Authors | Betsy Lerner

I’m Trying To Beat Life Cause I Can’t Cheat Death

Posted on June 3, 2013 by betsylerner

Dear Readers of this Blog: I couldn’t be happier than to congratulate Sheri Booker on the publication of her first book Nine Years Under (notice I am not saying “debut” because I think it’s pretentious) about her experiences working in an inner city funeral home, coming of age there, amid the corpses, inside the embalming room, and among the mourners who looked to her, a teenager, for comfort and tissues. There was a lot to learn about death; there was even more to learn about life.

I have copies to give away to the top three funeral stories. I’ll see if I can get Sheri to judge.

And here’s some great early press: NPR: http://www.npr.org/2013/06/01/187086911/nine-years-in-a-baltimore-funeral-home Baltimore Sun Interview: http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/arts/bs-ae-book-funeral-20130601,0,4451923.story Washington Post: http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-05-29/entertainment/39591099_1_funeral-business-viewing-west-baltimor NPR news http://www.wypr.org/podcast/how-working-deadaffects-your-view-living

Filed under: Authors, Client, Memoir, Uncategorized | Tagged: African American, Death, Funeral Home, Memoir | 36 Comments »

Could It Be That It Was All So Simple Then

Posted on May 30, 2013 by betsylerner

Guys, guys, guys, guys. It’s Book Expo in New York. I just tripped over Scott Turow. I didn’t get invited to the Malcolm Gladwell party. I didn’t get invited to my own publisher’s party. That I take as a badge of pride. I ran into a book rep I haven’t seen since the Fifties, but he’s still wearing that bolo and I still remember Miami. I saw a machine that makes books on demand. I saw a vampire in broad daylight. I saw my beloved Japanese agent and she was wearing a gorgeous floral skirt that she bought at thrift shop, then corrected herself: Vintage. I met with a mother-daughter team who sell audio books. When I told the daughter she looked like Kim Kardashian she seemed to be insulted. I wandered through the booths thinking about all the publishing jobs I had, all the bosses I didn’t blow, all the massive excitement I used to feel helping books come into the world and learning how to galvanize my passion. Or how I could get high off the smell of books fresh out of the carton. Or the party I once threw for a first collection of stories, decorating my apartment with candles and peaches.

Were those the days?

Filed under: Authors, Books, Booksellers, Publishing, The End of the World as We Know It, Uncategorized | Tagged: Book Expo, Glory Days, Publishing | 31 Comments »

Hey There, You With the Stars In Your Eyes

Posted on April 9, 2013 by betsylerner

Hey Guys, remember when I said stay in touch with good news (though of course bad news and general carping always welcome at the Betsy Lerner Institute of Psychotherapy)? Well, our own Jessica Lahey has landed a major book deal (see below) based on a popular article in the Atlantic. Hot shit. Congrats Jessica, and thanks for not approaching me to agent you. What the hell does a girl have to do around here?

Pubs Have Feeding Frenzy Over Lahey’s ‘Gift’

After a three-day auction featuring 10 bidders, Jessica Lahey’s The Gift of Failure was acquired by Gail Winston at Harper. Winston bought world English rights to the book, based on an article Lahey wrote for the Atlantic, from agent Laurie Abkemeier at DeFiore and Company. Lahey is a middle school teacher and her story, “Why Parents Need to Let Their Kids Fail,” drew impassioned reactions online, after it ran in late January. The book, Abkemeier said, will be “a manifesto and action plan about why parents must learn to refrain from stepping in any time children experience disappointments… so that they may grow up to be successful, resilient, and self-reliant adults.”

Filed under: Authors, Fame! Celebrity! Riches!, You Go Girl | Tagged: publishing deal | 39 Comments »

Tell Me Lies Later, Come and See Me

Posted on November 7, 2011 by betsylerner

Last week when I came into the office, I found a query letter on my desk with a post-it note from one of our interns. It said, “I don’t think this is very good, but I’d feel terrible rejecting it.” The letter was from a woman whose daughter was schizophrenic and had been in and out of hospitals her whole life.

