Publishing Spoken Here By Richard Curtis Traduttore, Traditore (“The translator is a traitor”) – Italian proverb One of the critical roles literary agents play is that of translator. We perform the task on several levels. The most obvious and fundamental is explaining the nomenclature of publishing to the uninitiated author. The writer who sells his first book to a publisher and reads his first contract is plunged into a sea of words that may be totally unfamiliar to him, or that are used in a totally unfamiliar way. “Force majeure,” “net proceeds,” “matching option,” “warranty,” “discount”—these need to be defined for the novice author. There are many difficult concepts to be grasped, such as “advance sale,” “midlist,” “fair use,” “reserve against returns,” “pass-through,” and “hard-soft deals.” The language has its own slang, too, and our initiate hears bewildering references to who handles the “sub rights,” what is the tentative “pub date,” and what happens when the book is “o.p.’d.” Agents patiently try to demystify these terms, but it may take many years of experience before our clients are completely at ease with them. It may well be true that what distinguishes professional authors from their amateur brothers and sisters is that the pros have undergone this linguistic rite of passage and are now able to sling around “pre-empts,” “first proceeds,” and “escalators” with the best of ‘em. But there is another, and profoundly more important, job for the agent-translator to perform beyond explaining to his clients the terminology of the book industry. I’m talking about using language to forge and strengthen the bonds between authors and publishers. For, while the goals of both may ultimately be identical, they are usually achievable only after many conflicting viewpoints and interests have been reconciled. Sometimes those conflicts become intense, and if allowed to go unresolved can cause serious if not fatal breakdowns in the relationship. An agent, standing between these potential adversaries, must find common ground for them to stand on, else all – including his commission – is lost. And though their differences may be genuine, sometimes they are semantic, and if an agent can pinpoint and settle the linguistic problems, perhaps the more substantive ones will not seem quite so insuperable. Although it’s a stimulating challenge, not all of us enjoy sticking our heads up in this no-man’s land. You must not think, however, that editors cannot be seriously wounded. And it is important to know that fact, because a hurt editor (or art director or royalty bookkeeper) may not want to work as hard for an author who has irked him or her as for one who has been supportive, tolerant, and forgiving. This is not to say that editors are so thin-skinned they fold the first time someone criticizes them. But I do know that if an author or agent injures an editor’s feelings seriously enough, it can undercut his or her initiative, and that may eventually redound to an author’s detriment. Some years ago I phoned a bookkeeper who had been verbally abused by an author a few months earlier. This author was owed another check, and I wanted to know where it was. “Funny thing about that check,” she said, deadpan, “it keeps falling to the bottom of my pile. Must be gravity or something.” It is therefore vital that editors and their colleagues in other departments of publishing companies be handled with a certain degree of diplomacy, and it is in the language of that diplomacy that most agents are adept. We have learned that “a soft answer turneth away wrath.” And most of the time, we are able to rephrase or paraphrase the blunt demands, the raw needs, the hard feelings, the hostile remarks, of our clients into gracious packages of civility that convey everything the author intended without damaging the fragile sensibilities of the person at whom they were directed. I’ve been keeping some notes about discussions recently conducted with editors and am happy to offer herewith a few examples of this process in action. Some of them are tongue in cheek, others are deliberately exaggerated. Still others will sound stilted, and that is because, unfortunately, that is the way I speak. Let’s take one of the commonest problems in our business, that of getting editors to make up their minds about submissions. Editors are burdened with a great many tasks that curtail their reading time. They may be inundated with manuscripts to read. They may be on the fence about a submission and wish to postpone a decision for a while. They may be soliciting opinions or sales estimates from colleagues in their company. They have many legitimate reasons for taking a long time to read submissions. At the same time, some editors seem to have a considerably dimmer sense of the passage of time than people in other fields, such as airline management or television programming. So, one of the first lessons one learns in the agenting profession is how to translate an editor’s promises about time. “I’ll read it overnight” too often means, “I’ll get around to it in a week.” “I’ll read it in a week” means, “I’ll be back to you in a month.” And “I’ll read it in a month” may well mean that the manuscript is lost. In order to reasonably hold editors to their promised schedules, agents use the elegant phraseology of coercion. “As I’m loath to keep manuscripts out of circulation,” I might write, “may I trouble you for a decision?” If this fails to yield a reply, I might escalate to something more pointed, like, “My client is getting restless,” or, “I’m under some pressure to determine where we stand.” Sometimes a