756 Agents & Counting...

Is it unpublishable?

2005-11-14T21:33:00.000-05:00

Anne Merril asks in a comment have you ever considered that maybe the book just isn't publishable? That it is too flawed, too out there, or maybe just not what editors are buying? How is your second novel going? Are you having trouble with that one, too?

No, I'm one of the psychotic who is convinced there's a conspiracy against me.

There isn't a writer who's ever received a rejection who doesn't question initially "is it me?" F. X. Toole, the author of the series of short stories that were made into "Million Dollar Baby" (and whose collection has been renamed to fit the movie title) described on NPR's "Fresh Air" once that rejections were like the broken noses he received boxing. The only time they don't hurt is when the previous letter your opened up was an acceptance. But even then, you ask yourself "why doesn't the whole world like me?"

It's because writing fiction is one of the most-personal things we do. The only human creative activities that seem to come close are writing poetry or acting (where you can be Sir Laurence Olivier and Dame Edith Evans rolled into one, except that the director is looking for a young blond with huge knockers and a silky voice).

Unfortunately Ms. Merril's questions are too broad to be answered succinctly in one sentence. And what writer doesn't welcome the chance to wax prolix? So here goes.

1.) Is Beyond You & Me unpublishable? The simple answer is "no." I'm currently in discussion with a start-up POD erotica company. My reluctance stems from the relative newness of POD (print on demand), and the small track record of the company. But the owner has been very patient with me while I have sown my wild oats in the commercial publishing arena. One way or another, the book will find its way into print.

2.) Is it too flawed? Hard to say. Interestingly, the criticism from agents rarely falls into a coherent form. In other words, it's not like everyone hates the characters, or finds the plot weak, or the ending unbelievable. But we always assume if the agents don't want it, the reason must be a fatal flaw in the book itself.

3.) Too out there? Hmmmm. Yes, novels about serial killers aren't out there, but a woman finding herself by losing her lovers is. Forgive my sarcasm, I'm just trying to get a hold on that one. It's a fair question. Read around in the samples under "if you're new, start here," and tell me if it's out there.

4.) Just not what editors are buying? Apparently not. I don't fault the agents for wanting to rep a book that will sell. What does trouble me is the fact that editors are buying books that don't sell. At least not well enough that writers can earn enough money to establish a career. I'm not bitter about it, I'm an agent of sorts in another field. I understand that agents want to get paid. But the system sure isn't turning out quality fiction, at least not from what many folks say. But I could be wrong, and this is a real Golden Age of literature.

The good/bad news is that another agent has asked to see a few chapters. She'd be a good fit, since she represents women's fiction. If this book isn't about women's issues, I'm not sure what is. Stay tuned. If history is any indication, she'll just be another statistic.

Tell me a story, sell me some soap

2005-10-12T08:55:00.000-04:00

I love free advice.

One thing you can count on is sincere free advice from agents. They like to tell you things, mostly in the hopes you'll go away and read the books they tell you to and not fill up their mailboxes (virtual or snail) with useless bullshit they don't want to read anyway. Not that any of them read what you send them. In case you didn't know, it's the interns and flunkies who are the first line of defense. Writers also like to tell you things. I guess we wouldn't be writers if we didn't.

Now "how to" advice is very interesting, because it's an industry. Fashion and beauty magazines would go out of business if women didn't keep reading over and over how to get the perfect body, the perfect tan, the perfect man, or guys didn't want to find out the secret to getting that corner office or making a killing in real estate (buy low and sell high?). It should come as no surprise, then, that some of the same writers who dish out this brew are ready to offer it to aspiring novelists.

Take Jennifer Weiner. Jen's on a roll, with "In Her Shoes" having just opened in theaters near you. To listen to her tell it, publishing your novel is a snap, since agents are dying to find you. She insists she never used her connections from working at The Philadelphia Inquirer to help her career along, and I'm willing to believe her.
Actually one agent does offer some new self-help books on her site: Joanna Pulcinni. And by happy coincidence, Jennifer Weiner is a client.

More Thoughts on Ms. Snark

2005-10-04T22:55:00.000-04:00

I have been thinking about the logical conclusion of Ms. Snark's defense of the literary mainstream, and her comment:

The people who are in dire straits right now are the folks with two or three or more books under their belt who haven't sold in big enough numbers to keep a publisher offering contracts.

This is a really scary notion if looked at logically: it says that agents and publishers are signing up authors whose works don't sell well. This, of course, calls into question their business acumen; but the publishing business isn't really a business, because agents and editors resort to aesthetics to justify their decisions. The result is a constant turnover of writers as new books are sent out, like soldiers over the top into a hail of combat, with no support, only the hope that they will find an audience. Like the emperor's new clothes, it ignores the logical conclusion that editors are doing a poor job of picking books, since they don't stay with the authors they publish. Can't blame the agents, since their job is to bring authors to editors and get advances.

Or perhaps I'm mis-reading all this. It's the writer's fault for turning out drivel after that first remarkable tome, right?

Or it's the reading public's fault. After all, was it Mencken who said "nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public"? I guess we deserve lousy books that don't sell. Or are they good books that don't sell? Good books with lousy distribution channels? Good agents with stupid editors?

Interestingly agents live in suburban houses and dress well, while many writers I've known do their writing part-time, while holding down "day jobs." A curious disparity between the producer of the work and those who profit from it. I'm beginning to sound like a damned Marxist, and the only Marx I've ever studied in any detail was Groucho and his brothers.

I'm sure I'm wrong, after all, I'm just a "junior officer" as Mr. Winkler says, and don't know what I'm saying. The publishing world is doing just fine; ask the editors who all have jobs. Just don't ask some of the writers.

The Blame Game

2005-09-30T16:03:00.000-04:00

Peter Winkler took the time to leave a very long and detailed comment about the post below this one, and I'm going to quote some of it at length, because he raises some good issues. He takes up the question of whether the current system of agented writing is broken or not:

In terms of the acquisition of books, there are three groups of people affected:

1. Agents and editors.

2. Authors who have had at least one book published by a reputable, trade publisher.

3. Writers who have been rejected by #1.

The system works fine for #1. Even if everything submitted to them was pure gold, it couldn’t all be published. Publishers, big and small, can only publish a finite number of books each year. Therefore, there will always be books that may be of publishable (whatever that means) quality that remain unpublished. Therefore, there will always be writers convinced of the merit of their writing who will become embittered by the randomness of the process.

He's right: while some individual agents fall by the wayside, agencies seem to do well. In fact, many editors who were "down-sized" during the big conglomeratization of publishing in the 80s and 90s became agents, selling to their former colleagues and competitors.

The system works well for #2, as least as far as having a first book published. Because BookScan exists, there may never be a second book if book one doesn’t sell well.

This seems to me to be the point where things get sticky. If agents are good at figuring out what editors want, then who is to blame for the writers whose books sell, but not well enough? The agents? The editors? The writers?

