Q:  There’s some background information I need to include so my narrative makes more sense.  How can I do that without breaking the flow of the story?

A:  Many writers struggle with blending in historical context and a who’s who of key characters from the past whose influence has led up to their protagonist’s current dilemma — and how to do it seamlessly, without creating confusion or burdening the reader with too many details.

They grapple with how to explain about the immigrant ancestors. Or the bra-burning grandma or the parent with no boundaries.  Or the moody kindergarten teacher. Or the sadistic vocal coach. Or the tragic first lover who drank himself to oblivion.

Scroll down for a list of six suggested technical solutions.

What the reader needs to know

Every story has to start somewhere in time and space. But what came before?

There’s so much stuff the reader needs to know! How can a writer weave in the backstory details that are essential to understanding the story?

All authors of narrative fiction and non-fiction deal with these questions — whether they’re writing an adult literary novel, young adult or middle grade fiction, fantasy, sci-fi fantasy, romance, or narrative nonfiction like a memoir, history, or other complex true story.

Successful writers experiment with different technical solutions

There’s no one solution or formula.

Every rule you hear about can be, and often is, broken. Here are some of the options that make good storytelling so interesting but hard to achieve.

6 backstory techniques

1. Start in the past

Begin with a summary of the historical background as a prologue to the present time.

One example of this is the first chapter of A Tale of Two Cities, in which Charles Dickens famously begins “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” and proceeds majestically to portray the Kings and Queens of England and France, and describe the Norwegian wood that would be eventually be made into the guillotine that decapitates Sidney Carton, the book’s hero.

But such prologue material doesn’t always work.

In the original version of The Great Gatsby, for example, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote a lengthy biography of the title character. His editor Maxwell Perkins suggested he delete this slow beginning, which Fitzgerald did.  He later rewrote the text as the excellent short story Absolution.

As in that case, a danger of this technique is producing too many pages with more information than a reader can possibly remember. So if you try this technique, keep it short.

2. Start in the present, then flashback in time

Begin with a dramatic moment in the here-and-now in chapter one. Then in chapter two, jump back to an equally compelling moment that took place in the past. This can be effective but again, the danger is in getting trapped in too much explanation.

Even more problematic is a flashback within the flashback, something I see frequently.  A double-whammy like that can leave readers scratching their heads in bewilderment.

3. Go back and forth in time

Here’s an example of how to structure a narrative around shifts in time: Chapter one takes place in the present. Then chapter two takes place in the past. Chapter three is back in the present, four in the past, and so forth, creating parallel tracks.

I worked with author Katherine Neville on her bestselling novel The Eight, a great example of two apparently separate plots that meet ingeniously in a surprise ending.

But Katherine’s book was an exception, and this structure can become tedious if not executed brilliantly.

4. Insert memories

In a common but tricky technique, the heroine may think to herself, “She promised me that necklace, I’m sure of it…”

Or a memory is dropped into the dialogue.  The protagonist may say to another character: “Listen, David, I don’t know if I’ve ever told you this, but…”

This can work, but the writer must take special care, because it can also become clumsy and intrusive.

5. Shift perspective

In Moby Dick, Herman Melville starts with an “I” narrator Ishmael, but later shifts the point of view to a third person narrator, then moves occasionally to Ahab himself, then back again at the end to Ishmael.

If done skillfully and with discretion, shifting voices can work, but in general I don’t recommend “head hopping” from character to character in order to fit in backstory information.

6. Include footnotes

In The Kiss of the Spider Woman, Manuel Puig includes dozens of footnotes that analyze psychoanalytic theory relating to the characters, and other fictional footnotes that expand and explain the story.

Similarly, in his monumental novel Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace includes more than 400 endnotes to break up the linear chronology and to supplement and clarify the core text.

This is a very special technique and difficult to pull off, needless to say, but has absolutely worked for great literary writers and provides a splendid model for all.

Struggling with this? You’re in good company

If you’re struggling with the backstory blues, you’re in good company. Remember different strategies have worked for different writers, each with their own special strengths.

For example, my esteemed friend Tom Robbins frequently jumps around in time with impunity in many of his wonderful novels, including Skinny Legs and Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates.

Also, Leo Tolstoy wrote many versions of War and Peace, each of which kept moving further back in time. He ultimately started at a point even earlier, which included what he felt was the necessary historical context, Napoleon’s invasion of Russia.

How an editor works with a writer to resolve backstory problems

The issue of how to best integrate backstory details emerges frequently in my own work as a developmental editor. Here are a couple of recent examples.

Stitching in a family secret

In one case, an author and I replaced a 14-page prologue with three less repetitious and more powerful internal memories and one passage of quoted dialogue that conveyed a family secret, hidden for years, then suddenly revealed in present time.

Adding a flashback chapter

For another book, the writer and I identified a crucial past moment in the heroine’s coming of age, then developed it fully with dramatic action as the second chapter of the book.  We didn’t need to resort to another flashback for the rest of the story.

What has worked for you?

I look forward to hearing from you with reports of your own backstory solutions.  What have you found especially challenging?

Have you managed to avoid the dreaded information dump?  Please pass along any suggestions to fellow writers!

Psst!  Wanna write a scorcher for the booming YA market?

OK, here’s the secret: The first thing you need to do is create an authentic, quirky, true-to-life voice.

The story and characterizations in Young Adult fiction are crucial too, of course, but the most important element is that distinctive narrative personality.

The strongest and most powerful voice is a first person “I” narrator that draws the reader right inside a young character’s head. Third-person can also work.

Always go for an honest voice that captures how teens really think and talk to each other. Never talk down. Never be phony or try to sound cool.

That’s the bottom-line advice from three very active literary agents in the genre. Scroll down for more from our interview.

What’s behind the boom?

Three words: online social networking.

Kids are out there loving their books and telling each other all about them. They’re reviewing new titles on Facebook and Twitter. They’re texting and blogging and emailing back and forth in a gargantuan network of interactivity.

Authors are a big part of this scene — plugging in with their young readers all over the world, right in their own space, interacting in a way we’ve never seen before in the publishing business.

Soaring book sales

All this word of mouth has had a tremendous impact, resulting in soaring book sales for publishers — and a corresponding spike in new book deals for authors.

Hardcover sales are up a whopping 24 percent over this time last year in the juvenile fiction category “Social Situations, Family and Health,” according to Nielsen BookScan. And sales are up 16 percent in another hot category, “History, Sports, People and Places.”

At the same time, we’re seeing lots of action in book deals, with agents and publishers signing up new projects at a brisk pace.  New publishing deals in Young Adult and Middle Grade fiction were up more than 16 percent in 2009 over the prior year, according Publisher’s Marketplace.  Compare that to deals for adult mysteries, up 9 percent, and adult romances, up 2 percent.

Three agents to watch

These timely perceptions come from three agents at Dystel and Goderich Literary Management, based in NYC. With many big YA book deals among them, they exude an enthusiasm and energy that’s highly contagious.

The agents and their recent sales:

Stacey Glick:  “My main sale recently was a huge three-book deal [more than $500K] for Amy Huntington’s Sleepwalking. [Read Amy’s pitch letter here] I’ve sold two others to Harper Children’s, and I have high hopes for a couple of others that I’m about to go out with.”

Michael Bourret:  “I’ve had a very good year. I sold a bunch, more than during the year before. A lot of my sales have been for series - six books, four books at once. My author Heather Brewer has done extremely well with her Chronicles of Vladimir Todd series.”

Jim McCarthy:  “I’ve had five or six major sales, some for multiple titles. My author Richelle Mead, for example, finished up the sixth and last book in her Vampire Academy series, which has been on the NY Times Series bestseller list for 22 weeks, so we spun off two characters from the academy to sell a new six book series.”

I spoke to Stacey, Michael and Jim by conference call the other day.  Here’s some of our conversation and more of their insights for writers:

The term YA is used so loosely. What exactly is a Young Adult book?

Mike:  YA books are for teens. Strictly speaking, it’s 12 and up, though from 14 up the books are racier.

Jim:  YA also includes MG or Middle Grade books, which are for “Tweens”, 10-12 years old. These MG books usually have a younger protagonist, a heroine or hero who’s not yet a teenager.

Are there taboo subjects a YA author needs to avoid?

Stacey:  Not really. Judy Bloom has been writing for years about controversial topics like divorce, race, masturbation and teen sex. No X-rated sex scenes of course, or anything in bad taste. And Roald Dahl certainly never avoided the dark side of young peoples’ imaginations. Currently, the Stephenie Meyer Twilight books have made erotic romance more acceptable in contemporary YA literature. So there are no rigid rules about what you can write.

Jim:  That’s right. Unlike adult books, there’s a built-in support structure, since librarians and teachers are looking for challenging books with big issues that will attract teen readers.

Who are the biggest and best publishers buying YA?

Mike:  All the major houses publish YA, some within several imprints.

Stacey:  Simon and Schuster has  Simon Pulse and others, at Penguin there’s Razorbill.  Holt, Scholastic of course, Houghton - all have YA imprints. Farrar Strauss, Knopf, and Little Brown tend to publish more literary books in YA.

What kind of advances are you getting?

Stacey:  We’re seeing four to seven figures. In some cases YA books are sold for less than $10K because we just want to get the author on the YA community’s radar screen.  That’s particularly true when it’s a paperback original and there’s hope for a series to follow.

Mike:  The lower advances are usually for a publisher-generated series that doesn’t give an individual writer a credit, but has one fictional author, like Carolyn Keene for the old Nancy Drew series. For example, Simon Pulse has a romantic comedy series that’s written by a number of different authors.

Jim:  But YA’s can sell for up to $1.5 M and more, particularly for a series by a brand name author.

Are YA books illustrated and does the author have to provide the art, too?

Mike: Many books for teens and pre-teens have illustrations at the opening of each chapter, particularly the MG titles. But the author doesn’t have to supply the art.  The publisher usually provides the illustrations unless the author is a professional artist.

Has the downtrend in the economy affected the price of YA books?

Jim:  Not really. The pricing is really different than for adult books. Publishers do the hardcover version for only $16.99 or $17.99. They’re shorter books - usually only 25K words. The trade paperback books cost less too, only $8.99. So most of our books are still coming out in cloth, then later in paperback.

Is it true that more girls than boys read YA books?

Jim:  Yes, girls are the biggest readers. Boys less. Girls will read books that have either a girl or boy as the protagonist, but boys prefer books with boy heroes. That’s why a lot of MG books particularly, have two central characters: a girl and a boy.

Mike:  Boys are still reading the classic old Hardy Boys adventures. There haven’t been any new ones published for years.  Nancy Drew, on the other hand, keeps rolling along with new titles every year.

What do you predict for the future of YA writing and publishing?

Stacey:  I’m very optimistic. There’s no reason why this category shouldn’t continue to flourish in the years to come. It’s a rich, creative field with so many options and possibilities for writers and readers.

Jim:  Definitely. There’s a robust trend and it’ll keep going. No other category has such diversity and such an enthusiastic interactive audience of avid readers.

______________

Wow. We’re not in the twentieth century any more, Toto. There’s a whole “native” generation that’s grown up texting, tweeting, and living in an online community of social networkers. Those of us who are internet “immigrants” need to catch up or we’re in danger of being as extinct as a dinosaur.

In memoriam of the great master

J.D. Salinger

1/1/1919 - 1/27/2010

Speaking of an authentic, quirky voice, how about everyone’s favorite YA leading character: Holden Caulfield in J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. Here’s Caulfield in a line from the book:

 ”What really knocks me out is a book, when you’re all done reading it, you wished the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.”

____________

Kids are doing exactly that online these days, which is one of the wonderful things about contemporary YA.

The irony, of course, is that Salinger, who died this week at age 91, was himself the Garbo of publishing, famously never wanted to talk to anybody at all, and had “No Trespassing” signs posted all around his remote homestead in New Hampshire.

Attention authors

If you’re writing adult books now, consider the flexibility and potential of the YA market. What a great audience of readers.

If you’re already a YA author, what are you working on? Tell us about your experience and advice and post any questions in comments.

I can’t help smiling when I read a good hook.  When it happens, it’s a rush, a little like falling in love.

The hook — those critical initial sentences of a query letter from an author, or the opening of the book proposal itself — are the first and most important words that agents and acquiring editors read.

