How to Pitch to an Agent

I just got back from the Surrey International Writers Conference in Vancouver.  I loved it. I spent a lot of time taking pitches from the 400 participants.  But I also saved some time to attend some wonderful classes taught by writers. Diana Gabaldon, author of the bestselling Outlander series, gave a presentation on how to manage backstory in a novel. I’ve always felt that finding a way of getting the backstory out without just dumping it into a prologue is not easy.

The other class that I attended was about point of view and was  taught by mystery writer, Hallie Ephron. Most of us know that point of view has to do with the novel’s  narrator. Sometimes first person, sometimes third, rarely (thank God) second. But Hallie showed that the devil is always in the details, and that point of view is infinitely complex.  She told me after the class  that getting point of view right is the hardest thing in fiction writing. Even  harder than managing backstory. After taking her class, I think she’s right.

One of the best attended presentations of the conference was a workshop on making effective pitches to agents. It was given by a panel of 3 agents: myself, Vickie Motter, and Bree Ogden. The three of us are getting to be a bit of a dog and pony show. We gave the same presentation at the Willamette Valley Writers Conference last month. Vickie has a cool blog called: “Navigating the Slush Pile.” Check it out.

Every conference seems to have a class on techniques for presenting effective pitches to agents. I don’t agree with a lot of what is getting passed off on this subject. When I get pitched at conferences, too often I find that the attendees have been so over-coached that by the time they get in front of the agent, they act like their heads are going to explode. They read from note cards, they recite  from memory in a sing-songy way, they stare at me with an intensity that spooks me out. A lot of times they are taught that the 10 minutes they get to spend in front of an agent will determine whether their book will get published. AND EVERY SINGLE WORD THEY SAY DURING THE PITCH MUST BE PERFECTLY CRAFTED AND CALIBRATED.

Oh, puh – lease!  I certainly don’t want a writer to sit down with me and present a rambling and  incoherent description of his book project. But I find that most of the people who do that have an incoherent book concept. If you have a good book, you need  to convey the virtues of that book during a pitch session, but you should be able to do it in a more relaxed and conversational way. This says to me that you have confidence in the quality of the book. So when  authors sit down with me, I tell them to put away their notes and let’s just talk.  I think that makes us all feel a lot better.

I find that pitching fiction is particularly difficult. Usually the author sits down  and proceeds to rattle off the plot for 10 minutes. Hard as I try, I just can’t follow it. And neither can any agent I’ve spoken to about this. For me there is no way I can judge whether a novel is good or not by being bombarded with a plot recitation. It’s been said that there are only 10 plots in all of literature. That might be an exaggeration. But for me good fiction is not  just a plot but how you tell the story. And it’s pretty hard to get that across during a 10 minute pitch.

The best an author can do is to give a very short description of the story  and try to convey  something meaningful  about it even though that is, ultimately, ineffable. I always want to know something about the writer too. Has he published before? Has he won any awards? Is he respected by his peers?  That’s important.

Let’s try this for a pitch:  “I’ve written an historical novel. It’s long. About 300,000 words. It is the epic story, written in a realistic style,  of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia and how 3 people, members of the  Russian nobility,  live their lives   or die in the course of the novel.  Readers have told me that the 3 protagonists, Prince Andrei, Natasha, and Pierre are among the greatest characters in all of literature.  I’ll let you decide that for yourself. But I’ve tried to make those characters come alive in a way that all readers can engage with them. I also bring in some themes that try to explain how the events in the narrative help us understand the inexorable truths of history. You know, kind of weighty stuff.  Some of the secondary characters are major historical figures, notably Napoleon and the Russian general, Kutuzov. I think my description of the Battle of Borodino is memorable. I tried to make the battlefield come to life so that the reader can almost smell the gun powder. I’ve tentatively titled the novel, War and Peace. The publisher may want to change it though. That Russian novelist, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, is a big fan of this book. He said it is the greatest novel in all of literature. He’s something of a crank, but  he said he was willing to write a blurb to that effect.”

That takes about a minute and says about as much as I can absorb. Of course, I may think that the author making the pitch suffers delusions of grandeur. You might want to tone it down a bit and show a little modesty. At least, if you aren’t Count Tolstoy. Actually, that’s an important point. I really get turned off by people who try to convince me that their book is unique in the annals of mankind. Or that it will definitely be made into a movie, or that Oprah will kneel before him and wash his feet. Managing clients’ expectations is always tough, and I insist that they take a realistic approach to getting published and remember it’s a business and, at least at some level, the book is treated like a product.

