Book Sense Announces Best Books: The Best of Book Sense From the First 5 Years

Book Sense -- the campaign that embodies the passion, personality, character, community, and knowledge of independent bookstores -- announced today the Best Books: The Best of Book Sense From the First Five Years winning titles. The list is the result of voting by independent booksellers across the country, who cast ballots for the titles they most enjoyed handselling over the past five years.

"Independent booksellers, because of Book Sense, are once again being recognized as a vital way of identifying and connecting great books and passionate readers," noted ABA Vice President Mitchell Kaplan, owner of Books & Books in Coral Gables, Florida.

The Best Books ballot included 223 adult and 148 children's titles culled from the Book Sense 76 lists of the past five years, as well as any Book Sense Book of the Year winners not already included. The final list consists of 10 Adult fiction, 5 Adult Nonfiction, and 10 Children's titles:

Adult Fiction:

-- Atonement by Ian McEwan (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday)
-- Bel Canto by Ann Patchett (HarperPerennial)
-- The Da Vinci Code: A Novel by Dan Brown (Doubleday)
-- Empire Falls by Richard Russo (Knopf)
-- Life of Pi by Yann Martel (Harcourt)
-- The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (Little, Brown)
-- Peace Like a River by Leif Enger (Atlantic Monthly)
-- The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (HarperPerennial)
-- The Red Tent by Anita Diamant (Picador)
-- The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd (Viking)

Adult Nonfiction:

-- Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson (Crown)
-- Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller (Random House)
-- Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal by Eric Schlosser (HarperPerennial)
-- Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich (Metropolitan)
-- Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand (Ballantine)

Children's:

-- The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket (HarperTrophy)
-- Because of Winn Dixie by Kate DiCamillo (Candlewick)
-- Dear Mrs. LaRue: Letters From Obedience School by Mark Teague (Scholastic)
-- Diary of a Worm by Doreen Cronin, illustrated by Harry Bliss (Joanna Cotler Books/HarperCollins)
-- Eragon Inheritance: Book 1 by Christopher Paolini (Knopf)
-- The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman (Del Rey)
-- The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkein (Houghton Mifflin)
-- The Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis (HarperCollins)
-- Olivia by Ian Falconer (Atheneum)
-- The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares (Delacorte)

'The part I liked best was when...'
Amateur reviewers gain clout

By Renee Tawa
Tribune Newspapers: Los Angeles Times

April 6, 2004

In the courtship of Rebecca Johnson -- who's No. 4 on Amazon.com's list of top customer book reviewers -- publishers and authors are told upfront how to land a spot on her dance card: Don't send novels or unpublished manuscripts, and please no books that include violence, nudity or swearing.

Not if you want to bedazzle Johnson, who gets 40 to 60 free books a month, along with checklists from publishers asking her to mark the upcoming titles she's interested in receiving at no charge. Play along, and your shot at a rave review is far better than it would be with professional critics.

No one is saying that the Harold Blooms and Dale Pecks and other literati should be looking over their shoulders, but professional critics are no longer the only game in town. These days, as the Internet continues to reshape our notion of community, amateur critics are posting reviews across the cultural spectrum -- from film to books and more -- on discussion boards, blogs and other sites.

"It's all part of this culture we're now seeing where, `My opinion is just as valid as the guys at the L.A. Times,' " said Thomas Kunkel, dean of the University of Maryland's Philip Merrill College of Journalism. "It may not be as informed or educated and is maybe wrongheaded, but there's no question that a reader has as much right to publish their own opinion."

Everyday readers also have a shot at building a potentially huge following of their own. On a mega-site such as Amazon, where amateur reviews are packaged with bells and whistles, the collective voice of the consumer sometimes is powerful enough to help sales soar or sputter. In fact, the opinions of people such as Johnson on Amazon and other sites are cutting into territory that once was the province of mainstream critics alone.

Johnson, 36, is a freelance writer from Yakima, Wash., with a master's in education. She is known for her relentlessly sunny reviews and once even provided a blurb on a book jacket; she'll send a book back to a publisher rather than write a bad review. In the realm of criticism, there's room for both Amazon reviewers, who weigh in with impunity, and the somber voices of professional critics, Johnson said.

"I tend to be able to analyze books really efficiently. Authors say I'm insightful and I have a gift for extracting the essence of a book," she said. "I feel like I'm part of the reviewing community."

Amazon readers provide early and almost instant signs of breakout success; writers tend to obsessively check up on their reviews and ranking.

Quirky small-press books, ones that rarely get any media attention, have a chance on Amazon, where readers love to hunt for and pluck out overlooked page-turners. In 1999, writer M.J. Rose landed a contract with Pocket Books after the publishing industry noticed the reader buzz on her self-published novel, "Lip Service."

And Amazon readers loved the offbeat, tender sensibility of Danny Gregory's "Everyday Matters," an illustrated memoir. The raves from customers, as well as blog readers, "definitely affected sales" following the book's release in January, said Katharine Myers, spokeswoman for the Princeton Architectural Press, the book's publisher.

By the same token, first-time novelist Allison Burnett watched his book ranking plummet last year after Amazon readers suddenly began panning "Christopher." Until then, the book consistently had received five-star ratings, the highest rank, and good press. Burnett, like many authors, regularly was checking his rankings and reviews. He began to notice a pattern in the anonymous, negative postings, which often used the same words or phrases. After complaining to Amazon about what appeared to be a coordinated attack, the posts were removed. But sales never fully recovered.

Flame campaigns notwithstanding, reader reviews on Amazon are "so much purer," said Caroline Leavitt, a book columnist for The Boston Globe. "They're really from the heart. It'll be, `Oh, I stayed up all night,' or `This is a piece of garbage.' It's a true response."

Leavitt, author of eight novels, including "Girls in Trouble," takes in both professional and amateur criticism. "I absolutely want and prize and love and revere every single media review I get, but if I got 50 reviews from major newspapers and one review from Amazon, I still would feel a little weird: `What's going on? Why aren't people responding?'"

A backlash

The site's customer feedback is taken so seriously by readers, writers and publishers that a recent glitch on the company's Canadian Web site triggered a backlash against the entire reviewing system and made headlines around the world. (The site accidentally revealed the names of anonymous reviewers who, in some cases, raved about their own books or those of friends.)

In a backhanded compliment to Amazon, Kunkel, the University of Maryland professor, noted that "authors wouldn't be forging reviews if they didn't think it would be doing some good."

Lack of credibility

By the same token, customer reviewers don't have the credibility of book critics at mainstream publications, said Kunkel, who is president of the American Journalism Review. "You have no real guarantee that the person is bringing any kind of knowledge or expertise to his opinion."

Since its launch in July 1995, Amazon has spun itself as a cyber-community, fueled by the notion of we-are-the-world democracy. Following its lead, other booksellers, such as Barnes & Noble, also post reader reviews, as do sites for book fans such as www.readerville.com and www.bookreporter.com.

Publishers are beginning to solicit reader opinions as well. Simon & Schuster posts both signed and anonymous comments on its books. Bantam Dell, a division of Random House, sponsors a regular contest in which randomly selected entrants receive an advance copy of a book. The winners' reviews are posted online.

In October, HarperCollins began a monthly contest called First Look, which offers readers the chance to receive and critique books before publication. "We thought there were probably a lot of people out there who want to get involved, who want to feel like they're participating rather than simply going out there and buying the book," said Andy Khazaei, the publisher's senior vice president of electronic media.

Excerpts from the reviews, edited for "clarity and accuracy," are posted on the publisher's Web site alongside blurbs from media critics. So far, it's hard to tell whether the reader reviews are influencing sales, Khazaei said, but "there were a couple of instances where I thought, `Wow, these reviews are saying this, maybe we should reconsider how we position a title.'"

Status differential

The fact that amateur reviewers are on publishers' mailing lists doesn't necessarily give them more credibility, said Laura Miller, a book columnist for The New York Times Book Review and a book critic at Salon.com.

"There have been so many cutbacks on coverage of books in the mainstream press, they're probably desperate for any coverage they can get," Miller said. "Ask an author, would they rather have positive reviews on Amazon or a positive review in The New York Times Book Review. The status is not the same."

Yet writer Beth Lordan took to heart the HarperCollins winners' opinions on her new novel, "But Come Ye Back." She listens to professional critics, but "I wanted to know from readers who aren't doing literary analysis: Does the story itself hold? Do you care about the characters?

"I was literally in tears that all these people in the middle of regular, ordinary, demanding lives took the time to read the book and respond to the characters and then say so. And they said, `This is a good story.' It's not about networking, or you give me a good review, and I'll give you a good review. It leaves all the parts that are a little bit tainted out of the mix."

Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune

Chicago Tribune | 'The part I liked best was when...'

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Volunteers keep Burns bookstore open
Without help, The Book Parlor would have been shuttered for a month after its owner broke her leg

04/05/04

RICHARD COCKLE

BURNS -- When a badly broken leg laid up Janice Morefield a while back, folks in this isolated high-desert town faced the dreary prospect of life without her little bookstore.

So the townspeople of Burns, population 3,000, decided to run it for her.

Thirteen volunteers have kept The Book Parlor operating for almost two months since Morefield, 47, slipped in an icy parking lot Feb. 4 while getting milk for the store's espresso machine.

"I would have been closed at least a month, for sure," a grateful Morefield says. "There were a lot of people that stepped forward."

After surgery in Bend for a spiral fracture to her right leg, she was ordered off the injured limb until it healed. Even before she left the hospital, people were offering to help.

"A good bookstore is a real luxury in a small town," says Laurie O'Connor, 50, who lives on the Double O Ranch near Burns and organized the volunteers. "It's a little spot of civilization in the middle of the desert."

Another volunteer, Claire Larson, 50, who mushes sled dogs for fun, says The Book Parlor has become an essential place for coffee and conversation. Everybody worried that Morefield might have to permanently close if she was out too long, she says.

"This is a business we really wanted to see continue in this community," Larson says. "How do you keep a store closed that long? How do you pay the bills? Some people were coming in and saying, 'Maybe we will buy our Christmas presents now.' "

The Book Parlor closed the day of Morefield's accident and the next day. But by Feb. 6, it was operating on a half-day schedule, says Morefield, who has run it for 21/2 years. Volunteers did most of the work, sometimes assisted by Morefield's husband, Steve , 49, son Brett , 17, and daughter, Kelee , 13.

The toughest part was learning to operate the Italian espresso machine that contributed to Morefield's accident, O'Connor says.

"Everybody would recoil with the thought of blowing up the whole place with the backlog of espresso pressure," she says.

Another difficulty: special orders for books that Morefield didn't have in stock. The problem was solved when The Book Parlor's former owners, Tracee McGee and Ramona Bishop showed volunteers how to do it, O'Connor says.

The Book Parlor's biggest trade is in children's books, followed by Oregon history, fiction and -- this time of year -- books for bird-watchers, Morefield says.

"I do sell quite a few of the political types of books for an Eastern Oregon town," she says.

Among the big sellers: former first lady Hillary Clinton's autobiography and liberal humorist Al Franken's tome ribbing conservatives.

Sales dropped after the accident, something Morefield attributed to the half-day schedule and the fact that February and March traditionally are slow months.

Morefield returned to work part time March 29. She says the outpouring of help is typical of people in Burns.

"People come together here," she says. "They are stretched thin, and they just keep giving."

