Editor | Betsy Lerner

I’m Just a Love Machine

Posted on November 23, 2009 by betsylerner

Dear Betsy,

I start most workdays by reading the latest post on your blog, particularly apt given that I work in publishing. I am however a young fledgling (aka editorial assistant) and lately I’ve been wondering how you and others have bridged the gap between editorial assistant and editor. Where I work there is a nice name for it, assistant editor, however it is not much more than a title. From what I’ve seen, you have to either be in the right place at the right time (another editor drops off) or you wait and wait and wait and finally are rewarded for your perseverance. I wonder if this is common across publishing. What was your experience like and what have you seen? Any suggestions?

Fortunately or unfortunately, I am itching to edit after being an assistant for almost two years. Maybe it is because I work in academic publishing, but all the editors I’ve seen are a decade or two older than me. Where are the young editors?

I should clarify that though I work in academic publishing, my interests are with fiction and literary publishing.

Sincerely,

Dearest, Darling Editorial Assistant:

Going from assistant to assistant editor to editor are the most difficult rungs on the ladder. It’s easier to go from marketing manager to head of sales, or CFO to CEO. At least it used to be. I began my climb 25 years ago and everyone said it was extremely difficult then. We had a pool among the assistants betting on which assistant would drop next, and by drop we meant head to law school or grad school.

You’re doing one thing right: reading my blog every morning. This is as nourishing as a good breakfast.

You’re doing one thing wrong: waiting. You should be finding the young scholars, you should be reading journals your boss isn’t, attending conferences that are a little off the beaten path. You’ve got to bring in a book. If you don’t want to be in academic publishing get out asap. It gets more difficult later. But no matter where you go, you must make yourself indispensable.

Before anyone asked me to edit, I made copies of my boss’ projects and edited them at home, then compared my version to his. It was a self-tutorial. Eventually, I asked him why he did this or that, and he was impressed that I was reading and taking notes. Then he gave me a book to edit when the right one came along. I hated that book, btw, but it was good experience.

Finding books is the most important job an editor does. Until you have an expense account and a bevy of agents who send you their projects, you must go to readings, read blogs and on-line magazines, network, talk to booksellers, get invited to conferences, look under rocks, etc. etc. And if you find a young writer who isn’t quite ready to publish a book but has tons of promise, then keep in touch. This is a business of relationships, contacts, and drive. It’s not about being in the right place at the right time. There is no right place, and no right time.

Filed under: Editor | 5 Comments »

Only Your Hairdresser Knows For Sure — Survey #5

Posted on November 9, 2009 by betsylerner

You know how you never really know what goes on in a marriage? The same could be said for what goes on between writer and editor. The editorial process is still a private, mostly behind closed doors affair. The best editorial relationships can last a career; some don’t make it to first base. I asked five extraordinarily accomplished bigshot editors the following question: what percentage of your editing do your authors take, and how do you persuade them to take it?

Editor #1: All of it. I wouldn’t make the suggestions if I didn’t think they were the right thing to do. Of course, some suggestions can be made in the conditional, what-do-you-think? mode. The Big Persuader is, of course, the check due on acceptance. My rough rule of thumb on acceptance is this: If the author elected to proceed with the book exactly as submitted, would I publish it as is? If so, here’s your check and let’s work to get the book to its absolute peak of perfection from here. If not, let have a serious talk. These things have to be done with maximum care and diplomacy, but it is in the nature of the power dynamics of the relationship that the prospect of that payment tends to make the editor look wiser and more all-knowing.

The above goes out the window for authors with consistent net hardcover sales above 100,000 copies a pop.

Ca-ching!

Editor #2: I generally think that if authors grasp 80% of what you are asking and do 50% of it, you are in clover. One author described me as an iron fist in a velvet glove — I found this touching. For me, the key is providing, as far as possible, a healthy balance of praise (sincere, of course) and criticism. Nobody works well when they feel they’re being nagged, treated unkindly, or found wanting.

Did someone say Velvet?