Hooks that capture and delight us

If the hook doesn’t capture our attention, delight us with sparkling prose, enlighten us with fascinating news, or make us laugh at your wit and surprising twists and turns, then the rest of what you’ve sent is in grave danger of getting dumped and deleted.

A good hook persuades an agent and editor that you’re serious and capable. It’s the first step in convincing us to drop everything and devote ourselves to making a major commitment of time and money on your behalf. Once we’re hooked, we’re ready to go to the next level and be your champions in the lengthy and difficult process of publication.

So it’s not surprising that writers struggle with this.  A hook can’t be boring or lack energy. It can’t read like a canned formulaic cut and paste. It has to pop and stand out from the crowd. It’s not easy to do.

Memorable hooks that led to book contracts

I surveyed some friends in the business, all agents, for their recent favorites. Here’s what they sent.

The body comes down the river…

“Under a low sun, pursued by fish and mounted by crows and veiled in a loud languid swarm of bluebottle flies, the body comes down the river like a deadfall stripped clean.”

–The opener of Finn, a Novel, by debut author Jon Clinch [Random House].  From his agent Jeff Kleinman, Folio Literary Management

A brother shows you who you are…

“A brother shows you who you are - and also who you are not. Your family has a certain flavor or smell unlike any other. It has an ethos, perhaps even a mythology all its own. You are a ‘we’ with your brother before you are a ‘we’ with any other.”

–The hook for the anthology Brothers: 26 Stories of Love and Rivalry by David Kaczynski, about his brother, Ted, known as “The Unabomber” [Jossey-Bass/Wiley]. From the agent for the project, Andrew Blauner

Plunged into the world of an American teenager…

“The reader is plunged into the world of an American teenager living in a bewitching foreign city while attempting to rebuild her shattered life after the death of her parents.

 She finds herself in the most typical teenage condition - falling in love with the most untypical person imaginable: an eighteen-year-old Resistance fighter who died in 1942.”

–The hook for Sleepwalking, by debut YA novelist Amy Huntington, which sold recently in a major 3-book deal, ($500K and up) for publication in Summer 2011, 2012, 2013 [Harper Children’s].  From her agent Stacy Glick, Vice President at Dystel & Goderich Literary Management

My new book is narrated by a dog…

“I am a Seattle writer with two published novels.  I have recently completed my third novel, and I find myself in a difficult situation: My new book is narrated by a dog, and my current agent told me that he cannot (or will not) sell it for that very reason. Thus, I am seeking new representation.”

–The hook in an initial query from “emerging” author Garth Stein, whose novel The Art of Racing in the Rain ended up snagging a $1.2 million book deal and has so far sold more than 750K copies; on the New York Times best seller list for the past 31 weeks [Harper].  From his (new) agent, Jeff Kleinman, Folio Literary Management

A chance encounter with a Chinese Muslim dissident…

“The Beijing ‘08 Olympics are over, the war in Iraq is lost, and former National Guard medic Ellie McEnroe is stuck in China, trying to lose herself in the alien worlds of performance artists and online gamers.

When a chance encounter with a Chinese Muslim dissident drops her down a rabbit hole of conspiracies, Ellie must decide whom to trust among the artists, dealers, collectors and operatives claiming to be on her side - in particular, a mysterious organization operating within a popular online game.”

–Opening hook of a book proposal by debut author Lisa Brackmann for Rock Paper Tiger  [Soho Press, June 2010]. From her agent Nathan Bransford at Curtis Brown, LTD, San Francisco

A personal training course for amping up your creativity…

“Can sitting in front of a light box increase your creativity? How about listening to Bach’s Italian Concerto in F major? These are, believe it or not, crucial questions to the survival of humans.

In The Creative Brain I’ll present a personal training course for “amping up” your level of creative thought and productivity. The strategies in my book are based on findings from neuroscience that identify seven specific brainsets (the biological equivalents to mindsets) associated with creativity.

I’ll outline techniques that will guide readers to reproduce these brainsets, thus increasing creative ideas and motivation. (And by the way, the answer is ‘yes’ to bright light and “no” to Bach’s Concerto.)”

–The hook from a proposal for The Creative Brain by Shelley Carson PhD [A Harvard Health Publication at Jossey-Bass/Wiley] submitted by her agent Linda Konner.

Hooks to share?

There’s no question that the hook is an essential element in the process of finding an agent and getting a publisher.

What do you say, readers? Have any hooks to share?  Any you’re working on now?  How’s that going?  I’ll watch for your questions in comments.

“Writing a memoir is an act of courage. Be brave. It means exposing who you really are, which is hard to do, even to yourself.”

That advice comes from a conversation I had recently with Linda Joy Myers, Ph.D., President of the National Association of Memoir Writers. She’s the author of a new book, The Power of Memoir: Writing Your Healing Story, which we’re publishing at John Wiley & Sons in February.

Scroll down for Myers’ great tips for writers.

Memoirs are hugely popular

“Memoir writing is a grass-roots movement sweeping the country,” says Myers, a psychotherapist and coach who has led memoir workshops and trainings for more than 28 years. “We want to understand ourselves, to reach a deeper level of meaning about what we’ve experienced.”

This week’s New York Times best-seller lists include the memoirs Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson, The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls and Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert — not to mention blockbuster celebrity memoirs by Andre Aggasi, Edward Kennedy, and Sarah Palin.

I personally receive a dozen or more memoir proposals and manuscripts from agents and writers every month in my capacity both as Executive Editor at Wiley and as a consulting editor working with private clients.

Making sense of our lives

We publishers think it’s partly the demographic bulge of baby boomers who are reaching an age where they’re trying to make sense of their lives.

There’s a timeless universal instinct to sit around the fire and tell stories that explain the world, and also to listen - for insight and inspiration. When we read another person’s memoir we learn about them and get inside their skin. And when we understand another person, we can understand ourselves better too.

Memoir writing may in fact be an evolutionary survival mechanism, a creative artifact of human culture and tradition, and the need to create order out of the random chaos of our lives.

It’s not simple or easy

But writing a memoir that’s of interest beyond family and friends isn’t simple or easy. Myers identifies the two biggest obstacles every memoirist faces:

The memoirist’s two biggest obstacles

Your inner critic

That’s the nagging voice in your ear that says nothing you write is good or true, the voice that inflicts you with shame and guilt, especially if you’ve experienced trauma, abuse, or loss. The inner critic can inhibit you from acknowledging and revealing — even if only to yourself — what actually happened in your life.

Your outer critics

They are the family members and others who don’t want anything about themselves or their history revealed in writing.  Try your best to shut down the outer critic while you’re writing. Don’t tell your family or friends what you’re working on.

Once you’ve finished writing, go through and take out all the anger. Delete anything that’s there just for revenge. Leave only the truth as you see it, and then show it to them, if they’re still living.

If you’re writing for a broader audience

You need to focus your material.

“You have to get outside of yourself and think about your reader,” Myers says. “What does the reader want to know and what’s irrelevant?

This makes you less self-centered, and it also has developmental benefits, by integrating your experiential ego with your observing ego. When you write a memoir, you become the ‘I’ who’s telling the story, and also the ‘I’ narrator who has perspective on the story. So that means you’re both the eight-year-old in the story and you’re an adult observing yourself when you were eight.”

Linda Myers’ 7 tips for defeating your inner critic

1. Start today

Get past that inner critic and start writing. Get it down on paper or up on the screen, then go back and rewrite it. Don’t wait.

2. Keep it private

Don’t show or tell anyone until you’re ready. Listen to your own voice only, and protect your sanctuary, your inner self, home, wherever and however you’re writing.

3. Write the truth

Be ethically and emotionally accurate. This is your story and this memoir belongs to you. Don’t ask family or friends for permission to write this, and if they disagree or get upset when they do finally read it, tell them “This is my story.  This is how I see it. You can write your own story if you want.”

4. Seek understanding

Remember why you’re writing this memoir. Search for meaning, and healing for old wounds. Any anger or desire for revenge will hurt you more than anyone else.

5. Find a focus and theme

Include only what tells your story, since a memoir is not a journal or diary. It’s not like reportage or playing back a tape recording. You’re picking and choosing what to say and how to say it.

6. Writing dialogue

You can’t be expected to remember exact quotes. Go back in time and recreate the scene in your mind’s eye. Write it down, however awful it may be at first. Then read it over, shape it, listen some more, and rewrite until it’s more accurate and has not only the essence of what people said, but also how they said it.

7. Liability

If you’re writing about controversial, criminal, or other potentially damaging matters attributed to people in your story, show the manuscript to a literary attorney to evaluate potential liability. Even if you’ve disguised individuals, people recognize themselves. Try to avoid legal action before it happens.

Getting published

To improve your chances of getting published, you’ll need to write and rewrite.  And if, like many successful writers, you want feedback and assistance, don’t hesitate to hire professional help.  Take a look at this earlier post on what you need to know about choosing a freelance editor.

Once finished, self-publishing a memoir has become an increasingly popular and honorable way of reaching the public fast. Or you can try to get an agent and go for mainstream publication.

Sure it helps if you’re a celebrity or best-selling novelist, but my colleagues at other publishing houses and I are still seeking new authors, fresh faces, and the dream of literary and commercial success.

Are you writing a memoir?

Are you writing a memoir?  What have been your greatest challenges?  What has helped?  Please share your experience in your comments.

Q: Someone in my writers group complained that my plot is hard to follow. Can you help?

A: You might need to work on the transitions — the glue that makes a seamless narrative.  You might need to add a few words of clarification or entire new passages to bridge the gaps.

Your reader could be bewildered because those critical transitions  between the scenes and events of the story are missing or insufficient.

The narrative could read along pretty well but suddenly there’s a bump in the road, a jarring hiccup from one scene to the next that leaves the reader perplexed, confused, disoriented and up in the air: “Wait a minute,” the reader thinks. “This doesn’t make sense! Where are we? What’s happening? What did I miss?”

As an acquisitions and developmental editor, I see this all the time. It’s a very common problem, and easy to fix. Consider some of these types of transitions depending on the specific needs of your draft manuscript:

Types of Transitions and Bridges

1. Date and location headings

A specific date, including month, day and year, like April 7th, 1941 set in caps or italics on its own line at the beginning of a scene or chapter can be an effective way to keep the time straight, especially in a work of fiction or non-fiction that spans many years. You can even spell out the location, like December 25th, 2009, Portland, Oregon, to eliminate the need to explain it elsewhere in the text.

2. A few words of orientation in time and space

Getting the reader from one scene to the next in a coherent manner can be as simple as including some words of orientation, such as “Early the next morning…” or “Three days later…” This discrete addition may save the narrative from disintegrating and make it easier to follow.

3. Third-person narration

Some form of third-person narration can often fill the missing link, like “Alice decided not to wait for the letter to come but made plans to leave on her own. She found herself standing on the platform at the train station the next morning, with only an overnight bag and the Lonely Planet guide to Ecuador…”

4. A character’s inner thoughts

If you’re writing a first-person narrative, you may need to let us into the character’s inner thoughts to explain what’s going on. “I thought about what Dad always said about the true meaning of money, so I….”

5. A new scene or chapter

In many plot-driven stories, memoirs, biographies or histories, the author may have left out an essential piece of the puzzle that can’t be ignored.  This may require the insertion of a full-scale scene or chapter that shows the narrative development from an omniscient perspective, or from another character’s point of view.

The trick is to realize this and locate the precise spot for the new additions.  A good editor can help by identifying not only the location, but also the kind of insertion that’s needed.  Sometimes it’s a new piece of dialogue; sometimes it’s a quick run around the block to see the story from a different point of view.  So read over your manuscript with a critical eye or get some objective professional advice from a teacher or independent editor.

Pruning and planting

Good writers understand that the process of writing and rewriting has to include both pruning and planting. They know it’s essential to take the scalpel to any repetitious sentences or chapters, while at the same time not being so cool and stylish as to bewilder, disorient, and ultimately alienate the reader.

Of course, a writer doesn’t want to be pedantic in tracking the linear sequence of one event after another, whether it’s fiction, memoir, biography or history. Less is often better and an effective literary style should never be based on formulaic step-by-step recitation.

Everyone needs an editor

I’ll bet you can find unnecessary or repetitious words in this post that if removed would make the writing better. And what did I leave out?

Write in with your own experiences and any advice to pass along. I look forward to your comments.