The system is always broken for #3. For obvious reasons. Very few artists are willing to accept repeated rejection as proof of their lack of talent.

American culture loves to find blame ("The Blame Game"). If you're an unpublished writer, then it's the fault of the greedy/stupid/arrogant/insensitive agents/editors/capitalists. If a writer can't find an agent for his or her book, it must be because they're a no-talent/nitwit/moron/misfit.

Winkler then includes an account of a scene from "The Caine Mutiny" to point out that in any hierarchy,

Junior officers must ... obey orders, otherwise the system cannot function. I think [this] is applicable to the world beyond the military. The publishing industry is the captain and the writer is the junior officer.... [The] dilemma is what conclusion you draw about your writing and yourself when you have been repeatedly rejected and what you do about it.... If a writer can’t sell their writing, is it the writer or everyone else who is wrong?

I would find Mr. Winkler's reasoning more persuasive if it were only unpublished writers who were clamoring for change in the system. I would be more persuaded if alternative technologies, delivery systems and marketing options were not spreading with the rise of the Internet. In other words, it ain't just pissed-off writers who are mad as hell and won't take it anymore, it's also the buying public, who are looking for alternatives to the closed system of agented publishing.

Keep in mind, kiddies, you didn't always have to be represented. Agents arose because writers needed someone to negotiate book deals, handle their finances, bail them out of jail or pay their bar tab. I can remember when large NY publishers still had slush piles. Now all large publishing house, and even some small presses refuse to read any manuscript or query that comes over-the-transom.

I tend to continue to believe that most unsuccessful writers simply can’t write. This is certainly not what you want to hear, but I had to say it.

Oh, I don't mind. First of all, I have been writing for money for quite some time. Magazine articles mostly, no books yet. I'm not fraught with doubt whether I can write, because I know I can. I may not be able to write what will sell in today's large publishing marketplace, but that's not the same thing. Again, I ask: if it's just the pissed-off writers who are mad, then why are so many writers being dropped when their books don't sell?

Piling on (Bookner.com)

2005-09-28T21:43:00.000-04:00

Elektra, a writer-in-waiting, left a here comment about Bookner.com, a site that hopes to offer agents the chance to skim manuscripts vetted by other writers. In it, she lambastes Bookner's founder, Jason Gonzales, for numerous sins, including "shady business practices" and deleting her negative comments about his operation from his blog. Elektra is so incensed that she's started an anti-Bookner blog, called appropriately, antibookner.

Now, with a blog entitled "756 Agents & Counting..." I'm very sympathetic to Quixotic tilting at windmills. But I'm not sure how you can accuse Bookner of "shady business practices" if the site's not charging money for anything.

Ms. Elektra is just another wannabee writer, but Ms. Snark has devoted THREE postings highly critical of Bookner.com. Elektra might find it interesting that her heroine, Ms. Snark, has deleted things I've posted on her site. It's her site, and maybe she felt I was trying to drive traffic to my blog because I included hot-linked references to it in my post. It's her right (though I make no real effort to promote this site, and referenced it in case her readers might like to find alternate opinions).

I found it most interesting that Ms. Snark devoted THREE separate posts to someone she considers a nitwit. I have NO IDEA whether Bookner.com has a chance, I have not joined the site, and have little opinion about it, other than I hope it may help. She's right when she points out that having other unpublished writers read and evaluate the work submitted isn't a promising way to separate the wheat from the chaff. Though I think she's wrong when she says that writers who submit work that's not publishable do it always out of ignorance of what agents want. There are plenty of books that one can copy, but not all of us choose that path.

But when people go whole hog at someone else with daggers, it often makes me wonder "who's bull is being gored?" Ms. Snark ably defends the publishing industry and her (and other agents) place in it. She is adamant the system's not broken:

The literary agent system of gate keeping to publishing isn't broken. Good writers get published all the time. NEW writers get published all the time. The people who are in dire straits right now are the folks with two or three or more books under their belt who haven't sold in big enough numbers to keep a publisher offering contracts.

Agents and editors are actively looking for good work. If you write well, you'll get attention. The problem is people don't know if they're writing publishable stuff. Sending material in for other, unpublished, writers to judge is akin to the blind leading the blind.

I'm not persuaded that because good writers get published that the system works; if that were true, then why are there so many who are unsatisfied (not all of them unpublished writers)? I don't pretend to offer any solutions for the system, which seems to work reasonably well for agents and editors, though writers continue for the most part to struggle as a group. At this point, I'm really looking at other alternatives, including small presses and one or two start-up operations that will allow me to sell my book through my web site. Yet I think Ms. Snark misses the point partly when she implies it's only unpublished writers who are angry about the status quo. This is a fact that the NY-centric publishing world has largely ignored: the world is reading less of what they publish, and more of other things. E-books continue to be published, despite continuing reports of their imperfection. POD is perhaps imperfect, but still in its infancy (yeah, and Beta-Max was a better system than VHS, but look who won out).

I don't have answers. But that doesn't mean my observation isn't valid. This is what is most troublesome about Ms. Snark's critique of Bookner.com. It very well may be naive and ultimately unhelpful. But that doesn't mean the current system couldn't be improved. In that respect, I think she overplays her hand.

Agents Don't Get It (the Internet, that is)

2005-09-23T22:38:00.000-04:00

If you needed any proof that agents do not understand the Internet, I give you Lydia Wills, an agent for the snooty Paradigm Talent Agency in (where else?) Beverly Hills. These people are so exclusive they apparently don't even have a web site. After receiving an electronic press release from me about passing the 50,000th hit mark at Beyond You & Me, she sent me a huffy reply stating "remove my email address from your mailing list immediately."

Lydia, Darling, if you act that way, I'll have to sell your email addy to a REAL Spammer. You'll be getting offers for penis enhancement pills and Rolex replicas by the bushel-load. Same with Alexandra Robbins. She didn't ask me if I wanted to receive her newsletter promoting her new book recently, but asks me to "unsubscribe" her when I send her communications about what I'm doing. So much for "old Blue" spirit.

Ladies, hasn't anyone ever told you about the "twit filter" that allows you to block email addys you don't like?

Employing double standards with restive writers risks having them post your email addresses everywhere, allowing the web crawlers Spammers use chew you up and spit you out to the porn industry. But my mother always told me to be polite, so I won't do that.

But it definitely crossed my mind....

A Word from the Metawhore (actually quite a few)

2005-09-20T18:10:00.000-04:00

The utterly bewitching Magdalena had enough to say in a comment that I thought I would post it for more readership:

I'd like to open this comment by saying that I am one of the bloggers/readers who feels that affinity with Cassie. I appreciate very much the organic feel the 'Beyond You and Me' site has. So many sites are cold and faceless, yet yours is warm and inviting, more so for the enigma that you are. The novel is paramount, in an excellent trade with your persona. Your words speak.

I can't comment on agents in the literary industry. I have friends who grew tired of them in music and art, and I imagine their tales would extrapolate well.