humorous approach is in order. I’m a great believer in the power of teasing to accomplish that which solemnity cannot, and I’m not above a little sarcasm under the appropriate circumstances: “When I submitted that manuscript to you, the oceans were two inches lower.” If an editor has sat on a submission for an unconscionably long time, I will invariably get a phone call from my client saying, “You tell that sonofabitch that if we don’t have a decision by Friday, I’m personally gonna come down there and rearrange his prefrontal lobes with an ax haft! ” Justified though that ultimatum may be, it is couched in language this is terminally infelicitous. By the time I’m through modifying it, it may sound something closer to this: “As you don’t seem able to make up your mind, suppose we say that if I haven’t heard from you by Friday, I’ll put another copy of the manuscript into play elsewhere, and you may take as much time thereafter as you wish.” And sometimes I’ll put a finer point on my message with this veiled warning: “Do let me know when your work load is down to a more reasonable size so that our agency can resume submitting books to you.” I’m certain that you must be saying to yourself, “How is an editor going to get these messages if the agent pussyfoots around that way?” The answer is, editors get these messages loudly and clearly, for unless one is incredibly dense, he pr she will have little doubt that a knife has been placed against the throat. Another common problem for agents is, of course, overdue checks. Authors are remarkably articulate when it comes to expressing the discomforts of financial deprivation and to depicting the character and ancestry of those who conspire to keep them in that condition. Unfortunately, most editors would go through the roof if exposed to the authors’ invective. Enter the honey-tongued agent, and though that agent might love nothing better than to say, “Pay up or we’ll vaporize you,” it’s more likely he or she will say something a bit more subdued. Perhaps a subtle form of extortion: “It would be to your advantage to remit payment promptly so as to avoid scheduling delays,” In plain English, this informs the editor that unless his company ponies up the dough, the agent isn’t going to deliver certain manuscripts that the publisher desperately needs to put into production. Because a late manuscript can wreck a production schedule at fearful cost to a publisher, the wise editor will undoubtedly give the check-processing machinery an extra-hard spin when he or she gets a message like that from an agent. I can think of lots of other ways that agents refine the harsh language of their clients without sacrificing effectiveness. For instance, though we may be thinking, “My client just turned in a real turkey,” what we are telling an editor is that, “My client thought you might like to see a first draft of his book before he starts polishing it.” Or, “My client is going to sue you into Rice Krispie-sized pieces” becomes, “My client is contemplating contacting his attorney, at which point the matter will be out of my control.” Or, “My client thinks your editor is so incompetent, he couldn’t spell “cat” if you spotted him the C and the T!” becomes, “I’m not certain that the author’s and editor’s views about the book are entirely compatible.” * “My client is so upset he’s taking big bites out of his living room sofa” translates into, “My client is finding it hard to understand why . . .” * “You’ll use that cover on my client’s book over his dead body!” may be altered to, “My client is pretty determined.” * Here’s a brief glossary of other agently euphemisms commonly employed when tempers start to overheat: * You: “I’m thoroughly disgusted with those people.” Agent: “My client is somewhat disenchanted.” * You: “If I had that editor’s throat in my hands . . .” Agent: “I’m not sure my client is completely comfortable working with you.” * You: “They’re lying and cheating.” Agent: “My client feels he may have detected some discrepancies. * “You: “What a crummy deal?” Agent: “Some of the terms leave something to be desired.” * You: “I wouldn’t sell another book to that butcher if he were the last editor on earth.” Agent: “Let’s have lunch.” The transmutation of hurtful language works the other way around, too, so that when we have to tell a client that his publishers hate his book so much they want to manure a cornfield with it, we may say something like, “It didn’t live up to their expectations,” or, “They found it lacking in certain respects.” Or an editor’s remark to the effect that a certain author couldn’t write his way out of a trash can liner becomes, “They don’t feel you’ve reached your potential quite yet.” Here are a few others. *Editor: “This material is simply lousy.” Agent: “Your editor is disappointed.” * Editor: “What language is your client writing in, anyway?” Agent: “Your editor pointed out some obscure passages.” * Editor: “Your client is the rudest person I’ve ever had the misfortune to work with.” Agent: “Your editor seems to have overreacted to what he perceives as a slight.” * Editor: “Is your client crazy, or what?” Agent: “I’m not sure your editor appreciates your sense of humor.” Of course, not all agents approach matters as delicately as this. Some of us are in fact quite plainspoken, and even the most tactful among us realizes that there are unavoidable occasions when we must unsheath a steel fist from the velvet glove. Still, it is gratifying to know that at least when it comes to the language one may still find reminders of the time when publishing was a profession for civilized ladies and gentlemen.