“Everybody’s looking for the next big thing — a work of great literary fiction from an unknown writer who’s never been published.”

That’s according to Jay Schaefer, an editor-at-large at Workman Publishers in New York City and its subsidiary, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Schaefer, a publishing veteran best known for producing the huge best seller Under the Tuscan Sun during his long tenure at Chronicle Books, spoke with me the other day after making the rounds at two writers conferences out here on the West Coast.

“Every editor I saw was prowling the workshops and the grassy slope outside the conference, searching high and low for the next undiscovered debut novelist,” Schaefer said.

“No question, good debut novels are getting snapped up and published.”

Publishers shelling out big bucks for first novels

Some recent figures, according to Publishers Weekly:

Bantam/Dell paid $600K for Beautiful Malice, a first book by Australian author Rebecca James, described as a “gritty psychological thriller for teenagers upward.”

Doubleday made a significant ($250K to $500K) preemptive offer for Belle Cora, a first novel by Phillip Margulies based loosely on the life of a 19th century prostitute.

And Random House paid in the same significant price range for The Bells, a first novel by Richard Harvell, described as “the confession of a thief, kidnapper, and unlikely lover, a boy with the voice of an angel whose exquisite sense of hearing became his life’s greatest blessing and curse.”

A new author with a clean slate has no baggage to overcome

More from my conversation with Jay Schaefer:

Q: Why would an editor prefer an unknown writer to someone with some kind of a track record?

A: Because there are so many mid-list authors around whose last few outings weren’t exactly best sellers. You can see their real numbers easily on BookScan and so can the book buyers for Barnes & Noble and Amazon who keep decreasing their orders. A new author with a clean slate has no baggage to overcome.

Q: Have you acquired many first novels lately?

A: We’ve been very selective. We’ve declined a lot of well crafted but empty stuff. You know, I think too many writers have been influenced by American Idol. They want to leap out of the chute, and win the literary lottery without working that hard.

Algonquin is a small company that likes to discover and develop a few smart books. Once we sign up a project, we help the writer make it better, then spend care and money on marketing it for the long haul, not just for that brief window just around the pub date.

[Note: Algonquin published Sara Gruen’s novel, the New York Times best seller Water for Elephants, which has sold more than two million copies.]

Q: What are you looking for in the way of good fiction?

A: Algonquin wants something that excites us — that captures our imagination and takes us somewhere unexpected where we’ve never been before. Most importantly, we want to find an author who has a new way of seeing things and has something to say.

Betting on an overnight sensation

Q: Are you paying big advances?

A:  We’ll go after an author aggressively if we love the book. There are some reckless publishers gambling the farm these days with beyond-belief big advances. They’re betting on an overnight sensation.

Q: Any hot tips for authors?

A: Don’t be in a rush to publish. Make sure it’s as good as you can make it.  Get some reliable feedback before you show it to an agent or publisher. Consult with a professional, a literary coach, take an advanced class in writing, or hire an independent editor.

_____________

Good advice. As an acquisition and development editor myself, I know how hard it is to find a good proposal or manuscript, and how difficult it is, how much time, discipline, and perseverance it takes to write one.

The important thing to remember is that publishers are in fact avidly seeking out and paying for good books by new writers.

What do you think of all this, writers?  Questions?  Comments?

What if a reader’s neocortex actually lit up because he recognized your cab driver’s distinctive Hoboken snarl?

Or her hypothalamus sent off sparks because she could practically taste the creamy hot chocolate with handmade vanilla marshmallows that your heroine sipped at the Bittersweet Café?

There’s scientific evidence that books really do turn on our brains.

The brain’s response to the written word can be seen in scans using technology called Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), that illuminate in bright lights and colors the increased flow of blood through synapses of the brain as we read.

“We fiction writers don’t have to think of ourselves as mere storytellers anymore,” Livia Blackburne, a graduate student in neuroscience at MIT and a YA author, wrote recently on her blog, A Brain Scientist’s Take on Creative Writing.  “Nope, we’re brain manipulators. That’s right. Read the words on my page and your neurons will do my bidding. Mwahahahahaha.”

Hmm.  Intrigued, I phoned up Livia in Cambridge to ask if writers could really manipulate readers’ brains so their books might have greater success.

Q: Can a writer use specific words to evoke emotions of fear, anxiety, surprise, or happiness in the reader’s brain?

A: I would recommend that writers use vivid descriptions and precise language, so readers can form a clear mental picture of what’s going on.

Make the reader identify with the characters.  The closer a reader feels to the character, the more they will empathize with and experience what the characters go through. Events that bear similarities to what the reader has personally experienced will strike a deeper chord with the reader.

Here’s an interesting tidbit: Viewing pictures of faces with emotional expressions — especially fearful faces, will cause an automatic negative emotional response in people.  I don’t know of any studies that say how well this transfers to written descriptions of facial expression, but it might be something fun to play with.

Q: Would an increase in brain activation be the same for every reader?

A: The regions will be similar, but not identical. If you scan many people reading the same passage, you’ll find the extent and intensity of activation varies not only between individuals but also within one individual at different scanning sessions.

Q: Does lighting up a scan mean that the reader is more engaged or excited by these words?

A: Reading a page or screen can activate the brain in at least two ways. First, the words activate a specialized word and language network in the brain’s left hemisphere.

Second, at a deeper level, readers show brain activity in regions depending on the meaning and content of the words. This is because some of the areas of the brain we use to imagine events are the same areas that would in reality process the events if we were to actually experience them.

For example, a vivid visual description will activate visual regions of the brain, while descriptions of a character’s thoughts and motivations will activate portions of the brain that handle social reasoning.

Note that this type of activation isn’t necessarily restricted to reading — you would get similar brain behavior in people watching movies or listening to a story.

Q: So it’s true that attention or excitement will increase brain activation?

A: Yes, but it’s not the only possible explanation. Many other factors can affect blood flow to a certain region.  For example, increased task difficulty is a factor, so if the passage is hard to understand, there may be increased activation.  Or it could mean the reader is thinking about something else that happens to be activating the same region.  Even the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will affect activation levels to some degree.

Q: Any other tips you can offer as a neuroscientist and writer, for creating a literary work capable of lighting up our brains?

A: First a cautionary note: More widespread or intense activation is not necessarily better.  Just because a passage lights up more brain regions doesn’t mean it provides a better or more realistic reading experience.

Second, the best way to judge the quality of a passage is still to have people read it and give you feedback.  Therefore, I would discourage anyone from using  brain scan results as the only way to improve their writing.

Nevertheless, I do like to think of brain research findings as brainstorming (no pun intended) fodder.

If you know about certain brain regions and what they process, you can keep them in mind as more tricks for your writer’s toolbox.

So what brain regions are there?  Well, there are the five senses, as well as regions that process emotions, faces, motions, objects and landscape/locations. There are also regions that process peoples’ motivations, and how they feel about themselves and others.

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Fascinating stuff.  Livia suggests that writers can use information about brain regions as a source of ideas for details to include in their narratives. Are you using all five senses? What about movement? Are your characters complex enough for the reader to infer motivations, thoughts, and feelings from their actions?

What do you say, writers?  Is this news you can use?

Readers are fans. They love author appearances!

What’s more, a successful author reading can spark sales and help build a following for a new book.

Publishers know this, but unfortunately, the days of big budgets for glamorous book tours and star-spangled author events are now largely behind us.

Author readings still a hot ticket

Established and emerging authors, nevertheless, are still actively engaged in promoting and selling their work by reading, signing, and speaking at bookstores, libraries, seminars, and all manner of creative locations, like theaters, clubs, restaurants, retail shops, and private homes.

Even though bookstores these days are stressed and preoccupied with the problems of competing with internet discounting, retailers we surveyed remain enthusiastic about author events.

In the SF Bay Area, where I live, the enterprising retailer Book Passages produces a whopping 500 author readings and workshops every year, devoting two rooms exclusively to these events.  My own neighborhood bookstore, the lovely Mrs. Dalloway’s in Berkeley, schedules about four author appearances weekly. And venerable Kepler’s Books near Stanford University maintains a packed calendar of author events.

Author appearances are hot in venues across the country.  A quick search online for readings and signings coming up this week brings up big names like Andre Agassi and Hendrick Hertzberg in Los Angeles, Isabella Rossellini in Seattle, David Plouffe in Boston, Mary Gordon in New York and countless other authors appearing at bookstores and locations large and small.

Charging for admission

We’re noticing more author readings charging admission – and filling every seat – a concept that seems to work especially well when the author has built a local reputation and niche following.

I attended a couple of these events recently, and came away impressed by the organizers’ ingenuity and the positive audience response.

The first, in Seattle, WA, was held at Richard Hugo House, the center for literary arts — and featured three local writers, all talented presenters with fascinating stories. Despite the stiff admission of $25, the 148-seat theater was sold out.

The next event, back in my hometown, was sponsored by Berkeley Arts & Letters, and held at the city’s cozy Hillside Club. Fans paid $15 to hear author and anthropologist Liza Dalby read from her new novel Hidden Buddhas, a story taking place in Japan about “bad girls with cell phones, murder by blowfish, and the Buddhist apocalypse.”  Wow, now that’s intriguing.

In each case, back-of-the-room book sales were brisk.

Tips for successful author appearances

1.  Rehearse

Consider your appearance to be a dramatic performance from the moment you walk through the door. No matter the size of the audience, you have to be on.

That means preparing on every level. Choose four or five short passages from your book, though you may ultimately read only a couple. Read these selections out loud at home, while facing a mirror. Then recruit a family member or friend with a video camera to preserve your delivery so you can watch yourself in action and make any necessary corrections.

If you intend to talk about the book and how you came to write it, prepare an outline with key talking points.  Practice the material without reading from a script until it becomes familiar and comfortable.

2.  Read just enough, not too much

Pay close attention to your audience response.  You can usually tell if people are restless. Novelist Joyce Maynard (Labor Day; To Die For, Internal Combustion) says she reads for 12 minutes max, then talks and asks for questions.

Readers who come to events featuring authors who write novels, memoir or narrative non-fiction, history and biography, often want to know about the deeper meaning, choice of symbolic action, characters, and relationships in the work. They’re hoping for a personal connection when the author is someone they admire and appreciate. They want to find out what’s behind the story, why it was written and how – the artistic, creative, psychological process.

At events featuring the authors of how-to books, readers are more apt to ask questions related to the writer’s expertise, like “What’s the best time to sell my house?” or “How can I get my baby to stop crying and sleep through the night?”

Based on her decades of experience producing author events, Melissa Mytinger, now with Berkeley Arts & Letters, offers this advice to authors:  “Don’t read! Just relax, look up, and talk.”

3.  Look your audience in the eye

That advice goes for everyone except Joan Didion, who once arrived at a packed reading in San Francisco, stood at the podium and promptly buried her head in a copy of her best-seller Year of Magical Thinking. Without taking off her oversized coat, and without looking up, she began to read in a monotone so soft she could barely be heard.  Hard core fans were enthralled anyway, and leaned forward on the edges of their seats, mouthing the familiar words they had read so closely.

But we are not all Joan Didion, who is extraordinary and exceptional.

Veteran authors always recommend making eye contact with their audience, and to be sensitive and respectful to their needs and responses.

And some authors get a real dividend from events where they take the time to look at and listen to readers face-to-face. Like Po Bronson (What Should I Do With My Life; Why Do I Love These People) who says he gets good stories and ideas for his work when appearing before an audience of readers at lectures and workshops.

4.  Work with your publisher

Even if there’s no travel budget, your publisher may be able to help  book a local event in your neighborhood or the general region.

Their key concern will be whether you guarantee a crowd large enough to justify the store ordering enough copies to make it worth their effort. If you can’t really deliver a critical mass of eager buyers, don’t pursue this route, since it’ll wind up being frustrating for all involved.

5.  Work with your local book sellers

Cultivate a relationship that will interest them in you and your work. Take the time to see who’s coming into the store and find a connection between their demographics and your work.

Authors who do well at Mrs. Dalloway’s, for example, have a personal connection to literary fiction, gardening, poetry, and architecture.  Smaller independent book sellers want to establish good community relationships and increase traffic with potential readers for any book in their inventory.