I do have years of experience with bookselling, during which time I saw the evolution of net publishing and the concerns that created. By and large it made little impact and was quickly forgotten. Of more concern were the changes wreaked by the shareholders. If I start to discuss this I may never stop, suffice to say they changed the market for the worse. Range suffered at the mercy of bulk bought face front core stock. Smaller publishers were spurned, reps could no longer court bookbuyers and wile away glorious lunch times over wine selecting titles and numbers. In sum, the decisions of what would be on the shelf was made high up and a long time before we had any say.

Deeply saddened and sickened by the direction the industry was rapidly moving in, I resigned. And when I left, both the UK's biggest book chain and music outlet were owned by the same company. Selected artists and authors are plugged relentlessly and damn the rest.

So 'A' core stock dominates sales. Walk into ANY bookshop in the country and you will see EXACTLY the same titles on every shelf, in every subject area. Thank God we have a healthy second hand and antiquarian book scene.

Here in the UK, a customer no longer has the luxury of ordering a book on approval. You have to commit to the purchase based upon the scant information provided by Whitiker. The extraction of profit over value means that very few cross the line in a race that has no clear rules. Once an individual bookseller could champion your cause, I doubt that is the case any more.

Sorry to be such an Eeyore.

On a much brighter note, I would certainly buy the book and have no hesitation in recommending it to others.

You're too lovely, My Dear, to be compared to Eeyore, though readers of Beyond You & Me will recognize (as I do) your reference to a line in the first chapter when Cassie feels she's a little black raincloud.

It's clear that alternative ways to market books exist and are evolving all the time. Thank you, dear Magdalena. And should any agents be watching, I hope they understand that Beyond You & Me has attracted scores of people like her who aren't my personal friends or relatives. They're prospective customers, if you can get off your cans and publish the damn book!

Devil's Advocate

2005-09-12T10:40:00.000-04:00

When a new candidate for sainthood is advanced within the Catholic Church, a prelate is appointed to look for reasons why not. The term is "the devil's advocate," because he is required to attack the goodness of the saintly person. Peter Winkler is volunteering for that role in a comment, and I thought what he says worth repeating for those who don't read all the comments:

He begins by quoting me: "I have attracted almost 50,000 visitors to a blog devoted to a novel and its heroine. Yet few in the industry show any interest in a tool for pre-selling the book, or the pre-sold audience that might be lurking behind those numbers."

Would that really help sell a book in a bookstore to an audience who hadn't read part of it on the internet? I suppose the cover could say, "Read the book that 50,000 people have discovered online." If I saw that on a book, I might be skeptical of the claim. So much hype is fakery. How would I know if it was true? If I was internet savvy, I would probably wonder what that number means. Lots of readers will try something if you give them a free sample. There's no sales resistance. It's quite another thing to ask them to commit to buying a book. I hate to be the devil's advocate.

I don't think that blurbs mean very much. They certainly don't seem to induce anyone I know to read a book. After all, in most cases, blurbs are written either by friends of the author, or writers who have been hogtied into blurbing by their publishers. Same with reviews: I have seen books reviewed in both the Sunday and daily editions of The New York Times, especially when the authors are Times staffers or ex-staffers.

No, the way to employ the website would be to send viewers to Amazon.com or the publisher to pre-order the book, or purchase it after publication. It's also a way to let readers know of book tours, reviews, etc.

And many of the fans of the excerpts published so far tell me they feel a real link to the heroine. What better way than to bring fans closer to her than through a "living" site?

It's very hard to overcome people's prejudices, even with cold, hard numbers. Could I recount two of my experiences? I wrote a book proposal in early 1997 for an annotated directory of web sites devoted to TV shows. At that time, there were lots of web directories in print, including ones devoted to various special interests, like "The Book Lovers Guide to the Internet." I had two agents and they could never sell my book. At the height of the internet boom! One sentiment I heard from two other agents was that publishers assumed that people could look things up online through search engines for free, that web directories in print were superfluous and didn't stay in print long.

Clearly you are right. Agents either already agree with your idea, or you're sunk. There's no salesmanship involved, because they're not biting.

My last proposal was for a James Dean encyclopedia. I flogged it relentlessly for years. I tried agents to no avail. I didn't give up there. I approached editors directly. A few even requested my proposal. I assumed that with Dean's status as one of the most visible pop culture icons and the 50th anniversary of his death this year, someone would agree with me that it was a no brainer. No one agreed with me. Some told me there were too many other book about Dean in print. I argued with one editor that that showed how much interest there was in Dean. Then she looked up the numbers for those books in BookScan and said they were too low to warrant an offer. I didn't bother to go back to her and point out that those were backlist titles that couldn't even be found shelved at most bookstores, that my book would be new, would get the benefit of all the anniversary hoopla. That was all in the proposal anyway. It didn't sway anyone.

You're correct: nothing an author says is going to sway an agent. That's because they believe they know the market. I guess that's to be expected. And since it's a business, I can't blame them for not taking on projects they don't think they can sell. After all, I'm sure that all an agent has to do is make a few phone calls--

Agent: Hello, J. Bigass Editor? This is Sheila Hotagent. What do you think about a novel of personal discovery written in the voice of a 24 year-old woman?
Editor: Hate it.
Agent: Thanks, I do, too.

Winkler goes on:

I grant you that being able to demonstrate some level of interest in your book should be a plus. But it may not be able to surmount the prejudices of agents or editors, a lot of whom are hidebound and conservative.

I hate to be relentlessly negative. You've already experienced enough frustration as it is.

756 agents-worth!

Have you tried approaching editors directly? I would, and not just at small presses. If that doesn't work, some serious soul searching is in order. Maybe serializing it online on a pay as you go basis?

Like you need my advice. Reminds me of a joke I read in Mad magazine as a kid in the 60s. There was a man who read so much about the bad effects of smoking, he gave up reading. This whole publishing game can kill one's desire not just to write, but in books and reading.

Well, I have approached a few editors who are Yalies, thinking they would be interested in a book that takes place at Yale. The only ones who have answered back are those in non-fiction or kids books. Seems that without an agent, I'm S.O.L.

Now to your question about whether 50,000 "hits" on an Internet site will translate into a fraction of book sales. There's simply no answer to that question. I can't say what percentage of those who stop by would click through to Amazon.com and purchase a copy of the novel. But I do know that I now have nearly 100 links to other bloggers, many of whom are regular readers (and some are commenters) on the site. Again, how many would purchase the book for anywhere between $12-$18? Dunno the answer.

But what guarantee is there that anyone will purchase books that the publishers turn out? After all, a goodly number of them get NO publicity. This is one of the big areas of anger from authors. A friend of mine published a very fine book about fathering, and was at the time an editor at a parenting magazine. The net result: his publisher declined to option his follow-up project, citing weak sales.