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this, but I used to be known as the pain and suffering editor. Mental illness? Show it to Lerner? Physical impairment? Show it to Lerner? Death row? Bulimia? Stuttering? Sexual Dysfunction? See what Lerner thinks. Lerner thinks if the writing sucks, no one is going to want to read it.

Dear __________________: I am very sorry to learn about your personal tragedy. It takes great courage to write about it with such candor. That said, I’m not convinced you’ve found the universal chord in your story — at least not yet. I hope others feel they can help you place your memoir. Many thanks for the chance to consider your work. Sincerely, Betsy Lerner

What kind of letter would you write?

Filed under: Agent, Authors, Query, Rejection | 48 Comments »

The Rockies May Crumble, Gibraltar May Tumble

Posted on May 24, 2011 by betsylerner

Last night, I met one of my literary heroes. If you haven’t read this book, order it now. And then this one. Or her latest. From the moment I read Janet Malcolm’s work in the New Yorker in my early twenties, I was hooked. The quality of mind and quality of prose are perfectly met. Was I nervous? Check. Did I say something really stupid, twice? Check. Coffee was finished when I blurted what a big fan I am. It’s extraordinary how you feel you have a relationship with an author you’ve never met, when you’ve read a body of work and powerfully responded to it. When it has shaped your ideas and standards. I wasn’t disappointed. She was like her prose: elegant, incisive, exacting, penetrating. Also funny, which I wouldn’t have guessed.

I might have asked this long ago, so forgive me. But do you any good stories to tell about literary heroes.

Filed under: Authors | 54 Comments »

Is this love – is this love – is this love – Is this love that I’m feelin’?

Posted on May 9, 2011 by betsylerner

In the NYT article about Bob Loomis’ retirement from Random House after nearly sixty years, Jon Karp (now publisher of Simon & Schuster) said that Bob would signal boring prose with the marginal comment, “We know.” That gave me a good chuckle. I have always used the rather boring “repetitive” or the more jaunty “rep” to signal prose that has lost its will to live. Sometimes I write, “slows narrative,” or “condense?” There are many euphemisms for boring, but “we know” has a the genius of the light touch with a just a dash of condescension. Woe to the writer who does not heed.

What is the best or worst comment you’ve every received in the margins of your manuscript? Mine was, “who would want to read that?”

Filed under: Authors | 86 Comments »

Sooner Or Later It All Gets Real (reprise)

Posted on October 24, 2010 by betsylerner

I have a confession to make: I’ve always been afraid of killing someone by accident while driving. I’m sure you’ve had the experience where a person seems to appear out of nowhere as you’re backing out or making a left turn, no matter how many times you look. I’ve never been able to easily shake those moments, but instead replay them over and over. Do you do this? Is it normal?

When I heard about Darin Strauss’ new memoir, Half a Life, I ran out and got it. Strauss was weeks away from graduating high school when he kills a girl riding a bicycle. It was quickly ascertained that he was not at fault, but that doesn’t alleviate his suffering. I read the book in two sittings, completely mesmerized by the events he describes. The writing is also extremely effective, self-aware of both his inner life and the potential for a writer’s manipulation through poetic language.

I am wondering why I am so powerfully drawn to this story and to stories like it. I suspect it has something to do with the death of my baby sister and how I, at four, didn’t really understand what happened. It happened very quickly and life was forever changed in our family. While very few people experience what Strauss did, the story strikes me as universal because he is able to capture that particular terror where our lives can be irrevocably changed. Loss of control. Terror. Desire. Permanent loss. Unspeakable regret. The reason why we replay those moments again and again. For Strauss, it happens on the eve of going to college, of what must certainly have felt like the beginning of life, not the end. Which for me made it all the more poignant. All the more unbearable.

