"So I bought this novel recently: a foreign publisher gave me a tip, long story short, the agent and the author and me, it's one of those love-at-first-sight things..." --Mar. 24, 2005

Hi, it's me. Max.

Long ago and in a land far, far away, I wrote in this space about editing a novel I'd acquired, and of the singular satisfactions that came from that experience. Of the dozens of posts I wrote during the six or seven months of BookAngst 101, "What makes it all worthwhile" was my favorite, the one that best captured the myriad rewards that the editorial life can provide when the stars allign.

It seemed to strike a nerve with readers too--perhaps because it was about the joy of the process, as opposed (for once) to the innumerable frustrations and disappointments experienced so frequently on all sides of the writing/publishing/bookselling universe. Or maybe it was because it was a story with a happy ending. An editor fairly in awe of his talented author, and grateful to have been granted such access and trust; an author, it might be inferred, who gets the editor she deserves.

Whatever the case, that "report" seems to have represented the high-water mark in the short, happy life of Mad Max Perkins. I gauge this both by the nature of the comments that it elicited, and by the fact that so many of you expressed interest in finding out more about the author and the book.

That interest was both gratifying and encouraging; for me it had the effect of making a little bit less preposterous the preposterous notion that's at the core of every author/editor partnership. Not just that we might be able to make a great book, but also that, somehow, this great book might wind up being embraced to some reasonable degree beyond the walls of our little two-seat incubator.

* * *
Ten months later, that book now exists. It's got a handsome cover, blurbs from a number of generous authors whose work I admire, and handful of pre-pub reviews (including a starred Kirkus, sez he proudly). A second printing is already in the works. Sometime in the next week or two, I'm going to have the experience of walking into a bookstore and seeing this book "live" for the very first time. (A special feeling, that.) One thing that I know for sure: if the books aren't where I want them to be when I arrive, they'll be there by the time I leave. Another thing: I'll linger in a semi-predatory fashion. On two prior such occasions that I know about for sure, my innocent comments to a book-in-hand browser have resulted in confirmed, watched-'em-all-the-way-to-the-cash-register sales. I'll be gunning for more this time around.

* * *
Back in March, a lot of people sent me comments to the effect of

Wow. I want to read this book. How are we going to know to run out and get it when it hits the shelves?

If you're still interested? The novel--DOPE--goes on sale any day now. The author--Sara Gran--has a website, and a blog, and two previous novels. And an editor who, though he should know better, can't help but be excited about what might unfold in the weeks ahead.

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*Narcissists Anonymous

I. The Slippery Slope.

You try to be strong, to be patient, to take the zen view that worrying it will do no good anyway.

You try to take the advice of your editor, your agent, your friends, fellow writers, your shrink, your analyst, your podiatrist, your psychopharmocologist, your mother [that's how bad it's gotten: you're soliciting advice from your mother], that the best thing you can do now is to block it out and just work:Work on your next book. Work on your garden. Take up a new hobby. [Blogging, anyone?] Take up smoking.

You try to hear--I mean, really hear--those same members of your League of Support Professionals as they say, with that patronizing earnestness that makes you want to slit their well-meaning throats, that it's the Inner You that matters: you've written a great book, you're an artist, you can't let external circumstances over which you have no control become a measure of how you feel about yourself--

--and then you say, ENOUGH! Quit with the laying on of hands! I'm not going to spend the rest of my life in a womb or a plastic bubble or a sensory deprivation chamber. I'm a grownup, and

• I'll smoke if I want to! And--
• yeah, I know about identity theft & all, but SOMETIMES, dammit, I just don't FEEL like shredding my bills after I've paid them! And--
• OK--they can legislate my obligation to wear seatbelts, but not since I was sitting in a fucking CAR-SEAT were they in a position to forcibly strap me in!!!

For a time, this declaration of independence feels freeing. Until...well, there's that clock, in the kitchen--boy does that sucker get loud, late at night when you're all alone. A little less deliberate, but no less maddening, is the slow plink-pulink-puuuuuh-LINK! of the faucet-from-hell as droplets land with unexpected percussive resonance in the basin of the sink. And then there's the irritating buzz of--whatzit, a skeeter?--and as you squash that skeeter and scratch at the one actual site of attack, suddenly it feels like you're covered with insect bites, or fleas, or some horrible skin disease, you're scratching madly at your arms and legs and belly, until at last you throw your head back and howl (again),

ENOUGH!!

***
A junky needs her dope, a bulemic needs his Twinkies. Writers?

Well, what you'd prefer is real data, feedback, some sense that something is happening out there--anything?!?--with/for/in relation to the prospects for your forthcoming book... Absent that? Invariably, you'll look back on this as the moment where the wheels came off--that first time you typed that fateful URL into the Address bar of your computer and hit return. And so it begins.

The vigil....The stakeout....

The hourly Amazon.com sales-ranking check-in.

Gotta get that fix...It doesn't matter that the "data" Amazon provides tells you nothing, of course, or at least nothing you can make any sense of. In the weeks leading up to publication--a moment you've spent much of your life imagining--Amazon.com will be more often visited by the average writer than Nerve or Skank or PornPro or any of the other usual favorites.

And when Amazon fails to deliver the desired reassurance? Well, like those anti-drug lecturers always told us back in grade school: what starts innocently invariably leads to the harder stuff.... And so it goes: the little devil on the left side senses your weakness, taps you on the shoulder, and whispers those two syllables whose effects will prove ever more insidious, ever more seductive--

GOO-
GUL.

"Huh?" you ask.
That left-shoulder Beelzebub hisses encore:

GOOGLE!

And this, my friends, is when the trouble really begins: because once you've taken that maiden voyage--once you've signed your name into the log-book of that turbo-charged search-vessel--you've conscripted yourself to a life of hard labor on the turbulent seas of narcissism... For if you live long enough, and manage to create enough trouble (however minor), you, too, can run a Google search and find that somebody, somewhere, has written about you--an alumni magazine, a catalog for a writer's workshop, a piece of hate-mail identifying you as part of an industry wide conspiracy to fill-in-the-blank ...

Trouble is, no number's big enough... Believe me: I know.

***************
II. A Cautionary Tale.

Friends: Tonight, at long last--having hit rock-bottom; and being beyond salvation, beyond dignity, beyond redemption--I raise my tchukus off this plain pine bench, stand before you all, and say,

Hi. My name is Max
and I'm a Narcissist.
A Hyperbolist.
A Google-Junky who's lost his way.

It's a familiar enough story. I started in the cowardly trade of publishing as a desk-jockey, a copyist, a scrivener with delusions of grandeur. In the beginning it was but a lark--a temporary gig, I'd say with a shrug, exhaling cigarette smoke with a world-weary roll of the eyes. Bigger things--Yale Law, UCLA film school, LSE, Iowa--were always just around the corner. But a decade passed, then another--there I was still, in my 8x8 cubicle with a partly-obscured view of the sotty brick wall across the narrow air-shaft. My hair thinned, then fell away; in the meantime my sedentary habits, combined with my love of Hostess Fruit Pies, wreaked havoc on my once-girlish figure.

Then--Halleleujah!--the new wave of reality television hit. Knowing myself ill-suited for an actual personality overhaul, but consumed, now, with the Lotto-like jackpot potential I'd witnessed so frequently during the Sweeps-Week finales of so many of the shows (to say nothing of a deep-seated [or is it -seeded?] desire to appear on David Letterman), I knew that my time had come. A mid-life makeover was nigh on the horizon. All I needed now was the vehicle through which to create an alternate personae.

Then, in the fall of '04, Time Magazine named Mark Sarvas "Man of the Year" and declared ours The Age of the Blog. And Mad Max Perkins was born.

***
At first, of course, it was bliss. The controversy! The accolades! None other than Maud Newton (who we'd call "legendary" if she weren't way too fly to wear that style) characterized BookAngst as "an indispensable source of information about the inner machinery of publishing. " The afore-mentioned Mark Sarvas declared "We can't remember a blog becoming indispensible as quickly as Mad Max Perkins' BookAngst 101 has." As "Max" I received mentions in the Denver Post, New York Newsday, the Boston Globe, Crain's New York. Even NPR wanted to know: who's this Mad Max fellow, and how do we get him on our show?

***
A month or so after the launch of BookAngst--it was late, I was hungry--I ran an innocent search through Yahoo or MSN. In the "search" field I typed

"Late night delivery, chocolate cake"

and hit return. The result failed to satisfy. So I turned then to another search engine.

GOOGLE!

I was so impressed with the results of THIS "chocolate cake" search that I tried Google another time: I typed in my own name. The result was predictably unsatisfying: it came back with a scant 17 matches, 12 of which rightly belonged to a San Diego-based attorney famous, briefly, for defending a serial killer.

Without giving it much thought, I typed in

"BookAngst"

and fell quite out of my chair. The number of matches read 652,003.

***

Dr. Grumpy O. Bookman recently presented a fascinating post on the subject of narcissistic personality disorder, which includes a list of tell-tale personality traits.

• A grandiose sense of self-importance.
• A need for excessive admiration.
• A sense of entitlement...not justified by [his] attainments.

The list goes on. Every item fits me to a "t".

***

The particulars of my fall are too humiliating to repeat in detail--yet I cannot help myself... Suffice it to say that, as delighted as I was by my IGO [Initial Google Output], I was disappointed that my subsequent Googlings didn't reflect a similarly exponential growth pattern. As my number plateaued--flatlined, really--I spent more and more of my late-night hours trying to find new mentions of the good deeds of Mad Max Perkins. One hour a night became two, then three; this in addition to the time spent on new posts themselves, which became ever-more transparent in their desperation. I was begging for more links, for more mentions, for the bloggists' equivalent of column inches.

Cruel, fickle bastards all! They'd moved on! M.J. Rose's popularity grew and grew, while visitors to my site dwindled to a dozen or so a day. Maud, Mark, Sarah--they no longer paid any attention. The cruelist irony? In late 2004 I won Honorable Mention in the "Bloggist With A Bullet" category; in 2005, mine was named "Blahg of the Year." In barely eight months I'd gone from hot-stuff to has-been. I'd become completely irrelevant.

But the humilation doesn't stop there. So much Googling-till-the wee-hours left me with more than just pale skin and bags under my eyes. In March my supervisor called me into his office. After months of falling further and further behind in my work in the contracts department, he'd had enough. I was given two weeks' severance, plus a half-hour to pack up my things. I stole a stapler.