Copyright 2004 Oregon Live. All Rights Reserved.
Volunteers keep Burns bookstore open

True to Nancy Drew
Call them the clued-in crowd: The girl sleuth's perennial appeal is no mystery to her fans, both kids and adults, many of whom gathered at a New Orleans convention last week to talk about all things Nancy Drew.

Monday April 05, 2004

By Barri Bronston
Staff writer

When Patty Kravets and her 9-year-old daughter, Ellie, learned that a Nancy Drew convention was coming to town last month, they immediately put it on their calendar.

As a child, Kravets devoured the books in the Nancy Drew mystery series, and now Ellie, a third grader at Benjamin Franklin Elementary School, was exhibiting that same devotion to the teen-age detective.

"This is a kid who goes through Nancy Drew like candy," Kravets said. "If she's into a book, she'll get up at 5:30 or 6 in the morning because she wants to finish the story."

With their curiosity getting the best of them, they headed to the Chateau LeMoyne Hotel, where Nancy Drew buffs -- actually, fanatics -- were discussing everything from where they could buy collectible Nancy Drew paraphernalia to the history of River Heights, the fictional town where the mysteries are set.

Members of the fan club Nancy Drew Sleuths, they also opined on the all-new series, a collection of four books that gives Nancy a whole new look, attitude and vehicle. Instead of the blue Mustang convertible she drove in newer books of the original series, she now drives an environmentally friendly but still blue electric hybrid car. She is still in her teens but all done with high school. And she uses computers to solve mysteries, from finding a missing Fabergé egg in "Without a Trace" to discovering who kidnapped the daughter of a mayoral candidate in "False Notes."

Representatives of Simon & Schuster, publisher of the new series, were on hand at the convention to plug the books and answer questions. Not to her mother's surprise, Ellie had one:

"Why did you feel the need to change it?" she asked. "I really like it the way it is."

The publisher's representatives weren't completely shocked by the question. The books have enjoyed immense popularity since they were first published in the 1930s, with more than 200 million copies sold in 17 languages.

Although the books, written under the pen name Carolyn Keene, have undergone updates and revisions over the years, publishers felt the series needed a major overhaul if it were to compete with the likes of Harry Potter and Mary Kate and Ashley.

"We wanted to preserve the wholesomeness of Nancy Drew and the things that have kept her popular, but we wanted to update it for today's 'tween' readers in an effort to expand the reader base," said Jennifer Zatorski, senior publicist of Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing.

Besides giving Nancy eco-friendly wheels and a computer, she was also given a voice. The new books are written in the first person, so that readers know what Nancy is thinking as well as what she is saying.

"My name is Nancy Drew," says the first line of the first new book, "Without a Trace." "My friends tell me I'm always looking for trouble, but that's not really true. It just seems to have a way of finding me."

Nancy's friend Bess is still ultra-feminine but she has a natural ability to make and repair things. Her tomboy friend George has a knack for finding useful information on the Internet, and she can even do some hacking if necessary.

"There is also a lot more information about River Heights," Zatorski said. "In the old books, it's a setting, but the new series gives more information on the history of the town and why all the mayhem and crime happens there."

Although Nancy Drew devotees Tricia Boh and Camille Seyler, sixth graders at St. George's Episcopal School, have not read the new series, both are eager to learn more about the characters and the town.

"You know it's going to be good," Tricia said. "Nancy Drew has that spunk. She's ready for anything."

That doesn't mean Tricia won't continue reading the old series, which numbers 175 books, including such classics as "The Secret of the Old Clock" and her favorite, "The Mystery of the Ivory Charm."

Both Tricia and Camille were introduced to Nancy Drew by their mothers, who read Nancy Drew mysteries as young girls, and both are hopeful that the new books will maintain the series' high level of suspense and intrigue.

"I like that you never know if the mysteries are going to be solved," Camille said, "although you know that in the end all the loose ends will be tied up."

Jennifer Fisher, a Nancy Drew historian and national president of The Nancy Drew Sleuths, is always thrilled to hear young girls -- and boys -- talk about their fascination with the books.

As an adult, she not only continues to read the books but she also organizes sleuth gatherings and runs the sleuth Web site (www.nancydrewsleuth.com), which features Nancy Drew trivia, tips for collectors and sellers, analyses of plots and themes and links to other Nancy Drew sites.

Although she was initially skeptical at the thought of a new series, she said, she read each one and is sure that today's generation of young readers will be pleased.

"It's a re-energization of the whole series," she said. "The writing style is much richer and you get more of a sense as to who these people are. It opens up Nancy's personality, and you get a sense of how she's feeling."

Nancy's future seems solid, with Simon & Schuster planning to publish six books a year, including two more this summer. The Nancy Drew name is already licensed for merchandising, including loungewear, video games and backpacks, and a new Nancy Drew movie is in the development stages at Warner Bros.

Clad in Nancy Drew pajamas, Stacey Johnson of Gumshoe Girls is among those capitalizing on the Nancy Drew revival. She manufactures such merchandise as tote bags, business card holders and T-shirts. The items feature various quips and images of Nancy from earlier books.

Johnson and her sister Kim Dahlquist got the idea for the merchandise after uncovering a box of old Nancy Drew books in the attic of her childhood home.

"I was such a Nancy Drew reader," she said. "I wanted to be a detective. And I wanted to be Nancy Drew. I remember all those feelings of empowerment she gave me."

Johnson didn't become a detective, but her business has certainly kept her close to the heroine of her youth. Members of The Nancy Drew Sleuths aren't detectives either, but they, too, have enjoyed the relationship they've maintained with their favorite female sleuth.

"We never grew up," said member Sharon Reid Harris of St. Louis, who is working on a Nancy Drew encyclopedia. "I've read the books from the time I was a child, and I've never stopped."



True to Nancy Drew

Critical Condition
Reading, Writing and Reviewing:
An Old-Schooler Looks Back

by Sven Birkerts

For years, in one capacity or another—as fledgling comp instructor, as seminar auditor, then as editor of a literary journal partly quartered there—I mounted the front steps of the Boston University building at the end of Bay State Road, and as I did I never once failed to glance at the big red sign on the facade to my right identifying the place as home to the Partisan Review. Time-lapse clips would show me getting conspicuously older as the institutional masonry remains imperturbably unchanged, but for all that steady aging, my associations with that name still feel fresh.

First, going way back—even though this was no longer the Partisan of its great decades (the journal came to BU in 1978)—I had a strong residue of provincial awe and often thought as I pushed open the building door that I was in live proximity to something legendary. Most readers will not need to be lectured here on the glory days of what was for so long America's premier intellectual/arts journal, home to writers and thinkers well known enough to be listed by their last names: Baldwin, Bellow, Howe, Silone, Jarrell, Orwell, Sontag, McCarthy, Trilling, MacDonald. But by the '80s, Partisan, like the literary culture, had long since declined from those heights. Still, the aura clung, and though it grew fainter as the years passed, as the journal seemed to lose its purchase on the culture, it never quite disappeared. I always felt a residual twinge, a surge of complicated emotion, whenever my eye landed on that sign. And then it happened. One day last year my glance slipped sideways, like a heel on ice, and I saw that it was gone. This is how realization sometimes comes. Though I already knew that Partisan had officially disbanded a few months before, it was only when the maintenance people finally came with their tools that I got it.

And now the retinal afterimage of that sign lingers and the implications haunt. The fate of Partisan Review signifies in a larger way. Indeed, the more I think about it, the more clearly I see that any substantive discussion of criticism in our day has to take in the whole systemic ecology of things, by which I mean the connections among writers, publishers, and readers, not to mention the vast influence systems of academia on the one hand and entertainment media on the other. As a working reviewer, I am aware of these considerations every time I pick up my pen to write—they have everything to do with the way books are read, discussed, and written about. And they have changed a great deal over time. If I begin by invoking the Partisan Review, it's because I see it both as an emblem of the kind of intellectual/cultural cohesion that was once possible and as a clear reminder that, as Robert Frost wrote, "nothing gold can stay." Partisan Review failed in part because it couldn't acknowledge that our intellectual and artistic needs—our cultural situation—had changed. Its venerability guaranteed nothing.

Anyone who reads books and book journalism knows that the big ruckus in the sideshow tents the past few seasons has had to do with negative reviewing, the worst examples of which were christened "snark" in a widely discussed essay ("Rejoice! Believe! Be Strong and Read Hard!") in the inaugural issue of the new journal The Believer, by its editor, Heidi Julavits. The precipitating event—and one hates to give it any more ink than it has already got—was an aggressively attention-grabbing review in the New Republic by Dale Peck of Rick Moody's memoir, The Black Veil. There have been other attack reviews elsewhere, of course—by Colson Whitehead, Lee Siegel, Walter Kirn, James Fenton, and others—but this one got everyone going. Doubtless goaded on by the magazine's literary editor, Leon Wieseltier, who has for years enjoyed the sport of corrective deflations, Peck took Moody's book as the occasion for a gloves-off pummeling, going after the writer's whole career, taking in everything from his metaphors to his imputed motivations. "Rick Moody is the worst writer of his generation": So wrote Peck, and the relieved sighs from a hundred thousand epigones rustled whole forests.

Taken to task by readers, critics, and other writers, as of course he knew he would be, Peck insisted not only that he was defending the sacred honor of Literature but that he was flaying Moody for the author's own good—because he had betrayed his considerable gift. I found myself recalling Norman Mailer's similar feints in his notorious 1959 essay "Evaluations—Quick and Expensive Comments on the Talent in the Room." He, too, rationalized his sadistic eviscerations—of rival novelists James Jones, James Baldwin, and others—by insisting that it was the deeper genius of their prose he was policing. A good trick, that, holding fast to the moral high ground even while twisting the blade for maximal damage.

Though Peck was hardly the first mudslinger in the annals of reviewing, his piece became a headline event in literary circles, evidence, for those who needed it, that we have, along with the Brits (who have their own Dale Peck contretemps in Tibor Fischer's gob-lofting review of Martin Amis's latest novel, Yellow Dog), entered the dark ages. Heather Caldwell promptly covered the Peck-Moody controversy for the Salon website, where the outraged parties shared equal time with the indefatigable optimists, who opined, as they always do, that all the fuss just proved that people still cared to argue about books and that this could only be good for the cause of literature. "Like it or not," Caldwell wrote, "Peck's down-flung gauntlet has the literati talking about such larger questions as: What makes for good criticism? Is the literary world too polite and clubby? And finally, what is the effect of this kind of skirmish on literary culture at large?"

After Caldwell came Julavits's lengthy essay asserting her belief that literature has "an intrinsic worth" and calling for "fairness and rigor when assessing the success or failure of an author's project." Julavits was, in turn, countered in the op-ed pages of the New York Times by Clive James, who concluded by saying: "When you say a man writes badly, you are trying to hurt him. When you say it in words better than his, you have succeeded. It would be better to admit this fact, and admit that all adverse reviews are snarks to some degree, than to indulge the sentimental wish that malice might be debarred from the literary world. The literary world is where it belongs. . . . Civilization tames human passions, but it can't eliminate them. Hunt the snark and you will find it everywhere."

