Publishing | Betsy Lerner

Seven Habits of Highly Successful Writers

Posted on January 14, 2010 by betsylerner

I forgot all about my “ask a question” gmail account, so without further delay (and questions always welcome):

Hi there

I have just started following your blog.

I am in the process of writing a synopsis for a novel which I need to get finished by 28th February. I would love some hints and tips.

Many thanks

Dear Reader: I know agents differ on the matter of the synopsis and its importance, but I’ve always hated their skinny asses. With fiction, it’s all in the execution, so what can a synopsis tell you? A brilliant one line description is worth gold, as far as I’m concerned. If a writer sends me a synopsis and a few chapters, I just read a few pages of the novel itself and see if the writing interests me. The synopsis is of no use to me. Unless I forgot my sleeping pills.

But why are you writing a synopsis on a deadline? Is this a self-imposed deadline (which I am in favor of)? Has an agent asked for one? If you’re determined to write this god damn synopsis, I would keep the following in mind: speak to the themes more than the plot details. Describe just the two or three most important characters. Pepper the motherfucker with rhetorical questions, i.e. What happens when a brilliant literary agent and blogger falls desperately in love with one of her readers? Most helpful, go to publishers’ websites and read the copy they squirrel together for their authors. You’ll learn a lot.

Now, for some real tips for writers:

Wash your specs with warm soapy water and dry with a cloth
Floss twice a day.
It is NEVER too late to thank your agent/editor with fruit or flowers
Look up words you don’t know.
Go to at least one reading a month (and buy the book)
Read a poem a day.
Write

Filed under: Publishing, Writing | 10 Comments »

I Saw Her Today At The Reception

Posted on December 8, 2009 by betsylerner

True or false: the squeaky wheel gets the grease. I’ve been thinking about this lately. Some writers have no trouble asking for what they want and need. They are in your grill. Others nearly disappear themselves. Some authors send me a query letter and follow up a week later. One man this year wrote me every day pitching himself and the merits of his project. Some send a project and follow up many months later, hoping not to bother you. Why does it feel like the person who is too pushy can’t be a particularly good writer? Maybe because being a good writer requires a certain amount of emotional intelligence, sensitivity, communication skills. Then again, there are the Norman Mailers of the world. I’m just guessing, but I don’t think Mailer was shy about what getting what he wanted.

Sometimes I bristle when a client pushes me too hard, but then I tell myself that this is his job. If he can’t be ambitious about what he wants, who can. Other clients need me to be ambitious for them, to suggest the parameters of a dream, or look into my crystal ball. It’s extraordinary, really, watching how a writer’s ego, esteem, confidence, insecurities, and talent combine to help or hurt them as they put their work forward. Even after 25 years of working with writers, I marvel at how some can shout it from the mountaintops, while others barely whisper in your ear. How do you comport yourself as writer or author? Do you find you get what you need, and if so how? More bees with honey? The squeaky wheel?

Filed under: Authors, Protocol, Publishing | 28 Comments »

Baby, It’s Cold Outside

Posted on November 11, 2009 by betsylerner

Every lunch date with an editor begins the same way: How bad is it? Is it going to get better? Will books still be around in our lifetime?

Last week, one editor sat down and exclaimed that she was tired of all the gloom and doom. She was going to put blinders on and get on with her work. Wake me up when it’s over.

A young editor wondered if he got in the business too late; he was worried if editors would exist in twenty, ten, five years.

Today, at a breakfast, an editor said said that sales were hideous. Books were getting out of the gate, but then mysteriously falling off a cliff a few weeks later, disappearing.

I think it’s going to take more than Jeff Bezos and Sergey Brin to put an end to print books. Still, this is a time of transition and as such it is terrifying and exciting. How as a writer do you keep your own counsel, find your way, stay warm?

Filed under: Authors, Books, Publishing, The End of the World as We Know It | 26 Comments »

For Some Reason I Can’t Explain

Posted on November 4, 2009 by betsylerner

Blurb? Will do!

I’m working late. Contracts, paying bills, rejecting, er considering, query letters. I’ve got to send out a manuscript for blurbs and I’m stumbling on the letter. Asking for blurbs is the worst part of the job. It’s usually in the editor’s purview to get the blurbs, but I usually help out when I know a writer. Did I ever tell you how I found a galley for a book I edited in a used bookstore and within the galley was my letter asking an author for a blurb. Agh.

Sorry, I don't give blurbs. It's a policy.

Once, I gave a blurb to a book I didn’t like that much because I’m a good egg, I guess. When the book came out, it had five other blurbs on the jacket from writers far more significant than I will ever be. I was flattered to be in such blurb company. Blurb company? Was the book better than I realized, or was the writer super connected. You can’t blow that many writers, or can you?