***************
III. Endnotes.

Gotta get my shit together
Cuz I can't live like this forever
I've come too far & I don't want to fail
I've got a new computer and a
Bright future in sales

--Fountains of Wayne "Bright Future in Sales"

You know that old saw about how you learn who your real friends are when the chips are down? For a long time I'd been out of touch with my #1 touchstone, Dexter (aka Deadly Dee)--I figured he'd corralled a mid-six-figs contract for a whip-wicked comic memoir about life in the land of bookmaking (part THE INFORMATION, part Dave Eggers) and was now waiting in Paris with his new gang of celebrity pals to greet Lance Armstrong as he crossed the finish line of the Tour de France. So I was quite touched--humiliated, too, of course, but those who love you best tell the truest truths, even when it hurts--that, as I stumbled about in these, the last days of Max, Deadly Dexter appeared again:

you might get "sadly missed" on your tombstone, max, but by revealing yourself like some old flasher in the park you'll actually become what you really are, an anonymous cog in the satanic mills of book production, whose mid-life idealism crisis petered out into embarassing showmanship and the kind of ambiguity that makes me, for one, really fear for the future of publishing, if this is all that an insider's effort to change things leads to.... and now, at the end, you rely on hired wizardry and sleight-of-hand, like it was all a staged act to infiltrate your opposition. or maybe you're just the bloke who comes to do the magic tricks at the bloggers annual tea-party. you're quitting a sinking ship if you abandon this blog. shut the fuck up about who you are and keep fighting your corner like the real max perkins would've done. otherwise you'll just mirror your own executive career and let eventual world domination by one publisher takes its course. stay and help the writers, put a beret on instead, join the resistance to establish three things: split the multi-nationals back into indies, put a low ceiling on advances and get rid of the agent system. if you're not up to it then get off my screen for good and stop over-writing your final bow.

About this, Dexter is, of course, right: it is time for me to go, and I am overwriting my final bow, or at least taking too damn long to get it over with. And my posts have shifted--away from those of an insider asking potentially useful questions [about an industry moving further and further away from serving anyone well (including itself)]; tending instead toward easier, more clownish pieces that draw attention to Le Max rather than to Le BookAngst per se.

Narcissistic, that is, rather than something more broadly utilitarian.

On this front, I offer no apologies: it's hard work, this, even when the feedback has both been so energizing and made it so clear how great a hunger there is for some sort of industry perspective, for some sense that people on the inside aren't wholly disconnected from those on the outside.

I agree with Dexter regarding at least one of what he sees as our industry's three deadly ills (as articulated above)--the seemingly endless consumption of one publisher by another--when our only REAL hope is greater diversity & independence, not less. But there's finally nothing much that can be done about this by those of us among the rank-and-file, unless one has a Don Quixote complex and happens to be sitting on huge vats of capital, two variables that don't often co-exist.

If I had a particular goal when I started, it was to better understand how the machinery works, and to learn some new tricks of the trade--and I'm not sure how much we accomplished on that front, to be honest. The business is so f***ing hard now, and there's so much pressure on those working inside it, that either they don't have the time for (shall we say) pro bono discourse about (say) how to do some of the little things better; or they feel that giving away what few secrets they possess will put them at the sort of competitive disadvantage that might, soon, cost them their jobs.

Nonetheless, a whole lot of people--editors and publishers and agents and writers and others with industry experience in marketing & publishing (often under cloak of anonymity, which frankly served everyone well, me included)--DID share their expertise, on a whole lot of topics (midlist, anyone?), for which I'm enormously grateful.

From the end-line, I see that what I really hoped to do was to expand--for my own sake, if nothing else--my sense of what constitutes Our Community. And in this regard--speaking for myself, if for no-one else--I'm enormously pleased by the outcome. As Max I've made friends I'd never have made as not-Max, and feel, now, part of a universe that's much larger and much more generous than I'd understood it to be previously. The rise of blogs generally made it inevitable that a more intimate and honest discourse would emerge, one way or another; but I'll always be thrilled to have been an active part of that conversation, and to have had the excuse to get a close-in view of the passion and intelligence of so many lit-bloggers (there are way too many to mention individually), who if nothing else have demonstrated that books--and readers--are alive and well. And, deserved or otherwise, I take a modicum of pride at having perhaps spurred the emergence of other industry-bloggers such as Agent 007, Sepulculture and Miss Snark.

***
As for me? I'm off to work the program, the 12 steps of Narcissists Anonymous. And to apply myself, whole-cloth, to the business of being an editor. I'm not quitting a sinking ship; I'm just stepping down from the quarter deck (I was never officer material in the first place), and resuming my duties as deck-swabber first class. I return--refreshed and rejuvenated--to "fighting my corner" in the way that suits me best: one book, one author, at a time.

--MMP

P.S. If there's a use for it, BookAngst 101 may, in some limited capacity, continue to exist--as a forum for other industry-folk, say. News on that score to come at a later date.

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Bloggers ("Blahgers"--Mark Sarvas, TEV) Panel, BEA June 2, 2005. From L-R: Moderator Mark Dressler; Michael Cader; M.J. Rose; Max the Unmasked; and Robert Gray

As our time together reaches its end, I feel a great sense of relief that I can finally reveal my true identity. It's funny: in the comments to the Mighty Mouse/Fuller Brush post (wherein I dispelled the rumor that I might, in fact, be Karl Rove), an astute reader called me "poncey"--from which he then (rightly) extrapolated that I must be "a Brit." In the months since, I was apparently successful in disguising my poncey-ness--but that early reader had been right all along.

I must say I'm disappointed, a bit, that nobody "got" the hint made so explicitly with my BEA get-up! My costume was variously identified as representing Gandalf; Merlin; and Professor Dumbledore on crack--yet the truth was right there under your noses! That's the trouble with you kids these days--you've lost touch with your roots! I see you on the subway ("and walking all over/Manhattan") as you rock out to Britney singing her version of SATISFACTION ("a man comes on to tell me/how tight my skirt can be") without a clue about where that song came from in the first place!

But here's one more chance, dear people! Instead of telling you my identity, I'll give you one last try at figuring it out for yourselves.

Step One: Look at the picture (above) taken at BEA--notice the fellow in the pointy hat?

Step Two: Now look at this album cover. Notice, again, the fellow in the pointy hat...

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Ladies and Gentlemen, I hope you'll welcome, without judgment, a new lost soul, who comes before us here at LitBloggers Anonymous to ask for forgiveness for sins past & future.

Ladies and Gentleman, this individual claims to have been, in a more glorious past, a member of "The Editors' Club"--described (so aptly) as

that group of talent-finders and dream-makers who instinctively know what the fine readers of the world will embrace.

But at a certain point our poor Anonymite lost the way, and began to exhibit all the tell-tale signs... Took to watching television (network television!) till all hours of the night; to selling, without remorse, books received via "bigmouth" mailings to the Strand; to admiring, then acquiring, jewelry and wristwatches and eye-wear of a far more gaudy nature then had ever been the case before; and discovering, over time, that the idea of picking up the lunch tab at Michael's was becoming more and more repugnant. The final straw came when, after screaming mercilessly at a poor overworked editorial assistant (and ENJOYING it), this individual realized that there was no horror in the world so horrible as writing YET ANOTHER PIECE OF CATALOG COPY.

"Fini!"

And it was at that moment that another member of that rapscallion breed was born. No, but we must refrain from judgment! Please, all:

Welcome Agent 007!

I have not yet seen the (expired) union card, so I cannot vouch for or verify said (former) membership in the esteemed Editors' Club. There is, however, something about the cadences of Agent 007's inaugural posting that suggests at least a passing familiarity with the secret handshakes and the ol' wink-wink-nudge-nudge-say-no-more! insiderisms known only to We the Gatekeepers of [etc]...

Friends, whether this individual is honorable or not (and if Agent 007 is truly an agent, we can be sure that Honor is more a flag flown than a way of walking), there is no doubt that we must respond to this cry for help. Please, I beg of you: pay a sympathetic visit, and offer a few kind words, and remember:

There, but by the grace of God...

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Credit cards have gone missing. Keys have been copied. Inappropriate voice-mail messages have been reported...

To Whom (etc):

If you are approached by someone representing himself as "Max" or "Mad Max Perkins," proceed with caution. If contact is made, steer conv. if possible away from media-related topics--known triggers include "David Letterman," "Amazon dot com," "Google," etc. We have no reason to consider him dangerous; however, kindly decline his offers to buy you lunch, housewarming gifts, etc.
--Mgmt.

P.S. As soon as we find him, he WILL be fired.

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M.J. Rose, known by many in these parts as the industry's most persistent voice regarding the need for publishers--and authors--to be pro-active in terms of the marketing of books, has once again put her money where her mouth is. This week the paperback of her Anthony-nominated thriller THE HALO EFFECT comes out from Mira, and--not surprisingly--MJ refuses to settle for the status quo. Among other marketing initiatives (which she writes about at her blog), she hired VidLit to produce a movie-style promo.

Let me say, emphatically, that I think it's a knockout. (If anyone thinks VidLits can only work for funny books, think again.) I was so impressed that I had to track her down and ask her a few questions.

MMP: I loved the HALO VidLit--wonderfully evocative and atmospheric, and it definitely makes me want to read the book. Are you happy with how it turned out?
MJR: Not to overuse the word, but I'm thrilled. I'd seen a lot of Liz's work and knew how well the form worked for humor, as you pointed out, but this was the first thriller she worked on. I couldn't be more pleased.

How involved were you in making it?
MJR: I brought the idea to my publisher and they loved it. And then they blew me away when they signed up to do not one, but three - one for each of the books in the series (July 05, Jan 06, July 06). Knowing that they were going to be putting so much behind this effort, I really wanted to come up with some unusual marketing ideas with the Vidlit once it was completed. But creatively, it was Liz Dubelman's creativity that made it work and her talent that pulled it off.

How long did it take to produce?
MJR: Liz at vidlit.com would be the one to ask--I suspect she can adapt to different timetables. But mine took about three months.

What did it cost?
MJR: Liz charges by the minute--not minutes of her time, but minutes of finished product. It's in the ballpark of $5000 per minute.

How is your publisher using it?
MJR: First we came up with the idea of doing blog ads for the book that link to the Vidlit. So for the next two weeks ads will be all over the blogshpere. I'm thrilled (that word again) that Mira decided to do this. It's pretty innovative and required them to be willing to test an unproved concept. In addition there are some huge email lists that the Vidlit company itself markets each Vidlit to. My ppublisher is also looking for some other innovative venues for this one and future Vidlits but that's under wraps until we know for sure. I do have it on my laptop which I show to everyone I can stop in the street, on the train, at the nail salon, etc., (no, just kidding).

So you're feeling pretty good about this?
MJR: Very. It sure does seem to me like there's a different level of excitement this time than there has been for any of my previous books. Mira has totally supported this novel; everyone from the sales force to the publicity department has been terrific. Yeah, I'm thrilled. (That word again). The icing on the cake is that the book became an international bestseller today. Another first for me.

And what's this "Blog-a-Thon" promotion?
MJR: I got five sponsors to agree to donate a combination of a dollar each to Reading Is Fundamental. So for every blog that links to my VidLit, RIF gets $5. My goal is to get 500 blogs, which translates to $2500.

The campaign is called "Good Books/Good Cause" and if it's successful we'll see about expanding the program to include other authors too. I'm working with publicist Lauren Cerand.

What're you up to so far? How many blogs are on board, I mean.
MJR: We just sent out the first wave of letters to bloggers this morning and there are three more waves to go out. But as of 2 PM today [Wednesday] about twenty-five people have written to say they are already putting up the links.