6.  Go beyond bookstores

Some titles might lend themselves to appearances in settings other than bookstores and libraries. Identify your potential readers and ask yourself where they meet to discuss or shop for their interests. Possibilities could be as varied as a baby shop, the local botanical garden, or a professional conference.

If you’re writing fiction, find an element or location in your story that connects with a local organization or meeting. The mystery writer Rosemary Harris, for example, has a heroine sleuth who’s a master gardener (Pushing Up Daisies, The Big Dirt Nap). Consequently, she’s been able to have readings at garden clubs and shows around the country.

You can be creative with this.  In my neighborhood, I noticed that the author of a picture book of French postcards is doing a signing at a popular chocolate shop and cafe, where he’ll also be speaking about his favorite Parisian artisan chocolatiers.

Garth Stein says he makes it a rule to attend as many reader’s groups as possible. He enjoys going to community centers and people’s homes to sit down and talk about his books, answering questions, telling personal stories about how he works.  And his readers eat it up.

7.  Publicize your event

Put an announcement on your website. Mention it in your blog and twitter repeatedly leading up to the event. Send out a press release to local print media like shopping guides with calendars of community events.

Think of special personal touches that are uniquely yours. For example, Emma Straub, author of the novella Fly-Over State sent a love letter to each of the 400 people who purchased the hand-numbered first edition of her book. A second edition will be available soon from Flatmancrooked. Talk about building relationships and community outreach!

8.  Learn how to promote your book to niche markets

“Promoting a book is a significant and necessary part of the writing process” says Stein, who appeared at hundreds of independent stores, and reader’s living rooms to build a market for The Art of Racing in the Rain. Then he went beyond that to attend NASCAR racing events, where he handed out a self-produced pamphlet featuring appropriate highlights of the book. Stein attributes a good deal of the book’s word-of-mouth and eventual major sales to these kinds of efforts.

Not everyone has Stein’s charm and moxie, but his approach demonstrates that no one cares about a book more or can sell it better than the author.  For more on his methods, check out this earlier post and interview, How a best-selling author builds his market.

It takes persistence and hard work to arrange and deliver successful author events . Whether you have a publisher or are self-published, you need to connect with sympathetic local people who are busy but can be persuaded to see the potential your book has for them.

9. Make sure your books are stocked for the event: here’s how

One retailer recommends that authors maintain their own inventory of books, purchased from their publisher at favorable author discounts based on how many they order. That way, if the local shop can’t get them in time, they’ll buy them from the author to insure they have enough available.

That single piece of advice could save the day.  So many writers have had the awful experience of showing up for the reading, and you guessed it — for whatever reason, the books didn’t arrive on time.

Authors are also advised to sign all copies regardless of how many are sold on the spot, since stores will often keep an autographed  book on the front table long after your appearance  for book collectors and gift-givers.

Tell us about your author appearances

We want to hear about your experiences with your own author readings and signings: the great and the not-so-terrific.  What worked?  What went wrong?  Who’s had success with developing niche markets through readings?  Have you discovered any interesting off-the-track venues?

And we’d love to hear about memorable readings you’ve attended.  Did anyone else catch Joan Didion?

For those who are just learning the ropes, maybe struggling with some of this, take a look at this funny first-person account, Lessons learned from a book signing disaster by guest contributor Lisa Haneberg.  You’ll feel much better.

Q: I haven’t had any luck finding a publisher for my book. What’s the secret to getting in the door?

A: Here’s my advice on how you can beat the odds and overcome the biggest reasons most books get rejected.

But first, I’d like to give you an idea of what it’s like behind the scenes at a publishing house, and how acquiring editors go about the business of signing up books.

The reality: Editors are desperate to find books!

Writers often don’t realize that editors are strongly motivated, in fact desperate, to find authors and their books. Editors wake up in the morning with acquisition anxiety!  We’re all under tremendous pressure to find promising new books that will sell.

That’s why we’re out there hounding literary agents, scouring newspapers, magazines and journals, cornering college professors, the local city councilwoman and the 16-year-old tech head from next door – because who knows, just maybe they have a great idea or brilliant new manuscript ready to go.

Given this nervous reality, why do acquiring editors reject so many of the dozens of ideas, proposals, and manuscripts they see each week, often after only a 30-second glance at the first few pages?  Here’s why, and what you can do about it.

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The 5 best ways to improve your chances

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#1  Bulk up your concept

The concept is the core idea of any book project. So we’re disappointed when an author or agent sends us a project with a concept that is weak or inappropriate.

We see too many memoirs, for example, that are motivated by hurt and resentment.  Or books that are clearly calculated efforts to climb on the bandwagon of a perceived hot trend, like cross-over vampire love stories, and terrorist infiltrations of suburban St. Louis. Or quick and easy programs for financial success, satisfying marriage and perfect kids based on no research or track record.  No thanks.

Some concepts reveal a writer who thinks he can make a quick killing in the book business.  Now that’s funny.

Here’s what we’re actually hoping for:

We want to see a concept with a strong premise that has energy, intensity, utility, focus and vision. We want books that will grab readers by the throat, quicken their pulses, and resonate for their own lives.

We want authors who have something new to say about an important subject or story, who bring a fresh voice or unusual perspective on a topic of concern to many people.  Authors who are passionate about their ideas and stories, who bring to their work a maturity, expertise, and a visceral compulsion to write that comes from their hearts.

An editor can usually tell right away if a concept has a new idea or point of view.

It’s also helpful for you or your agent to know as much as possible about any given editor’s special interests or personal biases.

#2  Submit a complete and convincing proposal

I can tell pretty quickly when a submission is canned or formulaic. Beware of clearing your throat with digressive warm up sentences, or hyperbolic claims of grandiose brilliance.  Too many proposals appear to reinvent the wheel without acknowledging the competition. Too many authors are uninformed about the importance of self-marketing. Not enough writers hold themselves to a high enough standard of good writing.

The bare-boned essentials of any book proposal I’d like to receive should include:

• A two or three sentence hook that tells me what the book is about and why you’re the best person to write it.

• If it’s non-fiction, include a chapter outline with a few paragraphs for each, a total of no more than two or three pages. Same thing if it’s fiction: Give me a thorough synopsis of the story.

• Then write about your platform, including education, career status, track record as a writer, past or present appearances in print or broadcast media, current or future plans for websites, blogs, or internet marketing. I also like to see a DVD that shows you talking about the book with no script, either on local TV, at some community event, or even just in your living room.

• A good proposal requires a serious and honest analysis of the competition. Too many submissions dismiss all other books and claim a presumptuous kind of superiority. We prefer respect and acknowledgment of similar books, since it proves there’s a market. What you need to tell us is how your work is different.

• Finally, whether it’s non-fiction or fiction, I want a sparkling example of your writing. Usually the first chapter is best, but if it’s a first novel, send in the entire manuscript. I know conventional rules say start with a query letter, but with a novel, I recommend that you be more assertive and send the whole thing. It’s the best way for us to see what you can do, beginning to end.

For a more thorough discussion, have a look at this earlier post,  The book proposal: what publishers want.

#3  Come in with an agent

You’ve probably heard that unrepresented, unsolicited proposals and manuscripts don’t get the same attention, and it’s true. They end up in the slush pile.

Editors at most publishing houses won’t even open the email or package from someone they don’t know. They want to see a project a respected agent recommends — rather than spend hours going through literally hundreds of emails and packages.

Finding the right agent for your book is crucial. It’s your job to find the best one specifically for you, an agent who knows which editor at what publisher might be interested in what you’re doing.  That agent’s relationship with the editor is also essential for negotiating the best financial terms, since it’s the acquiring editor’s job to pay as little as possible.

It may not be easy to find the right agent, but remember, they’re also looking for you. So go to writers conferences where agents appear, search their websites, find their names in the acknowledgment pages of books you like, find a friend who has a good agent, and subscribe to Publisher’s Marketplace for the latest inside information about which agents have sold what project to which editors.

And beware of any so-called agent who charges you for reading the book. That’s a scam.

#4  Polish your writing to the highest standard

Your proposal, sample pages, or complete manuscript must be held to a high literary standard. Some common problems I see are proposals with disorganized thinking that jumps from idea to idea with no apparent logic or linear sequence. Or the same idea is repeated over and over. Or the writer makes unwarranted assumptions that I’ll be able to understand prose that twists and turns with bewildering shifts in time and place.  Or I see characters who are two-dimensional and all speak in the same voice.

And surprisingly, I see proposals replete with typos and poor grammar. Sure that stuff can be fixed, but it indicates a lack of care and professionalism.

Remember that writing is rewriting. Some fine authors I’ve worked with – Toni Morrison, Tom Robbins, Hunter Thompson – each labor over every word, and are actually never quite satisfied, always feeling it can be better. And it can.

Compare yourself to the best and see how good you can make it. Raise the bar. Be tougher on yourself.  Seek feedback beyond family and friends.  Here are some suggestions:

• Take a writing class that provides discipline and high standards

• Hire a freelance developmental editor (not for spelling or punctuation but content, style, organization) with a track record of published authors.  Here are some tips from an earlier post,  Choosing a freelance editor: what you need to know

• Be prepared to take the time needed to produce well-organized, highly polished prose. Yes, I know Dan Brown can get away with clunky prose, but he’s a master of cliff-hanging and page-turners, despite his writing.

#5  Come with a platform and plan for self-marketing

I’ve seen proposals from writers who say their book will sell itself or that they’re too busy or shy to participate in publicity or marketing.

Ouch. We depend on authors to cooperate and participate in a big way on selling their books. For more specifics, take a look at this earlier post on Building the author platform: 10 tips from a pro

That doesn’t mean every writer who submits a proposal already needs to have a celebrity status platform. Not many new authors have a national TV show or a website that gets a million page views every day.

But your proposal should demonstrate a willingness to understand and be effective at self-marketing. There’s so much an author can do these days to reach their readers directly. Even writers who are intrinsically shy are able to enter an online community that relates to their book and present their information, ideas, and stories.

To give your book the best chance of success these days you must provide your prospective agent or publisher with your own self-marketing plan for the book.

That means starting a website and blog before you even go for the agent or book contract. Get that URL based on your preliminary title, build your website with expert help, and start blogging, commenting on other sites and blogs, and social networking.  Welcome to the 21st century!

Conventional self-marketing is also still important. Learn to stand on your feet and speak extemporaneously about your book. Seek invitations to appear at professional and community events. Approach local print and broadcast journalists as an expert in your field, or with a great story to tell about your novel. Hire a publicity agent if you can afford it, publishers love to see that kind of commitment. And get to know the owner of your local independent bookstore.  They may be interested if you can pull in 75 people on your personal list for a reading when the time comes.

I know some of you may prefer to remain at home writing, but do it anyway — it works, and it can be fun.

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Motivated writers can navigate the changes in publishing

There’s never been a better time for a writer to navigate the big changes in book publishing. Agents and editors are tearing down old conventions and experimenting with new ideas. No one in the book business knows what the digital revolution or downturn in the economy will bring next.

Everyone realizes that they need creative authors who believe in what they’re doing, hold themselves to a high standard, and are able to reach their readers directly.

Dive in and you’ll have a much better chance of success.

Any questions or tips?

Have questions about any of this?  Tips and suggestions to pass along to fellow writers?  Please post them here in comments.

Short story collections are big business. Thousands of anthologies are in print with many more published each year. A quick look at Amazon shows 29,000 story collections listed. Of those, more than 3,500 are anthologies of stories by a single author.

That may surprise some short story writers, including those who’ve asked me if they have a prayer of ever getting the attention of agents and book publishers.

There’s a robust market for books of stories

We know that avid readers love short stories. Short stories are easy to digest, and can provide a little emotional sparkle or epiphany in one quick take. That’s particularly true in these busy techno multi-tasking, attention-deficit times, with readers seeking the revealing, surprising, twisting, inspiring or ironical dose of feelings that can illuminate the truth about their lives.

That said, most of the large circulation serious short fiction magazines like Smart Set,  American Mercury, Colliers, and the Saturday Evening Post are gone now.

But there are still a handful of national magazines like The New Yorker and Esquire publishing short literary work.  Just this week Vanity Fair posted a short story excerpted from Look at the Birdie: Unpublished Short Fiction, by Kurt Vonnegut, coming out October 20, 2009 published by Delacorte, an imprint of Random House, Inc.

