But don't you
think most writers want the big advance?
Not necessarily.
You need to be able to read your author. Some authors don't want the big
advance. Don't misunderstand me. I'm not talking about going from an advance of
a million dollars to an advance of ten thousand. It's really unfortunate, but
to some extent an advance is How much do you love me? I decided about ten years ago that the differential
of love in an auction is about seventy-five hundred dollars, which is really
unfortunate. So sometimes when I'm in an auction, and I know that the author
really wants to be with a certain publisher but the underbidder is determined
to have the book and will offer more to win the author, basically I go to the
underbidder and say, "Don't offer any more. Don't do it." Because the author
has made up her mind and I don't want the editor to be humiliated. I don't want
them to be embarrassed. I don't want to financially mug a publisher, get the
top amount, and then say, "Hey, guess what? Thanks for letting me use you, but
actually we never wanted you in the first place!" That's terrible. I have to
stay in business with these people. My job is to do the best job I can for my
author without ever being in collusion with the publisher. That's a very tricky
business.
Tell me
something that you often see beginning writers doing wrong.
I think they can
over-hype themselves. If they have a writing teacher, a letter will arrive from
the writing teacher. It's so transparent. It's not genuine. It feels like a
form of logrolling. And it doesn't really work with me. Or they will make false
comparisons between their book and other books.
This is the
magazine's Independent Press Issue. As you've watched the industry become more
and more corporate over the years, do you think it's been a good thing or a bad
thing for writers?
It's been a
terrible thing for writers.
Why?
First of all,
there are fewer publishers. When I started out, there were publishers all over
the place, all kinds of publishers that were legitimate companies, in business
legitimately, in New York. I mean, what's happening at Harcourt and Houghton is
just another nail in the coffin. I remember having a drink with Dick Snyder
maybe twenty-five years ago. He said something that I found appalling at the
time. He said that in twenty years—remember that this was twenty-five years
ago—there would be four publishers left. And we're not that far away from
that. We're really not. It's bad for writers in the same way that it's bad for
publishers to pick one or two big books and dump all your efforts and resources
into those books. It's great if you're the agent of one of those books. It's
terrific. Enjoy the ride. But you too will be on the other end of it if you
stay in this business long enough.
But I think the main thing that has been lost is a sense of diversity. I mean, everybody complains about this. There just seems to be a terrible sameness, and maybe it's because of the book groups and book clubs in this country, but it feels like readers in America are only having one of three or four conversations a month. Look, I love Khaled Hosseini. I love Elaine Koster. I love Susan Petersen Kennedy. I love everyone connected with The Kite Runner. But I read that book in bound galleys four or five years ago, and really, if one more person comes up to me on the beach this summer and says, "Oh! I love books too! Have you read The Kite Runner?" I really will kill myself. The opposite of that are the people who come up to me all the time saying that there is nothing to read. There is so much to read.
But what are
the implications for writers? Why is it bad?
It's bad for
writers because there is a sameness to conversations in the larger public. And
also because they have fewer choices. If you look at Publishers Lunch, you'll
see nonfiction, nonfiction, nonfiction, romance novel, paperback original,
nonfiction, nonfiction, and then there will be one novel that was sold. Everybody wants it to be obvious
and easy, but most books aren't. It would really be interesting to see whether
a book like The Beans of Egypt, Maine would be published today. It's a great book. Or take Annie Proulx. How
about that? Try describing that to
your editorial department and see how far you get. She's an extraordinary
writer, but you wouldn't get far at all.
So where do
we go from here?
I guess you have
to just keep putting your face to the wind, and never stop trying, and you have
to give publishers a chance to build an audience and a sense of family. I mean,
were doing that with Leif Enger's second book [So Brave, Young, and Handsome]. Paul Cirone, in this office, is the agent.
