 Talking Agents Ezine |
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WHAT IT TAKES
With apologies to Richard Ben Cramer, who in 1992 published a terrific book about presidential candidates with that title; figuring out what it takes to make it as a writer is equally important, if that’s what you do. World peace is probably not at stake, but as with high-stakes politicians, winning definitely requires a special breed of cat. You need first and foremost the gift of talent – but that’s only the starting place. Intestinal fortitude and a nose for a great idea are both every bit as important.
Maybe you’re among the small group of fortunate souls for whom the first book you wrote attracted a great agent, a terrific publisher, and spent 100 weeks on the Times bestseller list.
Hooray for Hollywood. They make us believe in such stories. Indeed, some very few times that’s how it happens. Excepting JK Rowling, examples do not quickly spring to mind. (FWIW, Rowling was rejected by one agent before finding Christopher Little, and her initial contract was exceedingly unimpressive, but even the sunniest stories need some dramatic tension…)
Instead, for the truly talented who are willing to work as much and as long as it takes to perfect their craft, the script usually goes something like this: First comes that dark period when there’s an endless flow of rejection slips from agents, and you shudder when you think about the fact that getting good and legitimate representation is only the first step in a grueling process. Next comes the euphoria of getting the agent. Followed by the agony of the realization that the best agents don’t manage to sell more than a limited number of the properties they take on, and this time you’re in the thumbs down percentile. Then you find the courage to go back and do another book. Finally there’s the heart-stopping moment when that believing agent manages to find you a decent publisher.
Then you get great reviews and sell 2,500 copies in hardback.
Or you get terrible reviews or none at all, but sell 20,000 in hardback and 100,000 in paper, the agent gets you a comfortable six figure contract for the next book, and with some healthy foreign sales and a dramatic rights option (never mind that they never actually make the movie) you can finally quit your day job.
Bearing in mind that in terms of numbers the last example represents still modest success in this business, that there are at least a dozen possible permutations of the story line, and that there’s a lot further “up” to go if you’re talking real success (see the following article on the totals racked up by 2007’s major winners), we’re left with the same question: What does it take?
One variation on the theme was a fascinating article that ran in the December 2007 Washington Post. The novelist Valerie Martin (no relation) and her very high powered editor, Nan Talese at Doubleday, discussed the likelihood of her new book, Tresspass, being her “break-out” book. It’s her twelfth published novel, and it was very favorably reviewed. The New York Times review, however, began with the words, “Over the past 30 years Valerie Martin's novels and stories, although well received by critics, have made little dent in the public consciousness.”
At which point we’re going to crawl way out on a limb and probably saw it off behind us. First an admission, we’ve not read Martin’s work. And we recognize that publishing a dozen novels and having a major publisher and a decent agent (Nikki Smith) stick with you despite sales figures that are not earth shaking can be seen as a huge achievement in a business of cutthroat competition. Nonetheless, in publishing terms, hers is limited success, and that seems to us to be attributable to her choices of subjects and, since these are novels, plots.
Books become popular when and if the public gloms onto something in the story (or in the case of non-fiction something in the idea or the narrative). Such books can be well or badly written and everything in between. In the former case, in the US market as currently constituted, they may qualify as literary novels. In the latter they are part of a huge pool of bad commercial work, which may nonetheless be compelling because of the timeliness of the subject, or the or the cleverness of one or another notion underlying the plot. Consider the maguffin that propelled Dan Brown’s DaVinci Code – Mary Magdalene gave birth to the son of Jesus Christ and mainstream Christianity has been engaged in a cover up ever since – or, at the opposite end of the spectrum in terms of literary finesse, the one in Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale. That book sold better than anything she wrote before or since, and hung its story on a dystopic near-future in which very few women are fertile, and those who can conceive are the male dominated society’s sex slaves. (Citing Atwood here is particularly appropriate because she and Martin are friends, and it was Atwood who marched into Talese’s office one day with a pile of Martin’s mss and said, publish these.)
Trespass takes place at the start of the Iraq war, and looks at the lives of East Coast blue state liberals when their son introduces to the family dynamic a foxy new wife who is surly, secretive, pregnant, and a Croatian refugee. And judging from the excellent reviews, this is not a 21st century Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner romp, with laughs and a few pithy bits of social commentary. Martin’s book is designed to make us uncomfortable and apparently does. That may be important, but it’s hard to see it being popular. A likelihood born out by the fact that, according to Neilson’s BookScan, Trespass has thus far sold some 3,000 copies in the US. (See the next story for an explanation regarding their figures.)
It is unfair to tell this story without noting that Valerie Martin has at times come close to touching the popular imagination. Her agent is Nikki Smith, who while not an über agent is accomplished and experienced and certainly effective for this client. She got Martin a movie deal for her late ‘80s book, Mary Reilly, a retelling of the Jekyll and Hyde story from the pov of a servant in the household. Unfortunately the movie, though directed by Stephen Frears and with John Malkovich and Julia Roberts in the lead roles, turned out to be a dog. That’s not Martin’s fault, much less that of her agent, but again we are being offered, according to one reviewer: “…the powerful story of a doomed domestic and her equally doomed employer…”
Valerie Martin has apparently decided that she will write what she wants and feels is important. She is not passionate about being a bestselling author. That’s her choice and it may well be the choice of many of you. If it is not, if you lust after bestsellerdom, bear in mind that however talented a writer you may be, what you decide to write about is at least half the ball game.
