Editors on Editing: What Writers Need to Know About What Editors Do (10 page)

Martha said that the book became more moving as it went along, particularly with the revisions the author was making. “I think it can succeed. Also I’m not asking for us to invest a ton of money.”

“Who’s going to buy this book?” marketing manager Lance L. asked.

Martha reminded herself that he was only doing his job. Gone were the days when a novel like
Remembering Angie
was perceived as an opportunity rather than a problem, when a book this promising by a Concord author created enthusiasm and affection, which was communicated inside the house and which then emanated from it, paving the book’s way to the review media and from there to the reading public. Now what was called for was a pseudosociology that reduced the book to some slot in the market. So, trying to keep her tongue out of her cheek, she gave them one. “This will appeal to the
Big Chill
audience. Also the educated reader who likes Bruce Springsteen…”

“But those people buy paperbacks,” said Lance.

“Well, what about doing it as a quality paperback and take a strong position on it, really break it out?”

“We’ve been down that road before,” Mac said. “If it doesn’t work, you get killed.”

Martha tried again. “You have to see it for what it is: a finely written love story that evokes an era that meant a lot to a lot of people. People who read books.”

“Novels about the sixties just don’t sell,” said Lance. “Look what happened to his second book about the hippies.”

“Well, where do we stand?” Martha then asked. When there was no immediate answer she played her last card. “I really want us to do this book. Also two other houses are after it at about that advance.”

“I don’t get it,” said Dot. “I thought he was working on it with you.”

“His agent has been showing it around, but he’d like to stay.”

Dot wanted to know who the competition was. When Martha told her, she said, “Offer twelve-five. I wouldn’t mind putting Al’s feet to the fire for trying to move one of our authors.”

“I’ve been talking in the neighborhood of twenty-five, and that was before he began improving it.”

“Well, now you have a captive author so take advantage of it,” Dot said. “I want people to know that we play hardball too.”

With Mac’s support Martha was able to get permission to settle at seventeen-five, with two-thirds of it paid right away. Even so, she left the meeting feeling thoroughly undermined. In her previous career as a senior editor, her estimate of the value of a book like David’s would have been more or less taken for granted. Also her first offer would have been honored.

Needless to say, neither David nor Al was happy about the new terms. But now David was mainly bent on finishing the book, and Al was content to let her off the hook with a little dig. “I’m getting used to the fact that editors are powerless these days,” he said.

…

While the book was in production, Martha sent out the usual bound galleys for quotes, and the book’s luck began to change—or rather its class began to tell. Though most well-known authors are glutted with advance copies and seldom respond, Martha received several enthusiastic quotes, including one of ringing praise from a famous critic, Victor P., which began, “At last a new American novel with a social conscience and a cultural vision.
Remembering Angie
does for the sixties what
The Great Gatsby
did for the twenties by encoding a chapter of the Romantic movement in America in a love story.”

“My cup runneth over,” David said as Martha read the letter to him. When she was finished, he said, “If nothing else happens, this makes it all worthwhile.”

Martha shared the critic’s comment with Mac, her one ally, discussing with him how best to make use of it. They decided to shorten it to “It does for the sixties what
The Great Gatsby
did for the twenties.” She sent it around with the other quotes in a memo to the key marketing executives that also invoked the success of David’s first book. She wrote a similar letter to the field force and added a personal note and a copy of the bound galleys for each of the reps who she thought would cotton to
Remembering Angie
and might speak up for it at the coming sales conference.

At a marketing meeting a book’s initial position is established: its tentative first printing and the quota that the sales reps are asked to meet; its advertising and promotion budget, its space in the catalog. Even with the quotes, Martha hadn’t been able to drum up interest, much less enthusiasm, from her editorial colleagues, none of whom read the book. That, too, was very different from the Concord she had known. Under the “lean and mean” edict of INCOM the editors were handling almost twice as many books as before and hardly had time for their own projects. And she had observed the ethos of the staff shifting from a collegial to an entrepreneurial one, in keeping with the pressures and rewards of meeting their individual acquisition quotas, which were reckoned on a scale that reflected the amount of the advance paid for a book.

…

Martha had two novels on the fall list:
Remembering Angie
and
The Limelight Café
by Melissa Rogers. The latter, which she was handling for Dot B., was a kind of contemporary version of Arthur Schnitzler’s
La Ronde
in which a serial string of amorous relationships in all three flavors connects the odd lives and plenteous life-styles of nine youngish people in the Newport Beach/Laguna strip.

Dot had paid $550,000 for world rights to
The Limelight Café
and the author’s next book, the idea being to make her into a “brand name” and publish her books throughout the English-speaking world through INCOM’s houses in New York, Toronto, and London.

Much of Martha’s stint at the marketing meeting was taken up with the plans to advertise
The Limelight Café
and to tour Rogers. Martha, who felt that her colleagues were being carried away by their enthusiasm for the promotability of both the book and the author, pointed out that there was often a critical backlash to a novel by an author whose first one had gone to the races, and perhaps they might take a more conservative position both
in advancing and in flogging the book until the reviewers were heard from.

Dot, the publisher, thought that the house should take an even stronger position: a first printing of 100,000 and an ad budget of $125,000 to give the book “more credibility, particularly with the chains.” The publicity, sales, and advertising people around the table began to think of further ways to reach the figure that Dot had proposed. Since Martha felt the matter was out of her hands and that her views would be taken as another example of her not being “on board” at the new Concord, she kept silent.

