommend to editors.
In March of 2011 Viking Penguin agreed to publish it.
Two different highly placed/experienced editors (three if you count one who wasn’t a good fit) spent the next year working with me on making perfect the story and the telling. (I have published many novels before this one – believe me, getting it right is never easy.)
After that the ms was copy-edited by another experienced professional. Her job was to make sure there were no errors of fact or spelling or punctuation.
Then I proofed her work and a proofreader did the same, and created page proofs.
Then I proofed the page proofs.
I am yet engaged with the book designer as we work through issues of fonts and print styles, and the challenges of a map as well as a schematic drawing. Her job is to be both a creative artist and an organizer of technical realities. She’s spent years learning how to do that.
As for the cover… Don’t get me started. The publisher and the art department and I are on the fourth attempt to get that right.
(Incidentally, my agent remains engaged as well. She’s asked to weigh in on 99% of these discussions and decisions.)
Pretty soon we’ll start talking about Advance Reader Copies and other issues of marketing. I’m relying on the advice of still more professionals for that.
In a few months readers and reviewers will finally begin to have their say. What happens if they don’t like what I’ve written and so many others have worked so hard on? Game over. We lose.
Now you’re telling me some people think it’s acceptable not simply to compete but to do the dirty in the process? It’s fair to destroy readers’ trust by jury tampering? Because, after all, “that’s business.”
If doping gets athletes disqualified, and falsifying medical or legal credentials gets you a jail term, how can you – the writer paying to deceive readers – think this is okay?
February 7, 2012
MAXWELL PERKINS AND THE E-BOOK*
Latest figures on the e-book revolution show some slowing of the exponential rate of growth, but surely that’s to be expected when the base-line was so recently zero. The numbers are still rising substantially, and the devices are in a healthy clash of heads with serious new entries still arriving and on the horizon. And Amazon has yet to leave Barnes & Noble for dead. In part because the mighty river of e-commerce decided to take on at the same time the big six US publishers; sort of like Hitler doubling down on the Eastern front while he was still trying to knock out Britain. Not perhaps a good idea. This piece, however, is not about the fight between Amazon and the rest of publishing. That’s being covered by many others.
What got me blogging this time is the notion of editing, and how it’s related to the e-book bestsellers lists now showing up regularly in the major papers. That topic comes up all the time when novelists – fiction dominates the e-book scene – discuss indie publishing, i.e. going it alone and maybe giving up a substantial advance to do so.
The items that make the checklist, the things the publisher normally does for the ms that the indie writer will have to do for herself, are editing, cover art, marketing, and of course distribution. Well, the argument goes, distribution is what the e-book removes from the equation. That really is easy now. Marketing, on the other hand, demands very hard work, but publishers have never satisfied 99% of their authors in this area. Self-marketing is an author responsibility whether the book is traditionally published or an indie. And, the argument goes, I can hire all the rest. If I’m willing to spend a few bucks backing my own career, I’ll get the same top class professionals who work for the legacy publishers.
That’s probably true for the cover. In the matter of editing I submit it is not. I’m convinced you cannot get the same results even if you’re willing to pay a top line-editor the going rate – which will certainly be in the mid to high four figures. Maybe more. (You can get first-class copy editing for considerably less, but that comes later in the process and it’s not what I’m talking about.) The reason is that there’s a very real difference when you’re the one writing the check.
Brilliant editing – and if you’re a writer worth anything you pray for nothing less – involves tension and abrasion and maneuvering. It flows from the fact that in a subtle way you and the editor are on different teams. In some measure your role becomes protecting your vision of the novel; your way of interpreting these characters you’ve created and the things that happen to them. Your story. Your plot. The editor’s job is to push back, to insist that you make it clearer, write it bigger, eliminate superfluous scenes – maybe characters – and add those that the reader must have if the whole thing is going to make sense. It’s the editor’s job to push you to the edge of a cliff, and make you brave enough to jump off.
A process of that nature inevitably brings a writer to the point of wanting to write STET in big red letters on every page. The time will come when that’s exactly what you have to do. But if the editor works not for you but for your publisher, and probably a good chunk of your advance depends on the two of you agreeing that the ms is as good as it’s going to be, you will think long and hard before putting your foot down. That, I submit, is not being abjectly beholden to the almighty dollar. It’s going through the crucible of the creative process; aware always that the editor can identify the problems, but only the writer can fix them. At the end the pair of you will have created something infinitely better than the original – even though it was probably your fifth or sixth draft, and good enough to attract the publisher in the first place.
