People keep asking: how bad is the publishing world? It’s really bad. Too many firings, too many publishing divisions merged, too many budgets shredded, too many disgusted shareholders, too many book stores closing, and too many book reviews folding. Though I’ve been asking friends if anyone remembers a time when the book business was thriving, when poets got fat and journalists lived like kings? As one of my first bosses was fond of saying, “it’s a nickel and dime business.” She got that right. The question now is how to stay afloat, how to maintain, how to do your best work when no one wants to publish, stock, review or even slam your book down on the remainder table. How to marshal your talent, ego, desire, and will, and at the same time quiet your insecurities and doubts long enough to write? I always hated it when famous authors were interviewed about their writing habits and they’d say, “I have to write,” or, “if you can do anything else, do it.” There was this false note, I felt, imploring people to do something else as if the writer wished he or she wasn’t burdened by this writing jones. Maybe it bothered me because I was able to do something else and did. Maybe it bothered me because it’s obnoxious. I’m getting off the point here. It’s really bad out there. You should only write if you have to write. And if you can do anything else, do it.

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Sold my first book of the new year. There is no better moment in an agent’s life than when you make that call to a first time writer with the news: we have an offer. For just one brief spell, you are a fairy godmother. And in that one sentence, a writer becomes an author. Getting published for the first time is a bit like losing your virginity except it hurts more.I’m wondering how you deflowered authors out there feel.

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It dawned on me this morning as I rejected nine submissions that it’s a bit fatuous, to say the least, to critique the rejecting habits of editors without looking at my own. One of the worst moments of my publishing life arrived when I met a writer, now a McArthur Genius Grant winner, who reminded me that I rejected his first novel some years earlier. Cringe. He even remembered what I said. More cringing and self-flagellation. Apparently, I said the book didn’t have a domino effect. A domino effect!? What, did I go to college at the University of Milton Bradley?What was I thinking. I’ve passed on some other big writers in my day, but he’s the one I’ll live to regret.

But back to my rejecting style. Well, all I can say in my defense is that I look at everything that comes my way. When I was a young editor I learned that Ordinary People was found in the slush pile and that had been one of my favorite books in high school. So I look at everything. And I know pretty quickly if it’s for me. And if I don’t have anything nice to say, I say it’s not for me. And if I have something constructive to say, I try to add that. I get a lot of thank you notes for my rejections which leads me to think I’m being too nice. When I mentioned this to another agent, she was astonished. She’s never received a thank you note for her rejections and she looked at me as if I were an imbecile. I’m sure I’ve sent some curt notes and I’m sure some manuscripts have fallen through the cracks.

I think writers suffer enough. But it’s also important to get your shit together and only send out material that is the best it can be and that you’ve crossed all the t’s and all that jazz. There are really good proposal writing books out there (I think Susan Rabiner wrote one), so familiarize yourself with the process; in other words when you send something out, make it your best shot. And if you get rejected, fuck em. No one can stop you but yourself.

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Ah, the avoider rejecter. This type truly is like the guy who fucks you and never calls back. At least it feels this way. Either way, he’s really, really just not that into you. With every submission we make, we find there’s always at least one editor who goes completely MIA. Even after you’ve called and pitched them a book about Hamas and they tell you they worked on a Kibbutz in high school and would be fasinated by anything about Israel, yes, even these folks sometimes completely disappear. There’s one editor who goes by the nickname Bermuda Triangle because everything you send her gets “lost.” Some editors don’t think they particularly need to respond. Deal with it. Most people don’t like conflict, except those who relish it, and I understand the desire to avoid rejecting something. But again, this is why god invented email, so that writers don’t have to suffer quite as much. After all it’s better to be rejected than to be left hanging. Though for that brief period in between, hope.

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A sanitation guy is sweeping up after the circus. The ground is covered with elephant dung and hay. A well dressed man approaches the sweeper and offers him a job in his air conditioned office building, promising to double his salary. The sweeper declines. The business man offers to triple his salary. Again, the sweeper declines. The business man offers to quadruple his pay. And, again, the sweeper declines. The business man is beside himself. He asks the sweeper what could possibly keep him here, sweeping up shit?

The sweeper shrugs, “what, and leave show business?”

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