Richard Curtis

This article was originally written for Locus, The Newspaper of the Science Fiction Field. It’s reprinted in Mastering the Business of Writing. Copyright © 1990 by Richard Curtis. All Rights Reserved.

One of the critical roles literary agents play is that of translator. We perform the task on several levels. The most obvious and fundamental is explaining the nomenclature of publishing to the uninitiated author. Writers who sell their first book to a publisher and read their first contract are plunged into a sea of words that may be totally unfamiliar to them, or that are used in a totally unfamiliar way.

“Force majeure,” “net proceeds,” “matching option,” “warranty,” “discount” – these need to be defined for the novice author. There are many difficult concepts to be grasped, such as “advance sale,” “midlist,” “fair use,” “reserve against returns,” “pass-through,” and “hard-soft deals.” The language has its own slang, too, and our initiate hears bewildering references to who handles the “sub rights,” what is the tentative “pub date,” and what happens when the book is “o.p.’d.”

Agents patiently try to demystify these terms, but it may take many years of experience before our clients are completely at ease with them. Click here for details.

Richard Curtis

“We will never acquire a book unless e-book rights are included.”

That is the prevailing doctrine governing the Big Six book business and it is as unshakeably rigid as the Credo of the Catechism. For a publisher to buy “P” without “E”  is to all but succumb to the status of printer, to become the dog wagged by the tail of e-books.

To make an exception, to acquire just the print rights and allow the author to retain e-book, sets such a treacherous precedent for the rest of the publishing industry that it would take an extraordinary author to move a publisher off that position.

Enter John Locke.

For those who confuse him with the 17th century philosopher (and no mean author himself), a visit to his website will quickly set you straight. No one will confuse A Girl Like You or The Love You Crave with his namesake’s Essay on Human Understanding.  The 21st century Locke is the phenomenal indie writer whose self-published Amazon thrillers have launched him into the rarefied stratosphere of the world’s most successful authors.  Above the stratosphere, actually, because to many fellow writers he resides on Olympus.

If he doesn’t reside there he has just moved a little closer, for Simon & Schuster has made him an exception to the aforesaid doctrine. Next winter S&S will commence print-only distribution of his books. which Locke himself will package.

One reason why publishers have resisted print-only deals is simple economics: it’s hard to imagine how to make a profit competing against cheaper e-book editions of the same titles. That goes in spades for John Locke whose Kindle editions sell for $.99, compared to a mass market or trade paperback in the vicinity of $7.99 or $16.99 respectively. But when you have a blockbuster author jamming bandwidth with downloads of his e-books, it stands to reason that a profitable percentage of that audience will want to own a hard copy.  For Simon & Schuster it absolutely stands to reason.  Which occasioned Locke to tip his hat to S&S and declare “I applaud Simon & Schuster’s incredible vision.”

So do we. Simon & Schuster’s publishing establishment allies may complain that S&S has betrayed them by opening the gates to the invading hordes of the self-published.  But there’s an even more important military lesson in the Locke deal: If you can’t lick ‘em, join ‘em.

Richard Curtis

A man’s will is the wind’s will, and the dreams of men are long, long dreams.

I humbly apologize to Longfellow for this presumptuous restatement of his great line (from My Lost Youth) but that’s what jumped into my head after reading Robert Lipsyte’s thought-provoking essay on the back page of the Sunday New York Times Book Review. Lipsyte attempts to “demystify…the testosterone code that would get teenage boys reading.” And the code is packed into the male’s need to be part of an us-against-them team. But that  condition is fraught with anxieties about hierarchy, performance, approbation, triumph and shame.

Both as agent and publisher I have devoted my career to understanding what boys and men like to read and introducing male readers to books they will enjoy. Unfortunately, hard statistical support for any thesis is meager and anecdotal. My own choices, whether representing a writer or publishing him (or her, for many women write wonderfully for men), are based more on instinct than on market surveys and are rooted in what I myself like to read.  And what I like to read as a man is what I loved to read as a boy – stirring fiction and nonfiction about gallant, righteous warriors conquering wicked scoundrels and overcoming daunting odds. And when I finish such a book I wonder whether I could adequately explain to a woman, without feeling a touch – or more – of embarrassment, what it is about it that spoke to me.