What was the last book you heard about that you had to have, and that you ran out and bought (or bought on-line)? What spoke to you that powerfully? And does the book you are working on touch that nerve?

Filed under: Authors, Books, Memoir | 46 Comments »

Guest Blogger #5 – August

Posted on October 21, 2010 by betsylerner

I spent a few days thinking of ways to mortify Betsy in this space, but I don’t have a copy of her updated book, and I don’t have the patience to click on every link in her blogroll looking for things to hate. I considered writing about how your publishing ‘team’—your agent and editor and publisher—functions like a family, more specifically a family in which your publisher fucks you under the stairs while your editor pretends not to notice.

Instead, however, in an effort to be helpful, here’s some shit writers don’t need to care about:

Query Letters

If you can’t write a good query letter, you can’t write. They’re business letters—that’s a lower form of writing than Tea Party signs. Describe the book. Either your description sounds like money to that particular agent, or you get a form letter.

Still having trouble with your query letter? Try this easy tip: take up scrapbooking.

Agents

Before you have an agent, your goal is finding an agent, not making agents’ lives easier. Screw agents’ lives. The only reason they have lives is that after they clawed from the grave, they hungered for 15% instead of blood.

Worrying about guidelines is bullshit. If they like what you’ve got, they’ll ask for more. If they like that, they’ll want to represent you, and you’ll slavishly agree. That’s the nature of the relationship.

Worrying about wasting their time is bullshit. Agents are hip-deep and sinking, dealing every day with the desperate, the manic, and the spittle-flecked; and those are their –clients-. Don’t worry about alienating them. This is a group of people who one day looked at writers and thought, I want to represent them. They’re not gonna remember your half-assed crazy.

Just remember that this relationship is based on mutual trust and respect, so never reveal your true self.

The State of the Book

Is publishing in decline? Yes.

In other news, you’re fat and lazy, a talentless hack. Nothing will change any of that. Publishing is in the shitter. Our goal is to swirl around as long as possible before we’re flushed. We’re not gonna reverse the direction of spin here.

Will e-readers revolutionize publishing? Sure, because an influx of semi-literate control freaks is what every industry needs. Our problem isn’t the shortage of digital formats, it’s the shortage of customers.

The one thing that distinguishes people in publishing is that instead of faking expertise about corrugated paper products or commercial real estate, we fake expertise about books. We’re nothing special. There’s the same proportion of assbaggery in publishing as in the Solid Waste Association of North America. The difference is one group pushes a product that’s full of crap, and you know the end of this sentence.

People are idiots. People in publishing are, largely, people. We’re working in a crazily dysfunctional industry, and when by some miracle a book actually sells, we desperately try to reverse-engineer the success. But that only works when luck isn’t a determining factor. You can’t reverse-engineer a coin toss. Why is Lethem more popular than Everett? No reason at all. Why did Harry Potter sell more than 3,000 copies? No reason at all.

None of that matters. Franzen doesn’t matter and Vargas Llosa doesn’t matter. Gish Jen and Stephenie Meyer doesn’t matter and I don’t matter and you don’t matter. Editors, agents, readers, the state of publishing, the technology of reading, the insulting advances and print runs and jacket copy, the blogging, the twitting, the social media, the self-promotion: doesn’t matter.

I’m trying to write this like a comment without worrying where it’s going, but I think where it’s going is here: the first step is admitting that we’re powerless over everything but the writing. And the second step is coming to believe that the best way to deal with all those distractions is to hate them.

What do you care about as a writer, that you shouldn’t? What do you not care about, that you should?

Filed under: Agent, Authors, E-books, Protocol, Publishing, self-loathing, The End of the World as We Know It, Writing, You Go Girl | 65 Comments »

Revved Up Like a Deuce

Posted on September 12, 2010 by betsylerner

Dear Betsy,

I thought I’d throw a real question your way. If you’ve already answered it elsewhere, please forgive me.

