My Mistake (21 page)

So I write a piece about this cluster of films for
Slate,
and as a result, and as usual in the world of minor cultural commentary, and as I fully expected, nothing happens. What could happen?

Nothing, except to me. It, and advancing age, get me back to thinking about such grand questions—the ones people generally encounter in college philosophy courses and then with relief, if not happily, leave behind. Is there something basically illusory about our lives? What are we doing here? Is there such a thing as free will? And why is there Something rather than Nothing?

The randomness and meaninglessness of my brother's death probably explain part of this restored, late-blooming curiosity and bafflement about the grand questions. The adoption of our children has probably added to it.
So
random. What if my wife and I had applied to the agency a year earlier, or a year later? What if my parents had procreative sex the night before I was conceived. I begin to see that a vast ocean of chance has washed us all ashore here, with illusions of greater meaning and purpose and control over our lives than we have.

 

In contrast to this airy philosophical wool-gathering are the thick and unpleasant realities of my work. I dislike selling myself and my ideas and the kind of honeyed nagging that publishing requires of its book editors, but I do it. Atul Gawande has been writing wonderful pieces about medicine for
The New Yorker.
I have gotten in touch with him about the possibility of Random House's publishing a collection of these essays in book form. His agent advises him not to do so, as collections of previously published nonfiction essays generally don't do well. And she wants him to write an original full-length book as his first venture into book publishing.

I don't agree. I remember Berton Roueché's
The Orange Man
and other collections of his
New Yorker
pieces—Gawande's are under the same heading, Annals of Medicine—which became bestsellers. I'm thinking that Gawande, who is not only a stellar writer but a star surgeon at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital, would fare even better with a collection of his pieces. But his agent and he resist my overtures.

I see the agent at a party. I press my suit once again, in person. Either because I'm so persuasive (unlikely) or because Gawande doesn't have the time to write an original work, they finally relent. The agent sends out a submission to a number of publishers. I figure I have the inside track if I can offer an advance competitive with others'.

In order to make that competitive offer for Gawande's book, I have to get Vintage, Random House's main paperback imprint, to chip in, and it offers a minor amount. Other publishers are offering more money. The level has ascended. I feel desperate and go to Ann Godoff and plead to be able to raise our offer without substantial help from Vintage. No dice.

On the morning of the closing, Gawande calls me because he wants to work with me but has heard from his agent that the acquisition will go to someone else, because of the disparity in offers. “I don't want this to happen,” he says. I tell him that I am trying to get more money from Vintage (which I am, still futilely). Five minutes later, the agent calls and says, “I understand that Atul called you about the situation with his book.”

“Yes, he did—his book which I have been encouraging him to do for a couple of years now, and which I don't want to lose. I've been trying to get more money for our advance all morning.”

“Well, he didn't have the authority to call you,” she says.

“That's funny—that word has the word ‘author' in it,” I say. “I should think he has the right to do anything he wants with his writing.”

“It's too late. The deal with Picador is done.”

Oh, publishing! Publishing is an often incredibly frustrating culture. And a negative one. If you are an acquiring editor and want to buy a project—let's say a nonfiction proposal for a book about the history of Sicily—some of your colleagues may support you, but others will say, “The proposal is too dry” or “Cletis Trebuchet did a book for Grendel Books five years ago about Sardinia and it sold, like, eight copies” or, airily, “I don't think many people want to read about little islands.”

When the proposal for
Seabiscuit
first came up for discussion at an editorial meeting at Random House, some skeptic muttered, “Talk about beating a dead horse!” When the eventual major bestseller
Reading Lolita in Tehran
was first presented, I said, sarcastically, at least to myself if not out loud, “
Reading
What
in
Where?”

Three streams feed this broad river of negativity. Most trade books don't succeed financially. Three out of four fail to earn back their advances. Or four out of five, as I think I said somewhere back there, or six out of seven, depending on what source you consult. Some books that do show a profit show a profit so small that it only minimally darkens a company's red ink.

This circumstance in turn increases the usual business safety strategy of self-protective guardedness. You're more likely to be “right” if you express doubts about a proposal's or a manuscript's prospects than if you support it with enthusiasm. And finally, the inevitable competitiveness among acquisitions editors will incline them to cast a cold and sometimes larcenous eye on others' projects. The “team” metaphor fits the editorial departments of publishing even less well than it fits other competitive businesses.

The worst case of this competitiveness I have ever known about: A newly arrived colleague gets in a proposal for an autobiography by a leading political figure. The new colleague goes to lunch with a more seasoned and unprincipled senior person. They discuss the new proposal. The veteran goes back to his office and calls the agent involved and says, “We've decided that I'll take the lead on the _____ autobiography.” This is just treachery without guile, and nearly beyond belief. (When the situation comes to light, it is rectified.)

Those three acquisition-time negativities are only the beginning of the negativities that editors must face. Barnes & Noble doesn't like the title. The author's uncle Joe doesn't like the jacket. The writer doesn't like the page layout and design. The publisher tells you that the flap copy for a book about a serial killer is too “down.” The hardcover doesn't sell well enough for the company to put out a paperback. The book has to wait a list or two to be published.
Publishers Weekly
hates the book. Another writer gets angry at you for asking for a jacket quote. (A famous author of legal thrillers began his reply to a blurb request from me with “If I even had to just answer all such queries as this from you and your ilk . . .”) The
New York
Times
isn't going to review the book. And so on.