Filed under: Publishing, The End of the World as We Know It | 12 Comments »

Take a Meeting

Posted on October 29, 2009 by betsylerner

One of my beloved clients allowed as to how he was hurt that I hadn’t written about him. Let’s correct that now. On Tuesday, he and I went to his publisher’s office for a meeting with the publicity and marketing people. Publishers will not always grant these meetings unless you are McKenzie Phillips. And sometimes, bringing a writer in can do more damage than good. Not in this case, my client is handsome, articulate, charming, in other words, eye-candy for the literary set.

The office began to look like the inside of a clown car: one person after another kept coming in. The Publisher, the editorial director, the associate publisher, the publicity director, the publicist, a web person and later their Amazon sales person. Most everyone had read the book! Brainstorming about the jacket ensued! Ideas were exchanged about how to reach the market! It went on and on. This is not your average meeting. And my client is not Mckenzie Philips. (Can’t have everything.)

I was really grateful that the publishing team came together for my client. It’s a shit-all climate out there for selling books and everyone is pulling back. This publisher has been very successful. What’s key, I think, is having a publishing team, like a ball club, that believes in itself where the various players respect one another. At some of the publishing houses where I worked, certain employees weren’t above crucifying a colleague in a full conference room or behind her back in a bathroom stall. I’m telling you, it was very Gossip Girl. Fun, but the books suffered.

Afterward, I had lunch with my client. The waiter reminded me of a guy at my alternative camp who I had a crush on.

Filed under: Agent, Authors, Publishing | 7 Comments »

I’m Walking On Sunshine

Posted on October 27, 2009 by betsylerner

My editor called today to say that she liked the work I did on the revision for The Forest for the Trees. Especially the ending. I no longer thought it worked, too overblown, but I kept moving paragraphs and sentences around like the wheel of a combination lock, hoping they would click into place if I got each sentence lined up just so. Finally, I scrapped it and started fresh. I think doing that is almost always the best solution to pages that have been over-worked.

So, dearest darling beloved readers of this blog. FFTT will come out next fall. I owe you a lot for helping me find my mojo again as the ever positive and cheerful promoter of writers and all things bookish. We will have to have a party. I may even get a fresh quantity of customized pencils made. I know you want them. You do.

One last piece of business. Check this out from today’s PublishersMarketPlace new deals column:

FICTION: DEBUT

Laurie London’s BONDED BY BLOOD, the first in her Sweetblood series, about a vampire warrior who must protect a human woman with a particularly delicious blood type from the vampire predators who hunt her, to Margo Lipschultz at HQN, in a two-book deal, by Emmanuelle Alspaugh at Judith Ehrlich Literary Management (World).

That coulda been us. ‘Nuff said.

Filed under: Books, Publishing, Writing | 18 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 »

Every Year Is Getting Shorter

Posted on October 7, 2009 by betsylerner

Here’s a good one:

Greetings! I am working on a memoir and nearly have the manuscript completed. After many years of working on it, I think this is the draft that I can start sending to agents. I have a feeling the manuscript will be ready around the holidays; at least, that’s my goal. I will be anxious to start sending it out right away. But is the period between Thanksgiving/Christmas a bad time to send manuscripts? Are there some general “bad times” in the year in which to submit? Is there a “good time” to submit?

I’ve consulted some of the great Talmudic minds over the last decade about when to send out books. And I would have been happy to share the information, but just like everything else in this economic climate — all bets are off. It used to be that you didn’t want to send out books in December or August. That said, I recently heard that August is new September. Does that mean November is the new December? As far as I know, August is still when most people take vacation. And you probably don’t want to send out your project before the Christmas holidays unless you’re submitting it to a Chinese food-eating, movie-going, beautiful young jewess like me.

The best advice: send it when it’s ready — that’s the bottom line. Send it when you can handle whatever happens, and keep writing.

Filed under: Agent, FAQ, Protocol, Publishing | 7 Comments »

Out for Blood

Posted on September 29, 2009 by betsylerner

Readers, I just heard that another vampire book (1,000 pages long) sold for seven figures. If the agent weren’t the sweetest guy in the whole world, I would drive a stake through my heart. I’ve always counseled writers not to jump on the band wagon, not to look to the bestseller list for inspiration, not to be copycats. Well, fuck all that. Writers: write! I want a 5,000 page manuscript about a Shape Shifter who works by day as a children’s book illustrator and kills small children at night, dates a half-human half-literary agent, and sucks her hammerhead thumbs to the great consternation of her dentist. Do you feel me? Let’s not spend the rest of this recession watching Mad Men videos when we can be printing money. Printing it!

Filed under: Books, Publishing, The End of the World as We Know It | 28 Comments »

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