Then, in October of last year, James Atlas published "The Takedown Artist," his lengthy profile of Peck in the New York Times Magazine. Peck was, tellingly enough, posed in both photos with a hatchet. The second, smaller picture had him lowering the blade with contorted echt-samurai expression upon a stack of books. Full victim identification was not possible, but my skilled bookman's eye saw the name "Charles Dickens" prominent on the top spine and made out Don DeLillo's Underworld, John Barth's Giles Goat Boy, and what looked alarmingly like my own distinctively jacketed memoir on the bottom of the stack. I'm being disingenuous here. I knew damn well it was my book, knew it because after opening with the inevitable quotation about Moody, Atlas segued right to a somewhat less arresting but similarly assaultive quote about me. So, yes, here I need to show my cards. Atlas's profile quoted at some length an unpublished (because "axed") piece Peck had written about me for the New Republic. (I have learned from the Atlas article that "The Man Who Would Be Sven" will be available as a chapter in Peck's forthcoming collection Hatchet Jobs, but I have not seen it.) And if the fact of being attacked for reasons as yet unspecified skews some of the assertions in this piece (how could it not?), the reader is invited to make the compensating adjustment.

The distressing thing about Atlas's piece, apart from the fact that I naturally took the sting of Peck's assessment of my enterprise, was Atlas's broadcast assumption that literary culture, like celebrity culture, is now mainly sensationalistic, that readers are irresistibly drawn to carny-barker strategies and that the ethos of "buzz" governs the reviewing world almost to the exclusion of the more pedestrian business of consideration and evaluation. Opening with his barrage of incendiary extracts, Atlas caught the reader by the lapels: "You're curious, right? . . . You want to read more." And this is the essential tone of the article and, more or less, the sum of its contents.

Did the profile itself have its intended effect? Did it capture my attention? I daresay it did, yes. But what it prompted, after the initial fantasies of rejoinder had played themselves out, was—inevitably, perhaps—a very personal reassessment of the whole vocation. I had to ask myself: Is this the world I know? Have we really fallen thus? Is our newspaper of record—its magazine—really commissioning and printing photos of books of Dickens (and others) on the chopping block? I wished perversely that I'd been there to watch the shoot being set up.

Oddly, maybe appropriately, just as I was asking these sorts of questions the whole Stephen King dustup began. The National Book Foundation had decided to award its annual gold medal for distinguished literary achievement to the master of the horrific-premise novel. Was this not a betrayal of its lofty symbolic office? Fiction-award winner Shirley Hazzard thought so and suggested as much in her acceptance speech (Hazzard was later photographed politely admiring King's medal). The argument, before and after, followed the predictable paths, the indefatigable optimists opining, as they always do, that all the fuss just proved that people still cared about books and that this could only be good for the cause of literature. Of course, everyone knew that the whole point of the awarding was to generate publicity and excitement for an event (and a cause) widely perceived to be in need of both. My heart sank for the second time in as many weeks. Was this indeed a trend? Was Atlas right?

I do the computation and realize with a shock that I published my first critical piece exactly twenty-five years ago, a long review-essay on Robert Musil. My choice of subject matter says a great deal to me, about my aspirations starting out, as well as about my faith in the "serious." Literature was a capitalized noun, and there was nothing more important, apart from creating the stuff itself, than writing about it.

This was in 1979. I was twenty-eight years old, a veteran not of graduate schools but of bookstores. As a self-directed reader, I had my own syllabus of critics, and it was strongly weighted toward the belle-lettristic essayists, including, on the one hand, writers like Edmund Wilson, George Steiner, Susan Sontag, Walter Benjamin, Cyril Connolly, Erich Heller, Guy Davenport, and Hugh Kenner, and, on the other, the various writers orbiting around the Partisan Review, including the aforementioned Howe, Trilling, Bellow, and MacDonald, as well as Randall Jarrell and Delmore Schwartz.

I was not plucking these names and reputations from nowhere. They were, many of them, presences in the air. Working in bookstores, first in Ann Arbor, then in Boston and Cambridge, I was positioned to see exactly who was reading what. I felt I knew month to month just how many atmospheres of pressure Benjamin or Howe or Sontag exerted, and I read and aspired accordingly. I am not at all surprised now, looking back, to see that my Musil essay is a stir-fry of Sontag and Steiner, with a liberal garnish of Heller—very earnest, very humanist, very European looking.

I don't think it was just me. I moved about in a whole circle of the like-minded. These were serious times, with the governing taste set by eminences from abroad. The New York Review of Books was like a marquee for this imported sensibility, regularly featuring essays by Czeslaw Milosz, Joseph Brodsky, and Isaiah Berlin, to name just a few. Sontag was writing the essays that would be gathered in Under the Sign of Saturn—a ruminative celebration of European sensibility. In my mind these writers were carrying on the Partisan line, taking their place at table with Orwell, Silone, Chiaramonte. The journals were then hospitable to these perspectives, and as a reviewer just breaking in, I found it fairly easy to approach editors at The Nation, the New Republic, as well as, say, the Boston Phoenix or Boston Review, with ideas for longer review essays on subjects like Thomas Bernhard, Robert Walser, and Max Frisch.

But climates and scenes are changeful. Perched behind the counter at the Harvard Book Store, where I worked for five years—into the mid-'80s—I became aware of what would soon be known as just "theory" encroaching like a frontal system. I noticed how the grad student intellectuals were turning from the familiar humanist syllabus, coming up to the register now with books by Derrida, de Man, Barthes, and Cixous. The tonality of things seemed to be getting perceptibly cooler. But to me the drift away from traditional belle-lettristic approaches did not seem especially alarming at first. If anything, there was the feeling that there was something almost sacerdotal going on in the upper strata of the literary, and this could only be to the good.

In retrospect—years later—I began to think the reverse may have been true, at least from the perspective of the practicing reviewer. The explosion of theory in academia, so invigorating in the beginning, had the effect in the long run of depreciating the merely literary and making the profession of any old-style humanism seem a hopelessly rearguard, conservative practice. In front of the work was always the idea of the work, the ism that framed it and made discussion possible. Essays in cutting-edge academic journals like Representations, Critical Inquiry, and Semiotext(e) grew cleverly opaque, or opaquely clever, and while reviewing of the sort I did continued on and literary essays got published, things began to feel—to use a then-current expression—"destabilized." Educated academics, mainstay readers and writers of the former literary order (which included, in my mind, the now-faltering Partisan Review), were fleeing the old mainstream for their respective academic niches. Deconstruction and post-structuralist discourses carried the day. Fewer and fewer thinking critics were willing to be spotted wearing generalist garb.

This business—of confidence, of tonality, of voice—requires comment, even though it's also true that nothing is harder to pinpoint. The colonization of literary discourse by theory, with its implicit unmasking of assumptions and positions of vantage, had all manner of consequences, but the most telling of these was, as I suggest, climatological. The widely publicized (and, in a sense, necessary) suspicion of ideologies and the incessant questioning of the "natural" sign made it singularly difficult to venture straight literary judgments. The supreme narrative confidence of, say, an Edmund Wilson, whose trust in common sense and linguistic adequacy was his bedrock, became harder to sustain.

Consider the squared-off diction of the opening sentence of Wilson's 1925 review of a work by Mencken: "H.L. Mencken's Notes on Democracy adds nothing that is new to his political philosophy: its basic ideas are precisely those which he has been preaching for many years and which already appear in his book on Nietzsche, published in 1908." This is the plain style, long the dominant voice of American criticism, and we hear it not only in Wilson throughout his long career but in Eliot, in Howe, and with adjustments and qualifications in Trilling and the Partisan critics. But while it has not died out completely, this steady assertion of judgment—Gore Vidal remains a living exemplar—the tonality has become almost impossible to generate, much less sustain, in the wake of the poststructuralist decentering.

The natural, obvious default has been the ironic mode, which from the threshold evades the danger of straightforward declaration, the most exposed of all positions. More and more we encounter a cunningly preemptive tonality. Here is Michiko Kakutani reviewing a recent novel by Nicholson Baker: "Remember that American Express commercial a few years back," she begins, "in which Jerry Seinfeld demonstrated his 'perfect pump' technique by making the self-serve pump stop exactly on the dollar?"

The reviewer is winking at her audience, creating her analogy from the democratic realm of popular culture; she will not be caught out insisting on anything that smacks of an absolute standard or posture of judgment. We have moved in these two samples from the modern to the postmodern.

Such a comparison is, of course, rigged. With a bit of creative research one can find instances for anything, and I'm sure that I could easily enough turn up some flip whimsy from the earlier period and counter it with a reasoned pronouncement from a categorically grounded critic like James Wood. But the tendency is there to be mapped, and I'll stand by it. I'll argue, as well, that where there is ironic discourse, snark cannot be far behind. Snark—seemingly gratuitous negativity—is where the ironist goes when evasions begin to cloy.

My whole argument, I recognize, depends on a reading of the big picture; it generalizes. Needless to say, it is extremely difficult to calculate how a large-scale shift or trend modifies what had been the status quo, the more so as there are usually a number of such shifts taking place at once. The rise and spread of theory was just one development. Lest we forget, there was also the society-wide advent of personal computers and the first self-trumpeting wave of digital culture. Do we even recall how suddenly all that happened, and how much the concept—the paradigm-shifting certainty—of it all impinged on everything we did? The binary worldview of the structuralists seemed to have propagated, become the zeros and ones that were the basis of the new communications systems. Literature, so tethered to its tradition of concrete representation, suddenly took on the patina of the antique, as if narrative belonged to the old dispensation.

Other forces supervened as well. In the all-important commercial sector, we began to see during this same period the fiercely waged corporatization of the publishing industry and the rapid transformation of bookselling by the tentacular exertions of superstores like Barnes & Noble and Borders. And, of course, it was digitization that made the massification of a formerly eccentric retail niche possible.

But for me these were all big transformations happening in the background. At ground level, trying to make my way as a reviewer, I noticed more immediate, specific consequences. For one thing, it seemed to be getting harder to work in the old review-essay track. Straight-on discussion of books felt increasingly outmoded, even as magazines like Harper's and the New York Review of Books exerted themselves to keep the critical tradition alive. Not only were there fewer venues to publish in, but there were also noticeably fewer literary books being published by the major trade houses. Though it's true that editors are always grumbling about the state of things, the grumbles were now louder and more widespread. The great shell game of book editors disappearing from one house and reappearing in another had begun, filling already anxious authors with dread.

This was the beginning of Andrew Wylie's reign in the world of agenting, the glorification of greed that in spirit owed more to Boesky than Brodsky. Huge German corporations like Bertelsmann and Holtzbrinck were picking up publishing houses like jacks. Very clearly it was an industry in flux, and when I went around to my usual bookstore haunts—I had by this point traded up from bookselling to teaching—I saw from what was displayed and stocked, from the obvious emphasis placed on moving quantities of "big" books, that what I had for so long believed was a kind of constant, a kind of water table, was in fact a tide that had peaked and was now ebbing.

And isn't this how change announces itself—through complex adjustments in a whole series of linked spheres: less of one thing, more of another? With the perceived diminution of the literary comes the more widely registered assumption about what matters. There were self-fulfilling prophecies and feedback loops. I realized that I had got in just in time. In 1987 I'd assembled a book of my pieces on various lesser-known, mainly European writers and had been very lucky to find a major trade publisher. Now, only a few years later, the same book would have been much harder—maybe impossible—to place.