Non-fiction pitches are a little easier. What I need to know is what the book is about, why is it important, who’s going to buy it, and what authority does the author have to tell it. This is all information that I will need to consider later on in a book proposal. But maybe you can pique my interest so that I’ll ask you to send one.

So potential authors, I recommend that you relax a little bit and just be yourself. If you have a great idea for a book, you will probably be able to communicate that without resorting to notes and gimmicks.  I don’t really care if your pitch isn’t perfect,  as long as your project is.

I Just Published an E-book, and It Was Pretty Easy

Recently we did a blog interview with author Mary Mackey talking about how her agent  republished  all of  Mary’s  out-of-print  novels as e-books. A lot of agencies are doing this now.  Some of them manage thousands of titles, and they are bringing them back in print, usually at very attractive prices. That’s good news for readers.

I decided to do the same thing with my clients’ books. I’d like to describe the steps that I took to get  an out-of-print  book converted and published. It was really quite easy.

The book  I worked on was  Face-Time by Erik Tarloff.  He is a client of mine. I first read Face-Time when it was published in 2000. I loved it then and I still do.  The story is about a presidential speech writer  in Washington who learns that his girlfriend is  having an affair with the President.  Erik’s voice comes through loud and clear. It is very funny and very smart. It  moves effortlessly between high culture and low farce.

Erik had some pretty good inside knowledge that gave this book a lot of verisimilitude.  Erik’s wife is Laura D’Andrea Tyson who was Chair of both  The Council of Economic Advisers and later The National Economic Council under Clinton, both cabinet level positions. Erik, himself, wrote speeches for the President.  Erik is also quick to point out that this book is in no way  a roman a clef.

 

 You can download either the Kindle Edition or the EBUB edition that can be read on all non-Kindle readers. The price is $2.99 (as Mad Magazine would say — cheap!)

So let’s talk about how I got this book published.

First, a word about e-book formats. There are two major digital formats for e-books. The first and most popular is the Kindle Format. It is proprietary and controlled by Amazon. com. Books in the Kindle format  can only be read on Kindle readers (or a Kindle App from the i-Tunes Store)  and only purchased at Amazon. Right now about 65% of all e-book sales are for Kindle Editions. The other major format is Adobe EPUB, an open source format. Most other major e-book retail venues and platforms (i-Pad, Nook, Kobo, Sony, Android) use the  EPUB format. This means that if you are going to make your book available, you will need to go through the conversion process twice, once for each format.

Ok. Let’s go through this step-by-step.

1) Create a word file.  If  Erik already  had a .doc file of the text, I could have gotten it up in a few hours. But he didn’t. So the first thing I had to do was to send the  physical book to an optical character recognition (OCR) service that  scans the book and converts the text to a digital file.  I chose Blue Leaf Scanning , a widely used service for this job. The price  is based on the number of pages in the book. Face-Time had about 250 pages and the price was $26.95. I sent them a copy of the book. And two weeks later they emailed me back a word file and a .pdf of the text.

2)Review and Re-edit. The good news about optical character recognition scanning is that it is at least 99% accurate. The bad news is that it is  only 99% accurate.  What that means is that on any page of the scanned book, there are likely to be about 35 incorrect letters and consequently 35 misspelled words. Re-editing is essential and is the most tedious part of the process.  So I turned it over to Erik.

3)Designing a cover. This is important for marketing. You really need one of those postage stamp size covers so that the book looks professionally published. I referred Erik to my friend and fellow-agent, Natanya Wheeler. She is an agent  at the Nancy Yost Literary Agency and she’s  great.  She also manages their large list of re-published e-book titles and knows how to create a properly designed and formatted book cover. She agreed to design the cover  for us.  She  charged Erik about  $100 and produced a gorgeous cover in the form of a .jpg file.

4) Formatting for Kindle Editions.  Amazon has made it pretty easy to get your book into the Kindle Store. Their program is called Kindle Direct. Publishing through Kindle Direct is free. Amazon will take a percentage of all sales.  Go to the link  and register. Then read the simple step-by-step instructions  for formatting and publishing.   It will lead you through a few formatting requirements, all of which  can be done using Microsoft Word. These  include: paragraph formatting, line spacing, preparing a title and copyright page, table of contents,  and adding addition materials like author bios and blurbs.  Then they show you how to convert your word file to a html file using your own MS Word program.