Who's your editor at Mira? You know me--always looking to get in a plug for a good editor if I can...
MJR: She's not just good, she's wonderful. Margaret O'Neill Marbury, who is executive editor at Mira Books. You know, everyone loves to talk about all the first novelists who get the big push and how lucky they are. That I'm getting this sort of push on book five, well, I'm incredibly appreciative, and I have Margaret to thank.

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Kim Ponders is author of a literary novel coming out from HarperCollins this fall called THE ART OF UNCONTROLLED FLIGHT. It retraces the tumultuous life of Annie Shaw from childhood—as the daughter of a Vietnam-era fighter pilot—through to her becoming a pilot herself. Kim—and, perhaps not by coincidence, Annie too—served in the Air Force during the first Gulf War. Mad Max “sat” with Kim Ponders recently to talk about books, gender, self-promotion and life in the armed forces.

Max: When I say “the armed forces,” I mean, of course, the literary community. Have you ever encountered so savage an enemy as a writer wronged?
KP: Savage, certainly not. Writers are a cultivated, crafty lot, though we might think savage thoughts.

Did you grow up wanting to be a pilot, or a writer? Or none of the above?
KP: I grew up wanting to survive. I had no plans to be a writer or flyer until those opportunities came before my eyes, which they did, roundabout the out years of college. What I am is an opportunist, and if something looks captivating, I’ll go for it.

And which career have you enjoyed more? Or is the jury still out?
KP: Writing, certainly. I work my own hours and don’t have to get my uniforms pressed.

Annie Shaw, Air Force pilot. Kim Ponders, Air Force pilot. Hmmm. Care to provide a de rigueur disclaimer about the difference between life and art?
KP: Hemingway said ‘Write what you know.’ John Gardner said, ‘Write only from your imagination.’ Now, I ask you, who’s better known?

Your honor! The witness is being non-responsive! Will you please direct her to answer the question?
KP: Not non-responsive. Crafty. Yes, counselor, I grew up in circumstances very similar to those I describe in the novel. And the scenes that occur before and during the war are based on things I saw and witness, and yes, experienced—because those scenes I chose were, I think, the most evocative and the most telling. I wanted to get at what I thought was the essence of what it’s like to be a woman flying in the Air Force. For the record, I was an aircrew member with AWACS, but not a pilot.
[Ed. note: Here's more back story regarding the writing of her novel.]

The opening sections of THE ART OF UNCONTROLLED FLIGHT reminded me a bit of Mary Karr’s The Liar's Club. Did you read that book?
KP: Of course. It’s a great book. Our lives were not terribly similar. I grew up in Massachusetts, not East Texas, for one thing. My father was a grandiose man and a mystery to me, and my mother died when I was very young. But Mary Karr strikes me, at least from her memoir, as a survivor. The key, the gift, I think, is to be able to internalize things and then articulate them, spit them out again. That’s what Mary Karr did and what I tried to do with THE ART OF UNCONTROLLED FLIGHT.

And then Annie Goes to War. I can’t think of any novels that tell about war from a woman soldier’s p.o.v.—is “soldier” right, by the way, in your case?
KP: No, in this case, it would be airman.

But re: the point of view—and I don’t mean to diminish novels about war written from a female civilian point of view, but are there others about a soldier’s experience from the point of view of a woman? Other than, say, thrillers?
KP: Not that I know of, at least in English. The Russians had women fighter pilots in WWII, and the Israelis have had them for years. Perhaps there are novels from those countries.

What’s the best soldier’s-experience-of-war novel you ever read?
KP: Hands down, it’s Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. I’m not sure if that’s a novel—it might be linked stories. In any case, it’s a phenomenal encapsulation of what it must have been like for a vet to come to terms with Vietnam. In terms of pure novel, I’d choose A Farewell to Arms or Catch-22.

You’ve recently launched a blog, FEMME LA GUERRE—“A take on modern war and the American military from an ex-Air Force flyer turned writer and—can we say it (Gasp)—Woman.” That “(Gasp)” is really part of the subtitle, by the way. Why “Gasp”?
KP: People who knew me from early in my life couldn’t believe I’d joined the Air Force. And then, there I was, an outspoken woman aviator who also read books. A real enigma. In fact, I never gave a second thought to being a ‘woman’ through all this. I just did what I wanted to do. All the arguments surrounding women in the military have always sounded irrelevant. Why should it make a difference that I’m speaking from a woman’s perspective?—and yet, that seems to make all the difference in the world.

So what is this blog, anyway—a publicity stunt for your novel, I assume?
KP: (laughs) Damn straight! It’s the converse of “If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.”

That went way over my head.
KP: Well, there are a lot of literary novelists out there writing literary fiction about firemen and cops and soldiers and housewives and schoolteachers, whether they’ve actually been any of those things or not. And it doesn’t matter—if they’re good, I mean—whether they’ve lived the life or not.

But in terms of marketing a book?
KP: Let’s face it, there aren’t a lot of novels by someone with my background. And everyone says how hard it is to get attention for literary fiction, and it is, obviously. I’m proud of my background, proud of my military career and I feel like I’ve got something to contribute to the public conversation—especially now, with a war on. And if it happens to help sell some copies of my book, too, then great.

In one of your posts you write about the four soldiers—women—who were killed in Iraq last week.
KP: Yes, four women were killed—3 marines and a sailor--in an ambush on a convoy last week. And this incident has everyone up in arms again about whether women should hold combat positions.

Did you have any particular reaction to this news? Different than, say, news that four male soldiers had been killed? I know that the p.c. answer is supposed to be, No, all death is a tragedy--but surely, as someone who served yourself during the first Gulf War, you identified with these women in some fashion, no?
KP: My first (emotional) reaction was one of frustration and sadness. I feel terrible for their families, for all the kids who’ve lost parents over there. But I think your question is a little leading. P.C. or not, I feel the same sense of helpless loss for each of the almost 2000 deaths that have happened. The fact that four women died—the most during a single incident to date—doesn’t effect my emotional reaction, and it doesn’t effect my politics. My second reaction was that, damn, this is going to reignite the issue of ‘women in combat’ that had Congress stirred up last month. I think it’s wrong to resurrect such a complicated argument based on a tragic event and expect the outcome to be some rational solution. The U.S. desperately needs a sane, intelligent national debate on whether and how women will serve in combat. Unfortunately, we’ll never have this debate if the only time it ever comes up is when a crisis occurs. What we don’t need are more emotional knee-jerk reactions, more simple sound bites. The issue itself it not at all simple.

You also talk about a movement afoot presently designed to curtail the number presence of women in combat zones. I read about this in the New York Times, and it mentioned an Army general who was in FAVOR of such a bill. The article indicated that women in the military seemed to take the opposite view--that is, they were in favor of making their presence in such situations more (rather than less) the norm. What's your guess about the mindset of women serving currently? What's your own view?
KP: It’s a complicated situation. The Army isn’t advocating putting women in direct combat positions, but in ‘combat support’ positions. It’s complicated because of the way the Army is redesigning their combat force to be more responsive to asymmetric threats. They want lighter, more mobile units to move around with their own support (i.e. intelligence) personnel—which are by definition ‘support’ positions and frequently women. The problem is that because these units are on the front lines, the ‘support’ positions are coming under direct fire, and firing back. But I believe it’s a political, rather than a military issue. The Army cares about one thing: winning the war. The generals in charge care not a dime about the issue of women in combat. At least I hope they don’t. I hope they’re thinking about the best way to win the war tomorrow. Administrators, policy makers, politicians—these are the people who make the issue confusing—rather that being the leaders they’ve signed up to be, they’re too busy polling the voters to put their spin on the issue. It’s frankly gone beyond the issue of whether women should participate in combat. They do—and they have to. There ain’t enough willing men to fill the roles. Oh, well, I guess we could open the draft. Perhaps that’s a better solution.

Is the General being a chauvinist, or are there reasons why women SHOULDN'T be on the front lines, other than not wanting to be killed? Which obviously is a desire that transcends gender lines...
KP: No, he’s being a realist. Most men are stronger and faster than most women. Fewer women than men can meet the challenges of the front line work. Not all women belong on the front lines—but some do. Some can carry their weight (and others’ too). And, by the way, there are plenty of men who don’t belong on the front line.
No other reason—biases, trauma in POW captivity, sexual issues on the battlefield—strike me as valid reasons to keep women out of combat. All of these things take place with or without women present, though nobody wants to talk about it.

You served on the front lines as well, during the first Gulf War, correct?
KP: It wasn’t the front lines. I flew in a combat support role with AWACS. We flew in well-defended positions behind the line of battle.

How many other women served with you then?
KP: There were a fair number of women flying in those positions with me. I’d say about 10 – 14% of the crew force was composed of women. It’s probably about the same now.

At the time, wasn't there an even more explicit exclusion of women serving under those circumstances?
KP: Yes, women weren’t allowed to fly fighters. After the Gulf War, Congress lifted that ban and the Air Force and Navy started recruiting heavily to get women in fighter cockpits—this, again, was a political issue. Some of the first women in cockpits probably shouldn’t have been there, but the two forces wanted to look responsive to the new allowances. Now we’ve not only got more women in fighter cockpits, many of them are in senior rankings and have combat experience under their belts. They’re getting a lot more respect these days for being strong, competent pilots. And they give up a lot, too. It seems to me that most successful female senior officers are either single or divorced, while their male counterpoints are married with families.

How did your male colleagues—“colleagues,” I guess you can tell I never served in the military—how did the male soldiers treat you?
KP: They mostly treated me fairly and with respect. During a flying mission, a good crew is one that’s extremely professional. You can be horsing around, cracking jokes thirty minutes before take-off, but in the air, we always worked closely and very well together. If anyone ever took any heat in the air, it’s because he or she wasn’t doing the job properly....On the ground, it was sometimes another story. I spent many nights on deployment to Saudi sitting alone in my villa, reading or watching movies. On some crews I was “one of the guys,” but on others, I didn’t quite make the cut. I taught myself French on one of those trips.

So all that stuff about the macho “Top Gun” culture is just Hollywood B.S.?
KP: No—dealing with the fighter pilots was a whole different story. They weren’t used to working with women, like the AWACS and tanker crews were, and you really had to prove to them that you were tough and competent if you wanted their respect.

For instance?
KP: In 1994 or so, we were flying in a Canadian exercise called Maple Flag. All the flyers—over 200 of us—would brief in a big room before the mission, and then we’d all debrief afterward, with someone different leading the briefings each day. Well, I was the only woman in that crowd of Americans, Brits, and Canadians. Every pilot who got up to give the debrief started with a joke, and the joke was always sexually offensive. I sat there listening to them for 2 weeks, and on the last day, I was offered the opportunity to run the debrief. So, when I stood up, the whole room sort of hummed and went quiet. So, of course, I had to tell a joke. And I did. I made it the most sexually offensive joke I could tell at their expense. What do you think they did? They laughed ferociously, and gave me a standing ovation, and wouldn’t let me buy a beer all night.

Beer’s good. I don’t know what the hell the difference is between “brief” and “debrief,” but I’m going to let you take that secret to your grave. When’s your book coming out?
KP: September 20, 2005.