There is no guarantee of book sales. The new book on "Deep Throat" (the Nixon source, not the porn film) has sold poorly. You'd think it would be a winner. I don't follow the ups and downs of the book trade, but there have been other notable failures this year.

Who Is Your Target Audience

2005-09-10T10:56:00.000-04:00

On page 30 of September 8th's The New York Times Book Review section is a blurb discussing trends on their best seller lists, including the survival of two Chick-Lit novels "about overworked women that appeal to overworked women." It got me to thinking.

What is the target audience for Beyond You & Me?

Who is going to be interested in a novel about a 24 year-old woman chafing within the boundaries of her job and her marriage? Add to that, the story takes place in 1975, so it's ancient history for most of today's 24 year-olds. And if you surf the world of blogs, you'll find scores of them by 20-somethings with adventures far more extreme and explicit than mine. The web site for Beyond You & Me has allowed me to get to know some of the fans who have apparently fallen in love with the book. They're usually older (mid- to late-30s), and a surprising number of them are men. So this has prompted a second question:

Why does Beyond You & Me have to have a "target audience"?

That's because it's naive to think otherwise. And I should know better after years of writing newspaper and magazine articles, mostly on assignment. After all, a writer shouldn't expect to suggest an article for Travel & Leisure about dental hygiene problems in large cities, or a piece on the small hotels of Paris to Accounting Monthly. Why should it be any different in book publishing?

The truth is, we look for categories in the things we read. You wouldn't suggest a novel about a 24 year-old woman's coming-of-age ordeal to a reader of thrillers, nor expect to find an audience for it among the fans of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. In the world or erotica, it's even more stratified: The online erotica site Tit-Elation has asked me to submit some short stories and erotic excerpts from Beyond You & Me. They use a very sophisticated online submission process that includes a checklist of "specialties" that apply to the material submitted. The list is long and expansive, covering "lesbian," "couples," "fetishes," "anal," etc.

The reason is that many readers of erotica are looking for sexual stimulation, not a good read. If you get off reading about threesomes, you don't want to find yourself in the middle of a story about two males. Sorta kills the arousal.

Bookner.com

2005-09-07T14:35:00.000-04:00

There's a new kid on the publishing block: Bookner.com. The idea is very interesting and quite simple: writers upload their manuscripts for "peer review" by other writers, and agents can then pick from the ones that score well. It presupposes that the mainstream publishing world is still the only game in town (or certainly the 400 pound canary).

Bookner has even received some notice in the books blogosphere: David Rothman at TeleRead has reviewed it. He is somewhat skeptical, since he is touting e-books on his blog. His point is that blogs and other web tools have made the traditional, mainstream publishing world increasingly obsolete, and that authors would rather use POD to sell fiction than return to the hell of commercial houses. While blogs and other tools are empowering writers to look at alternatives, there is still the problem of marketing and delivering physical books. POD is growing slowly, but there is tremendous resistance from bookstores, for example, because the books are expensive and can't be returned. Asking a store owner to stock your book means you either have a following or are a local hero.

There's no question the system is broken, and the more that becomes apparent, the harder the agents and editors seem to fight at looking for alternatives. They act, by their own admission, as "gatekeepers," keeping the sludge from penetrating the inner sanctum, yet often base their decisions entirely on taste. It's one reason they all seem so puzzled when the miss the next trend. "Oh, did you see that coming? I didn't."

Many of them talk about the Internet as the source for the next generation of writers (the publisher of Soft Skull waxed poetic at a recent NY writers conference about the 'Net), but few of them hang out here. Heck, many agents still don't have websites yet, or belong to services that list them and their co-agents, but tell you little else about their business. Many insist they have enough writers already, and are only looking for a few select clients. Yet in the meantime, books are published to no or few readers. The News from Paraguay is a good example. A National Book Award winner, no less.

In my own case, I have attracted almost 50,000 visitors to a blog devoted to a novel and its heroine. Yet few in the industry show any interest in a tool for pre-selling the book, or the pre-sold audience that might be lurking behind those numbers. I remain not so much bitter as puzzled. But definitely surprised. I had expected that by doing some of the heavy lifting, I would have moved this process further along. Clearly the publishing biz has others agendas.

Is It Time to Kiss the Agent Search Good-Bye?

2005-09-05T22:53:00.000-04:00

I stumbled across Agent 007 on Publishing and I'm glad I did. She writes about sheparding quirky books along the path to publishing stardom vs. taking the safe route with "can't miss" titles.

You may be forced, as I was, to sit in a conference room and revisit every failed book of the year in order to determine “what went wrong.” But most of the time, there is no one answer, just as there is no one secret to the surprise hits. And I, for one, wouldn’t have it any other way.

Because scoring with a sure thing is fun.. but only for about 15 minutes.

I left a comment there that I'd like to repeat here, because it will likely be lost amid the 21 previous comments, and because I'm not in a strong position to question any agents about their deeply-held convictions. Still, I've made a point in saying what's on my mind here, and I won't stop now. In any case, here's what I said:

"I'm in a different arena of IP rights, and it surprises me the way the literary biz works: basically it's about 'loving' a book and then trying to get it published. That's very noble, and I respect those people as artists, but it seems crazy as a business model. If I represented properties based on this success rate, I'd be looking for another line of work.

"Of course, it's a good thing for our culture that agents and editors are willing to take these kinds of risks, otherwise we'd have nothing but 'safe' choices. But what puzzles me is when the agents and editors will ignore trends and ideas for what they believe is 'well-written,' usually based on previous experience. It's probably one reason that there are so many who doubt the current publishing system will endure, especially as more young people turn to other media. I know this warning has been sounded before, but I see so many books being stubbornly clung to in spite of their weak sales. The whole National Book Award brouhaha last year is a good example. Is that a noble stand for culture, or an elitist shot across everyone else's bow? How many editors and writers even read The News from Paraguay? Perhaps history will show that stubbornly sticking to that book was the right choice, as your 'failure' still seems to you.

"I'm glad to know that books without best-seller audiences are getting published. What surprises me is that the business seems to be bifurcated into these two extremes: 'can't miss' books to pay the rent so that companies can take chances on dark horses. So what's in between? Not much from what I can see. Certainly the small presses are swamped with writers; several prominent ones are no longer accepting unsolicited queries, much less manuscripts.

"Because of the negatives that seem inherent in the business, I decided when I finished Beyond You & Me to help the process along. That's because several agents said they liked the book, but not enough to take it on in what they all called 'a tough fiction market for new authors.' Being an experienced marketer, I decided to jump-start the process by putting parts of the novel on a web site/blog. This made sense at the time, because the novel is told in a diary form, much like a modern blog. I read about agents & editors who are enamored of the Internet, and think it will be the source of tomorrow's authors. My experience is that few of them seem to have the time or much understanding of how it works, but that's another topic.

"I digress. It seemed at the time that building an audience for the story couldn't hurt. Publishers, strapped for cash to promote their wares and driven into sticking with safe, conservative choices in 'can't miss' authors, should welcome a chance to let me do some of the heavy lifting, right? 50,000 visitors to the site later, I'm still waiting for them to take any notice.