Honestly, we could've had an aggressive auction for that book. The trade
paperback sales of his first book [Peace Like a River] is one of the great sales stories of all time. Do
you know what the returns on that book are? They're zero! It's sold eight
hundred thousand copies! But we didn't shop him around. We wanted to do what
was right for the author, and the author was very comfortable with the deal we
came up with. The deal we came up with was unorthodox, but why not do that if you can? And Grove
was very happy. Their first printing is very hopeful, and it's on the extended New
York Times list, and he's doing this huge
tour. It might be a slightly old-fashioned business model, but it's one that
works for that particular author and that particular house. So why not stick
with it? I think that loyalty is
very important. Just like reader loyalty is important, loyalty to a publisher
is important.
How has
technology changed the business from your perspective?
I'll tell you,
what is hard about being an agent now is the Internet. The Internet is both the
joy and the bane of everybody's existence. The bane part of it for me, for an
agent, is that it used to be that authors were in isolation. Which was partly
bad, obviously, but it was also a good thing because they really got to focus
on their work and confront what was on the page. They weren't distracted and
hyped up by too much information. Today, if you are a writer of a certain
genre, you feel that you've got to get blurbs, you've got to cultivate all
these people, you've got to go to this or that event, and on and on. So you
have writers who aren't really being given enough time to write the best book
they can write. And meanwhile they have become a kind of awful consumer. There
are a lot of conversations about who has what. Like, "Well, Joe Blow has shelf
talkers. Why don't I have shelf talkers?" No! I don't want to hear about Joe
Blow's shelf talkers. You don't have shelf talkers because your career is set
within an entirely different context than the person you just mentioned. They
all compare notes. They compare advances. Part of it is that they have been
told it's no longer enough to just write a good book. They are told that they
have to get out there, press the flesh, have blogs, have Web pages, and get
advance quotes from everybody and their dogs. Then they're told, "By the way,
don't you think it would be a good idea to do two books this year?" This is
insane! It is altogether too fast. Everything in this business is too fast.
But how can
you build a career anymore if you don't do that stuff as an author?
You can. You
have to have some luck. I mean, look at Paul Cirone's author, Megan Abbott.
She's building a career. She's on her third or fourth book. She just won an
Edgar. She's under contract. She's with the same publisher. She hasn't had
outrageously great sales, but she's building an audience. She is a great, edgy,
funny, noir mystery writer.
What about
for a literary writer? Maybe a writer who has published a couple of books that
haven't sold too well?
They are in
trouble. I'm not going to soft-pedal that. It's very, very, very painful.
So what do
they do?
Well, thirty or
forty or eighty years ago when people said, "Don't give up your day job," there
was probably some wisdom to that. Certainly, if you get a large enough advance
and decide to recklessly give up your day job, at least don't give up your
insurance. Hang on to one writing class, which gives you insurance and protects
you and gives you the potential for tenure. Don't give it up. The first thing I
tell my authors when they sell their first book is to try to live as though
they don't have the money yet. Don't start building additions on your house.
Don't start taking expensive trips to Sicily. Try to remember that this might
not happen again. It's very important to me that people live within their income,
whether your income is thirty thousand dollars a year or thirty times that.
Tell me how
you spend most days.
I would say
being on the phone. Of course I do a lot of e-mail now, and I see the
advantages of hiding behind e-mail. A lot of the day is spent getting
information. Learning. I really read every catalogue that is sent to me. I
genuinely want to know what people are doing. From the moment I take a project
on, there is not a book I'm reading—if it's remotely relevant to building an
argument or a case for positioning that book—that won't in some way inform or
aid me in selling that book, or in understanding that project or the
marketplace. A lot of time is spent doing that, and getting information. Who's
selling what? The stuff in Publishers Lunch, I'm sorry to say, is rarely the
big deals. Those can be the people who want the publicity, they want to be out
there. It's great for them. Good. Fine. But it's not the big deals. Sometimes
the big deals aren't even in the rights guides.
What is the hardest thing for you about your job?
The whining. I won't have it. I don't
whine. I don't want whining from editors. I don't want whining from my authors.