By the mid-'90s, it was obvious to many people that the rules of the literary game had been rewritten. Corporate conglomeration in the publishing world (addressed by Andre Schiffrin in The Business of Books: How the International Conglomerates Took over Publishing and Shaped the Way We Read) ushered in the era of the blockbuster. Editors began to pay out succulent advances for "sexy" books like Mary Karr's The Liar's Club and Susanna Kaysen's Girl, Interrupted, while midlist writers went begging, many then shifting to small presses. No question, the prestige of the merely literary was depreciated—a harder sell in the trade marketplace—and the reviewing culture naturally reflected the change. Meghan O'Rourke's recent contention in Slate that John Leonard's tenure at the New York Times Book Review, from 1971 to 1975, was a kind of golden age assigned more importance to sensibility than cents and salability. If anything wags the dog, it's the profit-and-loss statement.

And this is more or less where we find ourselves now. Psychologically it is a landscape subtly demoralized by the slash-and-burn of bottom-line economics; the modernist/humanist assumption of art and social criticism marching forward, leading the way, has not recovered from the wholesale flight of academia into theory; the publishing world remains tyrannized in acquisition, marketing, and sales by the mentality of the blockbuster; the confident authority of print journalism has been challenged by the proliferation of online alternatives.

Even more debilitating, if harder to locate, I think, is the widely perceived loss of center, of the momentum that arises either through adversarial necessity or the emergence of the new. Or both. Partisan Review, in its glory days, rallied the best writers around the twin mission of opposing Stalinist ideology and defining and promoting modernism. It drew great energy, moreover, from another historical circumstance: the generation of American Jewish intellectuals separating itself from the world of the fathers. What a talent pool Partisan Review had to draw on—alongside the powerhouse polemicists and essayists were fiction writers like Roth, Bellow, and Malamud.

Similarly, the kinetic upstart journalism of the '60s and '70s was significantly powered by the broadly prosecuted opposition to the Vietnam War and the vigorous emergence of the ethos or style of what we now call the New Journalism. Again, the fusion of the literary/cultural with the socially active boosted the prestige of the writer. I think of Esquire, Harper's, The Nation, the Village Voice, the New York Review of Books—outlets where every week one could read fresh work by Mailer, Sontag, Baldwin, Didion, Fielder, Talese, Vivian Gornick, and Tom Wolfe. These writers aren't all gone, of course, but the pressure of sensibility they represented has long since dissipated.

What I am talking about here is, it's true, more polemic and feature-related journalism than reviewing per se, but the vitality of the latter depends in a thousand subtle ways on the vitality of the former, and if our situation feels demoralized, dissipated, without urgent core, it is to some degree because we are without a larger rallying cause and without any stirring sense of possibility. This is not to say that there are no rallying causes available—I can think of a few, beginning with the outrages of the current administration—but that we seem to be without the rallying will. We have lost the sense that there is any gathering place. Our intellectual life is fragmented. It has, perhaps of economic necessity, migrated into the academy, where it can only conform to the dominant strictures of theory-suffused disciplines (the luftmenschen of old, as Russell Jacoby reminded us in The Last Intellectuals, are no more). Connected and informed as never before, we nonetheless register a dispiriting sense of isolation, of not mattering.

All of this leads, and not all that circuitously, to the question of snark, the spirit of negativity, the personal animus pushing ahead of the intellectual or critical agenda. Snark is, I believe, prompted by the terrible vacuum feeling of not mattering, not connecting, not being heard; it is fueled by rage at the same. If writers and critics felt similar aggressive urges in the past—and of course they did, for personal, if not cultural, reasons—they were held back from venting, if not by an inner sense of decency, then by a more externalized awareness of prohibition. Cheap shots were not to be taken—not in the public arena. This was the tactic of the scandal rags and Hollywood gossip sheets, and it was just not done. But even more—and I hope I'm not getting starry-eyed here—there was yet a prevailing belief that the arts, serving and expressing creativity, were, yes, above that. They were nobler, pitched to higher ends; they did not traffic overtly in the commercial. Artistic media and entertainment media were separate. Stephen King would never have been considered for a medal from the National Book Foundation.

But for all of the reasons outlined above, the commercial consideration (sales, circulation, publicity) has in recent years become paramount. The logic of the situation is obvious. And desperation driven. What we are seeing is an effort in certain quarters to awaken a somnolent literary culture, to create attention, the idea somehow being that power and money go where the noise is. There is no way to solve the problem at the source, of course—it is systemic—so the best strategy is the quick fix. The jump start. "Rick Moody is the worst writer of his generation," writes Dale Peck. "You're curious, right?" queries James Atlas. The gamble here is that we readers are ourselves jaded and angry and TV conditioned enough to play along, to accept that this is the new way of things. For this sort of gambit works only when readers in their secret hearts do take pleasure in assault, when it serves as a valve for frustrations and blocked emotions. I doubt any of us who read the piece believed for an instant that Peck was right. But if we read on—most likely we did—it was with the same churning fascination we feel when someone on the city bus starts acting crazy and shouting obscenities. The screamer's "Fuck you!" about his job or spouse lets us get to our own frustration and rage. All well and good, but it has nothing to do with literature.

If I began this reflection by invoking memories and associations with Partisan Review, it was not because I wanted to propose that magazine as a model or its writers as guardian figures. In fact, I was more focused on its decline and disappearance, which seemed to me in many ways emblematic of the state of things on the literary front. It was an important decline, a bellwether. Partisan Review in its heyday was a model of mattering. Its circulation never exceeded fifteen thousand, but it nevertheless outlined the very nerve system of influence in our collective cultural life. Its main contribution, over and above the contents of any of its pieces, was that in its great years it gave us an intellectual idea of ourselves. It created the terms of the debate. By postulating a certain kind of intelligentsia, it helped to foster it. That intelligentsia was nonacademic (though academics devoured the journal) and politically and morally engaged; it deplored provincialism and assumed a cosmopolitan view; it believed in the necessity of the modernist project. We have nothing like the modernist aesthetic certainties. Indeed, our lot—henceforth—is to be suspicious of all projects. In a pluralistic and relativistic culture like ours, the clash of rival pundits may be the best we can come up with.

Partisan Review lost relevance and went under because that audience and that conjunction of beliefs and ideals faded away. This has everything to do with the state of our critical culture today, and with reviewing—indeed, with our intellectual life in general. The journal gave us a sense of center to some degree by assuming one, but finally the idea of a center itself proved no longer sustainable. The deeper structure of things is too much changed. Still, though I had not been a Partisan reader for years, when I heard it was gone I felt surprisingly bereft. Its demise reminded me—not for the first time—of all the young assumptions I have learned to do without.


The author of five books of essays and a memoir, Sven Birkerts edits the journal Agni, based at Boston University.


BOOKFORUM | spring 2004

First-time Novelist Wins Florida Literature Award

Artifacts, a novel by Mary Anna Evans, has won the 2004 Patrick D. Smith Florida Literature Award, given by the Florida Historical Society. This award recognizes the valuable contributions made by writers of Florida fiction in stimulating the promotion and study of the state’s history and heritage.

Artifacts features Faye Longchamp, an amateur archaeologist whose hobby turns deadly when she uncovers a dead body. Artifacts has received critical praise from a number of influential publications, including:

Publishers Weekly—“Few corners of Florida remain unmined for crime fiction and now, happily, there’s one less. The shifting little isles along the Florida Panhandle—hurricane-wracked bits of land filled with plenty of human history—serve as the effective backdrop for Evans’s debut, a tale of greed, archaeology, romance and murder.”

Booklist—“First-novelist Evans introduces a strong female sleuth in this extremely promising debut, and she makes excellent use of her archaeological subject matter, weaving past and present together in a multilayered, compelling plot. Let’s hope Faye Longchamp’s home-restoration project is one of those remodeling jobs that never ends.”

Florida Journal—“Richly atmospheric, populated with a colorful cast, and steeped in the local landscape and history of the Gulf Coast region, Artifacts makes a gripping read with a surprising plot twist.”

Ms. Evans is a resident of Gainesville, Florida. She holds degrees in physics and chemical engineering, and her professional background includes stints as an environmental engineer, as a youth choir director, and as a roustabout on a offshore production platform. She is at work on Relics, the sequel to Artifacts.

Artifacts is available in hardcover (Poisoned Pen Press, $24.95, ISBN: 1590580567), large-print paperback (Poisoned Pen Press, $22.95, ISBN: 1590580796), and mass-market paperback (ibooks/Simon&Schuster, $6.99, ISBN: 0743479505).

CBS should say it, S&S share corporate parent
David Folkenflik

March 31, 2004

Since Richard Clarke's March 21 appearance on 60 Minutes to discuss a new book in which he sharply criticizes the White House for its approach to fighting terrorism, some sympathetic to the administration say CBS failed to reveal its ties to his publisher for ideological reasons.

A desire to promote corporate interests seems more plausible. In the past two years, the program has aired segments on six newly published books on topics ranging from the story of a reporter who made up articles to the insider insights of President Bush's first Treasury secretary. Five were published by Simon & Schuster, which, like CBS, is owned by the media conglomerate Viacom. Not once was the connection disclosed, according to a review of transcripts.

The lack of disclosure of the corporate link for Clarke's book was "an oversight," 60 Minutes correspondent Leslie Stahl explained Sunday in response to letters from viewers.

The Clarke segment was aired just days before his testimony to a congressional commission into the 9/11 attacks and the Bush administration response. And, just as CBS undoubtedly had planned, it caused enormous buzz, as Clarke's assertions quickly sparked intense debate.

The "country is very much divided," said Sandy Genelius, a spokeswoman for CBS News. "We are experiencing an overheated partisan atmosphere."

CBS news correspondents often make viewers aware of corporate connections in other stories, she said. "To the people at 60 Minutes, it is worth taking a few extra seconds to defuse the issue," Genelius said. "We have nothing to hide."

Simon & Schuster frequently publishes books of significant public interest. 60 Minutes should be able to cover them, she said. "[Executive producer] Don Hewitt and the folks at 60 Minutes pay no attention to who publishes a particular book," Genelius said. "As Don has said many times over, he is looking for a good story."

Competition for provocative interviews often sparks an intense courtship between source and network. Sometimes major news stars such NBC's Katie Couric, ABC's Diane Sawyer and Barbara Walters personally intervene. As the media world consolidates - Viacom bought CBS in 1999 - so-called "multi-platform" pitches are possible. A CBS News executive's approach last year to former prisoner of war Jessica Lynch included an offer to facilitate programs on MTV and CBS and a book deal with Simon & Schuster.

Leroy Sievers, executive producer of ABC News' Nightline, said he is often challenged by many viewers who believe news decisions are made by corporate owners - in his case, the Walt Disney Co., which controls movie studios, theme parks, ESPN and other cable television outlets. Disclosure may dispel some skepticism, he said.

Local news programs and major news divisions routinely promote their networks' entertainment shows. NBC's primetime news magazine Dateline is preparing to devote significant time to Donald Trump, the star of its new hit "reality" program The Apprentice, and to do stories on the finales of longtime NBC sitcoms Friends and Frasier.

These books formed the core of 60 Minutes stories over the past two years:


Historian Michael Beschloss' Reaching for Glory on the secret tapes kept by President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Bob Woodward's Bush at War, an account of the president's response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The Fabulist, former New Republic reporter Stephen Glass' thinly fictionalized account of his own experience fabricating several dozen articles.

Hall of Fame NFL linebacker Lawrence Taylor's memoir LT: Over the Edge, about his cocaine addiction.

Ron Suskind's The Price of Loyalty, about Paul O'Neill's tenure as Bush's first Treasury secretary. O'Neill collaborated extensively on the book.

Clarke's Against All Enemies.
All the books except Taylor's were Simon & Schuster imprints. But the ties were not disclosed by 60 Minutes.