"In fact, 756 Agents & Counting later, I have pretty much given up on the commercial route, which requires an agent. Instead I am busy looking for a small press that would like to combine my marketing abilitie with a book that has resonated with readers, many of whom return regularly to find out more about the story and its plucky heroine.

"I have no particular issue with agents or publishers, though I remain surprised at their almost willful disregard for what the public may want. I suppose this is a noble stance, as when Jack Scovil turned down my query by saying 'BEYOND YOU AND ME is just not the kind of book I represent. I loathe Anais Nin, which will give something of a clue as to why'(the novel has been compared by some fans to Nin's journals). He's earned the right to represent whatever he wants, though I marvel at they way taste becomes the arbiter of culture. I presume that's a good thing, though I'm not sure how or why."

So What Does Almost 50,000 Hits Get Ya?

2005-09-01T08:33:00.000-04:00

Peter Winkler, who comes to us from Valley Village, CA, asks in a comment:

I'm curious about what tools you are using to determine the number of hits your site is getting. How do you know? And do you know how much time someone who views your site is spending reading it? Also, which site are you counting the hits for: the blog or the novel? It would seem that the hit count on the novel would be the most important data.

Glad you asked.

Both this site and Beyond You & Me have hit counters. In fact, the novel site has 2. One measures raw hits. You could, if you had the time, reload your browser page 10 times in a row and it would record 10 hits. But the second one is from eXTReMe Tracking, and it monitors a blizzard of facts about visitors, including who referred them, whether they are unique visitors or not, etc. So I'm carefully tracking the number of people who come to the site. That answers your question about tools, Mr. Winkler.

As to how much time someone spends on the site, I don't know the answer to that. There are tracker programs that do, like Opentracker, but those devilishly clever folks want $16.95 per month. Trackers don't answer the obvious question, though: whether someone coming to my site is staying to read, or simply looking for some dirty pictures, x-rated prose or some other pleasure. And there's a deeper question: whether nearly 50,000 hits will translate into book sales. At anywhere from $10-$16 apiece, books aren't as easy to peddle as free reads.

That, Mr. Winkler, is the frontier from which no one has yet returned. If things continue this way, we may soon find out; one solution to the problems of publishing alternative fiction is to publish it myself and take advance orders from a website. It wasn't what I signed on to do, but what the hell?

Bloggers

2005-08-30T11:51:00.000-04:00

The fascinating thing about bloggers is how seriously many of them take themselves. I have been treated wonderfully by some and like dirt by others. Exchanging links, for example: some folks will swap links if you ask. Others want to check out what you're writing. That seems fair. Others won't even answer an email. And we're not talking about famous published authors, we're talking about people who's only claim to fame is their blog.

Mistress Matisse will not be sending me a Christmas card. She did send me a nasty email about "spamming" her because I had sent her a virtual press release announcing Beyond You & Me hitting the 40,000 visitor plateau. Now, I get notices like this, and don't think too much about it. And since MM and I are both in sort of related fields (sex), well, I figured she might even be interested in exchanging links. But I suppose I shouldn't expect politeness and flowers from a professional dominatrix. Scary stuff, but who am I to judge?

Now, I understand when people come to you with offers to link to sites that are wildly inappropriate to mine. Because Beyond You & Me is partly about sex, I get offers from porn sites to link or even join their affiliate referral service. For those of you who don't know, an affiliate referrer sends traffic to your for-pay site. If they sign up, you pay the referrer a commission. I'm not particularly interested, and so I don't know if I should write the porn sites back, or ignore them. The former risks sounding conceited, the latter risks being rude.

Not sure which is the lesser of two evils.

A Small Press Publisher Chimes In

2005-08-28T16:33:00.000-04:00

James Chapman, whom some of you may remember from an earlier post, is the publisher of Fugue State Press, a self-proclaimed niche publisher. He has expanded on my list from the previous post with one of his own:

3.5 Watch as the agent requires small changes be made in the book (i.e. "cut the length by half," "combine these three characters into one," "raise the stakes on the ending.")

5. Watch as the editor at the mainstream publishing house requires that small changes be made in the book (see above). Decide whether to resist this, then cave in and produce a more commercial, smooth book that is not really your own.

6. Enjoy publication day, enjoy lovely reviews.

7. Marvel at the speed with which the book is put out of print, because it only sold in the low thousands.

8. Marvel at the speed with which you are dropped by the publisher because your editor moved on to another house and you have no political support within the firm any longer.

9. Look at the book you made in collaboration with these gentlemen publishers. Hold it in your hand. Flip through it. Realize that you don't even recognize it as your own.

10. Wonder what it all means. Wonder if there's a better way. (There is.)

As long as your book isn't about sex....

Chapman then goes on to say:

I think you've already considered and rejected my "other way," which is to start your own press. It just seems to me you have a lot of skills in promoting things, and could take all the time and effort you're spending in knocking on locked doors, and use it to slightly change the history of literature. Put out your own book and a few others that you admire, and you may find it hard to understand why you ever wanted to let businesspeople take hold of your work.

But almost nobody I ever tell this to ever takes me up on it. I understand why. But don't forget it's a real option, and it does work.

This option has crossed my mind, though the learning curve would be steep. Yes, I'm clearly a whiz at marketing, but publishing is much more than simply getting people to notice you. There are practical matters, including finding other authors to publish, the craft of publishing (ISBN numbers, distributors, etc.) and the real nitty-gritty: fulfillment. In other words, what happens when all those people send you money and expect to get books in return? Who stuffs them into envelopes, prints out and attaches the address labels, carts them to the post office, etc.

I'm not afraid of rolling up my sleeves and getting involved. It's just I didn't think I'd have to take off my clothes, too.

What's It All About, Cross???

2005-08-25T22:04:00.000-04:00

Todd Moser at Chasing the American Dream asks in a comment here:

So how DOES one get published anyway?

The man asks a reasonable question.

The usual method is:

1.) Write book (fiction) or book proposal (non-fiction). In both cases, it helps to be famous or infamous. In the case of non-fiction, you can also be an expert in some arcane field of inquiry.

2.) Send same to agent. In the case of a novel, most agents only want to see a query. What's a query, you ask? It's a short (usually one-page) description of your story. The query for Beyond You & Me reads as follows:

Beyond You & Me is a novel-in-diary-form that tells the story of Cassie DiMarco, an astonishing young woman struggling within the stultifying restraints of a boring conventional life as the wife of a Yale graduate student in 1975. The 110,000 word manuscript is partly a ride through the erotic house of mirrors we call the 70s, partly a journey of self-discovery that recounts her affair with a handsome European undergraduate.