I don't want to read about authors I don't represent who whine. I want every
single person who gets published to be grateful that they get to be published,
because many of their colleagues don't get to be published. I don't want
whining about money or any aspect of the business. Of course that doesn't mean
I don't want to know when you have a problem. It is my job to help you figure
out whether a problem is legitimate or whether it is just nervousness,
paranoia, insecurity, fear, dread, the sense that the world is passing you by
and you haven't heard from anybody. You've got to get a writers group, a mother,
a spouse. You have to seek your support system elsewhere. Because that's not
the job of an agent. When I see a problem, believe me, I'm already going at it.
The question is: Do I get on the phone with the editor or do I get on the phone
with the author and tell him I'm going to get on the phone with the editor, and
then not have time to get on the phone with the editor? In other words, you
have to trust that your agent is doing her job. When your agent says, "I will
take care of this," chances are really good that the agent will take care of
it. But at the same time, you can't assume that agents are always effective. I
can howl, scream, beg, sob, and implore, but it doesn't always mean that my
howling will make a difference. Sometimes the answer is just, "No. We've decided
not to publish this book in paperback. The sales of this book in hardcover were
three thousand copies, and we won't publish it in paperback."
What do you love most about your job?
Here is the thing about me as an agent:
I am not only looking for literature that may be a contender. If I cry at three
different points in a manuscript—even if it is lumpy, and overlong, and deeply
flawed—then I am going to go to bat for it. I love finding something and
getting the whole world to read it. Changing somebody's life. Changing a
writer's life. I love the thrill of loving something and really believing in
it, and then selling it really well. All agents know when they've done a good
job. They know when they've done a crappy job too. They know when they've let
their author down and when they've let themselves down by extension. It doesn't
matter if you've sold the book for a song or really aggressively. You know when
you've done well by a book and the book's author. And then having it all work out?
Having it be published well? Being part of that ride? I mean, it's great to be
right. It's wonderfully validating. It's thrilling to share in an author's
success. Frank
McCourt is an obvious example. What gets better than that? And to have an
author who remains unspoiled, like Frank has? It is just a joy to represent an
author like that. He always has been. He's so appreciative and never complains.
And when he does complain it's because he's making a joke out of it. He called
me up one time, maybe a year after Angela's Ashes had come out, and he
said, "Oh Lord, Molly, the taxes." And I said, "No, no, no, no, no. If you're
making enough money to complain about taxes, you don't get to complain about
taxes." He laughed and said, "All right, fine!" He's just a joy to work with.
Is there anything you haven't accomplished that you still
want to?
No. I just want to always be in the
game. I
want to work for at least another ten years. I don't want to retire when I'm in
a walker. The reason why this is such a great job, first of all, is
that I've been able to work around my children and my life. I have been able to
call my hours my own to an unusual extent, in a way that would not have been
possible if I stayed at Doubleday. But I have a very highly developed work
ethic. I work really hard. What is extraordinary about this business is that we
get to be more interesting than we would otherwise be. Because of our work.
That's really important. In other words, we do go to dinner parties, and we do
meet interesting people, and reading remains and will always remain a great
common currency. It's fantastic to work in the world of ideas, and great plots,
and the great insights that are given to us by writers. I don't ever want to be
far away from that. And I won't be. I refuse. I feel deeply privileged to be in
this business. So what if it's changing? I'm not going to change as quickly as
it changes—there's room for troglodytes like me. And I'm never going to rest
on my laurels. Because if you aren't always excited to get something in that is
fresh and new, then you shouldn't be in this business. If you're just going
along like a hamster in a wheel, then you've lost the pure white heat that
makes this business so much fun. And it should be
challenging. That's what separates the great agents from the good agents.
Jofie Ferrari-Adler is an editor at Grove/Atlantic.
Comments
Geraldine V Birch replied on Permalink
Interview with Molly Friedrich
Nissi replied on Permalink
Inspirational
HollywoodNovelist replied on Permalink
The Kind of Agent I want in My Corner
Great interview! A beautiful combination of passion, fight, talent, knowledge and understanding. I want to be represented by this woman. I'm going to find a way to make it happen!