Editor #3: I hate to sound smug, but I have a very high track record of acceptance – like 80-90% – so I have come to expect that. In my experience the best argument for acceptance is the editing itself – and I mean getting down to specifics. I think general advice doesn’t really help much – no one is going to disagree much over the principles that make for good writing, but when writers are struggling they generally can’t see where the problems are, or they have a general idea what they are but don’t know how to solve them. I usually tell writers that I don’t expect them to take every edit verbatim, but that in my experience just rolling up your sleeves and attempting a fix is often the best way of showing what the problem is – so I want them to look at the problem the edit points up, and if they want to solve it another way, that’s fine. In my experience the editing process is usually the most harmonious part of the publishing process – the time when the book is still a private thing, and its fate still largely under the control of author and editor. Later will come the fights (and disappointments) over jacket, publicity, sales … Once in a blue moon I have run into major editorial resistance. Once, early on, I got back a revised manuscript from the writer on a co-authored book. As I began to look through it, I noticed that he had disregarded almost every one of my comments. I called him up and asked him why. He said, “I didn’t think they were important.” I said, “If I wrote it, it was important.” On the other hand, the writers who make me most nervous aren’t the fighters, they’re the ones who have no idea – or have lost any idea – of what they are trying to do or say, and are looking desperately to me to save them. They’ll do anything you say, or try to – it’s like pushing on jello.

Zombie Brain Jello (not making this up)

Editor #4: None. Zero. I do, however, expect my authors to listen to, reflect on, and think seriously about, 100% of my edits. There may be conversations about why I suggested one edit or another, but my goal is never to persuade for the sake of persuading. If I’m doing my job right, I’m my author’s first, best reader. Hopefully, they’ll find that my edits and feedback illuminate for them what they’ve written in ways that help them make it better.

In practice, of course, if an author really doesn’t take many of my editorial notes, that’s a good sign that there’s something wrong with the editorial relationship. It means that I’m not giving them useful feedback, or they’re not listening….or, both. This thing of ours only works when there’s real mutual respect.

The password is: mutual.

Editor #5: 72.3% A claw wrench.

The End

Filed under: Authors, Editor | 8 Comments »

Darkness Visible

Posted on October 20, 2009 by betsylerner

It was easy to get responses to my first three surveys, so maybe I should stick with lighter fare: what publishers nosh, bad lunch dates, etc. This time, I surveyed a bunch of industry insiders and asked: how do you know if your book is going to tank and when do you know it. I got one response. Being me, rather than drop it, I kept asking, and here I present you with some darker fare. Warning: if you like to avert your eyes when you see an accident, skip this post.

One editor confides: I’ve been the victim of the “we’ve got to make budget and this book has got to ship this year” syndrome. These authors had previously published an enormous bestseller. I knew when I got the first draft of the new book that it wasn’t going to work. But I had to keep going and force myself to believe that the new book was as funny as the first. It wasn’t. And guess what? It didn’t work. AT ALL. But the company got to count the initial ship into their budget for that year. I’m sure the returns were brutal…but by then I didn’t work there anymore.

From an agent: The book was selected as a Minnesota Talking Books pick and there were no books in the stores and Amazon said out of stock, because the book had been published several months before to little fanfare, and it was around the Christmas holidays. I spent hours calling bookstores in the Minneapolis area asking why they didn’t have the book in stock, and no one had told them! The Talking Books promoter had delayed sending out a press release because they wanted to announce the subsequent selection as well! The publisher said they couldn’t help it because the bookstores had to order the books! I think the author has never recovered, although I’m not sure because she’s still in a fetal crouch.

Another agent: Well, I had a book on ( major publisher, highly prestigious, you fill in the blank) children’s list and it turned out that the publicist never sent the book out. To anyone. We kept calling and asking and they kept reassuring us that books had gone out, reviews would come in…when in fact they hadn’t, and they didn’t. The book — gorgeous and accomplished — never really got on its feet after that. And I’m still mad.

A senior editor: I knew the book was going to tank minutes after we acquired it. We had a new editor in chief and she was frantic and bullheaded. She heard about a book project I had in and told me to bid six figures. It had a great title, but I hadn’t even finished reading it. We “won” the auction. When I asked the agent who the underbidders were, she said she didn’t have to disclose that. Excuse me. I told her my boss would want to know. And again she declined. Obviously, there were no other bidders. The book, as it turns out, was horrible. It tanked in every way. The author had no expertise and couldn’t write. Worse, she still sends me Christmas cards.

Best for last: I hardly even hope for a book to succeed these days, because inside I am assuming that it is going to tank, since most of them do. This is sad but true. I can hardly bring myself to ask the first printings anymore…and if, after a few weeks or months, no reprint—well, then you know. It is the end. I guess I am pretty jaded, huh???