5) Enter title and product details.  After you have formatted the book on your computer, you need to go back to the Kindle Direct Page and enter   author and title information along with some descriptive catalogue copy and some other copyright details.  You will also have to confirm that you control the rights to the book and are not infringing on anyone else’s copyright.  (If you try to publish a digital edition of Twilight to help get you through the economic downturn, you might run into trouble.)

5)  Upload and Convert. The next step is to take your html file  still on your computer and upload it using Amazon’s simple instructions.  You will also upload the jpg of your cover art.  Doing this is a lot like uploading photographs on Facebook. You can then preview your book on a viewer on the Kindle Direct page  that will make the text look identical to what you will see  on the Kindle Reader. If there are  formatting problems or other errors, you can correct them at this point.

6) Pricing.  Amazon then directs you to a pricing page where you can determine how you want the book priced. It’s your choice. You can give it away for free or price it at $1000 and see if anyone buys it. (They won’t). I priced Face-Time at $2.99. I see a lot of books on sale at that price point. It’s low enough to avoid issues of price resistance. Typically the amount that Erik will receive on each sale is going to be 70% of the price.

7) Publishing. Hit the button and you are now a published author. It will probably take 12 hours before your book will have its own page on Amazon.

9) Formatting and Publishing in the EPUB format using Smashwords.com. A lot of authors and agents are going to Smashwords.com to publish on platforms other than Kindle. The nice thing about Smashwords is that you only have to format and upload once  and they will make sure that the book is available for sale at all the other important venues (Apple, Sony, Nook, Kobo, Android).  I won’t go into all the details of publishing on Smashwords. The process is very similar to the steps used for Kindle. Like Kindle, you need to set up an account with Smashwords.  Then follow the step-by-step instructions for formatting your  .doc file.  If you have the edited word file that you used for Kindle, you will need to make a few formatting changes. But you should be able to upload it to Smashwords in about an hour.  And as with Kindle, publishing on Smashwords is free and the royalties are 70-80%

10) Wait for the big bucks to start rolling in. Both Amazon and Smashwords have very user friendly systems for sales reporting and payment of royalties. You can check these out on their websites.

The hardest part of all of this is the writing. And if you look at most of the self-published books that are available, the quality is (how shall I say this politely?) spotty.  But if you have a manuscript,  regardless of the quality, it’s easy, cheap and fast to get it published. Of course no one’s going to read it if they don’t know it exists. And you probably aren’t going to get review attention for a self-published book, and you aren’t going to get an e-book into the bookstores. Since you’re the publisher, it’s your job to do the marketing. Good luck.

Rayme Waters Talks About Promoting Her Novel, The Angels’ Share

Rayme Waters

Today we are interviewing my client, novelist Rayme Waters, whose new book, The Angels’ Share was published by Winter Goose Press this August. The novel is the story of Cinnamon Monday, a girl born into the 1970′s Northern California counterculture. Her family, originally owners of a great Nob Hill hotel, have suffered a reversal of fortune. Her parents are hippies without reliable income and have fallen into drug and alcohol dependence. After nearly dying of meth addiction, Cinnamon finds work at a small Sonoma County winery and rebuilds her life through her  own resilience and  courage.

When I decided to represent Rayme, I read her manuscript at the request of a mutual friend (not in the writing world) who asked me  to do him a favor and take a look. I could tell by the end of the first page that Rayme had talent and that I really wanted to work with her.

The publisher, Winter Goose, is small, so most of the work in promoting  The Angels’ Share is going to fall on the author. By the way, this is no less true with authors published by large houses. The single most common complaint I hear from published authors is that the publisher didn’t do anything to promote the book.

Today I want to talk to Rayme about her experience and wisdom in promoting her literary novel.

Andy: Rayme, when I first finished reading The  Angels’ Share,  I was sure that you must have been a recovering meth addict. The scenes  describing Cinnamon’s addiction were utterly convincing. When we finally met, it was clear that you just weren’t that kind of girl. How on earth were you able to describe the experience with such verisimilitude?

Rayme: Before the explosion of vineyards, the two main crops in Sonoma County were apples and marijuana. However, when I was in high school in the 1980s, meth—speed is what we called it—was suddenly everywhere. Meth was cheap and took the edge off rural boredom. Girls thought it would make them skinny. Although I was more a wallflower at the drug party, I watched childhood friends take Cinnamon’s path. In a way, The Angels’ Share honors the memories of these friendships and wishes  those friends a happy ending.

