This is the season of movies based on books, plays or short stories. Doubt. Benjamin Button. Reservation Road. The Reader. Frost/Nixon. The Tale of Despereaux. Marley and Moi. This is good for writers. I know it’s commonplace to trash movie adaptations, but any additional money or exposure you can get as a writer is jam as far as I’m concerned. I’d option my mother if I could.

So far I’ve seen Benjamin Button. When I’m on my death bed, I will wish I had those two hours and forty minutes back. This is one suckface of a movie and it just might win more gold than Michael Phelps.

The Reader: The beginning is so good.

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In today’s New York Times, there’s an article by David Streitfeld, pointing out one more piece of bad news for publishers and writers: the on-line availability of used books for pennies. “What’s undermining the book industry is not the absence of casual readers but the changing habits of devoted readers. In other words, it’s all the fault of people like myself, who increasingly use the Internet both to buy books and later, after their value to us is gone, sell them.”

Maybe.

When exactly is the value of a book gone? Continue reading →

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From time to time, I’m going to try, here, to address the frequently asked questions that I field at writer’s conferences. And if you have questions, please feel free.

Today, nation, it’s the query letter. First, should you send a real letter or an email. While I still love a letter, I think most Continue reading →

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Company christmas party tonight. Spent the day cleaning up, hanging lights, running out in the sleet to Bed, Bath and Beyond to pick some…beyond. A good turn out. Due to our younger agents, a younger crowd of writers came this year, many of whom sequestered themselves in a back office to smoke dope and whatever. Felt old, but happy, noticing as I type this red wine spilled on my keyboard. Happy holidays, everyone.

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Some years ago, a big deal publisher type rejected a client’s project I had sent over. Unlike many who email rejections, she called. She prefaced her rejection with the following caveat, “I want to be gentle with you.” The minute I heard that, I knew she was going to rip me a new one. Or worse, that she deemed me fragile in some way and felt I needed to be handled with kid gloves. The whole exchange rankled and, obviously, I’ve never forgotten it. Now, I’m reading the extraordinary letters between Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop. One letter from Lowell to Bishop reminded me of the gentle publisher and her “favor” of kindness: “Don’t see how you could think Wilbur flattered by Randall’s review; what makes it hurt is R’s leaning over backwards to be friendly — caressed by a tiger.”

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My writers are worried and rightly so. Many publishing heads rolled last week and more to come. Cries of the sky falling, the Titanic plunging, the print world coming to an end. To quiet ourselves we say, it’s cyclical. As a bi-polar person, I know from cyclical. And this, well, this isn’t cyclical. It’s a steady decline that’s been going on for years. But I’m a glass half empty type. That said, if there’s one benefit of being a pessimist, it’s that you expect bad news. Still, I’m not packing it in and here’s why: Enough people still love books, real books, not necessarily authored by felines or Miley Cyrus. And the thing is, the people who love books really love them and are loyal to them. A few chairs have been harshly yanked in publishing’s game of musical chairs. Shelf space for the finest books has diminished as well, and, as we have seen, some of the finest bookstores themselves have disappeared. All the more reason to write your heart out.

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