"The problem with this kind of synergy is that it has political overtones," Fox News Channel media critic Eric Burns said on the air Sunday, then alluded to Suskind's book on O'Neill. "A couple of months ago another Simon & Schuster book ... [that was] also critical of the Bush administration got some time on 60 Minutes without a disclaimer." CNN's Lou Dobbs made a similar point.

But it is hard to make an ideological case. Woodward's book was received as a largely laudatory treatment of Bush. LBJ, a Democrat, was portrayed as insecure and power-hungry in Beschloss' rendering. The Suskind and Clarke books were unquestionably newsworthy.

It is the the failure to disclose that allowed critics to ascribe partisan impulses to the CBS interview of Clarke. "You should know that there is some sort of [corporate] relationship," said Nightline's Sievers. But he said he was surprised by the frequency with which Simon & Schuster books popped up on 60 Minutes. "That's a heck of a coincidence - if that's what it is," Sievers said.

Questions? Comments? Story ideas? David Folkenflik can be reached by e-mail at david.folkenflik@baltsun.com or by phone at 410-332-6923.



Copyright © 2004, The Baltimore Sun


baltimoresun.com - CBS should say it, S&S share corporate parent

Salon.com
The confessions of a semi-successful author
I've published several books, won adoring reviews, and even sold a few copies. But I've made almost no money and had my heart broken. Here's everything you don't want to know about how publishing really works.

Editor's note: Although the author's name and some identifying details have been changed, the facts, quotes, e-mails and tragedy depicted in this story are real.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Jane Austen Doe

March 22, 2004 | "A midlist author is one whose books are well received but have failed to make a commercial breakthrough; whose work sells solidly but unspectacularly, who's well known within the writing community but the majority of book buyers have never heard his name."


-- David Armstrong, "How Not to Write a Novel: Confessions of a Midlist Author," 2003

Reader Advisory: By the end of this story I will have broken the most sacred rules of modern authordom. I'll tell you how much my publishers have paid me for the books I've written. I'll tell you how many copies each of those books has sold. I'll share with you some of the secrets, lies and euphemisms told to me by my publishers, editors, publicists and agents in their efforts to comfort, pacify and motivate me, and I'll share some of the salient facts that make those secrets, lies and euphemisms such common industry currency.

If you don't want to hear about the noir underside of publishing -- if you're a writer longing for a literary career, or a reader who's happier not knowing that producing and marketing a book these days involves about as much moral purity as producing and marketing a pair of Nikes -- I suggest you stop reading now.

Still with me? Great. But who, exactly, might I be? I'm not saying. Because although I've published books and articles about things most people won't talk about, let alone publish -- my sex life and marriage counseling, my quirky predilections and unpopular politics, my worst mistakes and no-longer-secret yearnings -- I'm using a pseudonym to write this story, because telling the truth about my life as a writer is one risk I can't afford to take.

Thinking you'll put the clues together, figure out who I am? Give it your best shot. If you could identify me based on the story I'm about to tell you, I wouldn't have it to tell.

Here's a Clue: You might know me by my number: 40,137. That's today's sales ranking of my latest book on Amazon.

Sadly, this is also how I rate myself: Not bad, not nearly good enough.

Interlude: A Midlist Author Friend Writes

"Tales of the midlist author: When [my latest book] came out a few weeks ago, it bounced around the Amazon rankings in the 25,000 to 30,000 range, supported there by the radio shows I'm doing and my buddy who runs [a Web] bulletin board. Then last Thursday, I mailed a 450-piece promotion to my personal list, pitching Amazon that's selling the book for 30 percent off list. This morning, [my latest book] is No. 1,665. Now, we all know that the Amazon rankings are a distorted mirror and can't be taken too, too seriously. On the other hand, they're the only instant sales data midlist authors have. So I'm encouraged. My mailing to 750 members of the [organization presumably interested in my latest book] goes out this weekend. Fingers crossed that I see at least one day in three figures."

The Story

Being the author of several critically acclaimed, moderately successful books has given me an extraordinary, exciting, occasionally lucrative, quite public life. It has also broken my heart.

Nothing makes me happier than writing. And, thanks to the rules that govern publishing today, nothing I've ever done for a living -- housecleaning, data entry, creating campaigns for big-name, cutthroat ad agencies, full-time motherhood -- has been as hard on me as being a writer.

Being an author is the culmination of a lifelong dream. And -- because the sales of each book I write determine my ability to remain one -- being an author has ruined many of my greatest lifelong pleasures. Reading a book that's poorly written I pace the floor, beseeching the Muses, God and the editors of Publishers Weekly to explain why trash like this sells so much better than serious books like mine. Reading a book that's well written, I writhe, instead, with envy.

Relax with a glossy magazine on a sun-splashed beach? Not me, not anymore. The magazine doesn't exist that hasn't either published or rejected my work, and there's a trail of tears behind every story. Sunday morning in bed with a steaming cup of French roast, a well-schmeared bagel, the book review section of the New York Times? Sounds great -- if only I could sip, chew and gnash my teeth all at once. Veg out in front of the tube? Impossible. Playboy is nearly the only channel that hasn't scheduled, then cancelled me -- each booking raising hopes of thousands of copies sold; each cancellation a stake driven through the heart of my career.

Never an enthusiastic employee, I quit my job at age 35 to become a full-time writer, to live life on my own terms. After publishing four books -- each of them critically acclaimed, several of them award-winners, none of them big enough sellers to ensure my next book contract, let alone the lifetime of book contracts I crave -- I feel less in control of my finances, my schedule, my priorities and my well-being than I did when I had bosses and employees to answer to.

Acknowledgment Of Good Fortune

Believe me, I know I'm lucky to be published at all. I've read enough talented unpublished writers to realize just how arbitrary that privilege is. I'm more fortunate still to have had publishers who made significant investments in my books, editors who have gone to the mat for me, an agent I admire and trust. For more than a decade I've earned a reasonable living as a writer, raised a child as a writer, had a mostly great time being one.

You know that bumper sticker, "I love humanity -- it's people I can't stand"? Well, I love writing. It's publishing I can't stand.

Statement of the Problem

In the 10 years since I signed my first book contract, the publishing industry has changed in ways that are devastating -- emotionally, financially, professionally, spiritually, and creatively -- to midlist authors like me. You've read about it in your morning paper: Once-genteel "houses" gobbled up by slavering conglomerates; independent bookstores cannibalized by chain and online retailers; book sales sinking as the number of TV channels soars. What once was about literature is now about return on investment. What once was hand-sold one by one by well-read, book-loving booksellers now moves by the pallet-load at Wal-Mart and Borders -- or doesn't move at all.

Interlude: Publishing Today Is a Business

"Publishing today is a business, dominated by stockholders and profit margins, run entirely according to the hard, cold numbers. Investors in the major megacorporations that own nearly all of the New York majors want profit, and lots of it. In a business that traditionally makes maybe 4-6 percent profit in a good year, today's stockholders are demanding 15-18 percent. Gone are the days when a publisher could nurture a writer with potential through several lackluster efforts. Today's editors can't afford a single flop."


-- Jeff Kirvin, "What's Wrong With Publishing," January 2002.

Mine is what editors call "the human story behind the headlines." But it's not just about me; not just about the many wonderful, once-revered writers I know, who -- loving the craft of writing, hating the damage that being a writer has done to them -- aren't writers any more.

It's about the narrowing of the breadth and depth and diversity of our culture: the quieting of all but the blandest voices, the elimination of all but the safest choices. It's about what it will mean to you if the blunt force of commerce succeeds in silencing midlist authors like me.

Interlude: Excerpt From the Unacknowledged, Unpublished Publishing Glossary of Terms

When they say: "Americans read trash, not meaningful books like yours. You'd need to worry if your books were commercially successful."

What that means: "Your next advance -- if there is one -- will be half the size of your last."

When they say: "Your book will have a long life in paperback."

What that means: "We'll be forced to throw good money after bad to recoup our losses on the hardcover."

When they say: "Your career is building slowly but steadily."

What that means: "Time to look for a day job."

As Promised: The Unexpurgated, Possibly Unfinished History of One Midlist Author's Life

Book 1: Contract signed 1994. Book published 1996. Advance: $150,000.

Book takes one year, no research, pure joy to write.

I love my editor; my editor loves me.

Several publishers vying to buy book means book sells at auction for big advance. Big advance means big publicity budget. Big publicity budget means promotion handled by publicity director, which means reviews in top newspapers, excerpts in top magazines, TV and radio appearances, four weeks on two bestseller lists, seven-city tour. Publisher (Mr. Big) sends handwritten note, thanking me for "writing the great book we all knew you had it in you to write."

Question to agent: "Is there a downside to an unknown author getting such a big advance for a first book?"

Agent's answer: "What are you gonna do, turn it down?"

Pitch line: "Welcome a fresh new voice!"

Sales: I don't ask. No one seems to care. Final tally: Hardcover/paperback sales combined are 10,000 copies.

Current status: Out of print. Small but loyal cult following; 10 years later adoring fans still show up at readings, clutching well-worn copies, eager to tell me how book changed their lives.

Conclusion drawn then: Being an author, working with the best editor and the best publisher on earth is a dream come true.

Conclusion drawn now: There is a downside to getting a big advance for a first book.

The Desperate Years: 1996-98

"A small number of major houses account for the lion's share of publishing's annual revenues of about $20 billion ... In 1996 [in the U.S.] an astounding 140,000 new or revised titles were issued."


-- Phil Mattera, vice president, National Writers Union
"Crisis of the Midlist Author in American Book Publishing"
Revue Française d'Études Américaines, October 1998

1997: Agent submits new manuscript to Editor Who Still Loves Me (despite disappointing sales of first book). EWSLM, enthused, takes manuscript to pub board. Sales director rejects new book, citing losses incurred by first one. EWSLM acknowledges to agent: It's not the book being rejected; it's the author.

Question to agent: "Is my career as a writer over?"

Agent's answer: "I'm going to need to try something unheard of to get you back in the game."

Agent offers EWSLM unprecedented deal: If publisher will buy new book, we'll forgo advance to help defray losses from first one. EWSLM gently advises agent to "pursue other avenues." Agent gently advises me to "pursue other genres."

To keep daughter in Nikes while writing short-story collection, I write Web copy for dot-coms, ghostwrite celebrity bio (Book 2). Agent sends out collection; collection rejected by 10 editors. Agent suggests I "take a break." I start pursuing other agents.

Celebrity bio becomes national bestseller. It doesn't go on my permanent record, though, since it doesn't have my name on it.

Question to potential new agent: "Do you think changing agents will help my career?"

New agent's answer (in so many words): "It sure can't hurt."

Conclusion Drawn Then: Even most loyal, powerful editor employed by best publisher on earth can't override power of profit & loss statement.

Conclusion Drawn Now: Even most loyal, powerful editor employed by best publisher on earth can't override power of profit & loss statement.

Interlude: It's Nothing Personal

"Hardcover publishers lose money on most of their titles and depend greatly on a few bestsellers ... the large publishers are increasingly inclined to concentrate their resources on books that have the greatest potential to become bestsellers. Like Hollywood, book publishing has become a business driven by the quest for blockbusters."



-- Phil Mattera, op. cit.

Book 3: Contract signed 1998. Book published 2001. Advance: $10,000.

Book takes two years, intensive research, mostly joy to write.