And there you have it—buy now, buy often! We’ve been speaking here at BookAngst Radio with novelist Kim Ponders, author of THE ART OF UNCONTROLLED FLIGHT. You can read all about her at Femme La Guerre and at Kim Ponders.com.

Ed note: We tried our best to link to BookSense, but weren't able to find the book listed there at press time--perhaps because publication date isn't till Fall '05. This may well be remedied by the time you read this. Use this link to navigate the BookSense site on your own.

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Jessica Brilliant Keener is a novelist and journalist whose work frequently appears in the Boston Globe and elsewhere. Her thoughtful reply to Lauren Baratz-Logsted’s Misadventures in (Mis)Representation hits on what we here at BookAngst 101 feel is the singlemost important criterion for deciding whether an agent is right for you.

Dear Lauren,

Thank you so much for your instructive, forthright post. I think it’s egregious what you’ve experienced, Lauren, but thankfully you have the gift of self-possession and knew enough to get out of those unhappy marriages—or maybe you should think of them as “engagements” because engagements are designed to be broken, if necessary. Obviously, in your case, Lauren, you’ve been right to move on.

I, too, have gone through a few agents but when I think about it, many, many of my writer friends have “gone” through a few as well. It’s not unusual.

Of course, you’ll find many who don’t undergo this shedding process, but if you do, my cheap advice to anyone suffering through it is not to do the typical, writerly thing. Don’t take it all on yourself or decide it must be your fault entirely. It ain’t a crime to find a new agent if the one you have isn’t working.

Before he died, the co-author of my first book gave me some simple advice about agents. It was so simple I didn’t quite get it at first. But I listened to him because he knew about business. He founded Dunkin’ Donuts, and started several other multi-million dollar ventures. (He was appalled by the publishing industry but that’s getting off track--)

He said: FIND AN AGENT WHO CARES.

What does that mean? I think it means several things. It means finding someone who not only loves your work but cares about your work because a caring agent will try harder.

Selling books to publishers is insanely competitive. Agents are competing against how many other agents? (Maybe we should all do some math on how many agents are out there in the marketplace, selling how many books every month? to give us some perspective.)

If your agent cares, she’ll return your calls or respond to your emails within a couple of days. She’ll apologize if she doesn’t get back to you soon enough and will make up for it by being more diligent as you move forward—that’s caring. She’ll let you know, in detail, where she is submitting your work and she’ll follow up with the people she has submitted it to.

An agent who cares will work out problems when they come up, because life is gonna throw you some issues just to mess with your day.

Can you talk comfortably with your agent? Do your personalities click? Do you feel good after you’ve hung up the phone with your agent?

I think these things can’t be overstated. It’s much easier to care when there’s chemistry between you.

If you find yourself second guessing yourself or feeling weird or guilty about things your agent has said, and these feelings begin to overtake what you should be feeling, which is: good, supported, confident, then start looking for someone who cares.

But here’s the funny rub. Much of what I just wrote and what my dear co-author advised me to look for can’t be known or borne out until you enter the new relationship and see how it unfolds. All you can really know at the outset is whether your agent gets your work, in other words, loves it, appreciates it, etc. The caring part, you can only hope, will follow.

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Lauren Baratz-Logsted, the author of The Thin Pink Line and Crossing the Line, herein tells of her life as a romantic--that is, as a writer who refuses to settle for anything less than true love. Her essay, “If Jane Austen Were Writing Today,” is collected in Flirting with Pride and Prejudice: Fresh Perspectives on the Original Chick-Lit Masterpiece, edited by Jennifer Crusie and due out from Benbella Books on September 1. Lauren can be visited at http://www.laurenbaratzlogsted.com/.

Her third novel, A Little Change of Face, will be published in July '05.

Duration of union: three months.
Books together: one.
Manuscript drafts: four.
Submissions made: zero.
Books sold: zero.
Ultimate fate of Novel #1: a box in my basement.

Were these people nuts? Were they on drugs?

Duration of union: one year.
Books together: one.
Manuscript drafts: two.
Submissions made: a few.
Submissions made to Hollywood, even after Hollywood asked: zero.
Books sold: zero.
Ultimate fate of Novel #5 [Yes, Dear Reader: I’d actually written a few others since Agent 1, but if I get started on those we’ll be here all day]: a box in my basement.

[Memo to CBS:“How to Marry a Wage-Earning Novelist”—think we might be onto something??]

There’s a laundry list of ways in which we were incompatible, but space is short, so I’ll confine myself to a single illustrative story.

Duration of union: one year.
Books together: one.
Manuscript drafts: three.
Submissions made: one, but not the book we were working on. The book sub'd was Novel #5 and that was only submitted because I handpicked a place.
Books sold: zero.
Ultimate fate of Novel #7: about to be submitted, but obviously not by Agent Four.

Let’s cut to the chase here, because even I’m starting to have problems telling all these agents apart.

Duration: eighteen months (hey, I’m lasting longer with agents who don’t sell anything!).
Books together: two, sort of.
Manuscript drafts: four, sort of.
Submissions made: three of one book; none of the YA title.
Books sold: zero.
Ultimate fate of Novel # 7 (yes, that book again!): about to be submitted, but obviously not by Agent Five.
Ultimate fate of YA Novel: about to be submitted, but obviously not by Five.

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Herewith, the fifth and final report derived from the "Baker's Dozen" of Mad Max author surveys conducted long ago...As regular visitors to this space know already: In the very early days of BookAngst101, I asked writers to share with me their publication histories. Thanks, once again, to the 13 — Elliot, Jesse, Mary, Keith, Kitty, Allison, Lynn, Rachel, Calvin, Richard, Willa, Carla and Patrick—who replied in such frank detail.

[The clever watch-dogs among you are already working calculators with one hand as you draft a "rant" with the other. After all: even publishers have to admit that 5≠13...right?]

No, there haven't been 13 reports. Despite the fact that I've used the contents of those surveys numerous times in one way or another, most didn't lend themselves to a sustained narrative. But I went back through the material one last time, and found a few gems that every writer will want to post in a prominent place.

"The only dependable maxim I know of in publishing is 'Drunks buy books.' Thus, I always set aside some cash in the marketing budget for booze at readings."

"I've had some success marketing to libraries. Always be nice to librarians."

"Bookstore signings are about as effective as standing in an alley and sellling books from beneath an overcoat."

"Always carry a couple of copies of your book in your backpack or briefcase. I once made a sale in a parking lot to a Fed Ex driver."

"Beware publishers who boast of their marketing capabilities, and use it as a justification of their meager advances."

Survey Question #9: Based on your own experience, what one or two things have had the most impact on the succeses you've achieved so far?

"My ability to hang on to a day job."

"My own dogged determination & thick skin. Also a sense of humor."

"Big hats." [From an author who dresses in period costume for book signings]

"The fine-tuning of my own bullshit detector."

#12: Final Comments?

"My heart remains set on making the most beautiful, potent stories I can create, not on 'being an author.' "

"For me, it's always been about the writing, and that's what has saved me in the end."

"Do it because you love it.... Write because you can't imagine not writing.... What matters most is writing a really good book, a book that can't be ignored."

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Despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that one of my very first posts here began "Welcome back to BookAngst 101. Class is now in session," I've long been curious about the real going-to-school experience offered by novelist (Anthony Award-nominated The Halo Effect, e.g.) / bloggist M.J. Rose, whose agit-prop advocacy of forward-thinking book promotion at her site Buzz Balls & Hype isn't just energetic and thought-provoking, but frequently yields the sort of here's-what-you-can-do specificity represented in this recent guest-post by Kevin Smokler. Curious enough, in fact, to want to take the course myself, though for reasons of time constraints this hasn't been feasible.

When I noticed that M.J.'s "Buzz Your Book" course was being offered again, though, I thought I'd do a little faux-journalism--not just give the sort of friendly (b)log-rolling endorsement one friendly does for another [sidebar for newcomers: M.J. Rose has been a vocal champion of this site], but try to track down someone who's actually taken the course.

One such "graduate" is Andrea Buchanan, whose first book, Mother Shock, about the real experience of parenthood, is perhaps best characterized by its subtitle: "Loving Every (Other) Minute of It." The peripatetic Andi Buchanan is managing editor of Literary Mama, and has several anthologies coming out in the months ahead from Seal Press:

• It's A Boy: Women Writers on Raising Sons (Nov. 2005) with Jacquelyn Mitchard, Jodi Picoult, Jennifer Lauck, Marion Winik, and others;
• Literary Mama: Collected Writing for the Maternally Inclined (Jan. 2006) featuring the best writing from the online literary magazine Literary.com; and
• It's A Girl: Women Writers on Raising Daughters (May 2006) with Hope Edelman, Jacquelyn Mitchard, Katharine Weber, and more.

Ladies and Gentlemen, please give a warm Mad Max welcome to Andrea Buchanan! [Crowd, urged on by menacingly-assembled "APPLAUD WILDLY, YOU BASTARDS!" signs, applauds wildly.]

Hi, Andi. So how did you find out about MJ Rose's "Buzz Your Book" class?

AB: I first came across it online a few years ago, when I was looking for something to help with guerilla publicity for a website. Then I got to know MJ on Readerville and finally connected the dots.

What made you decide to take the course?

AB: I did a ton of work promoting my first book, and as excited as I was about the anthologies I have coming out this year and next, I couldn't shake off the feeling of dread just thinking about the work I had ahead of me in terms of PR for these next three books. I felt like I had a pretty good handle on what worked to build buzz for my first book and what turned out to be a waste of time, but I also knew that it was going to be really hard to do alone. In short, I felt overwhelmed. So I thought MJ's class might be a great place to get inspired, become enthusiastic about the promotion part of the publication process, get a fresh perspective on what pushing these books might entail, come up with new ideas, and brainstorm with someone who knows the industry.

Was it worth it?

AB: Definitely. Doing the class exercises helped me get motivated again, and helped breathe some fresh life into ideas I'd only half-considered before. Just knowing I wasn't going through it all alone was a big motivating factor. Now I feel excited about things, I feel proactive and prepared, and I have a great plan that will support and complement the work my publicist and publisher are doing.

What would you say is the single most valuable thing you took away fromit?

AB: To not be complacent -- to not talk myself out of "pie in the sky" ideas, or be satisfied with the first thing that pops into my head.

To sign up.

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I think of this one as the anti-rant, a happy report from Darlene Ryan, author of Rules for Life and A Mother's Adoption Journey.

I didn’t start writing to end up on the Today Show or the New York Times best-seller list. But if either of those happens I’ll be dancing in my green yoga pants and calling everyone I’ve ever met. I’m not even writing to get rich. Not that I would be offended by a big advance, should Random House come calling. I write because I like it, because I’m pretty good at it, because I’m a lot nicer to be around when I’m writing than when I’m not.

Yes I want to be published. Yes I want to be paid. I didn’t make enough money last year from my writing to live on. But I did make enough to buy a new refrigerator and pay for my kid’s skating lessons. Pretty cool. I have three books and a dozen or so articles published. No I haven’t been published by a “big name” publisher or in any magazines like Redbook or Good Housekeeping, but I’ve worked with some talented editors at reputable companies. I haven’t given my writing away and I haven’t paid for it to be published.