Nikki Smith Skolnick/Smith Literary Agency 963 Belvidere Ave. Sleepy Hollow Plainfield NY 07060 908 822-1870 |
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| RUNNING THE NUMBERS |
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As the above story makes abundantly clear, getting on the important bestseller lists and thus propelling a book into the (possible) mega sales category is the essence of commercial success in the world of publishing. Moreover, when the stars are in the proper alignment and the Universe chooses to cooperate, it’s a kind of success as available to literary novels and scholarly works of non-fiction, as it is to thrillers and works of science fantasy.
Here then are most of the big and very big winners of 2007, according to sales information from Neilson’s BookScan – as widely quoted as it is criticized. BookScan is as good as we have in a business notorious for its lack of hard data, but it does not count all sales. Industry subscribers get actual sales numbers from 4,500 retail outlets, but not every place that sells books is on the team. (Costco, for example, does not play.)
That caveat aside, here are the books that made a big splash in the last twelve months. Some were published years ago and are still racking up huge sales; others are newborns. When the cited numbers are for anything other than a hardcover edition of the book we indicate same with the initials TP (trade paperback) or MMP (mass market paperback).
And as is our wont, we have added the names and contact data of the agents who sold the books. Plus, just to make the game interesting, if there’s an asterisk beside the agent’s name it indicates that we know for a fact that the agent took on one or more debut authors in 2007.
So please, those of you writing your first book, no repeats of the big-name-agents-won’t-look-at-new-writers nonsense. They won’t look unless your work is brilliant (by the standards of what it claims to be – brilliant how-to and brilliant self-help and brilliant cozy mysteries are as possible as a brilliant literary novel or discussion of political history) and STARTS OUT BRILLIANTLY.
Newbies take note: They’re only going to read the first five or so pages before deciding whether to ask for more or send you a standard rejection. (Or simply ignore you.) You won’t win until you have those opening pages gleaming to polished perfection. Keep writing until you do.
A final note: When a writer had more than one big bestseller in 2007 (example: Khaled Hosseini for The Kite Runner TP as well as for his newer book, A Thousand Splendid Suns in hardcover) we list only the latest book. The agent is 99.99% likely to be the same in all instances. Moving on doesn’t usually happen quite so quickly.
Top 50 BookScan Bestsellers
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by JK Rowling Agent: Christopher Little Christopher Little Literary Agency 125 Moore Park Road 0207 736-4455 Agent: Sarah Chalfant * The Wylie Agency New York, NY 10107 212 246-0069
1 Million+ Agent Elaine Koster * Elaine Koster Literary
Agency, LLC New York NY 10023 212 362-9488
Agent Kathy Anderson * Anderson Literary Management 12 W. 19th Street New York NY 10011 212 645-6045
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen Agent Emma Sweeney * Emma Sweeney Agency LLC 12 W. 19th Street New York NY 10011 212 645-6045
Agent Geri Thoma * Elaine Markson Literary Agency, Inc. 44 Greenwich Ave. New York NY 10011 212 243-8480
Agent Amanda Urban * ICM 825 Eighth Ave. New York NY 10019 212 556-5600
Agent Candice Fuhrman * Candice Fuhrman Literary Agency 60 Greenwood Way Mill Valley CA 94941 415 383-6081
Agent Jennifer Rudolph Walsh William Morris Agency 1325 Avenue of the Americas New York NY 10019 212 903-1120 Agent Dan Strone * Trident Media Group 41 Madison Ave. 36th Floor New York NY 10010 212 333-1515
Agent Jodi Reamer * Writers House 21 West 26th St. New York, NY 10010 212 685-2405
Agent David Gernert The Gernert Company, Inc. 136 East 57th Street New York NY 10022 212 838-7777
Agent David Black * David Black Literary Agency 156 Fifth Ave. Suite 608 New York NY 10010 212 242-5080
Deidre Knight * The Knight Agency 570 East Avenue Madison GA 30650 404 538-2030
The Choice by Nicholas Sparks Theresa Park * The Park Literary Group 156 Fifth Ave. Suite 1134 New York NY 10010 212 691-3503
Agent Lynn Nesbit Janklow & Nesbit Associates 445 Park Ave. 13th Floor New York, NY 10022 212 421-1700
Agent Jennifer Rudolph Walsh William Morris Agency 1325 Avenue of the Americas New York NY 10019 212 903-1120
Agent Heather Schroder * 825 Eighth Ave. New York NY 10019 212 556-5600
Lean Mean Thirteen by Janet Evanovich Agent Robert Gottlieb Trident Media Group 41 Madison Ave. 36th Floor New York NY 10010 212 333-1515
Agent Jan Miller DuPree Miller and Associates, Inc. 100 Highland Park Village Suite 350 Dallas TX 75205 214 559-2665
Agent Sandra Dijkstra * Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency 1155 Camino del Mar Suite 515 Del Mar CA 92130 858 755-3115
Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult Agent Laura Gross * Laura Gross Agency, Ltd. 75 Clinton Place Newton MA 02459-1117 617 964-2977
Al Zuckerman * (NB: While Pillars was sold by Zuckerman, some years back Follett’s representation was switched within the agency to Amy Berkower. She is now President and Zuckerman is CEO, but as the asterisk denotes, he continues to take on and sell new writers.) Writers House 21 West 26th St. New York, NY 10010 212 685-2405
Agent Talia Cohen * Laura Dail Literary Agency, Inc. 350 Seventh Ave. Suite 2003 New York NY 10001 212 239-2861 |
Agent Research and Evaluation, Inc; 425 No. 20th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19130 Tel: 215-563-1867 Fax: 215-563-6797 Email: info@agentresearch.com www.AgentResearch.com |