Andy: Let’s talk about how you, as a first time published novelist, have gone about promoting your book.  I know you have been pretty relentless about it. What are the first steps?

Rayme: This is my first rodeo and I am certainly learning as I go. That being said, there are some marketing strategies that I’ve employed: create marketing materials that have your basic information displayed pleasingly and professionally, have an “elevator” pitch ready and deliver it with enthusiasm, and work your network—find out who reads, or who would be willing to read your book, then ask them to buy it. Then, if they love it, ask them to recommend it to other readers they know. You have to really ride that fine line between being assertive and aggressive—it’s tough.

Andy: Ok. Stop. “Elevator Pitch”. I hear that word a lot at writer’s conferences and by people in film. What’s an elevator pitch? Why do you need it? And tell us the elevator pitch for Angel’s Share.

Rayme: Elevator pitch is slang for a two to three sentence description of a novel. Everyone  will ask you and you never know who might be able to help you find an agent, be a popular book blogger or be the decider for their next book club pick.

I describe The Angels’ Share as the story of a young woman rebuilding her life while working at a small Sonoma County winery. With elements of a mystery and a love story, the novel is a great pick for book clubs.

A reader said I should pitch The Angels’ Share as Breaking Bad meets Jane Eyre. I think that’s great, and if I’m ever in an elevator with a Hollywood producer I’d add that in.

Andy: Everybody says that an author has to have their own website. Yours is pretty stunning. Can you tell us what goes into making a good site and what features are most effective?

Rayme: I really wanted something that didn’t have a “template-y” look to it, so I went to a pro. Ilsa Brink, was willing to do the design work to make my website unique. She’s fantastic and had already done websites for many other writers. It is good to post early reviews or advance praise on your website because you can point people to it when you let them know the book is for sale.

Andy: Can you tell us what one can expect to pay for this kind of professionally produced site?

Rayme: I saw offers on Etsy.com to design a very simple website for three hundred dollars but if you go with a lot of custom design work and content creation I’d say you are looking at closer to two thousand. I provided much of the content for mine and the price fell somewhere in the middle.

Andy: What has been your experience with social media? Are you active on Facebook? Twitter? Goodreads? What else?

Rayme: This was a huge topic of conversation at AWP (Association of Writing Professionals) this year in Chicago. Social media can help expand your potential audience, but really how many more books do you sell by Tweeting three times a day? No one can say. My advice would be to do as much social media as you can stand. I have a Twitter account and a fan page on Facebook. I could do more, but just these two outlets keep me as distracted as I want to be from my writing.

Andy: What about writers conferences? Have you gone to any? Are they worth it? What should a writer expect to get out of one?

Rayme: I have been to Sewanee, Tin House and the John Milton Writers’ Conference. They were excellent networking opportunities and most of the advance praise and university speaking invites I’ve gotten so far came out of the contacts I made at these three conferences. One regret I have is that I didn’t go to more of them and make more connections before the novel came out. I highly recommend them.

Andy: Give me a few more details. What is the value of networking opportunities?  Other than networking, what kind of concrete and useful information to you walk away with?

Rayme: While you can certainly make connections online, when you meet someone in person the bond is so much stronger. At conferences, I met editors of literary journals who I could send stories to directly, agents who wanted to see my work and my workshop leader at Sewanee, Diane Johnson, gave advance praise on my novel. I could have emailed all of these people and asked for the same opportunities, but because they had met me I had a much better chance of success.

After meeting people, the next best thing to come out of writing conferences was advice on improving my craft. This came sometimes through critique I received in workshop, but more often in the lectures and panel discussions. It was also very affirming to meet other writers who were in my same situation or a little ahead of me in the process. Stories they told of their own tenacity were encouraging.

Andy: Rayme, thanks so much for sharing with us.  The Angels’ Share is available for purchase in either paperback or e-book edition. Check out Rayme’s public appearances coming up.