In publishing lingo the nickname for books for male readers is “boy books”, but believe it or not this is not a term of opprobrium; the editors I know and work with utter it with an indulgent smile, as they might talk about such boys-will-be-boys activities as beer blasts or belching contests or drag races. As I pointed out in an article called Chick Lit and Boy Books, these distinctions “arose in the 1980s as a large, capable and influential cadre of female editors took charge of the mass market paperback industry. Their attitudes were feminist and, after decades of second class citizenship in editorial management they wielded their influence on every category of popular fiction. ‘Chick lit’ was one of the terms coined at the time; ‘boy books’ another.”

And if you’re looking for someone to blame for gender stereotyping in the book business, you might as well blame BISAC. BISAC, an acronym for Book Industry Standards and Communications, is a Dewey Decimal-like system of codifying books by subject matter. As I explained in Chick Lit and Boy Books, “The titles you see on the spines of paperbacks are governed by types of literature and are so designated to help bookstores place their titles in the most effective way possible. General women’s fiction and romance tend to get stocked in a female oriented part of the store, whereas stuff like western fiction, military science fiction, and male action adventure go into the male part of the store.”

Now for the heart of Lipsyte’s article: he is worried that boys are becoming disinclined to read and the quantity and quality of books they like are dwindling. To understand why,I’m afraid there’s a touch of cherchez la femme in his analysis. “The current surge in children’s literature has been fueled by talented young female novelists fresh from M.F.A. programs who in earlier times would have been writing midlist adult fiction. Their novels are bought by female editors, stocked by female librarians and taught by female teachers. It’s a cliché but mostly true that while teenage girls will read books about boys, teenage boys will rarely read books with predominately female characters.”

“Children’s literature didn’t always bear this overwhelmingly female imprint,”  says Lipsyte. But rather than paste his entire essay into this column, I urge you to read Boys and Reading: Is There Any Hope?. There you may rediscover the profound truth that Longfellow penned over a century ago:

A boy’s will is the wind’s will, and the dreams of youth are long, long dreams.

Richard Curtis

Alexandra Lebenthal’s bestseller The Recessionistas tracks the lives of affluent New Yorkers caught up in a collapsing economy after the nation plunged into recession in 2009.  This past week Grand Central Publishing released the paperback reprint, and though the economic news is still grim, there is plenty of entertainment value in the spectacle of rich people brought low.

The Recessionistas has been acquired for television series development by Sony Pictures, so read the book and start casting your favorite characters.

From Booklist
In 2008, Lehman Brothers is about to go under, other major banks and brokers are reorganizing, and those who depend on the markets for their income are in deep trouble. Economic reversals are coming for some very rich people, and unlike the rest of the world, the superrich don’t seem to be able to cut back. The $500 haircut, $10,000 gown, private-school tuition, servants, and beach house are essentials and can’t be done without. Some caught in the crash are culpable, some are innocent, and everyone suffers. Sasha and Renee, both smart, beautiful women, serve as the moral center of this topical tale. Other characters are clueless, self-absorbed at best, criminal at worst. In the end, some even find redemption. In her first novel, New York investment specialist and socialite Lebenthal is fluent in luxury brands and conveys a delicious sense of irony, and she is her absolute best when clearly explaining how various investment vehicles worked and failed. The rich surely are different from you and me, but oh so entertaining. –Danise Hoover
*********
From the Washington Times

For a book about wealthy high-flyers and their spendthrift wives, The Recessionistas is a surprisingly sympathetic tale. Not all Lebenthal’s characters are likeable. Yet there is enough depth in them to keep readers interested while still giving them hope that tomorrow’s post-recession world will be a better one than today’s.

Readers interested in big business and high society will enjoy Lebenthal’s storytelling and might even find themselves fascinated to learn more about business than they every might discover otherwise. For a first novel, The Recessionistas is a triumphant debut.

Next January Subterranean Press, publisher of beautiful limited editions and a particular devotee of the works of Dan Simmons, will issue Phases of Gravity, one of Simmons’s early novels and one of my personal favorites. Publishers Weekly has posted a starred review of the Subterranean edition, which we reproduce below. I don’t know if their subscription is sold out but it will grace every collector’s bookshelf, I guarantee.

Here’s that review.