Literary journals publishing short fiction

Then there are the hundreds of smaller journals listed from A-Z in the NewPages Big List of Literary Magazines.  These range from the African American Review, which has published short fiction by writers like Toni Morrison and Ishmael Reed, to ZYZZYVA, the San Francisco based journal founded in 1985 by editor Howard Junker. ZYZZYVA has published 241 first time authors, including F.X. Toole, who at 69 wrote the stories that inspired Oscar-winning film Million Dollar Baby, directed by Clint Eastwood.

For a roundup of a dozen literary journals publishing short fiction, take a look at the November issue of Writer’s Digest Magazine.  You’ll find background information and tips to getting published from the editors of McSweeney’s, Chicago Review, Zoetrope: All-Story, and many others.

Book publishers take chances on new writers

Agents and editors search these literary journals and magazines for new authors.  And every year publishers take chances on new writers who aren’t particularly famous yet, but end up surprising everyone with a big hit.

For example, Farrar, Straus and Giroux just this year published Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, a debut collection by Wells Tower, which has been highly praised and is enjoying good sales.

It’s true that agents and publishers hope that the short story writer will also produce that blockbuster novel. And it happens.

Annie Proulx, author of the short story Brokeback Mountain which originally appeared in the collection Close Range: Wyoming Stories, also won the Pulitzer for her novel Shipping News. Richard Ford, who wrote the short story collection A Multitude of Sins, also wrote the novel Independence Day. Michael Chabon, author of the short stories A Model World, wrote the novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.

Short story collections can sell very well

Sales numbers can be big enough for short stories on their own. There are many successful examples each season.

Just this year, Random House sold around 329,000 copies (according to BookScan, which captures about 70% of all cash register sales) of Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge, winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, for the set of 13 linked short stories about a grief-stricken family set in a small town on the coast of Maine.

That should give every short story writer a boost.

And in the same period, Vintage has sold around 210,000 copies of Unaccustomed Earth, Lahiri Jhumpa’s collection of related stories about the fate of immigrant Bengalis in America, since publication in April.

Remember these inspiring words

So have heart, short story writers everywhere, and remember the wonderfully inspiring words of Howard Junker, the editor of ZYZZYVA, who publishes a great deal of short fiction by new writers:

“Once upon a time in the wilderness of the slush pile, there were many lone voices crying out to be heard. And some were.”

The short story as dress rehearsal

Many writers use short stories as a technique to try out ideas, new narrative styles, and potential rehearsals for a novel. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote a wonderful short story called Absolution, published in American Mercury in 1924, widely understood to be a portrait of the young Jay Gatsby, prior to growing up and transforming himself into the protagonist of the classic The Great Gatsby, published in 1925.

Isaac Bashevis Singer, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, wrote several stories about Jewish refugees of the holocaust in New York City after World War II. Among them, A Wedding in Brownsville and The Cabalist of East Broadway and others appeared originally in the New Yorker, Playboy, and Esquire. These New York stories eventually evolved into his best-selling novel Enemies in 1971, then filmed by Paul Mazursky in a widely acclaimed film starring Ron Silver, Anjelica Houston, and Lena Olin.

Similarly the stunning young author Junot Diaz first published Drown in 1996, a collection of stories about his early youth in the Dominican Republic and then adapting to life in New Jersey, and used the same autobiographical material in his novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao in 2007, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2008.

In a twist on the syngergistic relationship between short stories and novel, author Tim O’Brien won the National Book Award in 1979 for his Vietnam novel Going After Cacciato, then later published what was a thematic collection of short stories on the same Vietnam experiences, The Things They Carried, in 1990.

Other literary giants like Eudora Welty, J.D. Sallinger, and John Updike have also used short stories as rehearsals and sequels for longer work.

Writers need to answer this question

What all veteran and aspiring new writers need to ask themselves first and foremost, what is the best form for the core idea in question? Is it a finite, self-contained episode in time, a precious gem on its own that needs nothing else around it? Or could it be perfectly readable in one sitting but also the kernel of something that could eventually become longer and more complex, i.e. a novel?

For more details about short story contests, conferences, magazines and journals, take a look at the annual Writers Digest Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market and the online directory Duotrope Digest.

Are you a short story writer?

Tell us about your own short stories and how they fit into your literary plans for the future.

Q : Everyone says I need to wrap up my manuscript and stop writing already. But I’m really stuck.  Any advice?

A : This isn’t unusual. You may have taken a wrong turn early in the story as a result of poor planning. Or you may have painted yourself into a corner. Or you could be suffering from avoidance, procrastination, and other writer’s blocks.

Structural problems and solutions

The inability to finish up a book can often be traced back to a lack of adequate initial planning.  Have you considered the narrative arc and characterizations? The balance of dialogue, visual description and background material?

It’s crucial to define at the outset what the book it about and where you ultimately want to go with it.  That’s why I strongly recommend creating an outline.  The finest writers I’ve worked with, including best selling literary stars, begin with a clear chapter-by-chapter structure that gives them a preliminary map of the steps along the way towards climax and closure.

Ouch. I can hear some of you wincing already. You may have not used an outline since high school. How stifling, how pedantic, you might be thinking. But believe me, an outline is a very useful tool. It’s never carved in stone, however, as things usually do shift and change as you go along and the book develops a life of its own.

But that original map can be your best friend.  It’s a frame of reference that leads to an ending developed organically from everything that has come before.

Reaching emotional closure

The lack of a plan providing a clear progressive structure and a purposeful conclusion leads some writers to resist ending at all, ever.

In one case, an author sent in 3,200 pages that he envisioned as a three-volume boxed set. “I have to publish all of them at once,” he said. “It’s all or nothing at all.”

Another writer couldn’t reach the finish line because he refused to let go of the story. “It’s impossible to know what happens,” he said. “I can’t stop these people from living on and on in my head. ”

OK. Real life can’t always be tied up neatly in a bow. Problems don’t evaporate, decisions don’t usually remain static or final. That’s why reading a good book, whether it’s fiction or nonfiction, gives us the chance to return to an alternate universe whenever we pick up the book during the day.  We get to use our imaginations to allow these characters to live on beyond what’s just on the page.

Nevertheless, as a finite object and hopefully a work of creative art, your book needs to reach some emotional finality, a sense of closure, a plateau of events that is emotionally satisfying and allows the reader to take away some sense of ultimate inspiration or enlightenment.

How an editor can help

Here’s an example. I worked recently with a writer whose  story reached a climactic turning point about 400 pages into the manuscript that required the wife, who was pregnant, to leave her husband and strike out on her own.

As the developmental editor, I didn’t think writing another 200 pages to resolve all the loose ends was the best solution, so I suggested flashing forward to a short epilogue about the baby’s first birthday. That showed us everything we needed to know about how the characters resolved their relationships and issues about working and co-parenting.

In another case, a true-crime writer traveled to a distant city to interview a serial killer in prison. He was unable, however, to get past the prison regulations to interview the inmate. To meet our contractual deadline, the author tried to write an alternate ending about how he was forced to stay in town for weeks, about the people he stayed with, the local culture, weather, and sports.

As the publisher, I rejected that ending and suggested instead that he interview everyone else involved with the case.  We ended up replacing the last fifty pages of the book with commentary, transcripts and documents from the trial. This technique ultimately worked just as well as an actual interview and may actually have been more accurate.

Don’t let it come to this!

One writer who had enormous trouble meeting publishing deadlines was my old friend and nemesis, Hunter S. Thompson. Shortly after his initial success he began to fear that he couldn’t sustain the quality of his earlier work, or satisfy the legions of fans who had idealized his persona as a bad boy rebel, a kind of literary James Dean or Marlon Brando. It was a hard act to keep up, requiring all kinds of bad habits and damaging his personal and professional relationships.

In that case, drastic intervention was required that included extracting the text word by word, in a difficult and painful process I recommend only when the end result is really worth it. You can read more about my adventures editing Hunter Thompson here.

Here’s what you can do

Acting out isn’t uncommon in the process of doing the hard work of writing. A fear of failure can lead to psychological depression, anxiety and paralysis. Therefore, as the end of your book approaches, check out how successful writers maintain their self-confidence, also take a look at these habits of well-known writers, and keep the following suggestions in mind.

5 tips for finishing your book

1.  Accept endgame writer’s block as normal and common, something that happens on occasion to all authors, even the best and most experienced.

2.  Reconsider your core idea, your starting-out concept and see if it fulfills your original outline. If you didn’t have an outline to begin with, make one now.

3.  Get help. That’s what editors are for.  Successful writers seek out and listen to professional feedback — from their publisher if they have one, or from a well-qualified trustworthy independent developmental editor.

4.  Dig deep. Be willing to listen to others about your self-defeating behavior. Friends and family, editors, publishers, or on occasion, psychological professionals, can be the source of honest and supportive feedback.

5.  Be patient. Wait it out. The outline and revisions take time. Sometimes this process needs to play out at its own pace to develop traction, take hold, and stick.

Send in your own stories of how you overcame problems finishing your book. I’ll bet you have some great examples and solutions waiting to be told.

Welcome to the final round in our series of book proposal critiques. It’s an audiocast, so to get started, just click the play button below.

The six book proposals

•The first proposal we’ll be looking at today is for a sci-fi/fantasy novel that takes place in a South American jungle.  The hero is a hack novelist, whose fictional characters, including a serial killer, come to life.

•The second is an illustrated children’s story about a boy, his dog and a conductor, who make music from the noisy sounds of the their city.

•Then, we’ll take a look at another novel, a satirical parody of James Frey’s alleged memoir, A Million Little Pieces.

•The fourth proposal is for a treatise that tries to bridge academic and popular non-fiction on the subject of religion and contemporary culture, namely Harry Potter.

•Next is a novel about a professional chef and his search for love and meaning in life.

•The final proposal is for a biography of a rap musician from Peru, who is best known for his political songs.

If you’re here for the first time

For those who are here for the first time, in Proposal Critiques we wanted to provide a snapshot of how editors, agents, and publishers go through and consider book proposals:  A behind-the-scenes view of the quick and candid evaluation your proposal will receive when you send it to a literary agent or commercial book publisher.

You’ll hear me discussing a little of what works and what doesn’t in these submissions, and some suggestions for how they could be improved.  By necessity the discussion here is very brief, but the issues I address are fairly typical, so I hope that readers will find something to take away. When I work with a writer one-on-one as a developmental editor, of course, I go into great detail with specific changes, suggestions and comments throughout the entire manuscript.

Thanks for sending your book proposals

Hey, thanks to all of you who submitted proposals.  I hope the exercise was a helpful step in the process of writing and shepherding your work to publication.

This audiocast will be the last one in the series, as we now turn our attention in the blog to other aspects of writing and getting published.  And remember: All writing is rewriting!

If you haven’t heard the two earlier audiocasts of Proposal Critiques, go here for Round One, an evaluation of a novel and a children’s book series, and here for Round Two, an adventure novel, a biography and an inspirational self-help book.

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A shopper who watches a video about a product is more likely to buy it.

That’s why publishers and video producers are rushing to collaborate on low-cost video book trailers.  Publicists and marketing professionals believe these videos are the best new way to create the kind of buzz that attracts readers and sales.

In the past few months, publishers like Simon & Schuster, Harlequin, Scholastic, Wiley and others, have commissioned and produced hundreds of these short videos.  They’re posting them on their own company websites, on Amazon, YouTube, author sites and blogs, and an expanding universe of multimedia and social networking sites.

Some of these book videos look like movie trailers, with high production values, location shots and paid actors. Some are just about the author, with talking heads and an interview at home about the book and how it was written.

Here’s one I love

This is a book trailer for New Confections of a Closet Master Baker by Gesine Bullock-Prado (Broadway Books/Random House Sept. 09). It’s about the author and her quest for meaning and purpose in her life, which she discovers by becoming a master baker and opening her own shop in Vermont where she creates pastry and cakes to die for. They’re so well photographed you’ll want to rush out and buy them, and the book.

A sudden trend

This new approach is part of the sea change in the industry’s turbulent and volatile efforts to sell books.  Most of us generally agree that the old ways of marketing books has become prohibitively expensive and obsolete, especially in the current economy and declining retail sales in all sectors.

That full-page ad in the New York Times Book Review or the 30-second national TV spot on a show like Today or Front Line can cost tens of thousands of dollars with few tangible results. At the same time the DIY free-access culture of the internet has shown how powerful a three-minute YouTube video can be, careening around cyberspace in a few minutes if viewers pass it on to interested friends in their social network.