…

Why all the enthusiasm for this soufflé of a novel—tasty but pretty empty? Martha had her ideas about it. The typical big-time publisher today was someone like Dot, whose expertise was high-volume marketing but who still took a certain pride in publishing quality books. Thus the particular feather in their caps was the classy writer like Melissa Rogers who allowed them to keep their heads high all the way to the bank and the management meeting. Also, in an era of publishing of information, advice, and entertainment, one list was pretty much like another, so that the presence of this or that “real writer” was about all that remained to distinguish one house from another. Then, too, there were the status drives of the new breed of publishers like Dot, their need to position themselves in the industry as “major players,” their house as a “hot shop.” All of which meant that the competition for the quality writer with a significant following had become as fierce and often as exorbitant as that for the tried-and-true authors of best-sellers. The inflated advances led directly to the excessive printings and advertising/promotion budgets that she was witnessing with Melissa Rogers’s book. Martha figured that given the mixed reviews that
The Limelight Café
was likely to receive, they would do well to sell 30,000 copies. With a sensible first printing of 40,000 and an equivalent budget the book would then be a success. She feared that unfolding in the room was a scenario for a failure that was bound to adversely affect Melissa Rogers’s relations with the house.

That morning, though, she was much more concerned about the fate of David’s book. The marketing manager rattled off the numbers: a first printing of 6,000 copies, a minuscule budget that would drop it into a house ad with three other books, and a half page in the catalog. Martha girded herself to do battle.

“I’m more confident about the reviews for this book than I am for Melissa’s,” she said. “Look at the quotes it’s been getting.”

“They’re impressive,” said Dot. “But so are most quotes. That’s why we use them.”

“Review editors don’t care that much,” said Jackie L., the publicity director. “They just figure that the quotes are from the author’s friend. Or the editor’s.”

“It depends how you present them,” said Martha. “With the right copy…” She could sense that eyes were already glazing over. “Look,” she said, “the quotes are indicative of the book’s quality and of the seriousness with which other writers and critics will take it. That’s all I’m saying. This book warrants our taking a stronger position.”

“We can take any position we want,” said Bernie T., the sales director. “I’m still only going to get out four thousand copies based on his track record.”

“If it starts to get the attention and to move, we can reprint,” said Lance, the marketing manager.

Martha realized that she was already down to her last shot. “All right,” she said. “This is a book that the reviews will have to make. But if you give it only a half page in the catalog, you’re sending a message to the review editors that we think it’s a small, run-of-the-mill novel and they’ll pass it by.”

“Every editor wants a full page,” growled Bernie.

At this point Mac intervened. “I’ve been reading
Remembering Angie
, and it’s got real possibilities. Let’s give it a page and get on with things.”

…

The two novels were published within a month of each other, though most readers wouldn’t have known that. Because of the publicity and industry buzz generated by the advance paid for
The Limelight Café
, as well as the success of Melissa Rogers’s first book, it was prominently and widely reviewed, particularly in the book media that emanates from New York, where, generally speaking, the reputation of a book is established. It shared a front-page review in the
New York Times Book Review
with the work of another rising woman novelist, was praised in
Newsweek
and panned in
Time
, made most of the slick monthlies, and was even included in an omnibus review of “trendy” fiction in the
New York Review of Books
. The review in the
New Republic
titled “Trivial Pursuit” summed up much of the negative response. But the book’s combination of “the latest in life-styles”
(Washington Post)
and “suave kinkiness”
(Vanity Fair)
carried the day, and soon the novel was making its way up the best-seller list.

Martha found herself being almost as swept away by the reception as Melissa was. As her author’s stock soared, so did hers: she felt herself being treated no longer like an old-fashioned family retainer who was out of step with the ambitious and lavish new master and mistress, but instead like a shrewd woman of the world who knew how to make things happen. Her
judgment about promoting Melissa and the book was taken seriously, her initial reservations forgotten in the heat of success. Dot invited her to a getting-to-know-you lunch, asked her opinion of a prominent writer who was being “moved” by his agent, then wanted to know whom Martha was “cruising.”

Martha said she now and then expressed an interest in an author to his or her agent but didn’t like to go further than that. “If the author’s worth stealing,” she said, “the other publisher must have been doing something right. All you’re offering is more money and getting an author who has become committed to the highest bidder.”

“I don’t see it that way. I’m concerned about the next three years. Also, there’s nothing like money for building an author. As you’ve seen with Melissa. I’ll bet she’s feeling great about Concord these days.”

Which was true. Martha’s mind turned to David, who was her unhappy author.
Remembering Angie
had been published a month ago and the reviews so far hadn’t amounted to a hill of beans. Though bitterly disappointed, Martha could not honestly say she was surprised. In her mind, editing a book like David’s was somewhat like raising her two children. While they were growing up, the world was full of possibilities for them; now that they were out in the world—one a painter, the other an actress—they faced intense struggles and slender prospects of making their ways. So too with a book like David’s, which had been nurtured by hope, hers as well as his, but was now at the mercy of chance and conditions.

The main condition was a glutted market. Each month four thousand or five thousand books poured from the presses; most of them sold a few thousand copies and were dead a year later. It was as though books had become as precarious and perishable as fish eggs, so that so many had to be spawned in order for a few to live. The colleges and universities seemed to be producing more writers of literary fiction and poetry than readers of them. Caught in the overflow, book review editors and writers, like readers, latched onto reputation and fashion and hype. Sometimes an unheralded book, like David’s first one, hit a public nerve of topicality or taste, got a few breaks from the media, and went to the head of the line. But the culture’s memory was short, almost amnesiac, and ten years later, the author had fallen back into the pack of so-called midlist writers.

At his end, David was telling himself some of the same things in a more despairing way. The early quotes from other writers and then an enthusiastic advance notice in
Publishers Weekly
had confirmed the feeling that he had broken out of his long slump, and visions of glowing reviews, even of best-seller lists and choice teaching positions, danced in his head. But then the publication week of the book came and went with a resounding silence, and the weeks that followed brought only a handful of perfunctory reviews.