Good – sometimes great – editing, I submit, is why those e-book bestseller lists are so overwhelmingly dominated by the digital version of books traditionally published rather than indies.
*For those who may not know, Maxwell Perkins was the publishing legend who edited the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe. A. Scott Berg’s wonderful Max Perkins, Editor of Genius is must reading for any novelist. It is happily available in e-book format as well as paperback.
What got me blogging this time is the notion of editing, and how it’s related to the e-book bestsellers lists now showing up regularly in the major papers. That topic comes up all the time when novelists – fiction dominates the e-book scene – discuss indie publishing, i.e. going it alone and maybe giving up a substantial advance to do so.
The items that make the checklist, the things the publisher normally does for the ms that the indie writer will have to do for herself, are editing, cover art, marketing, and of course distribution. Well, the argument goes, distribution is what the e-book removes from the equation. That really is easy now. Marketing, on the other hand, demands very hard work, but publishers have never satisfied 99% of their authors in this area. Self-marketing is an author responsibility whether the book is traditionally published or an indie. And, the argument goes, I can hire all the rest. If I’m willing to spend a few bucks backing my own career, I’ll get the same top class professionals who work for the legacy publishers.
That’s probably true for the cover. In the matter of editing I submit it is not. I’m convinced you cannot get the same results even if you’re willing to pay a top line-editor the going rate – which will certainly be in the mid to high four figures. Maybe more. (You can get first-class copy editing for considerably less, but that comes later in the process and it’s not what I’m talking about.) The reason is that there’s a very real difference when you’re the one writing the check.
Brilliant editing – and if you’re a writer worth anything you pray for nothing less – involves tension and abrasion and maneuvering. It flows from the fact that in a subtle way you and the editor are on different teams. In some measure your role becomes protecting your vision of the novel; your way of interpreting these characters you’ve created and the things that happen to them. Your story. Your plot. The editor’s job is to push back, to insist that you make it clearer, write it bigger, eliminate superfluous scenes – maybe characters – and add those that the reader must have if the whole thing is going to make sense. It’s the editor’s job to push you to the edge of a cliff, and make you brave enough to jump off.
A process of that nature inevitably brings a writer to the point of wanting to write STET in big red letters on every page. The time will come when that’s exactly what you have to do. But if the editor works not for you but for your publisher, and probably a good chunk of your advance depends on the two of you agreeing that the ms is as good as it’s going to be, you will think long and hard before putting your foot down. That, I submit, is not being abjectly beholden to the almighty dollar. It’s going through the crucible of the creative process; aware always that the editor can identify the problems, but only the writer can fix them. At the end the pair of you will have created something infinitely better than the original – even though it was probably your fifth or sixth draft, and good enough to attract the publisher in the first place.
Good – sometimes great – editing, I submit, is why those e-book bestseller lists are so overwhelmingly dominated by the digital version of books traditionally published rather than indies.
*For those who may not know, Maxwell Perkins was the publishing legend who edited the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe. A. Scott Berg’s wonderful Max Perkins, Editor of Genius is must reading for any novelist. It is happily available in e-book format as well as paperback.
August 31, 2011
Getting It Together
If I ever doubted the gurus who keep telling us that the new media changes everything – I have been convinced. Hit over the head more like. In a good way. As in: I finally get it.
Just checked the Amazon customer reviews for City of Promise, the published-last-week and last-for-the-moment of the NYC books I’ve spent over a decade doing for Simon & Schuster. Terrific reviews and I am enormously grateful. Especially to a very savvy lady who gave the book five stars, has insightful comments to make about the characters, promises to read everything I write, and finishes up by commenting that she seriously disagrees with my politics.
Wow! Not because she disagrees. Half the country disagrees with the other half. I will go to the mat fighting for her right to disagree and I’d like to think she’d do the same. The comment was a stunner because nowhere in City of Promise is there a single word about contemporary politics or my view of same.
But on my Facebook profile my politics sticks out a mile. I started that page years ago on the urging of I think my daughter-in-law. A way to keep up with family and friends… It never occurred to me that in our brave new world professional and personal are all mixed up. Which I guess makes me pretty foolish.