Book publishers are struggling to figure out how to survive and flourish in this brave new world of digital marketing. Many are now willing try something new.

At John Wiley & Sons, for example, we’ve already commissioned many such videos.  The Dummies division at Wiley in particular, is using video trailers to market its books.  Simon & Schuster’s CEO Carolyn Reidy, told me at Book Expo this year that she’s a big supporter of this recent initiative and has ordered dozens of videos for her various imprints. Jeff Gomez at Penguin is another strong advocate of this marketing tool.

We’ve also found that these book trailers are perfect as audition tapes for national broadcast and print media, and to generate author publicity and support the author’s direct-to-reader marketing efforts to drive sales and engage customers.

Growing book trailer industry

Video production companies targeting authors are emerging to produce book trailers. For example, Andrew Kaplan, Business Development Manager of the internet video company TurnHere, says they’ve produced about 500 book videos and is releasing three or four new ones every week.

Another producer, Scott Robinson of RFI films in NYC has been creating book videos directly with the author, most notably our own favorite discovery, Lenore Skenazy.

A quick search online turned up other players, including Living Jacket, Circle of Seven Productions, and Expanded Books. I don’t have any personal experience with these companies, so please do your own due diligence if you consider using their services.

If you’re a writer under contract, be clear about who’s paying for producing the video. If you don’t yet have a book publisher, consider doing something within your budget, either on your own or with professional help. The cost for such an effort can range from a few hundred to $5,000.

How can you make the best use of this new resource?

Watch as many book videos as you can and become familiar with the rapidly changing state of the art.  To get started, check out BookScreening, a hub for book trailers submitted by publishers and authors featuring great examples of this new medium.  Another big player in this arena is the book trailer channel at  Barnes & Noble Studio.  Search YouTube for book trailers, and you’ll find more than 50,000. And there’s Vimeo, with a roster of more than 200 book videos.  Also take a look at The Book Trailer Blog, with interesting background and commentary about making and re-purposing book videos.

Book trailers tend to fall into two major categories: Some are like Hollywood movie previews, with professional actors playing out elements of the stories in actual locations, with good music, slick editing, and high production values.

Others are entirely author focused, with a writer explaining why and how they wrote the book, often speaking from home.  The author might be sitting behind a keyboard, walking through a location associated with the book, or conducting an interview with an on or off-camera journalist or friend.

Readers want a relationship with the author

“Our experience and field surveys show that what potential readers want most is contact with the author,” Kaplan of TurnHere says.

“Book tours don’t often bring authors to neighborhood events anymore, but people still crave that personal touch, that sense of a real person they can get to know, that relationship between author and reader.”

What would work best for your book? Would you prefer to dramatize the story in an enticing manner, or talk about your work and how you did it?

Consider roughing out a preview trailer on your own. Do you have any video equipment at home? Do you know someone who would be willing to experiment and have some fun working on this with you?

“I’ve seen good book trailers that started as an amateur Flip camera version made by the author and then later redone with professional production values,” says Robinson of RFI films.

“Lenore Skenazy and her husband Joe, for example, did a first-draft video for her book Free Range Kids with consumer equipment and software.  They wrote their own script. It had humor – which is important for many book trailers — and a lot of smart ideas for inserts and locations. So we re-shot the whole thing with better audio and editing. Humor, good sound and good editing can all make a huge difference.” See the final version on Amazon.

Is Amazon charging for placement?

Book trailer producers have told me also that one of the biggest challenges they face now in video marketing campaigns is placement. It used to be easier to get a video trailer posted on Amazon, for example. Now I hear they’re beginning to charge for posting a video on the first page of a book listing.

Kaplan at TurnHere says that Amazon is beginning to charge some of his clients a $1500 fee for posting on the first page of a book listing. A spokesperson for Amazon, who prefers to remain anonymous, told me that such a fee would depend on how much business the publisher does with them, and the status of an individual author.

I’m told that we’re not paying that kind of money at Wiley for posting on Amazon, but we may be getting credit for the volume of cooperative advertising dollars that a publisher makes available to major retailers.

If anyone out there has had direct experience with Amazon regarding placement of a book trailer, we’d love to hear from you.

The bottom line

Here’s the bottom line: Smart buyers do research online before making any retail purchase. Book readers are no different. If they’ve heard about a book, or read something by a writer they like, they’ll search for it. When they find an actual video, the research shows that people have an attention span of about 3 minutes.

Three minutes doesn’t sound like much.  But that little book video could make a big impact in your ultimate sales.

We want to hear about your experience

Who’s got a book trailer?

Tell us about your experience and send links in comments.

In the increasingly difficult competition to get published, writers know they must put their best foot forward by sending out only a professional, polished, and persuasive new proposal or manuscript to any prospective literary agent or publisher.

Many authors have come to understand the value of objective help before taking the plunge, and I don’t mean from family, friends, or the local writing group. Such support is valuable to have close at hand, but even with the best of intentions, it’s not as useful as professional feedback and guidance.

Full disclosure:  I’m an Executive Editor at Jossey-Bass/John Wiley & Sons and I also work privately as a developmental editor with selected authors.

But I’m not the only such practitioner, and not necessarily the best one for you. There are plenty of other developmental editors out there.

Ask for referrals from authors you know and from agents and editors you meet at writers conferences, expos, or book store signings. It takes hustle and discernment.

Some independent editors have websites that list their services and former clients. If authors are listed, you can try to get in touch with them through their agent or publisher. The authors may be happy to endorse their editors and may well want to lend a helping hand to a fellow writer.

I recommend you be very careful when evaluating and making a final choice. Here are some of the primary considerations I think are important when selecting an editor.

Evaluating a freelance editor

• Professional Status

Is this individual a developmental editor? A developmental editor works with a writer to improve the basic concept of the book, the way it’s focused and structured, the style and attitude of the narrative voice, whether it’s fiction or non-fiction.

In a non-fiction book they’ll help clarify and organize the ideas and information. In a novel, they’ll work on the plot, characterizations, dialogue, visual description, and literary style.

It’s important to distinguish developmental editors from copy editors, who take a manuscript that has already been developed and correct the spelling, grammar, punctuation, and in some cases fact-checking.

Ask about the editor’s educational background and experience. A developmental editor is likely to have a vitae that includes a degree and perhaps graduate studies in literature or a related subject.  It’s also very helpful to have in-depth experience as an editor working with a broad variety of authors in real-world commercial book publishing.

• Track Record

Has the editor worked on books that have been published successfully?  Your prospective editor should be able to provide an author list of published titles that you can examine.  Did the authors acknowledge the editor in their published works?

Ask the editor to provide references and endorsements, and be sure to follow up.

• Compatibility

Don’t be shy. Get in touch with a prospective editor directly. If you live nearby, make an effort to meet. If that’s not feasible, have a good phone conversation. It’s important to see how they respond and to hear their voice, to establish a relationship you can trust and enjoy.

You don’t have to love your editor but it helps to like one another and have an open, honest channel of continuing communication. A good fit is important.

Humor and compassion also go a long way in forging a productive relationship!

• Accessibility

If your candidate is slow to answer emails or never returns your phone calls, that’s a bad sign, a harbinger of future problems. Being busy is normal; being absent or invisible for long periods of time is not acceptable.

Remember: It’s your book

Once you’ve narrowed your search or made an actual choice, I always advise authors to establish the ground rules up front and take an ongoing proactive role in protecting their interests.

Good developmental editors subsume their own egos and enter the world of the writer’s consciousness. They’re not writing their own book but helping you create the book you want to write.

A good professional should never take over a book, conform or contort it to their way of writing, or make any changes unilaterally or without your approval. That’s why the tracked changes tool on your Word document manuscript is so useful. You can see everything in the original with any edits, deletions, or additions, highlighted in another color in a way that can be either accepted or rejected.

Establish clear financial terms

Some independent editors have a written contract, and others don’t, preferring to operate on a basis of trust. In any case, you will want to agree on a minimum and maximum fee, and how payment will be made.

Most developmental editors charge either an hourly rate or a flat fee depending on the length of the book and how much work is needed. Not inexpensive, to be sure, so consider how much this kind of investment is worth to you, and choose very carefully.

Also be clear about your ability to follow up with more questions, brainstorming and feedback on subsequent revisions. Is that part of the original estimate or an additional charge?

Ask for work-in-progress

The editor can you send you at least partially completed chapters as you go along, to make sure you’re on the same page and getting what you expected.

Edits have to be taken in the context of structure and parallel development that may not be obvious at first. But the option to discuss what’s going on with editing during the process needs to be established.

Agree on an exit plan

Before you start, agree about how you can stop in the middle and leave the deal without rancor.

This rarely happens, but if a major problem develops over communication or work in progress that just can’t be solved, it should be discussed in writing so there’s a clear record and no misunderstanding — even if there’s no formal contract.

Maxwell Perkins: A role model for editors

Maxwell Perkins may be familiar to students of American literature as the legendary editor at Charles Scribner’s Sons (now a division of Simon & Schuster) who during the 1920’s and 30’s worked with Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Wolfe, Erskine Caldwell, and other famous authors.

Perkins was well known for his intelligence, humility, passion for good writing and unconditional support for the writers he edited.

He maintained close personal relationships with his authors, nursing the alcoholic Fitzgerald through vast improvements in The Great Gatsby. He advocated the then revolutionary publication of Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises.  He suffered through two years of persuading Wolfe to cut 90,000 words from his first novel Look Homeward Angel.

Here’s a passage from one of many letters Perkins wrote Thomas Wolfe in 1937 during a period when they were struggling over the length of Wolfe’s second novel Of Time and the River:

My impression was that you asked my help, that you wanted it. And it is my impression too that changes were not forced on you (you’re not very forceable, Tom, nor I very forceful), but were argued over, often for hours. But…unless you want help it will certainly not be thrust upon you…I believe the writer, anyway, should always be the final judge.  I have always held to that position…The book belongs to the author.

Given the success of Perkins’ work with Wolfe, this window into their professional process shows just how sensitive and complex a relationship this can be.

Any experiences with editors to share?

Every successful writer I know has a relationship with an editor they trust.  But it doesn’t always happen easily, or the first time around.  We’re interested in hearing about your own experiences finding and working with an editor, and the impact on your writing and getting published.  And if you have any questions about all this, fire away in comments.

If you want to succeed as a writer you have to realize you’re in the book business, with all its strange ways of doing things.

Publishing is still a relationship business and you need to know the players, the powers that be, who’s making what things happen.

Publishers Marketplace draws back the curtains and reveals the nuts and bolts of daily life and how to gain entry.

How to get in the game 

Years ago it was difficult if not impossible for aspiring or established  authors to know what was going on behind the scenes in the book business. Who were the important agents and editors? What were they selling and buying? How could an author penetrate the higher echelons of influence and power and get published?

That’s changing big time.

I’ve been telling writers at conferences and workshops for years that they should subscribe to Publishers Marketplace, the insider’s connection for crucial book publishing information, and a tremendous resource for every writer.  And now it’s more important than ever with all the changes going on in the business.

Subscriptions cost $20 per month – a bargain, in my view, for the access you gain to information you need to be an informed participant in this business. It’s on a month-to-month basis, so you can try it out and see what you think.

There’s also a free version with limited access, but unless you subscribe you miss out on most of the essential services.

I use Publishers Marketplace every day to learn what I need to know as an acquiring book editor for a large commercial company.  So this isn’t an infomercial, but heartfelt advice.

How I use Publishers Marketplace

• Like every publishing professional, I read a plethora of Publishers Marketplace email reports including Lunch Deluxe, Lunch Weekly, and Daily Deals, which provides news-breaking information on deals, hirings and firing, mergers and acquisitions, and other headline book news.

• Using PM’s immense industry database, I can search recent sales to see which agents are handling the kinds of books I want to publish.

For example, I can search by genre –  self-help, mysteries, cookbooks, memoirs, debut fiction, YA, etc. – and find all the recent deals.  Sometimes I can also learn approximately what they sold for, described in a scale of euphemisms starting with a nice deal (less than $49k), all the way up to a major deal (more than $500k).

• I can find authors with projects I’d like to see by searching Rights News and Offerings (available free) — a reverse chronology of recent books for sale by both agents and individual authors who post them daily.