I’ve been a fitness instructor, a commercial copywriter and a late night disk jockey and I like being a writer more than anything else I’ve done. (And I loved working in radio.) I like it on the days when everything I’ve written sounds stupid. I like it on the days when getting each word on paper is like pulling out my nose hairs with a set of pliers. I make stuff up and people pay me for it. I’m not a doctor saving people’s lives. I’m not a teacher, teaching twenty-five second-graders how to multiply. I’m not a plumber up to my elbows in, well, you know what. I make stuff up.

I had a snazzy book launch party for book number two and I got to sign lots of books. Also pretty cool. A friend found book number three in a bookstore in New York City. That was enough to get me dancing in the previously mentioned green yoga pants. I get a rush out of seeing one of my articles in print. When I hold a new book for the first time I’m a wild as a five year-old who’s had too much chocolate. Sure I’d like to have more readers and make more money. But whining about how unfair publishing is isn’t going to make either of those happen.

Publishing is a business. That means at the end of the year they need to have made a profit. That means they buy manuscripts that will make money for the company. So if the choice is between a relationship book with a catchy tag-line and a flip, funny young author, or a book that suggests relationships are (Gulp) a lot of work, penned by an academic, guess whose manuscript they’re going to buy? Guess which book I'm going to buy? I know relationships are work, but I like catchy lines and flippant people. I also know that a bowl of broccoli is a lot better for me than a Hershey bar with almonds. But guess which one I run for when life gets rocky?

I like my current editor a lot. But if he had to choose between a young adult novel penned by Jessica Simpson or one written by me, I think he’s smart enough to take the slam-dunk.

Publishing houses are not charities. They don’t have to be fair. They don’t have any obligation to nurture new writers. If an agent or an editor doesn’t like my work that may be a matter of personal preference. If sixty-seven agents and editors don’t like my work it’s a pretty safe bet that what I have isn’t saleable. Maybe the market is saturated. Maybe my manuscript doesn’t fit any established niche. Or maybe the writing just plain sucks. So I’ll write something else.

Sure, I want a book that’s a best-seller. Sure, I’d like to be on Oprah or the Today Show. Or both. And I’m trying to make that happen. But if it doesn’t, I’m still happy with my writing career.

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[The second Rant Invitational reply to be posted at BookAngst 101, following on the heals of FINE WHINE I: An Unpublished Writer's Rant. Max had intended this post to be entitled FINE WHINE II--he found himself torn between the merits of this particular writer's tale of woe and the fact that it is, well, another tale of woe. It seems there's a thin line between rant and whine...]

"THEY'RE JUST NOT THAT INTO ME"

Maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised. It’s not like I don’t get how the trade publishing game is played. It’s just that I didn’t think it would come down to this. It looks like I’ve I’ve unwittingly (and painfully) become an example of how easily you can slide down the commercial publishing ladder to the rung of unmarketable goods.

For the last three years, I’ve been offering advice by way of forum posts and articles for wanna-be, up-coming and already-published authors on [popular blogs and websites]. I’ve had four non-fiction books published over the last fifteen years, all by major houses. I’ve had the minor success of seeing my work translated into foreign languages. But while I’ve been well-published and received decent but unspectacular advances, I’ve never managed to “break out” as the publishing world calls it, to make real money, much of a publishing name, or more than mediocre sales. I’ll never be a "brand."

I’m just your garden-variety, everyday Expert and Authority with a successful career of gritty, in-the-trenches experience. And I’ve been blessed with a pretty good way with words. But no matter how clever I think I am, I can’t sell my latest proposal. Here’s a brief resume to help you see why it stings so much.

Over a professional career of 30 years, I’ve published (and often been paid for) over a hundred articles in professional journals and popular magazines, dozens of book reviews and commentaries, and hundreds of columns on topics related to my expertise. This doesn’t count all the paper presentations I’ve made at conferences or workshops I’ve given. But let me give you a bit more to make my point.

Because of the intense interpersonal nature of my work, in my private life I’m a rather reclusive guy who shuns trivial interaction and avoids most social gatherings. I’m basically more into the life of my own mind, which includes my interest in creative written expression.

But when it comes time to promote my work or I’m called by a journalist for an opinion, media savvy oozes like nectar from my every pore. I’m verbal, articulate, opinionated, and knowledgeable. Clever sound bites spring from my tongue on demand. And I’ve got the proverbial platform to go with it—although, I’m finding out, this platform appears to be on more shaky legs than I thought.

Here’s what I mean. In submitting this last proposal, we included in the package to editors an eight minute DVD of a live, in-studio tv interview done long ago that was dynamite. My agent wouldn’t have included it if he didn’t think it might help. But it didn’t make any difference. And maybe it even hurt. Maybe these young editors could then see I was too old when it was made and even older today. Of course, if the publishers didn’t want to spend anything or make much effort to market my book, all the media savvy in the world wouldn’t make much difference. But at least I was trying to show them what I had done and could do if they wanted to support me.

The list of agents I’ve managed to run through over the years reads like a who’s who. I started at the pinnacle, with [one of the most prominent literary agencies]. My first agent has become the leading go-to guy for those with industrial-strength platforms, wishing to cash in on their fame and celebrity. They want a book and the ego perks that come with it but most of them don’t know how to write. No problem—-he gets them a good ghost writer and they attain instant success as best-selling “authors.” He routinely makes deals for these people in six and seven figures. I only wish he could have done the same for me.

The next guy literally wrote the bible that writers currently use to research publishers and agents. He’s a skilled entrepreneur but, unfortunately, wasn’t able to help me make a better deal with the publisher than I already had made myself. But at least he had the decency to reduce the commission I still had to pay him for his efforts.

The agent who sold my last book is well-known, highly respected, and very selective in whom she chooses to represent. She has acquired a stable of well-known and reviewed Big Shots who have, over the years, made her a fortune. She didn’t show any interest when I came to her with the idea for the current proposal that hasn’t sold. In fact, she told me she had sold something similar years before that “bombed” and that I should find someone who didn’t have a bad memory of this type of topic. She thought the topic would be better as a movie than a book, that the written medium wasn’t the best for it. Not wanting to give up on my idea, I considered myself politely dumped and moved on.

The guy presently representing me has sold more books over his long career than any of [my] other agents and owns one of the largest agencies in the business. It’s not like he hasn’t gotten the proposal in the right hands. That’s not the problem.The problem is they’re just not that into what I’m offering.

Maybe this sting of rejection is what it feels like to be pushed aside just at what ought to be the height of my writing career, just at the time when thirty years of expertise and four books ought to make a difference.

I think what it’s come down to is this: Who needs a middle-aged expert in relationships to tell twenty and thirty-somethings about the importance of gaining insight into the past of the partner they’re trying to get a commitment from? All you need to do is listen to a totally unqualified “dude” in the same age group who will gladly share his experience and conclude that “he’s just not that into you.”

This afternoon I overheard two forty-something women in a bookstore. One smiles to her friend and says, “I wish that book was around when I was younger.” And I’m thinking, my God, it’s not that simple. Relationships are much more complex than these kinds of cutesy slogans.

But who wants complicated answers when simple ones are so much easier to understand? Nobody wants to be bothered having to read fascinating, complex stories of men with commitment hang-ups, as they struggle to understand themselves and find they’re way toward intimacy. Today’s readers—both men and women—want their prescriptive answers in a gulp-down form, something they can drink like a slush—not something they have to chew on.

Who wants to know about personality types or problems that prevent men from committing to women when you’ve got all kinds of off-the-cuff unqualified authors who will be happy to give you the benefit of their limited real-life experience? Have you read some of this realtionship advice stuff? I mean, way too much of it is just embarrasingly amatuerish in style and content. And yet, it sells. Publishers buy it and so do readers.

Who needs to peek behind the consulting room door to learn what makes men tick when everyone’s personal business is hanging out there on nightly reality tv, tabloid journalism and digitally splattered out on blogs? What used to read like stimulating and captivating case histories now seem tame in comparison to the everyday publicized Misgivings of the Guilty and the Shameful. Anything less than someone being caught in flagrante delicto isn’t juicy enough to capture our attention, you know?

Look, the truth is that most of these unqualified authors haven’t lived long enough to have much idea of who they really are—let alone offer advice to others. But this doesn’t stop the publishing world from not only welcoming their pablum but paying them a pretty penny for it.

How about the editors who are the gatekeepers for what gets taken seriously? The scary thing is that these editors sitting in judgment of my proposal are often barely old enough to grok what they are being offered. From their point of view, it doesn’t matter—they just need to know what sells.

I have lived long enough to see the demise of the expert—at least in the trade publishing world genre of advice and relationships. Everyone is now an instant expert, an instant Amazon reviewer. The internet has allowed everyone to have their voice, even if they still have to search deep within to find it.

So, it looks like another mid-list non-fiction author goes down in flames, unable to sell his latest proposal. Track record not good enough. Topic not hot enough. Too old, not cool enough. Now I know what it feels like to be marginalized. But I know, it's not personal--it's just business.

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Quick: who was the all-time master of the Wah-Wah? Gotta be George Harrison, right? The quiet Beatle, a gifted musician and song-writer disinclined toward self-promotion or hyperbole, one who tended to let his work speak for itself. After the strum und drang of the Beatles' breakup, it was George who first and most emphatically declared himself a free man, capable of carrying on quite nicely on his own, starting with ALL THINGS MUST PASS, a triple (!) album of mostly terrific songs and gorgeous guitarsmanship. His use of the wah-wah pedal (which bellows the sound of an electric guitar in somewhat the same fashion as when a trumpeter wields a mute, resulting in the eponymous "wah") became a signature in the early '70s, but it was never more than a gloss on the genuine chops that made him who he was.

I suspect there were some musicians of the day—now aging acid-heads, retired software-developers, Arizona real-estate brokers (you know who you are)—who resented George’s early post-Beatle burst of success. Who claimed it wasn't about talent so much as a certain cuteness factor, accented ever-so-slightly by being in the right place at the right time. [And who would've had a legitimate gripe if it were Ringo, rather than George, they were targeting.]

Wah-wah
You made me such a big star
Being there at the right time
Cheaper than a dime...

"Wah-Wah" (from ATMP) showcases everything we like about George Harrison: his wit and self-awareness and humility, his sense of melodic drama and his keen knack for the catchy riff. [There's that other thing, too--some like it, some not so much--the sense that, in every song, he might actually be addressing God directly...] As "Wah-Wah" sashays through its seasons, George contemplates the possibility of life without his signature side-kick:

Wah-wah
I don't need no wah-wah
And I know how sweet life can be
If I keep myself free
From the wah-wah
I don't need no wah-wah
Wah wah!

It didn’t hurt to have been a Beatle. But George was (obviously) more than just the wah-wah--he had enough chops that even if they took away his wah-wah (and/or his bandmates), he'd never have to resort to a day job.