Book rejected by 10 publishers; lone editor making offer promises to "make up for the modest advance with great publicity on the back end." Desperate to "get back in the game," I accept advance that's less than 10 percent of first one from editor who never returns my calls, continues to misspell my name.

Minuscule advance means no publicity budget. No publicity would mean this Second Chance Book will, instead, be Last Book. I hire freelance publicist at $1,500 per city, $5,000 to pitch to national media. I hand over half of advance, sign contract with publicist acknowledging no guarantee of outcome. Spend six months working full-time on own publicity in key cities; publicist focuses on nationals. Publicist books me on 55 radio shows, some local and B-list national TV.

Book hits local bestseller lists on pub date, stays there six months. Book wins awards. Glowing review in Time magazine nets calls from Hollywood producers. Screenwriter spends weekends at my house "to get inside my head," talks incessantly about her ongoing extramarital affair. One year later, screenwriter tells my agent she's too busy to pursue our project. Now too late to pursue once-interested producers. Neither agent nor I have received compensation for year spent working/negotiating with screenwriter.

Pitch line: None. Whose job was that?

Sales: Publisher announces print run of 20,000; prints 7,000, then four more printings over next year.

Current tally: Hardcover/paperback sales combined are 25,000 copies.

Question to agent: "How can we capitalize on these solid sales?"

Agent's answer: "Write a new book -- quick."

Current status: Three years later book still yields $600 royalty checks (after agent's 15 percent commission) every six months. Total earnings to me, after agent commission and publicist fee, are $21,000.

Conclusion Drawn Then: A $10,000 book advance is only worth taking out of pure desperation.

Conclusion Drawn Now: Sometimes it's worth taking out a loan to write a book. The trick is knowing when.

Interlude: Publishing Used To Be

"Publishing used to be almost a family business. Often a publisher would see talent in a new young writer and support that writer for many years, printing book after book that didn't sell, trusting that eventually the writer would 'break through' and make it big. The publisher was the friend and champion of the writer, willing to risk again and again for a writer [the house] believed in. Those days are long past."


-- Jeff Kirvin, op. cit.

Book 4: Contract signed 2002. Book published 2004. Advance: $80,000

Book takes two years, hellish research, difficult and delightful to write.

Love my editor at third publishing house; editor loves me. Medium-sized advance based on previous bestseller means medium-sized publicity budget. Book assigned to Sharp Young Publicist, so I don't hire freelance publicist. Six months before pub date SYP initiates meetings with major media outlets; tells me to choose between "Good Morning America" and "Today," Redbook and O, advises me to buy "great TV clothes." One month before pub date, publisher ("Mr. Big II") calls with bad news: SYP is MIA.

Mr. Big II assigns Junior Assistant Publicist to "lock down" Major Media Bookings made by SYP. After calling several "confirmed" producers, JAP concludes that SYP fabricated bookings while secretly preparing to "pursue other opportunities."

JAP makes heroic effort, books local media (I wear "Good Morning America" outfit for three-minute interview on local cable news show), is unable to book promised national media. Book wins awards; sales flat, even in areas saturated by local media coverage.

Pitch line: "The much-anticipated new book from the best-selling author of 'Y Marks the Spot'!"

Sales: Based on major media bookings promised by SYP, publisher announces print run of 35,000; based on lack of national media, publisher prints 10,000. Sales figures not in yet; projections not pretty.

Question to agent: "Is my career as a writer over?"

Agent's answer: "Write a new book proposal now, before the bookstores start shipping returns."

Current status: One hardcover copy (or less) available, spine-out, on a shelf hidden deep in the bowels of your local bookstore.

Conclusion Drawn Then: National media undoubtedly would have helped. But -- no matter how painstakingly written, no matter how enthusiastically promoted, no matter how glowingly reviewed, for reasons beyond mortal knowing, some books Just Don't Sell.

Conclusion Drawn Now: Maybe my career as a writer is over.

Just Ask Any Midlist Author -- This Happens All the Time

Stranger on a plane, at a party, on a date: "Wow -- you're a writer! Have I heard of you?"

Midlist Author: "Probably not."

Stranger: "Wow -- you're a writer! Have I read anything you've written?"

Midlist: "Probably not."

Stranger: "Wow -- you're a writer! Will I see your books at Barnes & Noble?"

Midlist: "Only if you look really hard."

Stranger: "I can't wait to tell my wife I met a real author! What's your name again?"

Book 5

New book proposal written overnight, submitted to editor of Book 4. Editor loves idea, pitches to pub board. Pub board loves idea, agrees to make offer. Editor/agent have celebratory lunch: Despite Book 4's lackluster sales, publisher is certain Book 5 will be my Biggest Book Yet. Editor No. 2 Who Still Loves Me (despite dismal sales of Book 4) says, "We want you to be a house author. We believe in you."

Despite eerie echoes of E#1WSLM, my Midlist Author's heart sings. At last I've found what every author wants: loyal publisher for life. Editor leaks terms of forthcoming offer: $80,000, since Book 5 is "so much more commercial" than my previous books.

Editor reassures agent daily that offer is forthcoming. Offer does not forthcome.

Three weeks after celebratory lunch, normally overly optimistic agent calls, sounding near tears. "It's bad, Jane. They're not going to make an offer." Mr. Big III overrode pub board. Citing lackluster sales of Book 4, wants to avoid "throwing good money after bad."

Comment to agent: "My career as a writer is over."

Agent's answer: "They're not the only publisher in town."

Comment to agent: "They're one imprint of the biggest publisher in town, which means we can't sell the book to any of that publisher's other 15 imprints. And I'm already banned from Publisher No. 1 and its 15 imprints. How many publishers does that leave?"

Current status: Rewritten Book 5 rejected by nine editors. Most love book; all say it's "not commercial enough." Three-times-rewritten manuscript currently under consideration by four -- oops, just received rejection e-mail from editor whose boss says it's not commercial enough -- three "interested editors," two in same Manhattan high-rise as editors who have already rejected it.

Conveying news of latest rejection, agent mentions we'll be lucky to get $50,000; explains, "Publishers aren't overpaying anymore. They know they'll just break even if they pay $50,000 and sell 20,000 copies in hardcover, which few books ever do."

I realize if I'm "overpaid" I'll earn $50,000 minus $7,500 agent commission. That's $42,500 for three years' work. Agent, who's now spent five months doing back flips to sell book, will earn $3,000 less than she would have if book had sold to Book 4 publisher as planned.

Despite estimated 20 cents per hour pay earned while in my employ, agent tells me, "Just because publishers define success by the numbers, you don't have to. You write important books. You should feel proud of yourself. And you must keep writing."

Sales: Interested editor tells me during phone interview, "Ten years ago, a book that sold 20,000 copies was considered a dud. Now we pray for that."

Pray, and, apparently, pay accordingly.

Conclusion Drawn Now: When a book "fails to meet expectations," many are candidates for blame. But whether commercial failure results from market conditions, moon in Mercury retrograde, or publisher/editor/publicist/sales force/author malfeasance, the consequences are the same. Those with jobs keep them. Only the author's livelihood is threatened. Only the author is punished.

Interlude: A Midlist Author Friend Writes

"'Celeste' [my editor of several previous books] offered a measly rotten $25K again. I countered with $35 plus foreign and it looks like I'll get that. I mean, I didn't earn out even at the pittance I am advanced so I didn't expect much. But, perhaps, perhaps, to keep my morale up, you could hint to [publishing people you know] that I have been offered a ludicrous amount of money? Please? If we could start a rumor like that it would be helpful all around. I am sort of relieved that it will just be a one-book deal this time. Even though that makes me insecure, it also means that when I turn [interesting character] into my next book, I will be free to attempt to actually get six figures."

There Was a Time

"There was a time when writers of serious books not destined to become bestsellers could expect to get contracts from publishers that included decent terms and large enough advances to survive until the next book. Today such expectations are rarely met ... While publishers lavish large sums of money and lots of attention on a few high-profile authors, conditions have grown increasingly bad for those writers known as midlist authors."


-- Phil Mattera, vice president, National Writers Union, op. cit.

There was a time, just a decade ago, when my life as a writer brimmed with hope and promise; when the world of work and words seemed open to endless possibility; when the music my editors and I made together -- the appreciation and, yes, the love they felt for me, the appreciation and love I felt for them -- made my heart sing in my chest and my words sing on the page.

There was a time when my life as a writer overrode my innate cynicism and doubt, moved me to tell my young daughter, cornball as it seemed even then, that dreams do come true, if you really want them to. Because what is a book made of, if not the spun sugar of a writer's wildest dreams?

"Does it ever get better?" I asked Patty, my most successful writer friend, recounting my midlist author's tale of woe.

"Not substantially," she answered. "My books sell well now, but I never stop wondering what'll happen to me when they don't."

"So why do we bother?" I moaned.

"Because this is the thing we do best," she said simply. "What else would we do?"

That question came home to me last week when, for the first time in 15 years, someone offered me a job. Without hesitation -- I'm a writer! -- I turned it down. Then I went home to another editor's rejection e-mail and called my agent, who advised me to take it. Of all the bad news you've given me, I said, this might be the worst. Have you given up on me as a writer?

"You'll always be a writer," she said. "But you won't be able to write if you're as worried about money and feeling as rejected as you've been. Maybe the thing that feels like it would strangle you will actually give you some room to breathe. When we sell the next book you can always quit the job."

My husband, greatest fan on earth of my writing, said the same thing. So did my best friend, and my father, and everyone else I asked. Clearly I hadn't been suffering in as much silence as I'd thought. Clearly, everyone who loves me had been worried about me. "Taking the job would feel like admitting failure," I told my now 19-year-old daughter, the girl I raised to believe that dreams do come true.

"You already succeeded as a writer, Mom," she said. "So what if you didn't make the All-Star team? You made the NBA."

I called my new -- gulp -- employer and accepted the job.

Interlude: A Midlist Author Friend Writes

"I'm having the worst publishing experience ever here. Every day it gets worse. It's like some kind of out-of-control nightmare that won't stop until this book has been completely killed and buried. Yesterday, I was debating whether or not to borrow some money to hire an independent publicist, but today I don't know if I can afford to risk it. At this point, it all seems like gambling. The book went on sale Tuesday (well, supposedly -- you can't find it here in [my hometown], even though this was the only place a review ran) -- one of the most depressing launches ever."

I Count Among the Losses

Looking back on my writing career I count among the losses the relationships -- indescribably intimate, more like marriages than friendships -- with the editors I counted on, and spoke to nearly every day for all the years of our contractual agreements, and loved and still love, who love me too but will never publish me again.

I count among the losses my conviction that mixing love and art and business is a risk worth taking, and that doing without any of these things isn't.

I count among the losses the hundreds of thousands of dollars that my books cost the publishers who believed in me enough to treat me respectfully and pay me well, and I count among the losses the profits I continue to generate for the one publisher who didn't.

I count as my greatest loss of all: hope, the most toxic, precious thing any writer has. Without a writer's foolish fantasies -- envisioning Book 5 piled in stacks of 50 in every airport bookstore, its carefully chosen title appearing on the Times bestseller list, my agent calling with breathtakingly, indisputably, non-euphemistically good news -- how can I face the otherwise overwhelming prospect of a book waiting to be written?

If I can't bring myself to hope that I'll have the chance to write Book 5, so my heart can be filled and emptied and broken again; if the privilege of being published hurts too much to be the thing I hope for, what will pull me -- and the multitudes of other midlist authors, who are, after all, the vast majority of published writers in this country -- through the long, unlit tunnel of writing another one?