First Lines in Young Adult Novels

I  get about 10 queries for fiction every day. Most of the time I reject them after only reading the query letter and try to send a timely and polite reply. If my curiosity is piqued, I’ll  request the first 10 pages of the manuscript. And if I get excited by that, I’ll ask for the complete manuscript. Fiction is so hard to sell that I end up representing only a few titles a year out of the several thousand submissions received. What really surprised me when I first started evaluating fiction is that I could usually tell by the end of the first page, sometimes by the end of the first paragraph, whether the writer had talent or not. I thought perhaps there was something wrong with my own critical faculties. But when I asked experienced book editors, they acknowledged that they do the same.

Last year at the Book Passage Children’s Writers Conference, I sat in on a wonderful workshop conducted by author Kristin Tracy about young adult fiction. We spent a lot of time looking at some examples of first paragraphs. And we talked about why they worked and how they were able to express so much in so few words.

So today I’m going to use 3 examples of beginnings of some young adult titles and try to understand what makes them work. Let’s start with Kristin Tracy’s first novel and see how she does it.

 Lost It, Kristin Tracy

“I didn’t start out my junior year of high school planning to lose my virginity to Benjamin Easter – a senior – at his parent’s cabin in Island Park underneath a sloppily patched, unseaworthy, upside down canoe. Up to that point I’d been somewhat of a prude who’d avoided the outdoors, especially the wilderness, for the sole purpose that I didn’t want to be eaten alive.”

Kristin  likes to write stories that start right out of the gate. No prologues, no weather reports. And I think that is generally  a good idea.  She gets  a lot of information out in the first 2 sentences without sacrificing the very engaging and natural voice of the narrator. We learn in the first 15 words that this is going to be a story about losing your virginity. We know that the narrator is 16 and her “seducer is probably 17. Important information for a teen reader.  We learn that the critical incident occurs under  an old canoe somewhere in the wilderness.   And we also know from the writing a lot about the tone of the book. The book will probably be funny, given the lighthearted voice of the narrator and even more the comical description of the place where she lost it. It wasn’t in a grave yard or a haunted house (for a paranormal novel). It didn’t take place on the field of Gettysburg (historical). Or in Middle Earth (fantasy). It’s just a cabin by the lake  (or something). A realistic genre with a realistic story.  The style is fun and you gotta love the character after just these 2 lines.

 The Fault in Our Stars, John Green

“Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time thinking about death.

“Whenever you read a cancer booklet or website or whatever, they always list depression among the side effects of cancer. But in fact, depression is not a side effect of cancer. Depression is a side effect of dying.”

Sometimes it’s hard to define great writing. But I usually know it when I see it. John Green tells us in the first sentence that this is not going to be a whimsical book. And he tells us in the second sentence that it is about disease. And in the 4^th sentence, about dying. But what makes this short passage amazing is the way the words get put together and the way the sentences sound when you are reading them. Try reading it out loud. It seems effortless, but it isn’t.  Look at his careful selection of words. “Winter”, for instance. I think that word really sets the stage for a book with a lot of elegiac qualities in style and content. This  wouldn’t work at all if it began in the spring with blossoms bursting forth.   Check out the cadence in these first few sentences. The first sentence is long, lots of subordinate clauses.  The second sentence is of a normal length.  The third, shorter still and with a kind of staccato feel to it. All a build up to the last sentence, made all the more dramatic by the brilliant use of the rhetorical repetitions of “depression” and “side effect”. A powerful release that hits the reader with a wallop.

A less experienced writer might have started this story: “I woke up feeling depressed…again. It was, after all, my seventeenth birthday.  I pulled myself out of bed and looked out the window. More snow. The third time this week.”

The Hunger Games,  Suzanne Collins.

“When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold. My fingers stretch out, seeking Prim’s warmth but finding only the rough canvas cover of the mattress. She must have had bad dreams and climbed in with our mother. Of course, she did. This is the day of the reaping.

“I prop myself up on one elbow. There’s enough light in the bedroom to see them. My little sister, Prim, curled up on her side, cocooned in my mother’s body, their cheeks pressed together.  In sleep, my mother looks younger, still worn but not so broken down. Prim’s face is as fresh as a rain drop, as lovely as the primrose for which she was named. My mother was very beautiful once, too. Or so they tell me.”