***
Fine, Max, very interesting--but where are you going with this?

***

OK, it's true: this post isn't about George Harrison or wah-wah pedals; rather it's a cautionary riff (if you will) meant to scare (some) writers clear of

The Path of the Wah-Wah Peddler

Peddle [sic], which counts among its synonyms words like "flog” and “sell” and which connotes a relative disposability of the items being, umm, flogged. Recently I received a number of "Rants"--replies to the Mad Max “Rant this Space” Invitational--and virtually every one of them, to one degree or another, was both self-promotional and self-pitying. Neither is surprising--first of all, the nature of a "Rant" more or less requires that one has a wrong to Rant against; secondly, what has BookAngst 101 itself flogged if not self-promotion?

And yet. As an editor, as a member of the industry about which both examples [below, to follow] are ranting, I found myself reacting unfavorably--even (I confess) unsympathetically--to the Rants and their authors. My first impulse was to walk on by--to neither respond nor to post them.

Then it occurred to me: Many writers lament never getting any real feedback from editors, about how the "not right for our list" kiss-off isn't even remotely instructive. So I've decided to take that lament at face value, and give some real feedback--

or, to put it another way, I've decided to be a consummate shit-heel, by using two of these Rants to purposes perhaps other than what their creators intended.

It's not that I disagree with them wholly, or that I can't see merit in their respective perspectives. Yes, there are obstacles (lots) to access; yes, the publishing industry, like the culture generally, is disposed toward youth, hipness, currency, platform, etc., sometimes to the detriment of those with more experience and perspective but less likely, say, to win a guest-host's squat on OPRAH.

On the other hand, if these represent the ways in which (some) writers reach out to the publishing industry, and if said industry (represented by Max) is put off by the strategies these writers employ, then these strategies aren't working....And maybe (I'm not certain, but maybe) this justifies my turning the bright lamp of the Rant back upon their creators. Even if they hate me for it, maybe it'll prove useful for others.

***
The first came to me with a subject line that read, "An unpublished writer’s rant"--and I confess it was two days before I even opened it. Which was exactly his point...

[Next up:FINE WHINE I: AN UNPUBLISHED WRITER'S RANT.]

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[Submitted to BookAngst 101 by an Anoymous Reader/Writer, via email, with the subject head "AN UNPUBLISHED WRITER'S RANT":]

Admit it... you’ve stopped listening already!

You saw “unpublished writer” and your eyes glazed over and you quickly clicked over to Bookslut before defiling yourself with the anxious whining of a new writer.

Therein lies the rub... I can’t get your attention without being published, and I can’t get published without your attention. For the unpublished writers amongst us who are sans MFA, short on contacts, and long on aspirations, the obstacles to a publishing career are daunting. The work's not good enough... so write better... but the only valuable feedback is locked behind those doors marked “only Pros need apply.” I get no feedback from a form letter saying, “this material isn’t right for us.” Sure, it’s easy to write another book, but will it be better? Oh sure, I’ve taken writing classes from nobodies, and I’ve been told I can write. So can a million others, apparently, as well as the Shakespeare-typing-chimpanzees.

How do you pluck that one possible out of a big stack of impossible? Is it possible that you’ve made your mind up before you’ve even resigned yourself to the icky chore of dispensing your slushpile?

I’m just sayin’.

***

To which Max responds:

Sorry, but this is self-pitying crap. Yes, you're right: I did shy away from your subject line--because (even before there was a Mad Max Perkins) I get dozens of unsolicited emails a day from writers wanting me to read their masterpieces. I recognize you're just trying to get through to somebody--but this ain't the way to do it. And it's not because you don't have an MFA or took "classes from nobodies": trust me on this, I delete them all without prejudice. [And--personally?--I'll be much less inclined to give you a open-hearted read if you've got an MFA than if you don't. Not a big fan of the production-line industry responsible for so many More Fucking Artistes...]

If you're not getting published, it sure ain't because you're not part of the "In Crowd." This conspiracy-theory gobblety-gook is a favored excuse for people who haven't got the talent or haven't got the drive, or both. The world is lousy with literary agents; and literary agents only get paid when they make a sale; so they're a competitive and fast-acting group. From my perspective, there are basically two reasons why a writer doesn't have an agent: either the writing's not quite good enough, or the writer hasn't applied himself seriously--doggedly--to finding one.

Whether or not publishers should have a responsibility to read material submitted to "Dear Slushpile," the reality is that most no longer accept unsolicited manuscripts. If you think this reflects the hard-heartedness of today's market place, you're right: publishers are enormously understaffed relative to yesteryear, which means that there are far fewer sets of eyes per submission than used to be the case... Another reason why your initial focus should be on getting your work to agents: they might actually read it.

This week's inspiring story about a writer discovered on the slush pile strikes me as the exception that proves the rule--and my guess is that his/her career began perhaps two decades ago.

“Only Pros need apply”...I get no feedback from a form letter saying, “this material isn’t right for us.”

First of all, damn right: pros ONLY, please! The business of writing, and of publishing the work of serious and talented writers, is, indeed, a matter of PROFESSION in the profoundest sense. If you write as a hobby, that's wonderful for you--but I have no place in that experience, and it's naive of you to expect me to be reassuring if your work fails to engage me. My professional responsibility is to find writers and books that I feel have literary and commercial merit (and it's not coincidence that there's often a strong corrolation between the seriousness and professionalism with which writers approach their craft and the extent to which I'm likely to be impressed). I have neither time or motivation to engage in feel-good correspondence for its own sake.

Finally: I accept the charge that this is a low blow, an easy shot--but, to my mind, anybody who says "it's easy to write another book" probably isn't putting nearly enough time and energy--enough professionalism--into the work in the first place.

[Tomorrow: FINE WHINE? OR RANT? YOU BE THE JUDGE]

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[This author's comments arrived yesterday in response to a January post on the topic of realistic advances. I don't know which I find more astonishing, the arc of the career or the fact that this happy story begins with--and didn't end on--the slush pile. Whoever you are: congratulations, and thanks for sharing this.--Max]

My first advance was $10K from a major NY publisher. (This was also, BTW, an unsolicited, unagented submission.) I earned back that first advance, landed myself an agent, and received a contract for a second book for $35K. In subsequent years, deals for my third and fourth novels followed, and each time my advances increased. Each time I earned out. For my fifth and sixth novels, I received my first 2-book deal and six figure advance. I am currently under a three-book contract for which I received a mid-six figures advance.

Perhaps most people would look at my early miniscule advances and sneer, and it could be said that a larger advance might have earned me more attention from the marketing department. However, I always made a profit for my publisher, and they stuck with me as I gradually built an audience. I've still never been on the Today show or had my publisher run a national ad, but my last two books both spent several weeks on the NYT extended bestseller list.

I give all the credit to my wonderful editor, agent, and in-house publicist who had faith in me and allowed my career to gradually build momentum. Would it have been great to receive a huge advance and publicity campaign for my first book? Well, maybe. I'm not so sure. I ended up at the same place; it just took a little longer.

No advance of any size could buy me what I have today: a great relationship with my publisher, an editor whom I adore, and the ability to continue to do the work I love.

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After two books at a midsize house established suspense novelist RICHARD as “one to watch” (relatively modest advances, and a high success-to-expectations ratio), a bigger house came calling. He’d been pleased with the efforts of Publisher #1—when the publicist he’d hired (at his own expense) got some traction, they responded nimbly to the opportunities by increasing distribution and extending (substantially) the co-op spend. Both books earned out their advances, and there was good feeling on both sides.

But Richard’s editor left, and other changes were anticipated as well. Publisher #2 came forward with a larger offer (a two-book deal) and a promise to position Richard’s third book as its lead title—major promotional support whose stated goal wasn’t just to break Richard out but to establish him as a brand-name author and get him “on the lists.” Given the change underway at his original publisher, the move to Publisher #2 seemed a no-brainer.

As it turned out, it nearly ruined his career.

RICHARD:
Six months after the deal was struck, my new publisher signed an established bestseller for a huge sum of money. You think: this can’t possibly have an impact on my situation, since the publisher’s goals for me are the same now as they were when they signed me. You tell yourself—thinking like a business person (how naïve…)—that they really do have to keep at least one eye toward the future; and so while a big-name author helps them in the short run, and perhaps even raises the visibility of the imprint for the good of the rest of us, in the long-term they understand that if my career takes off, there’s an even greater upside for them. And if not me, then another writer at my level: point is, surely they understand that they’ve got to continually restock the pond, make sure they’ve got fresh brands on the rise as the old ones lose steam. They do, right?

They do not. The arrival of the big name changed completely how they viewed me, and apparently made it OK for them to bail out on all of their promises to promote me and my books. The marketing budget, the tour, the co-op—all out the window. From Book 2 (Publisher #1) to Book 3 (Publisher #2), my sales dropped 60%. And this for a book (which was finished when they bought it--in other words, they knew exactly what they were getting) that everyone agrees, even today, is the best I've written.

The worst part of it is that I had no clue about any of this—about their change in attitude, or priorities—until the die was cast. I don’t know what we’d have been able to do if they’d been honest with us, or that the additional efforts (and money) I might have expended in the service of doing the publisher’s job would have stopped the bleeding entirely; but I’m certain I could have had an impact, because I’d done some of that with Publisher #1, to good effect.

But the promises that convinced me to move publishers in the first place had been so emphatic that there seemed to be no doubt about their vision both of what my future might hold and what they’d need to do to get me there. So I stupidly buried the paranoia and doubt that any sensible author has about such promises, and trusted “the plan” without having any sense—until it was far too late—that they’d effectively pulled the plug on my budget (and those of others too) so as to shift that budgetary pool to their new, already-established bestseller.

Yes, of course: in hindsight I wish I’d stayed w/ Publisher #1, despite the departure of my editor. But there’s no lesson to be drawn from that, really, because you never know how things will turn out. The bigger mistake, the one I beat myself up over, was taking for granted that anything my publisher promised would come to pass without endless vigilance on my part.

That’s the lesson I draw from this: that as a writer, it’s my responsibility (I mean mine and my agent’s, jointly) to make sure the details are being attended to. To know what the right questions are, and to never underestimate how early I should be asking them, nor how persistently. I’m not saying that you should anticipate having an antagonistic relationship with the publisher per se. But approach the endeavor with a clear-eyed professionalism, and don’t be afraid to ask questions and require answers to those questions—make it clear through your demeanor and responsiveness A) that you’re not going to give them a reason to go anything but all-out; and B) that they’re not going to be able to bullshit you.

Which doesn’t mean they won’t. Nor does it mean, of course, that one’s success is guaranteed—obviously the odds are always against us, even under the best circumstances, we all know that. But the bottom line is, I also know, now, that I’ve got to work every bit as hard at all facets of the publishing process—including marketing myself—as I do on the writing itself. I hate doing it—but I can’t risk the possibility that somebody else might not come through. And so I don’t.

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Far be it for me to take someone else to task for anonymity; but I found one recent anonymous post (in response to Vol. II of the Mad Max Survey: Keith, the thriller writer) especially wearying, spouting as it does received wisdom about the lock-stock correlation between the size of the advance and the extent to which a book will (or won’t) be well published.