If you work in the Editorial Department of a publisher, you usually don't know much about what goes on in Sales. That is, you can love a book you're working on, all your colleagues can—maybe uncharacteristically—share your admiration, your boss can talk the book up in marketing and sales meetings, but you don't know what sales reps say about that book when they make sales calls. I've always suspected that salespeople's and wholesale buyers' biases and preferences play a greater part in a book's fortunes than most editorial people want to allow themselves to understand. Reps and buyers are subject to their own “results” pressures, after all.

Further, genuine literary discernment is often a liability in editors. And it should be—at least when it is unaccompanied by a broader, more popular sensibility it should be. When you are trying to acquire books that hundreds of thousands of people will buy, read, and like, you have to have some of the eclectic and demotic taste of the reading public. I have a completely unfounded theory that there are a million very good—engaged, smart, enthusiastic—generalist readers in America. There are five hundred thousand extremely good such readers. There are two hundred and fifty thousand excellent readers. There are a hundred and twenty-five thousand alert, active, demanding, well-educated (sometimes self-well-educated), and thoughtful—that is, literarily superb—readers in America. More than half of those people will happen not to have the time or taste for the book you are publishing. So, if these numbers are anything remotely like plausible, good taste, no matter how refined it may be, will limit your success as an acquiring editor. It's not enough for you to be willing to publish
The Long Sad Summer of Our Hot Forsaken Love,
by Lachryma Duct, or
Nuke Iran, and I Mean Now!
by Generalissimo Macho Picchu. You have to actually
like
them, or somehow make yourself like them, or at least make yourself believe that you like them, in order to be able to see them through the publishing process.

To make matters worse, financial success in front-list publishing is very often random, but the media conglomerates that run most publishing houses act as if it were not. Yes, you may be able to count on a new novel by Surething Jones becoming a big bestseller. But the bestseller lists paint nothing remotely like the full financial picture of any publication. Because that picture's most important color of commerce is the size of the advance. The second most important color is the general level of book buying. I'd bet that the volume of sales of, say, the number 6 hardcover book on the
New York Times
fiction bestseller list in 2013 is, partly but not entirely owing to the advent of e-books, significantly lower than the volume of the number 6 bestseller five years ago. Four and three and two years ago, too, almost certainly.

It's my strong impression that most of the really profitable books for most publishers still come from the mid-list—“surprise” big hits bought with small or medium advances, such as that memoir by a self-described racial “mutt” of a junior senator from Chicago. Somehow, by luck or word of mouth, these books navigate around the rocks and reefs upon which most of their fleet—even sturdy vessels—founder. This is an old story but one that media giants have not yet heard, or at least not heeded, or so it seems.

Because let's say you publish a fluky blockbuster about rhinoviruses in Renaissance Italy,
The Da Vinci Cold,
one year. The corporation will see a spike in your profits and sort of autistically, or at least automatically, raise the profit goal for your division by some corporately predetermined amount for the following year. (The sequel to or second book after that blockbuster will usually command an advance so large as to dim a publisher's profit hopes for it.) This is close to clinically insane institutional behavior and breeds desperation rather than pride and confidence in the people who work for you.

Also, some 150,000 books are published in the United States every year. Let's—once again without any real foundation—be really draconian and say that only 10 per cent of those books would be in any way appealing to generalist readers of some intelligence. Let's take 50 per cent of that 10 per cent, for no reason at all, just to be even nastier, and we end up with 7,500 books. That means that on average 150 more or less worthwhile books are published
every week
in this country. Let's cut that number in half, just to make the floor of our metaphorical abattoir really bloody. That makes 75 worthwhile books a week. (By the way, that number is about twice the rough and generous estimate I've made based on actual experience.) How are 75 at-least-half-decent books going to receive serious and discriminating reviews in the few important places remaining for serious reviews every week? To say nothing of getting attention from prominent publicity outlets, like NPR and
Charlie Rose
and
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
? They're not. They're simply not. These statistical circumstances make publishing into a kind of grand cultural roulette, in which your chances of winning any significant pot are very small.

More: The sheer book-length nature of books, combined with the seemingly inexorable reductions in editorial staffs and the number of submissions most editors receive, to say nothing of the welter of non-editorial tasks that most editors have to perform, including holding the hands of intensely self-absorbed and insecure writers, fielding frequently irate calls from agents, attending endless and ritualistic meetings, having one ceremonial lunch after another, supplementing publicity efforts, writing or revising catalogue copy, ditto flap copy, refereeing jacket-design disputes, and so on—all these conditions taken together make the job of a trade-book acquisitions editor these days extremely difficult. The shrift given to actual close and considered editing almost has to be short, and it's growing shorter—another evergreen publishing story but truer now than ever before. So you have to be prepared to give up reading for pleasure.

Still more: Many of the important decisions in publishing are made outside the author's and agent's specific knowledge. Let's say your house publishes a comparatively modest number of original hardcovers (and their corresponding e-books) every year—forty. Twelve on the etymologically amusing “spring” list, January through April; twelve in the summer; sixteen in the economically more active fall. Well, meetings are held to determine which of those books your company is going to emphasize—talk about most, spend the most money on, and so forth. These are the so-called lead titles for those seasons. Most of the time, the books for which the company has paid the highest advances will be the lead titles, regardless of their quality. In many cases, their quality is unknown at this planning stage anyway, because their manuscripts haven't been delivered or completely written or even begun yet. But why
should
the literary quality of writing figure heavily in this prioritizing? It's not as if the millions of readers being prayed for are necessarily looking for challenging and truly enlightening reading experiences.