When dealing with agents, publishers, etc., how do we not be dicks? I don’t mean the kind who are intentionally that way, but dick-ness born of insecurity and desperation. The thought of getting published (what to speak of writing) is so frightening, so freighted, it brings to the fore (am I getting too alliterative?) all one’s defenses. It’s as if we unconsciously decide, “I’m not going to let them reject me so easily. I’m not going to let them see how scared I am. I’m going to preemptively reject them first by being a dick, and so, if they do somehow accept me, I’ll know it’s because they really, really want me.” For those of us who haven’t gone through years of therapy to overcome (or just become aware of) this kind of thinking, is there a code of publishing etiquette to which we can strictly hew? A chart which we can tape to the bathroom mirror? You can argue that it’s just a matter of being a decent human being, but dicks seemingly get published all the time. Or do they become dicks after they get published?

Love, NAME WITHHELD

Dear Gentle Person:

If you are wondering about being a dick, pretty good chance that you’re not one. Isn’t that part of the definition of being a dick, a sort of willful disregard for other people’s feelings? But more interesting to me is the question of whether being a dick helps or hurts. Tucker Max’s forthcoming book is called Assholes Finish First. I’ve always craved a little of that swagger to be honest. But I’ve also noted at every publishing house I’ve ever worked for that once you were deemed a dick, people did very little to advance your career. Of course, some would say publishers do precious little to advance your career regardless of your personality, zodiac sign, or the number of times you bring warm scones to the office.

The only authors from whom dick-head behavior is tolerated are those who make the company a barge of money. I’ve always heard John Gray was a major dickhead (Men are from Scroto, Women are from Clito); I’ve always heard Tuesdays with Morrie was a dickwad among dickwads. But these are rumors. I’ve also heard Mary Higgins Clark is a sweetheart. I know John Grisham is a gentleman. I believe Stephen King to be a really cool dude.

Is there a code? Well, yes and no. I mean you can’t be a total asshole and expect people to work with you. You can’t show up without an appointment and demand an audience. You can’t bombard with calls or email. You can’t rent a Mercedes and hire a couple of hookers on your reading tour and submit the charges. Those days are long gone.

Look, there is never any excuse for being a dick. I once had dinner with some famous people and after some drinks the conversation got around to whether any of them ever played the “do you know who I am” card. It was hysterical. They all had done it, but only once or twice they swore. (That’s like me telling me my mom I only tried pot once or twice.) But they were ashamed. They knew they were being dickheads. I also met a lawyer once who told me that he was very good at what he did (divorce law), and almost always won. I asked him what his secret was. “I can be a real prick, ” he said.

Here’s the deal: you probably have to be at least a bit of a prick to be a writer. Probably getting published brings it out a little more. And big success can certainly fan some dickheaded flames. Thing is, it’s probably okay to be a bit of a dick. Just try not to be a douche.

C’mon everyone, talk to me. What’s the biggest dickheaded thing you ever did in relation to your writing?

Filed under: Authors, Protocol | 24 Comments »

May You Bloom and Grow

Posted on August 31, 2010 by betsylerner

This post is a little out of keeping with the blog’s usual dyspeptic take on life and publishing, and I apologize if I offend anyone. But today, dear readers, I am in love with my clients. No, I am in awe of them, inspired by them, grateful for them. And I’m not just talking about a certain someone whose life story garnered FIVE EMMYS on Sunday night including best actress and best movie made for television.

I’m talking about the ones who are toiling away without a whole lot of recognition, or working through crushing depression, or books that haven’t sold. I am so moved by the stories that are unfolding, sometimes even surprising the authors themselves. I am blown away by a few projects that have come in far more ambitious and accomplished than promised, and those who are wrestling their editorial letters to the ground, unclear who will prevail. And unexpected moments of politeness, or sweetness, or silliness with a writer long hardened by the process.

I am grateful for being the old woman who lives in this shoe, with this unruly pack of artists and thieves. Tomorrow, back to bile, blood-letting and general ill will.

Filed under: Agent, Authors | 20 Comments »

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