What will we lose if writers like me stop writing? What are we losing now?

The End?

I ran into Patty the day her ninth book became her first to hit the Times bestseller list. She grabbed me by the shoulders, looked deep into my eyes. "It doesn't change anything," she said grimly. "My mother still doesn't approve of me. I still don't have a boyfriend. I still can't sleep at night. Don't let this be what you're waiting for."

And yet I wait for my agent's call, telling me there's another chance that it could happen for me.

And so I wait. And I wait.


- - - - - - - - - - - -

Salon.com
The confessions of a semi-successful author
I've published several books, won adoring reviews, and even sold a few copies. But I've made almost no money and had my heart broken. Here's everything you don't want to know about how publishing really works.

Editor's note: Although the author's name and some identifying details have been changed, the facts, quotes, e-mails and tragedy depicted in this story are real.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Jane Austen Doe

March 22, 2004 | "A midlist author is one whose books are well received but have failed to make a commercial breakthrough; whose work sells solidly but unspectacularly, who's well known within the writing community but the majority of book buyers have never heard his name."


-- David Armstrong, "How Not to Write a Novel: Confessions of a Midlist Author," 2003

Reader Advisory: By the end of this story I will have broken the most sacred rules of modern authordom. I'll tell you how much my publishers have paid me for the books I've written. I'll tell you how many copies each of those books has sold. I'll share with you some of the secrets, lies and euphemisms told to me by my publishers, editors, publicists and agents in their efforts to comfort, pacify and motivate me, and I'll share some of the salient facts that make those secrets, lies and euphemisms such common industry currency.

If you don't want to hear about the noir underside of publishing -- if you're a writer longing for a literary career, or a reader who's happier not knowing that producing and marketing a book these days involves about as much moral purity as producing and marketing a pair of Nikes -- I suggest you stop reading now.

Still with me? Great. But who, exactly, might I be? I'm not saying. Because although I've published books and articles about things most people won't talk about, let alone publish -- my sex life and marriage counseling, my quirky predilections and unpopular politics, my worst mistakes and no-longer-secret yearnings -- I'm using a pseudonym to write this story, because telling the truth about my life as a writer is one risk I can't afford to take.

Thinking you'll put the clues together, figure out who I am? Give it your best shot. If you could identify me based on the story I'm about to tell you, I wouldn't have it to tell.

Here's a Clue: You might know me by my number: 40,137. That's today's sales ranking of my latest book on Amazon.

Sadly, this is also how I rate myself: Not bad, not nearly good enough.

Interlude: A Midlist Author Friend Writes

"Tales of the midlist author: When [my latest book] came out a few weeks ago, it bounced around the Amazon rankings in the 25,000 to 30,000 range, supported there by the radio shows I'm doing and my buddy who runs [a Web] bulletin board. Then last Thursday, I mailed a 450-piece promotion to my personal list, pitching Amazon that's selling the book for 30 percent off list. This morning, [my latest book] is No. 1,665. Now, we all know that the Amazon rankings are a distorted mirror and can't be taken too, too seriously. On the other hand, they're the only instant sales data midlist authors have. So I'm encouraged. My mailing to 750 members of the [organization presumably interested in my latest book] goes out this weekend. Fingers crossed that I see at least one day in three figures."

The Story

Being the author of several critically acclaimed, moderately successful books has given me an extraordinary, exciting, occasionally lucrative, quite public life. It has also broken my heart.

Nothing makes me happier than writing. And, thanks to the rules that govern publishing today, nothing I've ever done for a living -- housecleaning, data entry, creating campaigns for big-name, cutthroat ad agencies, full-time motherhood -- has been as hard on me as being a writer.

Being an author is the culmination of a lifelong dream. And -- because the sales of each book I write determine my ability to remain one -- being an author has ruined many of my greatest lifelong pleasures. Reading a book that's poorly written I pace the floor, beseeching the Muses, God and the editors of Publishers Weekly to explain why trash like this sells so much better than serious books like mine. Reading a book that's well written, I writhe, instead, with envy.

Relax with a glossy magazine on a sun-splashed beach? Not me, not anymore. The magazine doesn't exist that hasn't either published or rejected my work, and there's a trail of tears behind every story. Sunday morning in bed with a steaming cup of French roast, a well-schmeared bagel, the book review section of the New York Times? Sounds great -- if only I could sip, chew and gnash my teeth all at once. Veg out in front of the tube? Impossible. Playboy is nearly the only channel that hasn't scheduled, then cancelled me -- each booking raising hopes of thousands of copies sold; each cancellation a stake driven through the heart of my career.

Never an enthusiastic employee, I quit my job at age 35 to become a full-time writer, to live life on my own terms. After publishing four books -- each of them critically acclaimed, several of them award-winners, none of them big enough sellers to ensure my next book contract, let alone the lifetime of book contracts I crave -- I feel less in control of my finances, my schedule, my priorities and my well-being than I did when I had bosses and employees to answer to.

Acknowledgment Of Good Fortune

Believe me, I know I'm lucky to be published at all. I've read enough talented unpublished writers to realize just how arbitrary that privilege is. I'm more fortunate still to have had publishers who made significant investments in my books, editors who have gone to the mat for me, an agent I admire and trust. For more than a decade I've earned a reasonable living as a writer, raised a child as a writer, had a mostly great time being one.

You know that bumper sticker, "I love humanity -- it's people I can't stand"? Well, I love writing. It's publishing I can't stand.

Statement of the Problem

In the 10 years since I signed my first book contract, the publishing industry has changed in ways that are devastating -- emotionally, financially, professionally, spiritually, and creatively -- to midlist authors like me. You've read about it in your morning paper: Once-genteel "houses" gobbled up by slavering conglomerates; independent bookstores cannibalized by chain and online retailers; book sales sinking as the number of TV channels soars. What once was about literature is now about return on investment. What once was hand-sold one by one by well-read, book-loving booksellers now moves by the pallet-load at Wal-Mart and Borders -- or doesn't move at all.

Interlude: Publishing Today Is a Business

"Publishing today is a business, dominated by stockholders and profit margins, run entirely according to the hard, cold numbers. Investors in the major megacorporations that own nearly all of the New York majors want profit, and lots of it. In a business that traditionally makes maybe 4-6 percent profit in a good year, today's stockholders are demanding 15-18 percent. Gone are the days when a publisher could nurture a writer with potential through several lackluster efforts. Today's editors can't afford a single flop."


-- Jeff Kirvin, "What's Wrong With Publishing," January 2002.

Mine is what editors call "the human story behind the headlines." But it's not just about me; not just about the many wonderful, once-revered writers I know, who -- loving the craft of writing, hating the damage that being a writer has done to them -- aren't writers any more.

It's about the narrowing of the breadth and depth and diversity of our culture: the quieting of all but the blandest voices, the elimination of all but the safest choices. It's about what it will mean to you if the blunt force of commerce succeeds in silencing midlist authors like me.

Interlude: Excerpt From the Unacknowledged, Unpublished Publishing Glossary of Terms

When they say: "Americans read trash, not meaningful books like yours. You'd need to worry if your books were commercially successful."

What that means: "Your next advance -- if there is one -- will be half the size of your last."

When they say: "Your book will have a long life in paperback."

What that means: "We'll be forced to throw good money after bad to recoup our losses on the hardcover."

When they say: "Your career is building slowly but steadily."

What that means: "Time to look for a day job."

As Promised: The Unexpurgated, Possibly Unfinished History of One Midlist Author's Life

Book 1: Contract signed 1994. Book published 1996. Advance: $150,000.

Book takes one year, no research, pure joy to write.

I love my editor; my editor loves me.

Several publishers vying to buy book means book sells at auction for big advance. Big advance means big publicity budget. Big publicity budget means promotion handled by publicity director, which means reviews in top newspapers, excerpts in top magazines, TV and radio appearances, four weeks on two bestseller lists, seven-city tour. Publisher (Mr. Big) sends handwritten note, thanking me for "writing the great book we all knew you had it in you to write."

Question to agent: "Is there a downside to an unknown author getting such a big advance for a first book?"

Agent's answer: "What are you gonna do, turn it down?"

Pitch line: "Welcome a fresh new voice!"

Sales: I don't ask. No one seems to care. Final tally: Hardcover/paperback sales combined are 10,000 copies.

Current status: Out of print. Small but loyal cult following; 10 years later adoring fans still show up at readings, clutching well-worn copies, eager to tell me how book changed their lives.

Conclusion drawn then: Being an author, working with the best editor and the best publisher on earth is a dream come true.

Conclusion drawn now: There is a downside to getting a big advance for a first book.

The Desperate Years: 1996-98

"A small number of major houses account for the lion's share of publishing's annual revenues of about $20 billion ... In 1996 [in the U.S.] an astounding 140,000 new or revised titles were issued."


-- Phil Mattera, vice president, National Writers Union
"Crisis of the Midlist Author in American Book Publishing"
Revue Française d'Études Américaines, October 1998

1997: Agent submits new manuscript to Editor Who Still Loves Me (despite disappointing sales of first book). EWSLM, enthused, takes manuscript to pub board. Sales director rejects new book, citing losses incurred by first one. EWSLM acknowledges to agent: It's not the book being rejected; it's the author.

Question to agent: "Is my career as a writer over?"

Agent's answer: "I'm going to need to try something unheard of to get you back in the game."

Agent offers EWSLM unprecedented deal: If publisher will buy new book, we'll forgo advance to help defray losses from first one. EWSLM gently advises agent to "pursue other avenues." Agent gently advises me to "pursue other genres."

To keep daughter in Nikes while writing short-story collection, I write Web copy for dot-coms, ghostwrite celebrity bio (Book 2). Agent sends out collection; collection rejected by 10 editors. Agent suggests I "take a break." I start pursuing other agents.

Celebrity bio becomes national bestseller. It doesn't go on my permanent record, though, since it doesn't have my name on it.

Question to potential new agent: "Do you think changing agents will help my career?"

New agent's answer (in so many words): "It sure can't hurt."

Conclusion Drawn Then: Even most loyal, powerful editor employed by best publisher on earth can't override power of profit & loss statement.

Conclusion Drawn Now: Even most loyal, powerful editor employed by best publisher on earth can't override power of profit & loss statement.

Interlude: It's Nothing Personal

"Hardcover publishers lose money on most of their titles and depend greatly on a few bestsellers ... the large publishers are increasingly inclined to concentrate their resources on books that have the greatest potential to become bestsellers. Like Hollywood, book publishing has become a business driven by the quest for blockbusters."



-- Phil Mattera, op. cit.

Book 3: Contract signed 1998. Book published 2001. Advance: $10,000.

Book takes two years, intensive research, mostly joy to write.

Book rejected by 10 publishers; lone editor making offer promises to "make up for the modest advance with great publicity on the back end." Desperate to "get back in the game," I accept advance that's less than 10 percent of first one from editor who never returns my calls, continues to misspell my name.

Minuscule advance means no publicity budget. No publicity would mean this Second Chance Book will, instead, be Last Book. I hire freelance publicist at $1,500 per city, $5,000 to pitch to national media. I hand over half of advance, sign contract with publicist acknowledging no guarantee of outcome. Spend six months working full-time on own publicity in key cities; publicist focuses on nationals. Publicist books me on 55 radio shows, some local and B-list national TV.