• I’m able to check out the competition and learn which of my esteemed colleagues has acquired books in categories we share. For me, this is a valuable way to see if our own advance offers are above or below the level the competition is paying.

• Checking under my own name, I see that I have some housekeeping to do to bring my information up to date, as many of my acquisitions are missing — yikes, 15 of the 19 I signed up in the last 12 months — and haven’t made it into the PM database.

• I can tinker with my Members Page (searchable for free) where anyone can see my editorial bio, current genres and specialties, best-known projects, recent purchases, and a photo. The shameless story of my life where everyone can see how old I am, even though I did start at the age of eleven, ahem.

So if you’re a writer who has a book that hasn’t been sold yet or for one reason or other is looking for a better publishing situation, by all means subscribe to Publishers Marketplace.

Features of special interest to writers

• Contacts Search (subscribers only)

Obtain email, phone and address information for anyone in Publishers Marketplace’s extensive database.  Search by name, company or branch of publishing from more than 2,000 listings for agents, 2,500 for editors and hundreds of other specialists.

• Top Dealmakers (subscribers only)

Writers can use this feature to research agents and editors by genre.  For example, you can learn the names of the literary agents who sold the most debut fiction in the past 12 months, including the titles, the editors who bought them and how much they paid. This is important information since a good track record is the best barometer for future success.

• Who Represents Search (subscribers only)

This useful feature searches the database of authors and agents, permitting a user to search by author or title to track down the name of the author’s literary agent.  This provides another way to find agents who handle books similar to yours or represent other writers you admire.

• Search Member Pages (free)

This feature allows browsing and searching of member-hosted web pages, including agents, editors, consultants, book designers and  publicists. Individual bloggers and writers who are members and have established their own web pages are also listed here.

Find out how to reach acquiring editors who have bought books like yours or are looking in your general genre or category. I generally advise writers to get an agent first, but some authors I know prefer to go directly to the publisher’s editor and take their chances. I for one do read unsolicited proposals and manuscripts if there’s something about them that grabs my attention, but many companies won’t even consider stuff in the slush pile.

•Rights News and Offerings (free)

Post your own proposals. Yes, you can describe your book in an abbreviated pitch that if well done can capture the attention of agents and editors.

•Top Reviewers (subscribers only)

Click on a reviewer’s name to browse his or her reviews, sorted by tone (positive, neutral/mixed, or negative) with links to the actual reviews.  Includes reviewers from major newspapers who have at least 25 reviews in the database.

• Publishers Lunch Automat (subscribers only)

Publishing industry news, commentary, financial updates, blog posts and more live from about 200 sources, including trade people (yours truly appears there), literary agents, bloggers, newspapers and booksellers.  A rolling news feed draws on the major headlines.

•Publishers Lunch Deluxe (subscribers only)

If you want to keep up with every bit of news and gossip, this email summary is considered the industry’s “daily essential read, now shared with nearly 40,000 publishing people every day.”

This is where you can learn about new techniques and services that publishers and other authors are using to help authors sell their own books in the brave new world of internet marketing and social networking. All the old assumptions are off, we all know now, and we’re all experimenting with new ideas and ways of selling directly to the reader.

The times when authors could hide in the attic are long gone. Ignore this information at your peril, and make the worthwhile investment of time and money.

More than 600 writers have built substantial member web pages at Publishers Marketplace.  We’d love to hear from you if you have information to share, for example if you’ve found any features at PM particularly valuable.  And if there are any questions, please post them here in comments.

Q:  I’ve heard that New York publishers will only accept books written from a third-person limited POV and no head hopping allowed.

Does this mean I have to rewrite my manuscript to conform to these rules?

A:  No! Stop. Don’t succumb to this kind of advice.

These rumors can start as the result of an editor or agent writing a rejection letter saying a particular book might be better if the author changed the POV (point of view.)

The news starts traveling and takes on steam.  But that’s only one editor’s opinion and it could be wrong.

The great POV debate

The truth is that there are no such monolithic rules.

As an acquiring editor, however, I’ve seen many fiction, memoir and narrative non-fiction proposals and manuscripts that suffer from problems with point of view. Writers often struggle with how to tell the story and with choosing the best narrative voice to do the job.

That’s why writers groups, classes, workshops and author blogs debate heatedly the rumors and alleged rules about the “right” POV.

Before going any further, I want to define my use of these terms to avoid some of the confusion I see online.  So for the purpose of this post, here are my simplified versions of four typical points of view:

Four Typical Points of View

1. Omniscient 

The story is told through an observer with the author’s narrative voice. This narrator knows how the story unfolds, though ideally does not reveal all at once.

2. First-person

The story is told from the point of view of the “I” narrator, who only knows what she or he sees and experiences, so all feelings, questions, and internal thoughts are in the narrative voice of a unique individual.

3. Third-person limited

The entire story is told through the perspective of one character, using for example, the pronouns he or she.

4. Third-person unlimited

The story is told through the perspectives of two or more characters, with shifting points of view.

Most writers choose to write in one POV at a time, but since writing is an art and not a technical science, some highly skilled, experienced literary artists may mix and mingle more than one of the above.  For this discussion I’ve omitted the rarely used second-person point of view.

My only rule: Does the manuscript work?

As an acquiring developmental editor with more than 40 years in commercial publishing, including Simon and Schuster, Bantam, and John Wiley & Sons, I don’t subscribe to any rules or generalities about the right or wrong point of view to tell a story.

My approach is strictly empirical. I need to produce books that make a profit. So when I work with a writer, I ask myself: “Is this manuscript working? Will the reader engage and keep turning those pages?”

As the editor, my job is to help the writer develop the book with the POV that works best. Each story requires a custom point of view. When working with a writer I encourage an open-minded approach.

How an editor works with a writer

Here are some recent examples of how I’ve collaborated with authors to revise narratives with point-of-view problems. In each case, reworking the POV produced more publishable manuscripts.

Refocusing the POV

The first draft of this mystery novel was written in third-person unlimited with seven different narrative voices. Inserting my tracked changes one page at a time, I asked the author to clarify who was talking, through whose eyes we readers were figuring out the crime.

I noted that the point of view was rapidly shifting away from the forensic psychologist whom the author told me was the going to be the heroine of a series of mysteries. First the POV switched to a serial killer, then to a string of other characters: a police detective, the most recent victim, a newspaper reporter and others. As a reader, I became confused and frustrated. I couldn’t tell where I was or what was going on.

After around two hundred pages of this kind of head hopping, I requested that the author eliminate the multiple points of view entirely, and refocus on one first-person “I” narrator.  This allowed the reader to discover all the mysterious twists of underlying story from our heroine’s point of view, avoiding any premature revelations or digressive information dumps.

This new focus also helped build more empathy and identification with the protagonist, whom we needed to identify with and admire enough to read about for not just this but other stories in the future.

I call this the Cutting the Gordian Knot school of developmental editing: one sweeping change that unravels the confusion.

Excising a distracting omniscient voice

The author had been working for months on an intense coming-of-age memoir, but hadn’t figured out how to explain what was really behind the apparently insensitive and abusive neglect she experienced as a child yearning for a dead mother and absent father.

The draft she sent me tried to insert an omniscient narrative voice every few pages to explain why her heartbroken father was in denial and avoidance. I suggested she delete that omniscient POV entirely and instead stick with a single “I” narrator perspective.

This permitted the reader to understand how she grew up gradually and discovered the truth about her family’s whole story, meeting elders, cousins, friends and mentors who eventually filled in the details of her earlier life in a manner that helped her to develop as a whole, mature, independent and self-reliant young woman who had a family and children of her own.

Creating a narrative voice to fit the story

Reversing direction, I worked with an author to develop a historical biography that was originally told from the POV of an 8-year-old boy.

The problem was that the writer had a literary style of a 40-year-old man. Mark Twain could get away with this in Huckleberry Finn, but it’s a difficult task for most of us mortals (and critics have pointed out how Twain’s adult voice was evident throughout that classic.)

So we revised the book with a new omniscient narrator to tell the whole story of moving west in a broad social and political context.

 POV Tips and Tricks

1. Know your characters

Who is the protagonist and where is he or she coming from? Is this someone you want to portray as naïve who learns the hard way, or more remote, above it all, controlling the action? Would it be more effective to write from within or observe from the outside?

2. Don’t give away the farm

Whether you choose first person or omniscient, be sure to sustain a sense of gradually unfolding discovery. One of the great pleasures of reading is delving into a parallel universe that accompanies us as we go about our day, just waiting for us to jump back in.

We want to the story to unfold step by step. We want to discover what’s going on for ourselves, through the characters and narration, and not be told or flooded with information, or tricked into believing something that turns out not to be true.

3. Break some rules

Slick genre plots sometimes include a last reversal which turns everything on its head. It may turn out the first person narrator has been lying to us all along, or the omniscient narrator was clueless to the reality of the story until the last minute.

A big surprise on page 123 can wake up your reader and re-engage flagging interest. But take this kind of flyer at your peril, after you’ve become a more confident and accomplished writer and have the skill to pull it off.

Enough said for now. We welcome comments, questions, and sage advice.

An author friend of mine couldn’t figure out why he was having so much trouble selling his new book.  He had a respectable list of published books to his name, a regular schedule of speeches and workshops, and a solid platform in print and broadcast media.

So on a hunch, I looked him up on Nielsen BookScan, an industry service for publishers that reports actual book sales by ISBN number at retailers across the country.

There was the answer in black and white. The sales figures for his last book were dismal.

He was shocked at the news, certain that the numbers were wrong.  In fact, he was only dimly aware of BookScan and didn’t really understand what it was or how it worked.

Big mistake.

BookScan numbers are like an author’s credit rating

All book publishers (and some savvy authors) subscribe to Nielsen BookScan.  The very first thing an acquisitions editor does is check a published author’s Nielsen numbers, when considering a new submission.

Nielsen BookScan tells the naked truth about how many copies a book sells. It produces weekly tallies via electronic links to thousands of cash registers across the country. This is no guess or anecdotal report. It’s all ka-ching, straight from the till.

The numbers may as well be carved in stone.

“We only report what we receive from cash registers, and we never change our numbers,” said Jim King, the go-to guy for book publishers at Nielsen in a phone interview at the company’s White Plains, NY offices.

“The book may have sold additional copies, but not through our reporting outlets. An author’s book might have sold at non-reporting retailers like Wal-Mart or book clubs, but we have no way of including that.  So there’s no way anyone can request us to change an ISBN report.”

Recent BookScan results may determine whether a book is acquired

The most recent Nielsen numbers will therefore have a powerful impact on whether or not a book is acquired in the first place, since publishers take these numbers as indications of the new book’s potential success.

Poor recent numbers may put a damper on a publisher’s enthusiasm to sign up your major new opus. I’ve known authors with a long track record of success slip into a marginal status with a single recent sales failure.

Brutal but true.

How Nielsen numbers impact bookseller orders

Even if a book is ultimately appealing, recent low Nielsen numbers will impact the all-important realistic projections for the new book’s potential sales.

This can affect not only the advance, since most publishers predicate the amount paid on signing on projected first year sales — but also the first printing.  That’s because sales reps know that the major accounts will also consult Nielsen as well as their own internal records to determine how many they’ll order of the new title.

In some case, they may actually pass. That’s right, book buyers may skip ordering any copies at all if the author’s last book had unimpressive performance numbers.

How Nielsen collects sales data

Nielsen says that they cover about 75 percent of retail book sales in the United States.  In a typical week, they track sales of more than 300,000 titles by their ISBN numbers, at nearly 13,000 retail accounts in the United States, including Amazon, the national chain stores like Barnes & Noble, Borders, Books-A-Million and 450 independent bookstores (extrapolated from 1700 total.)

Other sales outlets include some big box discounters like Costco, Target and K-Mart.  Recent additions are some “non-traditional” book retailers like Starbucks and Toys “R” Us.

Keep in mind that Nielsen’s 75 percent of total is an average, depending on where each individual and unique book actually sells. In cases where a book sells primarily in normal retail outlets, the report may be closer to 100 percent accurate.

All this means that we have weekly access to honest sales figures that can’t be altered by agents, publishers, or authors themselves.