We all know that this book is based upon Katniss’s decision to risk her own life to save her sister’s. And most of the book is about the violence and the horrors of The Hunger Games.  To me it seems perfect that Collins begins the book by painting this incredibly intimate scene at home as a contrast to what will befall Katniss in the coming story. Think about the evocative atmosphere of  intimacy and love Collins creates in this scene.  Katniss’s fingers stretching out, Prim’s warmth. Climbing in bed with the mother where she is curled up.  A lot of manuscripts I see from inexperienced writers have similes and figures of speech that seem overwritten and  usually miss the mark. But here Prim has a face “as fresh as a rain drop”. It’s simple and short and profoundly expressive. Even the choice of the words adds to the feeling of warmth of the scene (curled, cocooned, cheeks, rain drop, primrose).  The few words Collins uses to describe her mother tell us about the harsh conditions of the post-apocalyptic world they live in and prefigure the story to come.

Self Publishing at Book Santa Cruz Using the Espresso Book Machine

Casey Protti and the new Espresso Book Machine at Bookshop Santa Cruz

Today we are going to speak with Casey Protti, owner of Bookshop Santa Cruz, one of the truly iconic independent bookstores in America. The bookshop just acquired an Espresso Book Machine, a new technology which is able to create a perfect bound paperback book in minutes. The quality of the books produced are indistinguishable from paperbacks published by major publishers.  It’s a new technology that has the potential of redefining the role of local bookstores.

Andy: Casey, Can you tell us a little bit about the Espresso Book Machine.

Casey:  I’m really excited about our new machine. It is a remarkable technology that allows Bookshop Santa Cruz to print books on site, and on demand.  We can just hit a button and it prints, binds, and trims a paperback book in just a few minutes. What I love about this technology is not only the convenience factor of being able to give a customer a book when they want it, but more importantly, our ability to become a community publishing center- a place to have human to human interactions to create and distribute books.

Andy: The machine allows the local bookstore to become a self-publishing venue? Really.  Tell us about that.

books printed and bound in 5 minutes on the Espresso Book Machine

Casey: For those authors who have a novel or memoir or book of poetry that they want to make into book form, we can help them to bring their work to life through every step of the publishing process.  And not just people who think of themselves as authors. This could mean people who want to create family histories, compilations of family recipes, businesses who want to customize journals, student groups who want to make zines or graphic novels, or teachers who want to put together an anthology of their students’ work.

Andy: Other than self-publishing, what else can you do?

Casey: There are 8 million titles available including works in the public domain and hard to find and self-published titles.  Just the other day we had a man who had been searching for a hard to find book for over 20 years in used bookstores.  We had it on the EBM and printed it for him in 5 minutes.  Although other stores with Espresso Book Machines have seen self-publishing account for 80-90% of all the activity on the machine, more and more publishers understand the EBM as a good way of keeping their backlists available.

Andy:  That’s a good point. It seems to me that as publishers get more commercial and media –obsessed, they are putting their slower moving back list titles out of print faster. Will Espresso change that?

Casey: I think publishers see the EBM as good way of keeping their backlists available even if demand for a given title has waned. It’s economical for them, because they don’t have to warehouse titles or incur shipping and handling costs.  With EBM  we only produce as many copies as are sold.   We want to be able to sell a book that a customer asks for right away. It is of huge benefit to us, to publishers, and to the customer. And he gets the book a lot faster than he would if he purchased it online. And   we’d love to bring books back in print that have local significance and could sell well to the community but that may not  warrant a traditional print run.

Andy: What’s the quality of the books produced by the Espresso?

Casey: Books produced on the EBM are virtually indistinguishable from traditionally produced paperbacks.

Andy: Some people have said that this is a real transformative technology. Can you tell us what this means.

Casey: Six years ago, when I took over Bookshop from my father, I could never have imagined a technology like this.   In the age of the Internet,  our customers are looking for instant gratification, but also personalized services that you can’t get online. The EBM plays to the typical strengths of indie bookstores in terms of community connections and relationships with local authors but then brings it further with new products and services that meet new customer needs.  Our hope is that as more publishers add content to the EBM, we will one day be able to say that we can print any book ever published on demand.  That’s transformative!

Andy: What about ebooks? Aren’t they going to make print on paper books obsolete? That would make the Espresso machine a kind of dead end technology.

Casey: It has been  fun to see people  so excited at watching a physical book being made. Seeing this excitement puts to rest the idea that the book is dead.  Although people rightly want to publish their books electronically, they’d be shooting themselves in the foot if they didn’t also want people to see their books in physical form in bookstores.   Publishers will tell you that local bookstores are the showrooms for books. Online  stores can’t duplicate that experience.

Andy: Let’s say that you want to use the machine to publish your own book. What do you need to bring to the bookstore?