Cassie tells her story in an easy, direct manner that's not unlike a modern blog. Younger readers will relate to this, and older ones will remember their own struggles navigating the shoals of the Sexual Revolution. The novel is based an actual journal loaned to the author by the real "Cassie DiMarco" (on condition her identity remains a secret). Illustrated with dozens of beautiful, high-quality art nudes, the novel's controversial love scenes will scandalize readers as Cassie makes her way around the erotic banquet she's stumbled into with both men and women.

The novel chronicles a young woman gaining personal awareness through the dawning Women's Movement to free herself from the painful aftermath of the affair. With this new-found strength, she is able to find the life she both wants and deserves. Readers of both genders will root for Cassie as she tries valiantly at first to integrate the two men into her life, then empathize with her loss, first of her lover, then her husband. Forced to overcome her grief alone, she finally subdues her demons, leaves the wasteland of academia, and finds the life she’s always wanted in New York.

The novel's structure is a classic three-character play, and will make an easy transition to a motion picture.

3.) Agent agrees to represent you. This happened to me once before. Needless to say, agents don't always deliver. But when they can, their next step is:

4.) Sell publishing rights to mainstream publisher. Then nirvana happens, you're a successful author, you can smoke a pipe and wear tweedy jackets.

In truth, the way to getting published is quite varied, and we'll look at some others in the next post.

Nobody Nastier than another Writer

2005-08-18T11:36:00.000-04:00

For some months I've been hanging out in the "Speakeasy" section of the Poets & Writers website. The magazine Poets & Writers is one of those earnest efforts to go behind-the-scenes of the literary writing community. And any pub that talks about poets and poetry has GOT to be looked on favorably. Remember that poetry was once seen as the highest form of human endeavor. Look at Wordsworth or Keats if you doubt me. Now, poetry's mostly consigned to women and Hallmark Cards. Of course, Janet Holmes, a friend, recently became the target of a smear campaign over awarding poetry publication prizes, so there's life in the old metered verse after all!

Anyway, I posted something over in their "Writers Websites" section about how Beyond You & Me is about to pass the 40,000 hit mark. Needless to say, someone felt the urge to say "you can't sell first time rights to your novel if you've published it on the web," and "I don't think this shameless plug belongs here."

Thanks, considering you don't know what you're talking about. If publishing excerpts of something meant you couldn't sell first-time rights any longer, then it wouldn't be a strategy of most literary writers to get their stories published in literary magazines. Selling first time rights just means no one else can publish it until you do. Excerpting part of the novel is not the same.

But this isn't the only example. Ask a favor if you want to clear a room full of writers. I have written several dozen Yale alumni about blurbing my book, and every single one has told me how terribly busy they are. Well, yeah, we're all busy.

What is it about writers that we think we're God's gift to humanity and we know everything? Where is the lack of generosity of spirit one finds in other professions or from strangers? Is it the instinct to shrink from human contact for the solitude of our writing desks? Or does the profession attract the selfish and churlish?

No Indignation Like The Indignation of a Whore

2005-08-16T15:13:00.000-04:00

I got excited about a tiny publisher known as Fugue State Press. Their website eschews giving formal submission guidelines, preferring to paint an impressionistic picture of what the editor is looking for:

We'd love to see a book that's like an artifact, elemental, less like storytelling literature, more like dirt or air.

OK, that's a little vague, though certainly colorful. I don't know of any books that are like dirt, other than when I worked in Classic Books in the basement of the World Trade Center and we sold the book from the WGBH TV series "Victory Garden." I remember a college professor who once said a really great novel was like getting a wound that you carried around for days or weeks, so instinctively I responded to this description, especially the next sentence:

We often enjoy prose that's broken, writing in which the flaws are obvious and grow out of emotional necessity. Writing that's clearly different because its author is different.

Well, shit fire and save matches! as my mother says. What writer doesn't think they're different? And one of the criticisms of Beyond You & Me has been the sometimes imperfect prose of its narrator. Cassie's wracked with agony about the break-up of her relationship with her lover, S. So naturally her prose is often stressed and imperfect, occasionally boiling over into brokenness.

Well, I fired off a query to the publisher, but was turned down flat. Seems the subject matter is about sex, and he's anti-sex. Not anti-sex like Christian evangelicals, but anti-sex in our culture. Feels it's something that he doesn't like and doesn't want in the books he publishes. He wrote me two very lovely emails that compared what I'm doing to Laurence Durrell, D. H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, and of course, the previously reviled Anais Nin. He's ambivalent at best about "a kind of decadent sexual obsession [being] the basis of a lot of the great literature of the last century. (not, again, to stupidly pigeonhole your work.) It's certainly what drives Prakash Kona in his 'streets that smell of dying roses.' It's just the reality quotient that's different."

Great company to be in, though I don't know what a "reality quotient" is, and I've never read Prakash Kona. Still, I was flattered the editor went on to say he's not putting down my work. He could've just said "it stinks, go away." Is "sexual obsession" the proper description for those four writers (and by extension, me)? Durrell's work (particularly "The Alexandria Quartet" series of novels) does concern people who might be described as "decadent." Jews, Greeks, half-castes, expatriots living in Alexandria, Egypt before Nassar came to power and expelled them, destroying what some have described as a wonderfully tolerant and erudite culture. But obsession? Hmmm. Yes, there is a lot of coupling in various forms.

D. H. Lawrence did by the end of his life become identified with a cult of sexuality, especially after the publication of his scandalous Lady Chatterly's Lover. Women in Love and The Fox are also concerned with erotic relationships. But there's precious little explicit sex in either (more innuendo than anything). No, the emphasis is on "relationship" and power struggles, as in the Sapphic overtones of the trio whose interactions are described in the novella-length The Fox.

Miller and Nin are more markedly focused on sex, but not for sex's sake. Both viewed sexual expression and a way of freeing the soul from the restraints of social convention. But their "obsession" seems no more odd or remarkable than Philip Roth's or John Updike's. Isn't much of Western fiction about the struggles between men and women? And isn't the bedroom one of the battlefields that up until the 20th Century was largely off-limits to storytellers?

Still, his comments made me wonder if the acceptance of Beyond You & Me in the erotica community is obscuring other aspects of the novel? Remember, I never thought of myself as writing erotica, just literary fiction with good sex scenes. So there's a risk, one I'm aware of, that erotica will become smut or even pornography to some agents and/or editors.

To make my confusion more pronounced, there was the negative reaction of a fellow web denizen when I wrote what she decided was an insufficiently laudatory review of her website. "You never said anywhere that you liked it," she complained. Well, I sort of thought mentioning it favorably was enough.

Seems like there's no easy balance between sex and seriousness.

Sorry, nothing personal, a business decision

2005-08-15T12:11:00.000-04:00

Jennifer, some woman I don't know at Search4Blogs sent me an email saying:

Hello,

I needed to contact you about your blog 'Beyond You & Me' that you have listed in our "Writers Blog" category.

We had to remove all the links at our site that has [sic] adult content and your site has adult content so we will need to delete your blog from our data base.

Please remove our link from your site since your blog will be deleted from our data base.