If this writer thinks his publisher didn't do much for him after receiving his large, life-changing advance, he should consider that the effort would have been far less if his advance had been small … I've heard this "I got too large of an advance" story before and it defies logic. Sure, he didn't earn out. But who's to say he would have earned out with the smaller advance? Smaller advance would have certainly meant smaller effort by the publisher, smaller interest by the media, and smaller sales all around.

As an editor in good standing who has paid seven-figures for books, and who has far more frequently paid five figures, I’m here to dispute, emphatically, the claim that publishers never publish well books they don't pay a ton for. And before anyone accuses me of striking a pose designed to contradict the ingrained cynicism/skepticism with which publishers are viewed—after all, people so enjoy demonizing the ugly for-profit instincts of publishers, and have such uncanny insight into the ways this ugliness motivates us, above all other things—I’ll speak not of art, or of supporting the little guy, but as the bottom-line capitalist I am. Because here’s the truth about what a “small” advance represents to me: it’s a chance to earn a profit—

To turn a (relatively) modest investment into a (potentially) lucrative return… From the Latin lucrativus—from whence comes the rallying cry of investors since time immemorial:

“Hey, man—
let’s make us some
FILTHY LUCRE!”

Do publishers pay tons of money for books sometimes? Yes. Do they sometimes support such investments aggressively? Often, yes. But it's specious (and down-right illogical) to suggest that the inverse is true—that books bought “small” are necessarily doomed to be published that way. Again, I won’t play the “for the love of literature” card; rather, it stands to reason that, if we buy a book for $50,000 (a “small” advance, according to some), and publish it well, there’s a far greater likelihood of

Getting…into…the BLACK

The failure of a book for which a small advance has been paid is no more guaranteed than is the success of those seven-figure mega-deals that get headline ink in the trades. Are there publishers whose eyes, as a matter of course, glaze over when they see such books on their publishing grids? Yeah: stupid ones. Smart publishers are opportunistic. Sometimes opportunity presents itself in the form of bestselling authors for whom huge sums are paid based on the expectation that huge quantities will be shipped out, generating a stream of receipts that, even when not profitable by every conceivable measure, can nonetheless make a huge contribution to operational overhead. But nothing represents a greater (theoretical) opportunity for publishers than a book bought low that can be sold aggressively. These situations represent the ultimate win-win for author and publisher alike.

What does this outcome require? It requires vigilant activism on the part of editors, and it requires the trust of the people managing/supervising those editors. As the number of publishers shrinks; as the remaining publishers grow in size; and as the number of titles being published on each list increases, especially relative to the number of people needed to publish them well; it is, of course, inevitable that those charged with overseeing those lists focus greater and greater portions of their resources on titles & authors that have a proven track, or on which large bets have been placed—this is what Anonymous means by “chasing the money.”

But under these circumstances, editors have opportunities to be mini-publishers, even—no, especially—for these relatively smaller titles. Their managers are counting on them to do precisely that. And at the end of the day there is nothing so satisfying, so thrilling, so rewarding—for everyone involved—as putting the right book into the right hands at the right time, and turning a project for which expectations are modest into a lead title. Is part of that thrill the realization that you may have earned a terrific return on your investment? Well, this is a business--what do you think?

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PATRICK, a literary novelist, published his first book with a prestigious New York house, then published his next two with a university press.

BIG ......For my first novel, there was a generally good vibe leading up to publication. I had some issues with the publisher, though—the corporate behemoth and so forth—issues that seemed all the more clear-cut when my publicity director was fired the week before publication. The new pub director knew little about the book and as a result very little happened. Despite good reviews and moderately good sales (plus a good sub rights deal), the experience led me to want to explore other options.

SMALL ......I wound up publishing my next two books with a university press. I was drawn in that direction initially because I had heard they kept books in print and cared deeply about literature. In fact, I thought the editing was vastly superior with my faceless NY publisher. I'm not sure my editor at the university press ever read the book. They went into publishing fiction with the idea that they' make a lot of money to support scholarly monographs but they had no idea how to market fiction. Again, good reviews and even a minor prize, but low sales, due in part to lousy distribution and p.r.

I did a second book with this press, thinking we had all learned something from the first. In this case, I worked very hard for the book and sales were modestly better but many of the same problems remained. And while they sold out of their first edition within six months, they weren't willing to go back for a second printing. Another minor complaint is that while there was some movie interest, the publisher had no idea how to handle this, and fumbled the opportunity. Sub rights is a major problem with small press and university presses. Every so often they get a paperback deal but it's purely by accident, in my opinion.

BIG v. SMALL ......At the time I felt I’d been lost in the shuffle with my New York publisher; on the other hand, there's just no question that their professionalism and attention to detail made a huge difference. One small example: with my last book with the U.P., I almost didn't get noticed in PW or Kirkus because the press didn't get advance copies to them in time. This despite having gotten good notices on my previous novels—very annoying, given the importance of these publications to bookstores, libraries and the trade. On the other hand, while the first book was pulped within six months, my university press books are still in print. That means a lot to an author.

THE WORK ......Looking back on twenty years of frustration and some limited success, I think the most important thing is perseverance. Too many writers are willing to give in to pessimism because of the problems all mid-list writers face these days. For me, it's really always been about the writing, and that's what has saved me in the end. If I didn't love to write, I'd be in trouble.

I think that book tours and other publicity gimmicks are largely a waste of time. I know all the arguments for them, how they encourage booksellers, etc, but few things in life are more dispiriting that standing around in some bookstore in some distant place addressing five or six people and a pile of your books. Okay, you get to sign stock and sell a few that way, but in my view it's not worth it, especially in view of the way NY publishers view these kinds of sales. Ditto with interviewers, most of whom are clueless and have little idea of who you are and what you've done. A special place in hell should be reserved for these nitwits.

WHAT I KNOW NOW ......I just sent a new novel to my agent and have decided that unless I can get a decent deal with a NY publisher, I'm not going to publish it. For me, it's all about distribution and publicity. With the decline of review markets, it's just very difficult to get your book in front of the public without a big NY house behind you. Having said that, I'll also say that I think these literary blogs are the most interesting and exciting thing I've seen in publishing in twenty years. I have no idea what the audience is but I'm always impressed with the energy and intelligence of the bloggers.

______________________
PREVIOUS INSTALLMENTS:

• OVERVIEW: A BAKER'S DOZEN
• VOL I: PAPERBACK WRITER
• VOL II: THRILLER WRITER (The Trouble With Big Advances)

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THE TROUBLE WITH BIG ADVANCES.
KEITH: A thriller writer.

Keith’s career opened like a television ad for a European sports car: Zero to Sixty in Under Five Seconds. He was “an absolutely unknown 28 year-old” when his novel caught the attention of a powerful literary agent. The novel—an upmarket thriller featuring a female protagonist—went out to key New York editors. Keith was a publisher’s dream come true: a young, attractive thriller writer with commercial storytelling instincts, literary chops and—Halleluiah first novelists!—absolutely no prior sales track to have to contend with.

The submission generated instant buzz; an auction date was quickly set; and in the end, seven U.S. publishers came to the table. Novel #1 sold to a top editor at a venerated house for a hefty six-figure advance, along with “heady marketing promises”: an extensive tour, end caps at major chain bookstores, and national media appearances. The book quickly sold in numerous foreign countries. It seemed almost too easy—a dream score

KEITH:
Here's my story. I call it a cautionary tale about the trouble that big advances can lead to.

BOOK ONE:
Though the editor under whose imprint I was to be published was one of the pillars of her house, I was assigned to her assistant, who was just beginning to come into his own. He was very excited about the book, and worked, I honestly believe, his hardest to promote it in house. (How much weight he had to throw around, however, is less clear.)

The book received a two-page spread in the catalog, and the first printing was in keeping with the sizeable advance. Yet there were problems from the start. The cover my publisher finally settled on was hideous—and though I had approval of the cover art written into my contract, the process was so belabored and fractious that by time the final cover was decided, it was way too late to do anything about it.

The book came out to stellar reviews, and many—from a starred PW to a glowing NYTBR, and pretty much everything in between. Yet the cover was so hideous that the major chains refused to feature it. In the end, despite the glowing reviews, my sales were disappointing. The mass market team (the publisher's sister house) took its cues from the hardcover performance, didn’t position it aggressively etc., and the results were exactly what you’d expect. r.

[For the record, I was sent on a book tour for the hardcover—an absolute waste of time and money, in my opinion.]

BOOK TWO
The same publisher acquired my second book as well, with the advance being a third less than the first advance; I saw it as a vote of confidence that they wanted to stick with me. But with the lackluster sales of the first book dogging them, the marketing department decided to position the next book less as a thriller than as a mystery, and focusing their promotion exclusively on mystery book stores. They said it was their way of finding a niche. Again, my book came out to perfect reviews—we picked up PEOPLE this time, one of the few who’d given us a pass on Book One. But they shipped a much smaller number; I went on a dismal book tour to mystery book stores; and hardcover sales were even lower than for the first book. At the time I didn’t grasp just how significant this downward track would prove to be. As before, there was zero marketing on the part of the paperback house, which made its (dismal) publication a self-fulfilling prophecy.

BOOKS THREE AND FOUR
My original publisher offered me a two book contract for books three and four, though once more at a diminishing advance: I got the same advance for books three and four combined as I’d received for book two. By now the junior editor had moved on to greener pastures, but I’d formed a close relationship with the woman under whose imprint I was published, so we decided to proceed without another editor, with the implicit understanding that I wouldn’t get quite the same level of attention regarding the day-to-day as I had in the past.

Again, there were the same stellar reviews, the same dismal tours to mystery bookstores and appearances at Bouchercon, the annual mystery writers' convention. Only now the focus on the mystery world was seeming more and more like a bad idea: I write political thrillers, not mysteries. My third book was published just after 9/11, as we were poised to go to war with Iraq. This may sound heartless, but the fact remains that my book couldn’t have been more topical; had it been nonfiction, it might well have been a bestseller. The publisher made absolutely no attempt to tie the marketing in with current events; on the other hand I can't blame marketing entirely, as distribution was by now my real enemy.

Everyone—authors and editors both—has a story about how 9/11 took the legs out from underneath a promising publication. Yet unlike so many, I continued to get terrific media—all for naught. Here’s an example: one of the stops on my book tour was Minneapolis, and came immediately on the heels of three separate articles about me and the book in the Star-Tribune (a review, an interview, and a profile). But my publisher had managed to book an event in the Twin Cities; instead I wound up a tiny mystery bookstore thirty five miles away. Worse yet, the bookstore had NO STOCK. So my escort and I had to go to every bookstore in the area and buy them out of their few copies.