Casey: The EBM machine prints from PDF files that authors can either choose to format themselves (following the EBM submission guidelines) or by getting help from their local EBM operator.

Andy: And how about distribution of the book after it has been printed? Is the store involved in this?

Casey: Authors using the EBM can upload their titles to the main EspressNet catalog making their work available at other EBM locations worldwide and  authors printing their books  at Bookshop Santa Cruz can also enroll in the consignment program to have their books added to the shelves of our store.

Andy: How will Espresso allow Bookshop Santa Cruz to compete with companies like Lightening Source and Create Space?

Casey: The self-publishing services we offer are much more one-on-one and personalized then most of the online self-publishing companies. We can walk through a project with an author insuring that we are able to assess and meet all his needs from cover design to purchasing an ISBN number. The authors never need to go it alone. They can easily reach their local EBM operator for trouble-shooting help and project support in person, over the phone or via email.  This part of the EBM service package is completely in line with what indie bookstores do best – building relationships, customizing services, and providing that human connection that you can’t get online.

Andy: How much does a book cost per copy?

Casey: The base printing price for the EBM is $5.00 + 4.5 cents a page, although we do offer some bulk discounts and price breaks depending on the nature of the project.  We also have publishing packages which include various levels of service including graphic design, proof copies, obtaining an ISBN, etc.

Andy: How long have you been operating the machine in the story? How much business has it been generating.

Casey: The Bookshop Santa Cruz EBM has been operational for about a month, and on a typical day we print anywhere from 20-50 books.

Andy: I hear that these machines are incredibly expensive. How much do they cost? Will they really support a viable business model?

Casey: Typically the machine, software and installation runs $100,00-$125,000. American Booksellers Association members receive a discount on the software.  With just over a month under our belt, it is too soon to determine profitability.  However, since the opportunities to connect with the community to publish works are endless, we think there is a good chance that the machine will be a profit center for the store.  In addition, the feeling amongst your customers that the store is trying to remain relevant and innovate is priceless. Since the margin is so small on books, bookstores of the future need to move further into a service-based model in order to survive.  This is a step in the right direction.

Andy: If you want to find out more about the Espresso machine or if you have a self-publishing project and want to work with the Bookshop, call Sylvie Drescher at the Bookshop at 831-460-3258  or email her at ebm@bookshopsantacruz.com.

Thanks, Casey. We’ll check back in a few months to see how this new technology is unfolding.

Learning from Lee Child

A few weeks ago I was asked to do manuscript evaluations at the Book Passage Mystery Writers Conference. After reading the first 20 pages of a few of these, I started noticing that the writers were having a difficult time getting the story going. Sometimes the author  started out with a long description of the weather. Sometimes he began with  a prologue that delayed the beginning of the real story in order to  frontload some backstory information into the text.  Sometimes he just seemed to be in love with his own vocabulary.  I realized that by the time I was 20 pages into these submissions, I  didn’t know much about what these stories were really about.

I decided that it might be useful to analyze the start of a crime novel by a really good writer. Here is the first 200 words of  The Killing Floor by Lee Child. Let’s read the complete text below and then go over it line by line and see exactly how much story Lee Child packs into these very few words.

I was arrested in Eno’s diner. At twelve o’clock. I was eating eggs and drinking coffee. A late breakfast, not lunch. I was wet and tired after a long walk in heavy rain. All the way from the highway to the edge of town.

The diner was small, but bright and clean. Brand-new, built to resemble a converted railroad car. Narrow, with a long lunch counter on one side and a kitchen bumped out back. Booths lining the opposite wall. A doorway where the center booth would be.

I was in a booth, at a window, reading somebody’s abandoned newspaper about the campaign for a President I didn’t vote for last time and wasn’t going to vote for this time. Outside, the rain had stopped but the glass was still pebbled with bright drops. I saw the police cruisers pull into the gravel lot. They were moving fast and crunched to a stop. Light bars flashing and popping. Red and blue light in the raindrops on my window. Doors burst open, policemen jumped out. Two from each car, weapons ready. Two revolvers, two shotguns. This was heavy stuff. One revolver and one shotgun ran to the back. One of each rushed the door.

Now let’s take it one line at a time.

I was arrested in Eno’s diner. At twelve o’clock. I was eating eggs and drinking coffee.