I’m happy to be disabused and I love you “insatiable reader.” Not just because you say great things about my books – though I’m really, really happy about that – but because like me, you care about our politics. And we’re all better off when that’s true. Thank you.
Next stop, London. Will try and blog from there…
Just checked the Amazon customer reviews for City of Promise, the published-last-week and last-for-the-moment of the NYC books I’ve spent over a decade doing for Simon & Schuster. Terrific reviews and I am enormously grateful. Especially to a very savvy lady who gave the book five stars, has insightful comments to make about the characters, promises to read everything I write, and finishes up by commenting that she seriously disagrees with my politics.
Wow! Not because she disagrees. Half the country disagrees with the other half. I will go to the mat fighting for her right to disagree and I’d like to think she’d do the same. The comment was a stunner because nowhere in City of Promise is there a single word about contemporary politics or my view of same.
But on my Facebook profile my politics sticks out a mile. I started that page years ago on the urging of I think my daughter-in-law. A way to keep up with family and friends… It never occurred to me that in our brave new world professional and personal are all mixed up. Which I guess makes me pretty foolish.
I’m happy to be disabused and I love you “insatiable reader.” Not just because you say great things about my books – though I’m really, really happy about that – but because like me, you care about our politics. And we’re all better off when that’s true. Thank you.
Next stop, London. Will try and blog from there…
August 14, 2011
Oy Vey or I Love You Clarence Allen
Happens every book. At least once.
I am by nature and by nurture very careful (read obsessive) about the facts in my historical fiction. I check and double check. Indeed, there’s no excuse not to these days when you can access so much material without even getting up from the desk and walking over to a bookcase.
Then there’s the process. This novel like all the others in the series was worked on by a line editor at Simon and Schuster, then sent back to me. I read it again and sent it back. Then it was read by a copy editor (in this case, two – long story, just accept it) and came back once more. I read it again. It got sent to a proofreader (the world’s greatest I know because I’ve worked with her before). And came back to me yet again. I had, in other words, three bites of the cherry, right? Trust me, it’s right.
So how come there can be a foolish and amateurish mistake on page 286 of City of Promise? To wit: “The gold,” Zac said, “is in Fort Knox.”
Never mind the context. Only thing that matters is that it’s 1873. And as the aforementioned Clarence Allen, informs me, Fort Knox was not called that until 1918 and there was no gold there until 1937.
How did I miss it? (And it was my error, not that of anyone else.) Because it’s always the things you are absolutely sure of that catch you out. I’ve heard/said/believed “all the gold in Fort Knox” my entire life. Never occurred to me to doubt that was as true for my characters as for me.
But all is not lost. In his e-mail telling me about this bit of simple historical fact Clarence Allen also tells me he loved the book, loves them all, and can’t wait to read more of what I write.
I am sooooo grateful. I love you Clarence Allen, and I promise we’ll fix it as soon as we have a new edition.
I am by nature and by nurture very careful (read obsessive) about the facts in my historical fiction. I check and double check. Indeed, there’s no excuse not to these days when you can access so much material without even getting up from the desk and walking over to a bookcase.
Then there’s the process. This novel like all the others in the series was worked on by a line editor at Simon and Schuster, then sent back to me. I read it again and sent it back. Then it was read by a copy editor (in this case, two – long story, just accept it) and came back once more. I read it again. It got sent to a proofreader (the world’s greatest I know because I’ve worked with her before). And came back to me yet again. I had, in other words, three bites of the cherry, right? Trust me, it’s right.
So how come there can be a foolish and amateurish mistake on page 286 of City of Promise? To wit: “The gold,” Zac said, “is in Fort Knox.”
Never mind the context. Only thing that matters is that it’s 1873. And as the aforementioned Clarence Allen, informs me, Fort Knox was not called that until 1918 and there was no gold there until 1937.
How did I miss it? (And it was my error, not that of anyone else.) Because it’s always the things you are absolutely sure of that catch you out. I’ve heard/said/believed “all the gold in Fort Knox” my entire life. Never occurred to me to doubt that was as true for my characters as for me.
But all is not lost. In his e-mail telling me about this bit of simple historical fact Clarence Allen also tells me he loved the book, loves them all, and can’t wait to read more of what I write.
I am sooooo grateful. I love you Clarence Allen, and I promise we’ll fix it as soon as we have a new edition.