This is nothing persoanal[sic], just a business decision we had to make.

Thank you,
Jennifer
Search4Blogs

Honey, I didn't need more than a second to delete any link to you gutless folk who can't spell or make your verb tenses agree. We're not talking pornography here, we're talking adult content. So, since it's nothing personal, I hope Search4Blogs withers and blows away. Nothing personal, just business. That's what Salazzo the Turk told Michael Corleone about why he tried to kill Michael's father in "The Godfather."

Print on Demand: one author's story

2005-08-13T13:12:00.000-04:00

The nearly always fascinating and almost never dull Miss Snark pointed me over to Jamie Boud's novel-flogging blog The Known Universe as an example of guerilla marketing for the POD book Envy the Rain.

With the conventional publishing industry a closed loop, it's not surprising that writers are turning to unconventional means of getting their books in the hands of people who want to read them. Over and over I hear from agents who say "I wasn't sufficiently excited by your book to undertake the struggle of representing it in today's challenging fiction marketplace." Translation: "it's a bugger selling most fiction these days, so I'm not going to flog anything I don't love."

I can appreciate that. If it's going to take 6-8 months to place the damn thing, you don't want to admit to your agent and editor friends you're peddling a book about the mating habits of perverted monkeys. Not great cocktail party chatter.

The fact is, many agents won't even touch fiction, and the majority of titles most of them are promoting on their websites are non-fiction. That doesn't mean novels aren't getting published, but it's not a market for the faint-hearted. So writers either accept the verdict of the marketplace-- or they don't. This writer isn't prepared to throw in the towel just yet.

And yes, it has crossed my mind: if Miss Snark is hanging out here, why hasn't she asked to represent Beyond You & Me? Good question. Presumably she's not going to rush in where 756 of her colleagues have refused to tread.

The Same Old, Same Old?

2005-08-11T16:06:00.000-04:00

New publishing ventures are showing up all the time. Gracie Passette, who says she's a veteran of the sex biz, has created at least two new sites for peddling erotica. One is Sex Kitten, the other Tit-Elation.com. To read more about the latter, go to:

Tit-Elation.com

Now my dilemma is: what should I do with Beyond You & Me?

1. There's the e-book route, but most folks in publishing insist e-books aren't REAL books (I guess they eat quiche or something that makes them less real).

2. There's printing it myself and selling it on-line. My garage filled with books.

3. There's POD (iUniverse and other "print when you've sold a copy" services).

4. Then there are new, start-up operations like Gracie's.

One problem with the e-books is their ghastly covers: in an effort to save money, it appears many of them resort to graphics that look like they were scammed off a video game. Laura Croft as nude bodice-ripper heroine?

If it's true, as Miss Snark maintains, that agents and publishers are clueless about what will SELL (as opposed to what they LIKE), then should I follow my capitalist instincts and go with the new technologies. After all, at least the book would be out there in print.

Or is an e-book not really in print?

Do Good Books Always Find a Publisher?

2005-08-07T19:18:00.000-04:00

The lovely Mr. Jakubowski wanted me to feel better, so he finished his letter turning down Beyond You & Me by saying that "good books always find a publisher." Of course, that isn't always true, but it's a fiction we all need to believe in. The process isn't made any easier by publishers and their changing wants and desires.

James Pannell of Brook Street Press in Georgia wrote me three months after I submitted on-line to him to say that "we have decided, in the past month, that we will concentrate our efforts on building a backlist of reissued out-of-print novels by several established authors. We believe that this will provide a strong foundation for the company. At some point we may return to considering new fiction, and the risks associated with them [sic]."

Sort of like changing the rules in the middle of the game, isn't it?

But it's his right to do so. And the good news is that it was an email submission, so no money or effort wasted printing up something and mailing it off to him. Yet it's annoying to say the least that publishers feel it's OK to change direction after you've already sent them something. If they were thinking about making a change, why not let us know on the website?

The good news is that more and more small publishers are building websites. If the company is only putting out books by left-handed dead presidents, don't waste my time and yours.

In the end, though, there's that nagging question: if a book is good, wouldn't it find a publisher pretty easily? The implication in all this is that books without ready access to a publisher are somehow less-than-good, right? Or am I thinking too much?

Miss Snark Weighs In

2005-08-02T18:14:00.000-04:00

Miss Snark is supposedly a pseudononymous NY literary agent blogging away in the blogosphere. I say "supposedly," not out of any disrespect. She's never boring, sometimes quite funny, yet I have no idea if she's a real agent or not. With blogging, no one is carding us or checking references. She left a comment that got me to thinking:

Fuck em.

Agents who think that writers talking/blogging about how loathsome agents can be is a sign there is something wrong with the WRITERS is nuts.

I've heard some horror stories.
I've probably perpetrated a few myself.
Publishing could do with more transparency.

Blog on!

Thanks, MS. It did cross my mind that perhaps I ought to take this site down after the English editor of the new Neon imprint, Maxim Jakubowski, gave me that advice in the post beneath this. But you see, I didn't go looking for the nasty email from Jack Scovil that started it all, other than by sending him an electronic press release. Last I heard, there are "twit" filters to block emails you don't want. I suppose I shouldn't name names, but why not? I've already gone through over 700 agents so far, so it's not like I'm going to gain anything by keeping quiet. And Mr. Jakubowski has made it clear he's not going to offer a contract for Beyond You & Me because "the structure [i] too episodic and the writing a tad clumsy and self-conscious."

OK, you didn't like it, that's fair. Will I sound petulant to point out that it's supposed to be a journal, so that means it's going to be episodic by definition. And the writing's deliberately clumsy, because the narrator is 24 and writing a private journal.

So much for verisimilitude.

But that's OK, I bear no ill will to Mr. Jakubowski for turning down the novel, it's not his cup of tea. And I'm sure he meant well offering me advice to tone things down and not rock the boat. Publishing's a small world, and difficult authors get known.

I must confess what puzzles me about this whole process is a determination by some agents to turn down something that has a pre-sold audience. I appreciate that there is, as yet, no way to measure that audience, but attendance at the site has topped 33,000 and is still climbing. Comments continue to be left by people I wouldn't know from Adam or Eve, and other bloggers continue to link to the site without being asked.

So what's the answer? I don't know. POD? A small press? One of the sex sites is going to be launching its own line or erotica books shortly. And then there's the question: is Beyond You & Me erotica, literary fiction with sex scenes, or just garbage that doesn't deserve to see the light of day?

Stay tuned, there's more coming.

Don't Make Waves

2005-07-31T21:24:00.000-04:00

The editor at a new erotica imprint who was considering the novel disapproves of this blog and efforts over on Beyond You & Me to promote it are "exactly the sort of thing that could severely alienate potential agents and/or publishers, and will not aid your ambition to get the book published, and neither would disparaging agents on the blog."

Funny, it's OK for agents to make outrageous comments, only don't fight back.

