Publishing Panel Number Three

And we’ve returned after a brief hiatus! Sorry about the mild delay in posting. I’ve been back from Sewanee for two weeks, and all that real life stuff I’d been neglecting (household chores; work that results in income; connection with loved ones, etc) caught up with me. But we now return to regularly scheduled programming. First, though, I’d like to announce that I got an advanced copy of Clackamas Literary Review last week containing my latest short story! That’s two officially in print, and I am (of course) excited. I also got galleys not long ago for my Ontario Review story. I’m such a wee professional.

But let’s get back to the business at hand, shall we? Mid-way through the conference, Sewanee played host to a pair of book publishers, who balanced out the magazine folk from earlier in the week. The first one was named Erica Schmidtz, a publisher at Grove Atlantic—whose original company “Grove” was founded in 1951 and was famous for their role in fighting the censorship battles of the fifties and sixties before merging with Atlantic Monthly Press fifteen years ago. They are now one of the few independent press houses still in existence. The second editor was Gary Fisketjon, a senior editor at Knopf, who began his career in the late 70s, which he described as a dire time in literary fiction. He seems to have rebounded nicely.

This panel was mostly question and answer, and resists coherent summary. So we’re going to eschew chronology altogether and just hit the highlights. One of the most interesting things they said is that for all the financial backing they throw at a product, the thing that most sells books is word of mouth, when people pass on something that they know is good. They do not know of a single print advertisement that ever generated enough money to pay for itself, for example, and also see limited value in poorly attended readings or literati debut parties. As a complement to their point about word of mouth, they both feel that the larger chain stores—with their rotating staff and mass-market emphasis—are precisely the wrong vehicle for promoting a new product, and lamented the demise of independent bookstores whose owners once championed beginning writers. They also said they don’t know of anyone (sigh) who has ever turned a blog into a successful sales engine—more on that later, perhaps.

Marketing aside, they were also full of little tidbits about the editing and selection process. Both said that almost no editing takes place in the actual office—which they consider a place of business. Editing, rather, takes place on the weekends and often at home, at the laboriously slow pace of five pages an hour. In addition to giving me a newfound respect for publishers, this fact also reinforced the idea that a book does not need to be perfect to be accepted for publication—most books initially aren’t, in fact, which is why the collaborative process exists. Similarly, Schmidtz and Fisketjon reiterated the idea that editors want to find and market talented writers every bit as much as talented writers want to be found and marketed, and that they love and are willing to bend over backwards for courteous people. They also said, however, that you really need an agent for your work, so you should do your homework and find one whose interests seem akin to your own. Even so, the pair said they turn down 99.9% of the work that agents send them. Ouch.

Speaking of “ouch”, I also received a less than thrilling response to the first question I’ve ever asked at one of these panels, which had to do with the differences between marketing a collection of short stories and marketing a novel. The editors glanced at each other nervously and said that short story collections, in their mind, aren’t much better than poetry collections—partially because a first-rate novel needs to tell one successful story, whereas a first-rate collection needs to tell ten or twelve. They went so far as to say that every five or ten years you have a collection that works and cited Interpreter of Maladies as an example. But these, they were quick to point out, are rare. More frequently, short story collections are taken on as part of a two-book deal with a novel.

Honestly, this was the panel that convinced me I needed to be working on a novel. Fortunately, I had one ready to go—and am glad to report that since returning from Sewanee I have written twenty-five reasonably coherent pages of a first chapter. I also, however, have very little idea what I’m doing—although I’m told few writers do, at first (have an idea what they’re doing, I mean, not what I’m doing . . . though I suppose both might be true). With that in mind, its time to bring this visit to blog-town to an end and, well, get back to work.

Check back soon for a summary of Alison Lurie’s craft lecture. I’ll see you then!

Posted by Alan Ackmann - Aug 16, 02:28 PM.
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