Tomorrow on this blog: sunshine and kittens.

Filed under: Agent, Authors, Books, Editor, Publishing, The End of the World as We Know It | 27 Comments »

Find Out What It Means to Me

Posted on October 19, 2009 by betsylerner

If you have a chance, check out this interview in Poets & Writers with Jon Karp, publisher of Twelve, an imprint at Hachette. It is a measure of how much I respect him and admire him that I recommend the interview because, well, look at how he answers the question regarding which agents he admires:

There are a lot of agents that I admire—too many to name. It’s funny. I really enjoy working with literary agents, but I’m not socially friendly with any of them. I kind of feel like it’s a business relationship. But I enjoy their companionship at lunch and I love talking to them about their projects. Even when I pass on their projects, I genuinely enjoy talking to them, the give and take. There are literary agents who I’ve known for fifteen years who I’m just finally doing books with. Molly Friedrich was one who I’d wanted to work with forever and finally found a novel we both loved. I’ve known Stuart Krichevsky since I was in my late twenties, and he’s trusted me with Sebastian Junger, for which I am eternally grateful. Rob Weisbach is incredibly creative and he’s going to do great things. I could talk to Tina Bennett and Heather Schroder forever. There really are a lot.

Jon, it’s okay. I’m not, like, needy. I know I’m special. That we have a connection. It’s real. I feel it. You don’t have to advertise when something is real. Congrats on the great interview. It should be required reading for every writer who wants a window into the mind of a publisher who has had tremendous success and a very smart take on the industry. Does he even remember the time we had bagels at his apartment when we had a lunch date and he had to wait for Comcast? Does he?

Filed under: Agent, Authors, Books, Editor, Publishing | 6 Comments »

You’ll Never Eat Lunch In This Town Again

Posted on October 4, 2009 by betsylerner

When I was an editorial assistant at Simon & Schuster, there was a very rich and ambitious editorial assistant who used to take out agents and pay with her own credit card, pretending to have an expense account. My friends and I, over dollar pitchers of beer, debated which was worse, the fraudulence or spending your own money. When I finally got promoted to editor and got my first company credit card, it was incredibly exciting. Taking out agents, however, turned out to be a little more stressful than I bargained for. I surveyed some top editors around town and asked them to share their worst lunch dates ever. There was no shortage or replies:

“Hm, oh god, worse lunch date ever, but there are so many to choose from! Probably my first one. I was a baby editor on my first expense account lunch and the agent was 20 minutes late, then proceeded to order a 3 course insanely expensive meal with wine, and spent the entire time talking about much she loved my previous boss who was a notorious sadist and the worst person I’ve ever worked for in publishing.”

Nobody puts Baby in the corner!

Another editor, and a sharp one at that, thought he’d teach an old dog new tricks, “My worst lunch ever was with a literary agent who abruptly suggested we end our meal, even though the food had just arrived. I had been giving her the third degree about her policy of refusing to take editorial factors into consideration and selling her projects only to the highest bidder. She took offense. We did ultimately make it to the end of the lunch. No dessert, though. And I never received any further submissions from her.”

Damn, that creme brulee looked good.

Let’s give the agents a rest: “I was having lunch with an author and his wife, also a writer, on the eve of his publication. At the beginning they let me know they felt nothing but disdain for our corporate parent company. Then to alleviate their liberal guilt over taking money from such monsters, they ordered everything on the menu and stuck me with a $300 bill for lunch.”

Including tip?

Another newbie bought her first big book. The moment the deal was made, the agent insisted the editor take her out to celebrate. “It was my first sign of things to come. The agent chose the restaurant, the date, the time, and believe it or not the table…you can imagine my surprise when the agent was not only there ahead of me, but seated with a drink already sweating on the table, half-way finished.” DANGER WILL ROBINSON! Agent proceeded to dress down the waitress in “epic proportions” for slow service, needed each dish to be specially prepared, sent food back when it wasn’t hot enough, and ordered coffee and dessert. “Needless to say, after the agent scraped the final bits of frosting from the plate, shook out the napkin from his collar, patted his stomach over the too-tightly belted high-waisted pants, I was ready to sprint back to the office. I left the poor waitress at 50% tip…It was 3:30. We never lunched again.”

There’s no excuse for high-waisted pants. Not then, not now.

