Finding a Publisher
Correspondence with my agent
September 2005
Note to readers:
Many of you are fascinated with writers. It is natural as readers and writers have a special connection. Indeed, readers are perhaps writers on the brink of discovering that fact. There are a lot of myths about writing and publishing, myths created and perpetuated by writers. Readers see the same authors publishing book after book, especially mystery or fantasy novels, and think, “what an easy way to make a living.” Once I attended an authors party in which I got into a conversation with Erskine Caldwell, the novelist of God’s Little Acre fame, among others, and asked him when publishing became automatic. Caldwell, a tall, dignified gentlemen with beguiling southern charm, confessed, “It never gets easy and surely never automatic.” I had just published my first book, written in six weeks and accepted without an agent. It was 1970. My second book wasn’t published until 1990.
Here is a typical communiqué with my agent.
I watched the PBS program on F. Scott Fitzgerald's life, "Winter Dream," and the last credits brought a smile to my face. The royalties F. Scott Fitzgerald earned for the last year of his life were $13.13. Since his death in 1940, at the age of 44, his books have sold worldwide more than 10 million copies, and all his titles are in print.
When he died, practically none of his books were in print. Few attended his funeral, no more than four or five friends as Zelda was in a mental institution. Hemingway, who owed much to Fitzgerald, was not there. So much for fame and fortune of an author. Incidentally, Clancy Carlile's novel The Paris Pilgrims (1999) suggests what I have always suspected and that is that Hemingway was a pompous cad.
Due diligence got Fitzgerald into print. He pestered Maxwell Perkins at Scriber's & Sons about his first book when he was only 22, an officer in the US Army. It was 1918, and he was stationed in Alabama, where he met and became engaged to Zelda.
An interesting thing about book titles. He thought the title of his first book should be "The Personage," but finally settled on "This Side of Paradise," which was its published title.
Some thirty-five years ago, I read an excellent biography on Fitzgerald with the appropriate title, "The Far Side of Paradise." The Fitzgerald's of St. Paul, Minnesota (we produce more good writers in the Midwest than practically any other region of the country; more Nobel Laureates, too!) were on the edge of being wealthy middle class. This disappeared with his father's profligacy and bad luck.
Fitzgerald never forgot his taste for affluence and status, and gave expression to it in his works. His muse caught the temper of the times, its flapper insouciance partying until dawn.
My children experienced the same edginess of being wealthy, only to have their father drop out of the rat race at his greatest earning power in his thirties. Three out of the four are much wealthier than he ever was because the taste of wealth never left their psyches.
I have had a theory that authors know best what the title should be. My first book "Confident Selling" (Prentice-Hall 1970) was submitted over the transom as "Let's Take the Worry Out of Selling," a book I wrote in six weeks. My publisher changed the title to "Confident Selling." I insisted the title had no legs. Some editor at P-H wanted the title to be "The Magic Power of Confident Selling," but thank God it was ruled out. That title was too gimmicky and my book wasn't gimmicky.
The book was a bestseller for them and went through more than two editions and twenty-four printings, and was in print for twenty years. Still, I kept on P-H insisting it should do even better. Prentice-Hall was most patient with me, and reminded me that they accepted only one in every 5,000 unsolicited manuscripts.
Some have told me that "The Taboo Against Being Your Own Best Friend" should have been titled "Be Your Own Best Friend." The book has not sold well. I have also been told I made the reader work too hard. If only such comments had been available before it was published, yes, "if only."
Years later, after "Confident Selling" was published, P-H wanted me to "doctor" one of the books of its established authors. The manuscript was so poorly written, so incredibly bad that I couldn't believe they would ever publish such a guy, much less this book. The guy had an international reputation, and probably had little time to compose much less edit it.
Unknown that I was, and desperate to become a recognized writer, I gave it a go until I read the manuscript. I told P-H it wasn't worth saving. I never heard from P-H again until it stopped publishing CS and gave me the copyright. I was a sap to give them the copyright, but what did I know? I had never been published before. A syndicate wanted to produce an audio and training film of the book. P-H made such incredible demands that the syndicate dropped the project. I would have okayed it just for the exposure. But that is another, "what if."
I guess I am not alone in being difficult. Reading Stephen King on writing, he confesses that he was once asked to review one of Robert Ludlum's espionage novels. He refused saying the book was unreadable. I disagree with King about Ludlum but loved the sentiment. King has publishers where few authors do.
Regarding Perkins on Fitzgerald's book, it is amazing how serendipitous this writing business is. Perkins, then a low level editor at Scribner's, loved Fitzgerald's manuscript, indicating the same to his boss, who gave it a lukewarm reception, and then tossed it aside. Perkins, to his credit, took it to Mr. Scribner and asked him to read it with the comment, "If you think this is not something Scribner's should publish, perhaps I'm in the wrong business."
Mr. Scribner read it over the weekend and agreed with Perkins. It was published to much acclaim, and became the defining book of the Jazz Age and "the lost generation," and by extension, of American society immediately following WW I.
There is a reason I'm sharing this with you. The prescience of Fitzgerald was that Scribner's & Sons was the best publisher in the business, and the only one good enough to generate the audience he sought for his book. Perkins, on the other hand, had the confidence that Fitzgerald had that rare "touch of greatness" that can flicker and fade before you notice it.
Fitzgerald made a decision: if they didn't want his book, he would pester them until they did because he knew it was that good, and he wanted Scribner's & Sons, and no one else to publish it. Why? He knew what authors Scribner's already had in its stables.
Scribner's published Ernest Hemingway (because of Fitzgerald's insistence), John Steinbeck, William Faulkner, Thomas Wolfe (Perkins had to do extreme editing of Wolfe's works that he might have deserved co-authorship), James Jones, and Sinclair Lewis, among others.
Perhaps that is a mistake we are making. We want so desperately to get "Near Journey's End: Can the Planet Earth Survive Self-indulgent Man" published that we may not be focusing on "the right publisher." What do you think?
Perhaps it is the intellectual audience of a “Routledge classic,” as academics might find it refreshing to read someone that is of the people and comes out of its basic fabric. Just a thought. Be always well,
Jim
Post note:
If you are inclined to read the letters of authors to their agents published by the greats and near-greats, it may surprise you of the beseeching nature of the marriage of author-agent. An author believes in the nobility of his work, and sometimes an agent's wanes from that aspect from the sheer energy spent in rejections. When that happens, the author becomes a cheerleader. Fitzgerald often rose to this function, as have many others, and as I do here.
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