Dan Simmons. Subterranean (www.subterraneanpress.com), $25 (312p) ISBN 978-1-59606-476-4
Hugo-winner Simmons (Black Hills) shifts away from genre literature in this quiet masterpiece, first published in 1989. Richard Baedecker, a divorced former astronaut who walked on the moon, has hit a professional and personal low by the late ’80s. He still mourns the Challenger disaster, hates his mediocre civilian job, and can’t connect with his grown son. When he visits his son in India, Baedecker falls in love with his son’s friend Maggie, who shows him around the country and later meets him while climbing a mountain in Colorado. His travels, which take him to his Illinois birthplace and a colleague’s funeral in rural Oregon, are interspersed with flashbacks to his days at NASA, and Simmons switches perspective with a deft touch, keeping the reader off guard without ever undercutting his narrative. Fans of Simmons’s science fiction might be surprised to find him writing a mainstream novel informed by spiritualism and a hint of magic, but the story is still as good as anything Simmons has delivered. (Jan. 2012)

When E-Reads issued the e-book of Phases of Gravity I wrote the following tribute:

I seldom remember my dreams, but a long time ago I dreamed that I stood on the moon gazing at Earth. The exquisite glory of that vision has haunted me ever since and I have longed in vain to return to that sublime moment atop a lunar plateau taking in the dazzling silver disk of our planet. So it was easy for me to identify with the protagonist of Dan Simmons’s Phases of Gravity. Richard Baedecker is a former astronaut for whom standing on the moon has eclipsed all other experiences including love. Baedecker has literally come down to earth, but until his heart returns from the moon he will remain emotionally handicapped.

Having myself stood on the moon, at least in a dream, I can’t blame Simmons’s hero for struggling so desperately to cling to the memory, even if by doing so it takes such a terrible toll on his human relationships. Read Phases of Gravity and decide if you could relinquish your grip on an experience that only a handful of humans has been privileged to have.

– Richard Curtis

Above photo from NASA’s Apollo 8 Mission, the famous “earthrise.”

What does it take to be a competent editor in the 21st century? You might imagine a publisher’s Human Development interviewer saying something to you along these lines:

“I don’t see on your resume any proficiency in XML programming, statistical analytics, e-book formatting, metadata management, Web design, information architecture and app development. Surely you are aware that these are the skills that editors must bring to the modern publishing process.” (See Book Editors Wanted: Editorial Experience Optional)

One qualification we omitted was bean-counting, or what is popularly known in the book trade as “running the numbers.”  Editor Rich Adin reminds us that that skill is greatly in demand. “At one time in my career as an editor my function was crystal clear,” he writes. “Everyone understood and agreed on the role a copyeditor played in the publishing business. But as the years have passed and the traditional publishing industry has consolidated into six megacorporations whose decisions are made based on bean counting, what was once clearcut has become fogged.”

A recent assignment was so fogged that Adin felt obliged to turn it down.  As any freelance editor will tell you, in this economy it has to be The Job From Hell to walk away from it.  But Adin did.  Read The changing face of editing to see why.

And for an in-depth analysis from the British viewpoint of what qualifies today’s editors, you might want to check out How the Publishing Job Spec is Changing in The Guardian.

Richard Curtis

Jon Stewart’s guest John Hodgman won’t miss the “condescending nerds” who staffed Borders’ bookstores.

Dear Comic Book Artist:

I appreciate your asking my advice.  You won’t like what I have to say but I am going to tell it to you straight.

You are a brilliantly gifted draughtsman and the superhero you’ve created is absolutely unique.  You look like a very nice person and I don’t want to see your heart broken.  So, before you take the job with that comic book company I want to make it absolutely clear that if you accept it you will NEVER, EVER own the rights to your work.  Your employer will be free to create $100 million movies with ten sequels. Your precious creations will be works for hire and your only compensation will be the salary they pay you.

Consider that job a life sentence from which there is no appeal.  No appeal whatever. Have I made myself plain? Do you want to let that sink in before you accept their invitation to draw for them?

But don’t take my word for it. Read Michael Cieply’s New York Times article reporting on the ruling by a federal judge: Court Ruling Says Marvel Holds Rights, Not an Artist. If you feel my caveat was ambiguous, read the judge’s statement about the merits of the suit brought against Marvel: “In Thursday’s ruling, Judge McMahon provided a detailed review of the disputed Marvel works, and concluded that the Kirbys’ evidence did not make ‘so much as a dent’ in the assertion that Mr. Kirby had worked for hire, and thus did not own the copyrights.” Courts have taken similar positions in lawsuits concerning Superman and Stan Lee-created characters.

By the way, your brother, the author who’s just been hired by a book publisher to novelize a video game? The same rule applies. In the neighborhood I grew up in the rule was called “Tough Noogies.”

Richard Curtis

Thanks to all who participated in E-Reads’ Dave Duncan promotional event.  We asked two of our staff members to pick five winners at random, and here’s a video of Andy and Lauren selecting the names of the lucky recipients of a free e-book of Duncan’s Ill Met in the Arena.

Congratulations to the winners!

Keep your eyes peeled on the E-Reads website for news of more promotional events.