Another editor in her youth went nearly 100 blocks to meet an esteemed agent. (An unspoken rule of lunching: the younger or more junior person always travels to a restaurant convenient to the senior person.) So, our intrepid editor hopped the subway and nearly an hour later arrived at the lunch spot chosen by the agent. “The agent was there when I arrived, her head in her hands. I sat down and asked if everything was alright. She replied that she would kill herself if she had to have the Cobb salad again. When I suggested she try the Chef salad, she started weeping”

Clearly, this was a lunch date prior to the invention of SSRI’s.

For me, the worst lunch date is when the young editor across from me starts to blend into every other lunch date I’ve ever had, when I no longer remember her name or which publishing house she works for, when I start to time travel and remember all my nervous lunch dates taking agents out for the first time, skittish as a blind date, how I felt like a fraud yammering on about how much I loved books or thought the house I was working at was swell. It was all true enough, but it always felt false like too much make-up. It was the “Showtime” feeling from All That Jazz, being on like that, a trained circus animal. Sometimes I’d go to the restroom in the middle of the lunch just to get a look at myself in the mirror and make sure I was still there. Not exactly an existential moment worthy of Sartre, but still my little reverie.

Filed under: Agent, Editor, Protocol | 19 Comments »

Where Have All the Flowers Gone

Posted on October 2, 2009 by betsylerner

A reader asks: Is it true that editors no longer edit, and if so, why?

Good question but kind of boring. Still, I have a couple of theories. My first is that some editors don’t really know how. Editing was always an apprenticeship and you would toil away for years working with a senior editor before you got promoted and edited anything on your own. Now, editorial assistants get promoted in a few years or take the hint and go to Law School. You also typed and filed your boss’ correspondence. The first agent I worked for wrote 6 page editorial letters to his clients; I didn’t just type and file them, I inhaled them. Today, most of the work of editing and communicating is done via email so the assistant is no longer privy to the editorial letters, etc. that are exchanged between an author and her editor.

The other reason is expedience; some editors don’t believe that an edited book is going to sell a single copy more than an unedited one. And many are probably right on that score. If you want to read about Mackenzie Philips’ drug fueled consensual sex with her father, does it really matter if the transitions are weak? And for all I know that book might have been brilliantly edited by a whip-smart young editor with a PhD in linguistics from Princeton — it probably was.

Do editors edit? I think most do, and some quite brilliantly. Most of us still believe that if you strive towards making the book the best it can be, sentence by sentence, word by word, that if you search for the perfect title and subtitle, get the perfect jacket, write sublime flap copy, etc. then you will give the book its best possible shot in the marketplace and give readers what they deserve. We also believe that if we clap long and loud enough a little fairy will come and save us. Or do we save her?

Filed under: Editor, FAQ | 3 Comments »

If You Don’t Know Me By Now

Posted on September 29, 2009 by betsylerner

A reader explains her predicament: she submitted her manuscript to a publishing house a year ago and has still not heard back. Now, she believes the editor will be at a certain bookstore because one of her major writers is giving a reading. She wants to know if she should go to the reading, approach the editor, and ask about the status of her manuscript.

My advice: find out where the editor gets her Brazilians and follow her into the waxing room and ask her there.

Filed under: Editor, Protocol | 14 Comments »

The One That Got Away

Posted on September 19, 2009 by betsylerner

When the venerable editor and publisher Robert Giroux died last year, his NYT obituary listed some of the illustrious writers he worked with including Flannery O’Connor, Robert Lowell, Bernard Malamud, Jack Kerouac and Susan Sontag. Equally interesting to me were stories about the ones who got away. One of these writers brought in his manuscript on teletype paper pasted together into a roll of 120 feet long and demanded that no changes be made. Giroux would not agree and Kerouac walked out, On the Road with him. Giroux had also courted a new short story writer whose work had appeared in The New Yorker. When it came time to offer on his first novel, the brass at his company said it wasn’t right for them: adios Catcher in the Rye.

With this is mind, I surveyed some of New York’s top editors asking if they would divulge which books got away, either because they didn’t recognize their value (either commercial or literary) when they saw it, or because the deciders said nay. Friends, the results:

“My saddest loss was the three day auction of the Steig Larsson trilogy which I was sure I was about to land,” writes one editor. He goes on to say they lost the book to Sonny (that’s Sonny Mehta, publisher of Knopf, and known pistachio nosher). “If you’re going to lose it might as well be Sonny.”