A loophole – not all sales are recorded

But as Jim King told me, there’s a caveat.  BookScan’s numbers don’t include sales from every source.  Wal-Mart sales, for example, are not included.  Non-traditional retailers like gift stores and other specialty shops that include books in their product mix aren’t usually hooked up to Nielsen.

Nielsen may also capture fewer sales when significant quantities of your book are sold primarily through the mail, or book clubs, or when the author sells the book directly at non-book store events like trainings and workshops.

Keep in mind also that BookScan didn’t go live until January of 2001, and didn’t begin accumulating data until that time.  So Nielsen won’t have data on books published before then.

This loophole gives authors an opportunity to provide a more accurate picture of their total sales record — if they have the documentation to prove it.

My advice to authors

If you have good BookScan numbers that pop up all bright and sparkly, no problem. If, on the other hand, your most recent book fell a bit on its face, you’ll need to anticipate and come up with a defensive strategy.

1. Be prepared: Know your numbers

Writers can subscribe to Nielsen themselves, for a price: $5,000 a year for total 24/7 access to all titles in the system. A better deal for just finding out your own book’s sales history is $85 for a single ISBN number.

You can contact Nielsen directly to order an annual or one-time report at this address: Brianna.Buckley@nielsen.com.  That way you won’t be blindsided by any surprising numbers.

You can also get this information through your editor and publisher.

2. Check your past royalty statements

If you don’t have copies of your statements, ask your agent or publisher. The statements should provide an accurate analysis of your recent sales and where they came from.  That information can be significant if you have substantial sales from non-traditional outlets or bulk orders bought for non-bookstore channels like corporate premiums, schools, or your own public events.

One catch, however, is that royalty statements usually include a “reserve for returns”, which means that you don’t get full credit for all copies shipped until enough time passes for all potential returns to come back to the warehouse.

Some publishers, especially when accounting for mass market paperback sales, take as much as a 50 percent reserve and wait one or two years before accounting fully. Or, as is frequently the case, maybe you didn’t sell as many copies as everyone told you.  Your advance may have never earned out, and therefore the accounting may have been cursory or incomplete.

3. Have a dynamite proposal or manuscript

One of the best ways you can overcome recent negative numbers, of course, is to have a dynamite proposal or with fiction, an irresistible completed manuscript.

Remember, no matter what you hear:  Publishers are still in the acquisition business, turning out a new list every season, looking eagerly for the next big thing, the terrific book, the first novel with promise of many others to come, the fabulous original or compelling non-fiction proposal.

One author’s solution

In my friend’s case, mentioned above, he was able to explain how many books were sold at his workshops and trainings and found some old royalty statements going back before Nielsen started counting.

The total combined numbers added up to a better risk, and he was ultimately able to find a publisher who liked what he wanted to do and was willing to take a chance.

Your BookScan experience?

If you’ve had a Nielsen Bookscan experience, please share — we’d be interested to hear about it.

We all know it’s cheaper to buy books online or at the big box national discount chains.  I could have saved $12.10 the other day if I had gone on Amazon or over to Barnes & Noble.

But if we’re lucky enough to have a local bookstore nearby we ought to do what we can to help keep it alive, right? So I was happy to spend those extra bucks at Mrs. Dalloway’s Books, a special spot in my corner of town.

A homegrown bookshop inspired by Virginia Woolf

My little neighborhood in Berkeley is called the Elmwood.  There are only about three blocks of shops, cafes and restaurants, and one old deco movie theater.

The Elmwood doesn’t quite fit the image of Republic of Berkeley radical politics.

It’s quiet and slow here — practically a throwback to the fifties — though Ozzie’s funky soda fountain has now given way to a new ice cream boutique, called “Ici” – get it?  A little precious, but very popular, judging from the long lines down the block, even when it’s raining.

We know we’re lucky

At a time when independent book stores are shutting down across the country, here in the Elmwood we’re fortunate to have Mrs. Dalloway’s, a homegrown bookshop inspired by the first line of Virginia Woolf’s 1925 literary novel: “Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.”

There’s a resident mannequin in the window representing Mrs. Dalloway, usually dressed in witty outfits that evoke both Virginia Woolf and a spirit of the good green world of flowers and gardening.

It’s not a huge place, but open and airy, with tables of recommended books and walls lined with many more titles spine-out.  There’s a conservatory-like feel with a strong ‘green’ motif: eco-friendly seagrass and slate floor coverings, rattan chairs and the fixtures and wood moldings are painted in earthy natural colors.

Catering to the customer

The store has a distinct attitude and approach, and caters to its customers. In addition to literary fiction, current affairs, mysteries, biography, memoir, travel literature, poetry, and children’s books, there’s a large selection of gardening books chosen for their utility in Berkeley’s Mediterranean climate, plus shelves of books devoted to architecture and design.

Beyond books, Mrs. Dalloway’s sells things related thematically to the store’s concept: potted plants, unusual copper, ceramic, and glass vases to hold cut flowers; original art for hanging, including watercolors, photography and weavings, and also English, French, and German botanical and insect prints.

And Mrs. Dalloway’s offers free same-day delivery in the neighborhood.  Take that, Amazon!

Another indie bookstore perk: local author readings

The owners, two longtime friends, program a regular series of events that focus on mainly local authors of literary fiction, poetry, and topics of special interest to the neighborhood.  Michael Pollan, best-selling author of The Botany of Desire, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and In Defense of Food, has spoken and read there, as have Nafisa Haji, from her novel The Writing on My Forehead, and Eve Pell from her memoir We Used to Own the Bronx: Memoirs of a Former Debutante.

Mrs. Dalloway’s has the occasional sale but doesn’t discount books on a regular basis. I suspect that it’s difficult for them to compete with the big retailers like Barnes & Noble or the giant store-killing colossus of Amazon.

So sure, I could have saved $12 the other day by shopping at Amazon in these tough financial times. But I think it’s worth it to support my neighborhood bookstore, with all its perky charm and passionate devotion to providing what its local customers want.

Do you still have a neighborhood bookstore?

OK. That’s Mrs. Dalloway’s, my neighborhood bookstore. What’s yours? Hope you still have one. Please leave comments and let’s share what we hope will be a continuing tradition of the unique and irreplaceable independent bookstore.

And if you’ve got a photo of your bookstore, send it to alan@alanrinzler.com and we’ll post it along with mine of Mrs. Dalloway’s.  Please write “bookstore photo” in the subject line, and in the email include the name of the store and town.

Your favorite bookstores

Here we go, the first one in from the coastal town of Cannon Beach, Oregon.  The quintessential little independent bookstore, isn’t it?  Makes you want to pull up a chair.  We’d love to see more favorite bookshops, from all corners of the map, so send them over!

Welcome to round two in our series of book proposal critiques. It’s an audiocast, so to get started, just click the play button below.

Three submissions: A novel, a biography and an inspirational self-help book

The first proposal we’ll be looking at today is for an adventure novel with an environmental mission.  The story is set in Africa, and confronts the conflict of our modern lifestyle versus the preservation and sustainability of nature and wildlife.

The second is a biography that promises to reveal the truth about the mysterious death and apparent rebirth of a now-forgotten American  “messiah,” who practiced faith-healing in the late 1800s.

And the third is an inspiring self-help book composed of a collection of stories about women and men who have received a diagnosis of terminal cancer but against all odds lived to tell the tale.

If you missed the first round

If you missed the first round, go here to listen to an evaluation of two proposals, one for a novel and the other for a children’s book series.

For those who are here for the first time, we wanted to provide a snapshot of how editors, agents, and publishers go through and consider proposals:  A behind-the-scenes view of the quick and candid evaluation your proposal will receive when you send it to a literary agent or commercial book publisher.

You’ll hear me discussing what works and what doesn’t in these submissions, and some suggestions for how they could be improved.  The issues I address are fairly typical, so I hope that many readers will find something to take away from the discussion, and that this gives a sense of how I work with writers to help develop their proposals and manuscripts.  For those who would prefer to work with me one-on-one, please check out my Services page.

Is this helpful?

Keep sending in your proposals to alan@alanrinzler.com for the next round.  Check here for instructions.

In the meantime, let us know through your comments if you have suggestions and ideas for what you’d like to see in this feature.

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Agents, editors, and publishers receive queries every day from professors and other academics who say they have a great idea for a trade book based on their research, thesis, journal article or latest discoveries from the lab or clinic.

Sharp editors also scour the daily press for the latest breaking news about scientific discoveries and newly reported studies on topics dear to the heart of the general reader.

Popular translations of recent discoveries

Biology, economics, environmental sciences, genetics, psychology, theology, and neuroscience  are all popular in the media these days, as we learn more and more about human nature, why we behave this way, and what we can or cannot do about it – at least for now.

The New York Times best seller, How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer, for example, is an effective and popular translation of recent discoveries in neuroscience that show how we make up our minds about everything from getting married to making a financial investment. The book’s fascinating scientific revelations are based on new fMRI scans of our brains in action.

Dynamite stuff.

I’ve been involved in many successful arrangements with academics that have worked out for everyone and produced good books that sold well. For example, the best selling Fighting For Your Marriage by Howard Markman, Scott Stanley, and Susan Blomberg, who are all PhD academics with extensive clinical experience. And right now I’m working with a Harvard professor on an exciting upcoming book based upon recent neuroscience research on how to be more productive and creative in our work and daily lives.

Converting academic writing to popular prose

Aside from the usual factors in a decision to represent or publish the work – originality, author platform, competition – there’s usually a special issue with the style of the academic writing itself.

As undergraduates and as grad students, during years of hard work on their PhD theses, then submitting research and scholarship in articles for peer review journals, and ultimately as distinguished professors and scholars, academics are expected to produce a kind of formulaic dry and didactic style of writing that is difficult to understand for the lay reader.

It’s often tough for academics, moreover, to shake off this firmly ingrained style. Consequently, even smart and well-educated agents and editors may be left scratching their heads in confusion. What does this mean? They have perhaps a glimmer of understanding from a few words here and there but these academic proposals are often barely comprehensible and ultimately unreadable.

Nevertheless, because the underlying ideas may be fascinating, important and useful, such projects are often taken on and repackaged with the following basic strategies.

How academic authors produce popular trade books

Three strategies

1.  Editorial Development

If the author has the capacity to revise the proposal and ultimately write the manuscript with major direction from a developmental editor or other dedicated professional, then it may be possible to produce a book that a general reader can understand and learn from.

The editor will work with the author line by line, page by page, explaining, clarifying, reorganizing, polishing, adding important narrative story elements like dramatic case histories and anecdotal examples with dialogue, visual description and characterization.

2.  Co-authorship

Sometimes the solution is to bring in a second writer, identified clearly on the book’s cover or titles page as “with” or “and” their name. In this case, the professorial author may or may not produce a first draft but with it or without, the co-author writes the book.

The original academic author has the ultimate authority and approval over the manuscript, but the writer does all the heavy lifting, including outlining, drafting, interviewing, further researching, and taking responsibility for keeping the production on schedule, under the guidance and supervision of the publisher.

3.  Ghostwriters 

When the original author doesn’t want to advertise that they had help writing the book, we turn to a ghostwriter.

Ghosts don’t care so much if they get credit so long as they are properly compensated. You may find their names buried in the book’s acknowledgements with some vague kind of thanks, but not always.

Co-authors and ghostwriters are highly regarded and greatly sought after. Agents and editors try to assemble a stable of cherished professionals, some of whom specialize in one field or another, but others who are experienced in a variety of types and genres based on their skill and alacrity.

These writers are usually well paid and don’t work on speculation but rather with a negotiable percentage of the author’s advance and subsequent royalties.

This kind of collaboration begins with a written agreement regarding duties and compensation and the possibility of disagreement and dissolution.

My advice: Get help early on

It’s always better to send an agent or editor a proposal that is already in a form that appeals to the general reader. This may mean engaging a developmental editor or co-author. You can find them through recommendations and personal references from your colleagues, meet them at readings and writers conferences, or search them online.

If you go forward on your own, keep in mind that what may seem clear to you may nevertheless need a lot more explanation, example, and narrative polish.

Agents and publishers appreciate it when you acknowledge your willingness to revise and collaborate up front. Then be prepared to compromise and modify your academic way of communicating so your ideas can have a broader readership.

All these techniques – editorial development, co-authorship or working with a ghostwriter — have been utilized with great success, producing books that appear regularly on best-seller lists.