My fourth book also dealt with timely, trenchant subject matter, and had a terrifically exotic setting—and received no marketing support whatsoever. It was only now that I came to realize that my editor, fantastic though she was on the page, and as a human being, had little interest in or grasp of the ins and outs of marketing a book, or even generating excitement for it in house. As my British editor once remarked, "J. is from the old school, and sees marketing as something altogether vulgar." Had I known then what I know now…

BOOK FIVE
What had been obvious to my agent for some time now became plain to me: I had to find a new publisher. Yet this would prove much easier said than done. Many top editors at large New York houses were itching to read my manuscript, and I traveled to New York to meet with potential new editors, who were consistently "blown away" by the book, and "very excited to work with me." However, not a single one of these editors would be allowed by their marketing departments to make an offer, because of my sales track.

Moral: there really is such a thing a too-high an advance, and mine is a case in point. Had I started smaller and earned-out, it's possible that, in the aggregate, I wouldn't have made quite as much money. But I wouldn't be in the insane position I find myself in now. I've been published in a dozen different languages. All four of my books have received near perfect reviews. My European sales are respectable enough that I have made two promotional trips abroad this year alone. I have a contract with a major British publisher for two books. And yet if I'm going to continue publishing in this country, I'm going to have to do so under a different name.

PREVIOUS INSTALLMENTS OF
THE MAD MAX SURVEY:
A BAKER'S DOZEN: OVERVIEW
VOL I: PAPERBACK WRITER

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“For me, it’s always been about the writing, and that’s what has saved me in the end.”—Patrick, novelist

In the very early days of BookAngst101, I asked writers to share with me their publication histories. 13 authors replied to my survey, giving frank and detailed accounts—not many happy tales here, I’m sorry to say—and then generously answered my follow-up questions. I’d like to thank Keith, Kitty, Lynn, Richard, Patrick, Allison, Rachel, Calvin, Elliot, Jesse, Mary,Willa and Carla* for being so trusting, and so forthcoming. (It’s especially valuable, I think, because your backgrounds represent a perfect cross-section of the business: writers of fiction and nonfiction, across the span of literary-to-commercial; adult books, childrens' and YA; published by major New York publishers, university presses and a variety of small regional presses....)

I’d intended to use your experiences as a database from which to sketch out a composite of the writing-and-publishing life. But as I sifted through the details I came to see that there weren’t a lot of larger lessons to be drawn that we didn’t mostly know already:

Editorial turnover breaks authors’ hearts and leaves them compromised in ways the consequences of which are sometimes never undone... Overwhelmed and/or inexperienced publicists—the closest thing to “marketing in action” that many authors ever come into contact with—rarely seem to be up to, or invested in, the task of promoting mid-list authors... On the other hand, be careful what you wish for: almost to a person, these authors came to the conclusion that the book tour, on virtually any scale, is not simply a waste of time & energy but, in fact, an exercise in public humiliation... To top things off, it appears there really is a special ring in hell for the nitwit radio and newspaper personnel who purport to be working the “book beat” yet fail to read the books (or sometimes even the press material) by the authors they’re interviewing.

These are all real and significant concerns, but I suspect they’re not much of a surprise to professionals on either side of the aisle. It’s taken me rather a long time to recognize that the larger value of your replies isn’t so much in the aggregate “data” they provide, but in the narrative particularities of your experiences, and in the way you expressed them.

Seven months, in fact. In retrospect I wish I’d crafted my “survey” so as to invite a more discursive approach: I asked for nugget-sized details and got them, but the form of my questions elicited replies that, in some cases, don’t translate well for a larger narrative. And so, while pieces of all 13 interviews have informed various aspects of this blog for months now, and excerpts from many will appear in a series of “survey recap posts” I'll run over the next couple of weeks, fewer than half of your replies have translated effectively into stand-alone entries. I apologize to those of you whose stories aren’t reflected here, or in much depth, despite your having taken the time and effort to give such full reports. But seven months is too long, already, to have held onto to these; and it seems it’s better to put out some of these narratives than to keep them all on ice because of my inability to frame the others in a fashion that does you justice.

Watch this space for more Author Survey posts in the near future.

--Max

P.S. Don't forget, folks--we're still accepting applications for the Rant Room. space is going fast, though, so get yours in soon!
____________

*For the record: with the exception of self-proclaimed “Paperback Writer” Lynn Viehl (whose response to the survey was posted back in January), all the other writers are presented by alias, and in some cases with a detail or two changed, in order to safe-guard anonymity.

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A reader of this blog recently suggested the need for

"a forum where publishing insiders can vent (anonymously) about the challenges of their industry, and maybe offer/get some sympathy and support."

I don't know about the sympathy/support side of the equation, but I can attest to the psychic benefits of ranting. And then there's the confidence boost that comes from deceipt: by posing as a publishing insider as I've done, and posting pseudonymously, I've come to see myself as being more steeped in the pubishing process than most mailroom employees can claim.

And so I thought it might be interesting to open up the gates a little--to give you (Dear Reader) not just a chance to vent but also to bask in the glory that comes with being a part of the glamorous blogging community at this particularly glamorous moment in time. Think of it (as I do) like being Super Hero for a day--the chance don the brightly-colored cape & costume, and to demonstrate to all the world the full range of your genius [sic], your keen insights, your ability to take a bullet for the good of human-kind. Sure, there's the risk of public humiliation--on the other hand, what if you emerge from the experience not just alive but with a broader, stronger sense of your own self-worth?

[In my own case, there's little doubt that my time at BookAngst 101 has contributed directly to my best performance evaluation ever, and I'm currently on the short list to be promoted to Assistant Manager, Mailroom Operations. (Keep your fingers crossed, will you? I'll let you know how it turns out...)]

Remember the ad for the 96-pound weakling who, sick of getting sand kicked in his face, turns to Charles Atlas for guidance? That used to be me...except that my dyslexia prevented me from getting Charles Atlas's phone number right, and my apathy prevented me from trying again... As you can well imagine, this inaction (combined with many others, of which this was but one example) contributed to a low self-image and a predilection toward conspiracy theory, fast food and video games. And so, for much of my adult life, I've had the rather unsatisfactory experience of being a 96-pound weakling stuck inside a MUCH larger body. Think Ignatius J. Reilly. Think Gilbert Grape's mom.

But that all changed when I became a pseudonymous blogger. Donning the Mask of Max is the opportunity for the office-bound to (as the ad says) "Be all that you can be." To vanquish, in this newly (if only metaphorically) buff and bodacious state, those bullies who tormented us on the personal beaches of our respective pasts.

And now, for a limited time only, you too can share in this liberating experience! Here's how!!!

1. Pick a topic about which you feel strongly, and draft a "rant" of whatever length works for you.
2. Send it to me via email.
3. If I like it, I'll post it to BookAngst 101.

Now for the fine print:

Mad Max, that is, the original Mad Max Perkins, distinct from potential "Max for a Day" candidates, reserves the right to make all final decisions about content to be posted at BookAngst 101. Max is not so much worried about sloppily constructed arguments as he is about someone having something of genuine insight to say, which could reflect poorly on Max's perceived expertise. Max is willing to edit/comment on topics that strike him as worthy or serious or cogent or exceedingly silly, but warns in advance that there's a inverse corrolation between the amount of work to be done on a piece and its likelihood of getting posted. This offer is subject to alteration or cancellation without warning.

Let the venting begin.

P.S. Anonymity is optional.

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Sorry for the hiatus. Right now I don't seem to have the juice to be posting regularly, and have decided neither to force it nor to force a decision about when--or whether--BookAngst 101 will be back in session.

So for now I'm setting my solar panels in the yard and letting them recharge awhile.

Thanks to you e-mail pals who've checked in w/ me to offer good cheer and make sure all's well. All is well, and is better still because of your good wishes.

--Max

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Books, books, everywhere you look! Stacked to the rafters, high on the hip; on the front page of the New York Times, in high-rotation ads on Fox TV, in obits and litblogs and AP Wire postings. Suddenly the book biz has a personality again. Watch out, Teach for America: you'll have to fight a lot harder for those young Yale Dartmouth & Amherst grads next year.

Here's Judith Regan announcing her move to Los Angeles, promising Left Coast culture a shot in the arm--and my favorite kettle-calling-pot comment, from an unidentified Hollywood exec, who said, in the Daily News:

"Judith has succeeded by going for the lowest common denominator...While that makes her a standout in the book-publishing industry, it's not really so special out here."

Here's Pamela Anderson giving a boost to our collective silhouette in STACKED, the sit-com (premiering tonight) that the Calgary Sun describes as "FRASIER with boobs" [Headline: "Stacked not a bust"] and showing Middle America just how much fun reading can be. Speaking of fun, producer Steve Levitan compares (perhaps optimistically) STACKED's potential for romantic high-jinx with CHEERS's Sam-and-Diane [with Elon Gold in the "Sam" slot], and admits he had another sexy, literate, laff-riot couple in mind:

"I thought a lot about the Marilyn Monroe-Arthur Miller dynamic when I was writing this," Levitan said [in the NYTimes]. "Here was this blond bombshell who surprised a lot of people by being with this New York intellectual and vice versa. That's always been a fascinating relationship to a lot of people."

Here's Saul Bellow, resplendent in death, coming across not as egghead-genius but as hip-cat Jimmy Stewart, inspiring financial brokers across three continents to whisper a single word of investment advice: "TWEED." [Methinks I see a t.v. movie on the horizon... Bellow, Hunter S. Thompson, Arthur Miller--A Bookish Brat Pack of the Dead, with a made-for-t.v. amalgam of Andrea Dworkin and Gloria Steinem as protofeminist sidekick.]

Here's the launch of the Litblog Co-op, offering at least the possibility that serious, unhyped literature isn't doomed in the marketplace.

Here's the Iowa Writers' Workshop conducting an American Idol-like search for a new director to replace the legendary Frank Conroy, bringing beloved-but-not-bestselling writers Richard Bausch, Jim Shepard and Ben Marcus an extra measure of attention before ultimately selecting Lan Samantha Chang.

Here's Harvey and Bob, given the opportunity to slip free, blameless, of the book trade, and chosing not to.

Here's Jonathan Burnham and Rob Weisbach and Carole Baron and Ivan Held and Lee Boudreaux and Jennifer Hershey taking on new gigs, new challenges, and sending an energizing ripple through the industry.

Smirk if you will--and the opportunities are numerous--but can this really be a bad thing? Sure, Pamela Anderson's co-stars in STACKED are sure to be chubby, cross-eyed dorks. Sure, if there's reason to celebrate Judith Regan's move west, it probably has more to do with the notion of "addition by subtraction" than with culture per se. And--sure--the shifting of leadership players of late doesn't address, in any way, the more fundamental concerns of the industry.

But you can't have everything. Meanwhile, there's always this low-tech 19th century truism that is no less a rallying cry today, nor any less true:

Change is good.

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"Marking a departure from the solitary life of reading and writing, about 20 independent literary bloggers announced Friday that they will begin working together in hopes of drawing readers to books they feel deserve more attention, while seeking to generate more and deeper public discussions of literature....Mark Sarvas, who drew the project together, described the effort as less an awared program than a conversation starter.

"We want to shine a light on literary fiction likely to get overlooked and lost in the shuffle...The mission is to see what happens when 10 to 20 lit bloggers get behind a title and push hard. Does it make a difference?"

--L.A. Times article [April 9, 2005] on the Litblog Cooperative

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