NOTE: Everywhere I’ve ever worked, there was no publishing house people would rather lose to or win from more than Knopf. I worked for a publisher who actually defaced a jacket with a ball point pen because she was so frustrated with the art director. “Well, what do you want?” the art director screamed back. “I want Knopf jackets!” the publisher yelled. “Can you make a Knopf jacket?”

Then there’s the so-called beauty contest, that is when two publishers make the same bid and the author chooses the publisher/editor she prefers. One editor writes in, “I wish I had acquired The Physick Book of Deliverace Dane. Our offer was identical to the acquiring publisher, but the author went with the other house. ” That’s always a great feeling, like standing in line at your camp social, or for that matter sitting on a bar stool at 3:00 a.m., and not getting picked, not that that’s ever happened to me.

“I passed on Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld.” another editor shares. Years later she approached Sittenfeld for a blurb on a debut novel and praised Prep in the letter. Sittenfeld wrote back saying she’d be glad to read the novel, but did the editor remember that she had turned down Prep? Ouch. P.S. She never got the endorsement.

Another editor is still smarting over her boss’ refusal to let her bid on Kevyn Aucoin’s Making Faces. (What’s with that spelling of Kevin??) The book immediately hit the list and the editor shares how she relished the “oh-so-immature-yet satisfying feeling of I-told-you-so.” (Disappointing, but not exactly Holden Caulfield.)

Another editor admitted that she cried over losing The Angel’s Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. And also regrets not getting a shot at Edgar Sawtelle and Olive Kittredge. (Note to self: post a list of novels that are titled with the character’s name? Have a contest? Too nerdy?)

Another editor confessed: “I turned down Guernsey even though I thought it was a very commercial idea because it was stiffly told. Of course then it was rewritten and the rest is history.” And another, “I passed on Shopaholic because I had a current bestseller and thought I didn’t need another one. Ha.” (Funny, no matter what I have, I always want another.)

In the If-You-Don’t-Have’Anything-Nice-To-Say-Don’t-Say-Anything-At-All department, one editor addmitted to having passed on Cold Mountain. But she didn’t just decline, “I airily declared to the agent that I grew up on a Civil War battlefield and that if I didn’t believe it, noone would.” Thanks for sharing.

And then there’s the horse. Everyone wished they had published The Biscuit. For two years, all editors said when asked what kind of books they want to publish was Seabiscuit. One editor wrote in to say that she offered, “Except, I told the agent is was worth $50,000.” What are the odds that the book would’ve wound up on the NYT Bestseller list for 23 weeks? And be made into a feature film starring the incredibly sexy Jeff Bridges and be nominated for an Oscar?

And last, our annual “The One That Got Away Award” goes to the editor who claimed he “turned down James Patterson’s first novel Along Came a Spider because it was so poorly, sketchily written even though it was pacey, as the Brits say. MISTAKE!” Hey, you don’t get the prize for nothing.

Full disclosure: When I was an editor, I turned down The Liar’s Club. I just didn’t believe her.

Filed under: Authors, Books, Editor, Rejection | 25 Comments »

You Are So Beautiful To Me

Posted on August 30, 2009 by betsylerner

I did two very close line edits over the last few weeks, a novel and a memoir. They were both quite brilliant in their own right and as a result the editing was a pure joy. There were many books I’ve had to work on over the years where the prose was less than stellar. I used to compare editing those books to correcting papers, catching the same predictable mistakes over and over again.

When you have the chance to edit something you believe to be brilliant, the pencil comes alive in your hand. You engage in a dialogue in the margins of the page that becomes an intricate and intimate dance. You feel smarter, you may actually be smarter, because you are inspired. And because you don’t have to worry about big things, your attention is more finely tuned and with each suggestion, even as small as a word change, you see the thing more fully realized, elevated, nailed.

There is nothing more satisfying than fine tuning.

Well, a few exceptions come to mind, but this is not an x-rated blog.

Filed under: Authors, Editor, Writing | 6 Comments »

There Are Two Kinds of People In This World

Posted on July 22, 2009 by betsylerner

Had lunch with two great friends, also agents. After a lot of industry gossip, commiseration about the business being really slow (July is the new August), comparing and contrasting notes on editors, the conversation finally turned to something I could get my brain around: who we would rather sleep with, Jon Hamm from Madmen or Gabriel Byrne from In Treatment? Just for one night.

If you’ve ever even toyed with the idea of leaving a comment, please weigh in now: