Barer: Or even if you’re excited, maybe the response you hoped for isn’t coming in. That time is a window of opportunity for us to work with the authors to build their presence in the marketplace.
Weed: We’ve had editors in here who say, “Yes, the blurb game is horrendous. But anytime I get a blurb, I can send it out to everybody in the company and it’s not going to be considered annoying or self-promoting.” If there’s anything we can be doing, we try to do it.
Bender: There’s an idea now that authors need to be savvy with social media. Ideally, they would be, but there are a lot who aren’t. That isn’t a nail in the coffin. It’s something that you work with.
Bloom: Some authors aren’t even aware of whom they know and whom their friends know. It might even just be a matter of building up their mailing list and making sure that you have everything lined up, so that when you are six weeks away from publication you have a time line for the parts of the plan that you are doing on your own.
What else do you tell your authors to do before publication?
Bender: Send presents to their publicists. Not necessarily in a financially burdensome way—a small gesture, like making cookies.
Barer: Small touches are very meaningful. No one is in this business for the glory or the cash.
Weed: I also tell my authors, right at the start, that I will return an e-mail or a phone call within twenty-four hours and I tell them to do the same. I have no ego about them following up with me about something. There’s a lot of playing tag. A lot of that window of time is staying on everybody to make sure they’re doing what they should be doing.
Barer: That fallow period is also a great time to start thinking about what you want to write next.
Bloom: One thing that I learned from all of you is the idea of making sure that the author keeps us in the loop on all communications. Sometimes things start happening and the process kicks in and all of a sudden you have first pass, second pass, galleys, and things are getting away from you.
Barer: The author doesn’t always know what to be looking for and we can say, “You know what, they actually forgot to do this.” Not intentionally. There’s just a lot of stuff going through a lot of hands.
Bloom: We actually have it in our client agreement now. “Please, remember to keep us in the loop.”
Barer: And don’t say yes to anything before we talk about it!
Bloom: Our biggest nightmare is when an author gets a jacket before consulting with us and says, “I love it!” or “I hate it!” We need to talk about these things before you reply.
Oh yes, the jacket conversation.
Barer: Are we there already?
It always comes up! What’s the best way to share a jacket with an author?
Barer: I don’t remember which editor told us this recently, but I thought it was a great idea. They just send it. They don’t say anything about it—they just send it.
Bloom: When we’re anticipating getting a jacket, I tell the author, “We’re probably going to see a jacket soon. Please do not respond and do not show it to anyone until we’ve had a chance to talk about it.” I think what ends up happening is that the author has spent so much time with the book and has a certain vision of what they want the jacket to look like, so the first reaction is often, “Someone else has come up with this vision of my book, and it’s not at all what I was expecting.” It could be amazing, but you’re never going to initially see it.
Do you mean it’s like getting a gift you didn’t want?
Barer: That’s a great way to put it.
Bloom: It could be an amazing engagement ring, but it's not the ring you wanted. It could be a sweater, but not the sweater you had your eye on.
Barer: It’s very easy for an author to turn that experience into something that means more than it actually does. “They don’t get my book,” or “They don’t really like it” or “They see it very differently than I see it.” It’s harder when the jacket comes from the editor with this loaded phrase: “Everybody here loves it”—so you’d better like it too. The author already feels like they have no agency. Sometimes you’re really lucky and the first thing out of the gate is incredible. Other times it’s twenty-five jackets of misery. It’s probably just as hard on your end.
I do lose sleep over jackets. I also get anxious over how many other things there are to get right before a book publishes. There’s always another idea we could explore, another insight we haven’t yet had. No matter how much time you have, it’s limited. You have to prioritize. But it never gets any easier to let go.
Barer: I actually feel like anxiety is what makes you a good editor. I think we would all say we stay up at night thinking about the email we didn't answer, the thing we didn’t do, or the author who is still disappointed.
Bloom: There’s nothing that’s left at the office at this job.
That’s hard to balance. How do you manage that?
Bender: Having kids was a turning point. I don’t want to sound awful, but it helped me become much more mercenary in my decisions. What I mean by that is figuring out what I can and can’t do, and being up-front and honest about it.
Weed: She is so good at that.
Barer: People get disappointed when we aren’t direct about what we or the publisher can deliver on.
Bloom: Often you’re representing something because you love it and you've told the author that you love it. You've made clear to them that you will do anything for their book. They have it in their mind: “My agent loves it! Everything in the world should line up for this book.” So when things don’t go exactly as you hope, there's almost no way to minimize the disappointment.
Barer: Your loving it doesn’t control the outcome.
Bloom: Right, and we all wish that our love would. But you can love your children more than life itself, and they're not necessarily going to want to play the piano. Being a parent has made me a much more compassionate and realistic agent because there are just so many things that are out of your control.
When you get an offer from a publisher, what’s going through your mind?
Weed: Depends on the offer! [Laughter.]
Say it’s for an author I’ve published before and want to continue with. In coming up with my offer, I’m thinking, “How did the last book do? What’s the sales potential for this one? How much special editorial sauce can I slather on this to help make it its best?” What’s your framework for receiving that offer?
Bender: I think we have a number in mind.
Weed: We’re looking at “What is this book? Is this book bigger?”
Barer: Right. Does it reach a broader audience? Has the author won a prize since the last book? What else has changed? It’s also us knowing the marketplace. We know what you paid for so-and-so’s book and how many copies it sold. We know what was just at auction and we know what our authors’ comp titles are doing in the marketplace.
But the foremost thing we think about is the author’s existing relationship with the publisher. Is she happy with the editor and with how her publication went? Do we even want to go down this road or is it better for everyone to start fresh somewhere else?
Everybody likes the new new thing, and competition drives price. That can result in a frustrating situation with an author’s second book, where it feels like the only way to get what you think is a fair advance is to take it out into the marketplace. That competition can get you the money that you think the author deserves, but it’s frustrating because you want, in the best case, to stay with the option publisher.
Bender: There are also realities of writers being people who need an income that counter all of the strategic thinking about what we should do. Human elements come into every decision we make.
Barer: And ideally it’s a conversation. I don’t think that you have to be a hostile negotiator to get a great deal.
Bender: There are specific rules about the information that we share and don’t share.
Barer: It is a game where you’re trying to help editors do their job—
Bender: But part of our job is withholding some of the information.
Some editors get a thrill out of deal making, while others see the effort and gamesmanship around auctions as a necessary evil they must endure to publish the books they love.
Bloom: What we struggle with…is that once the auction is over, there’s a winner, the publisher is thrilled, and it’s the best day ever. But you have to sustain that enthusiasm for eighteen months.
Bender: If an acquisition was fueled by competition alone, that feeling probably will not be sustained through publication unless other forces come in.
Barer: That’s why it is important for authors to know that the books that sell at auction or for high advances are not always the most beloved, and don’t always go on to be the most successful. There really is not a lot of direct correlation.
How does your relationship with an author begin?
Barer: I think the relationship starts with the book. One of the ways I know I’m really passionate about something I’m reading is when I’m rolling up my sleeves and taking out my pen at the same time.
Weed: You’re writing editors’ names in the margins.
Barer: I know that I’m the right agent when I see what the author is trying to do and have a clear vision of how I can help us get there. If we’re not on the same page about that, there is no relationship.
Bender: You’ll do a disservice to your author in the end if you’re not working in concert on that vision.
Bloom: It’s a little bit different for me because I work with a lot of nonfiction writers who often come to me with an idea. And then in talking about that idea, spending a day with them hashing out the proposal, really fleshing it out, there is something intangible. One of my first clients, Charlotte Gordon, wanted to do a biography of America’s first published poet, Anne Bradstreet, who wrote poems late at night in the wilderness while her husband was running the Massachusetts Bay Colony. I had not seen a word that she had written, but she talked about it in a way that got me so excited I fell in love with it. We worked on the proposal; Little, Brown preempted it; and her career was off. But it started with that conversation.
What core values do you bring to your work?
Bloom: Passion.
Weed: And compassion.
Barer: And commitment.