Anais Nin the Loathesome

2005-07-30T11:44:00.000-04:00

Carlton from Grad Student Madness made a comment to the post about agent Jack Scovil's scathing rebuke of Anais Nin (see previous post below). I think it justifies a post all its own:

"I suppose the good news is that there are plenty of readers who enjoy Anais Nin. Sort of an astounding comment really. Not particularly witty, and really bizarrely vicious. Why exactly would a mentally healthy individual loathe Anais Nin anyway?"

Indeed, why would a big-time agent like Mr. Scovil dismiss out-of-hand a writer who has charmed so many, sold a ton of books, and whose influence on other giants like Henry Miller will assure her a place in literary history? What sort of author is he looking for? The website for his company, Scovil Chicack Galen Literary Agency insists:

"Our list is eclectic and chaotic, rich and diverse, and there is no type of book that doesn't interest us if it is first-rate. We take on clients who interest us deeply as people and as writers, whatever their background and prior accomplishments. At any given moment we might be working on a first sale for an exciting new author or an eight-figure deal for a veteran of the New York Times bestseller list, or anything in between."

Just no Anais Nin, please!

Interestingly, I was not the one who made the comparison between Beyond You & Me and Anais Nin. It was Demon Queen, a fan, and a passionate one, too. The real Cassie wasn't familiar with Nin's work, who was still not well-known in the mid-70s when the journal my novel is based on was written. So I have stayed away from Nin's writings for fear of being influenced-- Harold Bloom's Anxiety of Influence appeared during this same time period, and he was a looming presence at Yale. In this case, a reader who finds a resonating chord in the book made the connection to Nin's naked self-revelations.

Looking further at Scovil's own list of agented books, they're all pretty weighty topics: Mars, the Korean War, no fiction I could see. Thankfully there's THE CATHOLIC GIRL'S GUIDE TO SEX by Melinda Anderson and Kathleen Murray to redeem Mr. Scovil from total fuddy-duddy status. Certainly no stories about the mostly self-inflicted problems of a married woman and her failed affair. Of course, it's true that the problems of most people are small, personal and often largely self-inflicted, not the subject of great books.

Or apparently, even commercial fiction.

The truth is, most of us are under the partially mistaken impression that agents are looking for books that will sell. So why, you might ask, would Beyond You & Me, which has clearly demonstrated an appeal to at least a small coterie of fans, be of such little interest to a big-time agent? Apparently the month-in, month-out dedication of so many of you in the unfolding saga of Cassie DiMarco is not enough for Mr. Scovil and others in the business.

I hesitate to pick on him, except the arrogant dismissive tone of his email makes him such an inviting target. I'm sure to get an angry missive from at least one of his authors (assuming anyone is reading this site), so let me issue a blanket apology up-front: I'm sure Jack Scovil is a wonderful agent, talented and immensely sage. I suppose I just caught him on a grumpy day.

So why are agents unwilling to take on a book with a fan base. It's not because we expect our literature to be non-profit. Dr. Johnson, one of the titans of English literature, decreed "no man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money." Yet we denigrate commercial fiction. No matter how many of you embrace Beyond You & Me and swear you'll buy it, that doesn't change a thing with agents. The book's inferior in their estimation. Your vote doesn't count.

Beyond Beyond You & Me, Scovil raises an interesting question in my mind. Is women's writing and/or books about women second-class? Just look at the condescending descriptor "chick lit." Or "chick flick." The highly-regarded "Band of Brothers" or "Black Hawk Down" films were really just "guy flicks," but because they have wartime settings, they're more meaningful than books or films that appeal to women. Nin's work (and by extension, Beyond You & Me) suffers from being confessional.

And erotic.

How can erotica be true literature, since it's purpose is not to excite the intellect, but arouse? Because Little Birds and The Delta of Venus were written for pornographers, they can't be literature, right? Add to this the anti-sex bias of western intellectual history since at least St. Jerome took to heart the Paulist dictum about cutting off an offending member. Self-castration will certainly limit arousal.

I accept my banishment by Mr. Scovil and the other agents. It's now up to the small presses to see the merit in having a pre-sold audience for a book that's not about nuclear proliferation on the Korean peninsula or the Kennedys, or even successful young women looking for Mr. Right amid the wilds of Manhattan. I would be happy, though, to take a seat beside Anais Nin in the erotica ghetto if she'll let me.

And to the organizer of "S.W.A.Y. Sex Week at Yale" who asked me about coming back to Old Blue to read next Valentine's Day, I will not let your interest "sway" those same agents in their resolve to ignore my novel. No, nor when its website passes 50,000 hits (sometime around Labor Day). Nor when the list of links to the webiste passes 100 (currently at 75 and picking up two or three a week). No, nor even those of you who drop by regularly to comment on the unfolding saga of Cassie DiMarco.

After all, publishing is a meritocracy, not every vote counts.

Yet.

An Agent Responds

2005-07-29T00:01:00.000-04:00

With the website for Beyond You & Me having topped 30,000 visitors, the agents now can't ignore the book, even if they don't want to represent it. Here's one email from Jack Scovil of the Scovil Chichak Galen Literary Agency (sadly not quite as funny sounding as the apochryphal law firm of Dewey Cheatham and Howe mentioned in the closing credits of NPR's hilarious "Car Talk"):

Dear W S Cross:

I seem not to have responded to your many communications, and I apologize. Because BEYOND YOU AND ME is just not the kind of book I represent. I loathe Anais Nin, which will give something of a clue as to why. Nevertheless, you seem to be skillful in attracting readers, and I wish you great success in the future. Very best.

Jack Scovil

Scovil Chichak Galen Literary Agency Inc
381 Park Avenue South, Suite 1020
New York NY 10016
(212) 679-8686

I guess he doesn't want to be on my mailing list, do you think?

While I don't want to turn this blog into a poor man's version of Gerard Jones's very funny thrust, parry and ripost Everyone Who's Anyone in Adult Trade Publishing & Tinseltown, too, here is what I wrote back:

Dear Mr. Scovil,

Thank you for your response. It's nice to know that if enough people are interested in a book, agents will actually reply to my communications. You see, something like 25% of the ones I queried never got around to it somehow.

And since you have been blunt with me, I will be honest in return. I really have no interest in what agents like or dislike, but in getting my story out to the growing number of readers who have taken its heroine to their hearts. Frankly, I thought that's what publishing was about: putting books in the hands of people who want to read them. Evidently you have another goal, so it's a good thing I'm not sitting waiting for your answer.

Thank you for your good wishes, and I promise to keep you up-to-date. I would imagine Beyond You & Me will hit 50,000 visitors sometime around Labor Day. Your refusal to consider it will seem even more courageous then.

He's not going to represent Beyond You & Me anyway, so I guess there's no point in NOT being frank. Someone once told me "don't piss the agents off, it's a small world and word gets around."

Well, having gone through the first 756 agents already, I'm curious to know if there are any left to piss off?