Book hits local bestseller lists on pub date, stays there six months. Book wins awards. Glowing review in Time magazine nets calls from Hollywood producers. Screenwriter spends weekends at my house "to get inside my head," talks incessantly about her ongoing extramarital affair. One year later, screenwriter tells my agent she's too busy to pursue our project. Now too late to pursue once-interested producers. Neither agent nor I have received compensation for year spent working/negotiating with screenwriter.

Pitch line: None. Whose job was that?

Sales: Publisher announces print run of 20,000; prints 7,000, then four more printings over next year.

Current tally: Hardcover/paperback sales combined are 25,000 copies.

Question to agent: "How can we capitalize on these solid sales?"

Agent's answer: "Write a new book -- quick."

Current status: Three years later book still yields $600 royalty checks (after agent's 15 percent commission) every six months. Total earnings to me, after agent commission and publicist fee, are $21,000.

Conclusion Drawn Then: A $10,000 book advance is only worth taking out of pure desperation.

Conclusion Drawn Now: Sometimes it's worth taking out a loan to write a book. The trick is knowing when.

Interlude: Publishing Used To Be

"Publishing used to be almost a family business. Often a publisher would see talent in a new young writer and support that writer for many years, printing book after book that didn't sell, trusting that eventually the writer would 'break through' and make it big. The publisher was the friend and champion of the writer, willing to risk again and again for a writer [the house] believed in. Those days are long past."


-- Jeff Kirvin, op. cit.

Book 4: Contract signed 2002. Book published 2004. Advance: $80,000

Book takes two years, hellish research, difficult and delightful to write.

Love my editor at third publishing house; editor loves me. Medium-sized advance based on previous bestseller means medium-sized publicity budget. Book assigned to Sharp Young Publicist, so I don't hire freelance publicist. Six months before pub date SYP initiates meetings with major media outlets; tells me to choose between "Good Morning America" and "Today," Redbook and O, advises me to buy "great TV clothes." One month before pub date, publisher ("Mr. Big II") calls with bad news: SYP is MIA.

Mr. Big II assigns Junior Assistant Publicist to "lock down" Major Media Bookings made by SYP. After calling several "confirmed" producers, JAP concludes that SYP fabricated bookings while secretly preparing to "pursue other opportunities."

JAP makes heroic effort, books local media (I wear "Good Morning America" outfit for three-minute interview on local cable news show), is unable to book promised national media. Book wins awards; sales flat, even in areas saturated by local media coverage.

Pitch line: "The much-anticipated new book from the best-selling author of 'Y Marks the Spot'!"

Sales: Based on major media bookings promised by SYP, publisher announces print run of 35,000; based on lack of national media, publisher prints 10,000. Sales figures not in yet; projections not pretty.

Question to agent: "Is my career as a writer over?"

Agent's answer: "Write a new book proposal now, before the bookstores start shipping returns."

Current status: One hardcover copy (or less) available, spine-out, on a shelf hidden deep in the bowels of your local bookstore.

Conclusion Drawn Then: National media undoubtedly would have helped. But -- no matter how painstakingly written, no matter how enthusiastically promoted, no matter how glowingly reviewed, for reasons beyond mortal knowing, some books Just Don't Sell.

Conclusion Drawn Now: Maybe my career as a writer is over.

Just Ask Any Midlist Author -- This Happens All the Time

Stranger on a plane, at a party, on a date: "Wow -- you're a writer! Have I heard of you?"

Midlist Author: "Probably not."

Stranger: "Wow -- you're a writer! Have I read anything you've written?"

Midlist: "Probably not."

Stranger: "Wow -- you're a writer! Will I see your books at Barnes & Noble?"

Midlist: "Only if you look really hard."

Stranger: "I can't wait to tell my wife I met a real author! What's your name again?"

Book 5

New book proposal written overnight, submitted to editor of Book 4. Editor loves idea, pitches to pub board. Pub board loves idea, agrees to make offer. Editor/agent have celebratory lunch: Despite Book 4's lackluster sales, publisher is certain Book 5 will be my Biggest Book Yet. Editor No. 2 Who Still Loves Me (despite dismal sales of Book 4) says, "We want you to be a house author. We believe in you."

Despite eerie echoes of E#1WSLM, my Midlist Author's heart sings. At last I've found what every author wants: loyal publisher for life. Editor leaks terms of forthcoming offer: $80,000, since Book 5 is "so much more commercial" than my previous books.

Editor reassures agent daily that offer is forthcoming. Offer does not forthcome.

Three weeks after celebratory lunch, normally overly optimistic agent calls, sounding near tears. "It's bad, Jane. They're not going to make an offer." Mr. Big III overrode pub board. Citing lackluster sales of Book 4, wants to avoid "throwing good money after bad."

Comment to agent: "My career as a writer is over."

Agent's answer: "They're not the only publisher in town."

Comment to agent: "They're one imprint of the biggest publisher in town, which means we can't sell the book to any of that publisher's other 15 imprints. And I'm already banned from Publisher No. 1 and its 15 imprints. How many publishers does that leave?"

Current status: Rewritten Book 5 rejected by nine editors. Most love book; all say it's "not commercial enough." Three-times-rewritten manuscript currently under consideration by four -- oops, just received rejection e-mail from editor whose boss says it's not commercial enough -- three "interested editors," two in same Manhattan high-rise as editors who have already rejected it.

Conveying news of latest rejection, agent mentions we'll be lucky to get $50,000; explains, "Publishers aren't overpaying anymore. They know they'll just break even if they pay $50,000 and sell 20,000 copies in hardcover, which few books ever do."

I realize if I'm "overpaid" I'll earn $50,000 minus $7,500 agent commission. That's $42,500 for three years' work. Agent, who's now spent five months doing back flips to sell book, will earn $3,000 less than she would have if book had sold to Book 4 publisher as planned.

Despite estimated 20 cents per hour pay earned while in my employ, agent tells me, "Just because publishers define success by the numbers, you don't have to. You write important books. You should feel proud of yourself. And you must keep writing."

Sales: Interested editor tells me during phone interview, "Ten years ago, a book that sold 20,000 copies was considered a dud. Now we pray for that."

Pray, and, apparently, pay accordingly.

Conclusion Drawn Now: When a book "fails to meet expectations," many are candidates for blame. But whether commercial failure results from market conditions, moon in Mercury retrograde, or publisher/editor/publicist/sales force/author malfeasance, the consequences are the same. Those with jobs keep them. Only the author's livelihood is threatened. Only the author is punished.

Interlude: A Midlist Author Friend Writes

"'Celeste' [my editor of several previous books] offered a measly rotten $25K again. I countered with $35 plus foreign and it looks like I'll get that. I mean, I didn't earn out even at the pittance I am advanced so I didn't expect much. But, perhaps, perhaps, to keep my morale up, you could hint to [publishing people you know] that I have been offered a ludicrous amount of money? Please? If we could start a rumor like that it would be helpful all around. I am sort of relieved that it will just be a one-book deal this time. Even though that makes me insecure, it also means that when I turn [interesting character] into my next book, I will be free to attempt to actually get six figures."

There Was a Time

"There was a time when writers of serious books not destined to become bestsellers could expect to get contracts from publishers that included decent terms and large enough advances to survive until the next book. Today such expectations are rarely met ... While publishers lavish large sums of money and lots of attention on a few high-profile authors, conditions have grown increasingly bad for those writers known as midlist authors."


-- Phil Mattera, vice president, National Writers Union, op. cit.

There was a time, just a decade ago, when my life as a writer brimmed with hope and promise; when the world of work and words seemed open to endless possibility; when the music my editors and I made together -- the appreciation and, yes, the love they felt for me, the appreciation and love I felt for them -- made my heart sing in my chest and my words sing on the page.

There was a time when my life as a writer overrode my innate cynicism and doubt, moved me to tell my young daughter, cornball as it seemed even then, that dreams do come true, if you really want them to. Because what is a book made of, if not the spun sugar of a writer's wildest dreams?

"Does it ever get better?" I asked Patty, my most successful writer friend, recounting my midlist author's tale of woe.

"Not substantially," she answered. "My books sell well now, but I never stop wondering what'll happen to me when they don't."

"So why do we bother?" I moaned.

"Because this is the thing we do best," she said simply. "What else would we do?"

That question came home to me last week when, for the first time in 15 years, someone offered me a job. Without hesitation -- I'm a writer! -- I turned it down. Then I went home to another editor's rejection e-mail and called my agent, who advised me to take it. Of all the bad news you've given me, I said, this might be the worst. Have you given up on me as a writer?

"You'll always be a writer," she said. "But you won't be able to write if you're as worried about money and feeling as rejected as you've been. Maybe the thing that feels like it would strangle you will actually give you some room to breathe. When we sell the next book you can always quit the job."

My husband, greatest fan on earth of my writing, said the same thing. So did my best friend, and my father, and everyone else I asked. Clearly I hadn't been suffering in as much silence as I'd thought. Clearly, everyone who loves me had been worried about me. "Taking the job would feel like admitting failure," I told my now 19-year-old daughter, the girl I raised to believe that dreams do come true.

"You already succeeded as a writer, Mom," she said. "So what if you didn't make the All-Star team? You made the NBA."

I called my new -- gulp -- employer and accepted the job.

Interlude: A Midlist Author Friend Writes

"I'm having the worst publishing experience ever here. Every day it gets worse. It's like some kind of out-of-control nightmare that won't stop until this book has been completely killed and buried. Yesterday, I was debating whether or not to borrow some money to hire an independent publicist, but today I don't know if I can afford to risk it. At this point, it all seems like gambling. The book went on sale Tuesday (well, supposedly -- you can't find it here in [my hometown], even though this was the only place a review ran) -- one of the most depressing launches ever."

I Count Among the Losses

Looking back on my writing career I count among the losses the relationships -- indescribably intimate, more like marriages than friendships -- with the editors I counted on, and spoke to nearly every day for all the years of our contractual agreements, and loved and still love, who love me too but will never publish me again.

I count among the losses my conviction that mixing love and art and business is a risk worth taking, and that doing without any of these things isn't.

I count among the losses the hundreds of thousands of dollars that my books cost the publishers who believed in me enough to treat me respectfully and pay me well, and I count among the losses the profits I continue to generate for the one publisher who didn't.

I count as my greatest loss of all: hope, the most toxic, precious thing any writer has. Without a writer's foolish fantasies -- envisioning Book 5 piled in stacks of 50 in every airport bookstore, its carefully chosen title appearing on the Times bestseller list, my agent calling with breathtakingly, indisputably, non-euphemistically good news -- how can I face the otherwise overwhelming prospect of a book waiting to be written?

If I can't bring myself to hope that I'll have the chance to write Book 5, so my heart can be filled and emptied and broken again; if the privilege of being published hurts too much to be the thing I hope for, what will pull me -- and the multitudes of other midlist authors, who are, after all, the vast majority of published writers in this country -- through the long, unlit tunnel of writing another one?

What will we lose if writers like me stop writing? What are we losing now?

The End?

I ran into Patty the day her ninth book became her first to hit the Times bestseller list. She grabbed me by the shoulders, looked deep into my eyes. "It doesn't change anything," she said grimly. "My mother still doesn't approve of me. I still don't have a boyfriend. I still can't sleep at night. Don't let this be what you're waiting for."

And yet I wait for my agent's call, telling me there's another chance that it could happen for me.

And so I wait. And I wait.


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