By the third word we know a very important piece of information,  that this is going to be a crime story.  The narrator and main character, Jack Reacher, is in a diner, not at his supper club.  This tells us that he is a guy who lacks pretension. He’s having eggs and coffee, not brioche and cappuccinos.

A late breakfast, not lunch. I was wet and tired after a long walk in heavy rain. All the way from the highway to the edge of town.

He sets the scene. It’s  daytime. It’s raining. Lee Child isn’t spending much time giving the weather report. Just what you need to know. And he gets a lot of other information in as well. The fact that he is walking in the rain instead of driving tells you more about Reacher, that he is modest, that his tastes are simple. He didn’t drive up in a Ferrari or a Buick. He walked.  And he’s walking from the highway to the edge of town. He’s coming into the town, not going to the diner from his home. He’s an outsider.

The diner was small, but bright and clean. Brand-new, built to resemble a converted railroad car. Narrow, with a long lunch counter on one side and a kitchen bumped out back. Booths lining the opposite wall. A doorway where the center booth would be.

Nice short description of the scene. Most people already know what a diner looks like. So he doesn’t need to embellish much.  He focuses on the big design. Bright and clean, resembles a railroad car, etc. Doesn’t bother to go into the details, what’s on the wall, color of the table tops.  The reader doesn’t need to know all these details, and Reacher, the narrator, wouldn’t be noticing them either. That isn’t what Reacher is all about.  The fact that it is a diner also  sends a kind of ineffable message. There’s a noir quality to the scene.

I was in a booth, at a window, reading somebody’s abandoned newspaper about the campaign for a President I didn’t vote for last time and wasn’t going to vote for this time

Tells us more about the kind of guy Reacher is. He’s  cynical and worldly wise. Not sentimental and not  an idealist, not an intellectual. Doesn’t suffer fools.  (He’s reading a discarded newspaper, not a copy of Hegel’s philosophy.) And notice how he uses short choppy sentences, sometimes just phrases. The words are simple.  You wouldn’t find Reacher in a Henry James novel.

Outside, the rain had stopped but the glass was still pebbled with bright drops. I saw the police cruisers pull into the gravel lot. They were moving fast and crunched to a stop. Light bars flashing and popping. Red and blue light in the raindrops on my window. Doors burst open, policemen jumped out. Two from each car, weapons ready. Two revolvers, two shotguns. This was heavy stuff. One revolver and one shotgun ran to the back. One of each rushed the door.

Now the action begins.  It starts right out of the gate. Lee Child’s delivers. We are about 150 words into the book. And the police cars pull up with lights flashing and popping. The cops burst in armed to the teeth. Covering all the doors.  We already know they want Reacher.

Hey –  let’s turn the page!

Interview With Kristen Iversen: Author of Full Body Burden

Today we are going to interview Kristen Iversen and talk about her new book, Full Body Burden (Crown Books, 2012)  and the challenges of writing memoir. Kristen is the director of the MFA program at the University of Memphis. She is also the author of : Molly Brown: Unraveling the Myth .

We last heard about Kristen in this blog where we meet Kristen,  myself,  and several other writers and agents going from bar to sleazy bar in San Miguel de Allende. There was lots of writerly talk about how much money Kristen actually got in her nail biting auction for Full Body Burden. She won’t say. And we won’t ask her here.

Full Body Burden is an amazing book. It tells the story of  Kristen growing up in Arvada, Colorado just down-wind from Rocky Flats nuclear weapons facility. She interweaves her  memoir  with the astonishing work she did as an investigative journalist uncovering the 50 year (and ongoing cover-up) of the horrific contamination caused by the negligence of the plant as well as  the accidents that almost resulted in nuclear catastrophe.

The book has  received effusive reviews.

Andy: Kristen, tell us a little more about  Full Body Burden  and  how you came to write it.

 Kristen: I’ve carried this book in my head and my heart for a very long time.  Ten years of research and writing went into Full Body Burden, but it really began all the way back when I was around eleven, looking out from our back porch at the Rocky Flats water tower. Rocky Flats was a great mystery to me; no one in our neighborhood talked about it.  It was operated by Dow Chemical, and like many families, we thought they made household cleaning supplies. My siblings and I spent our childhood riding our horses in the fields around Rocky Flats, swimming in the lake, and floating on inner-tubes down the canals that carried water off the plant site.  We had no idea that Rocky Flats—which secretly produced more than 70,000 plutonium pits for nuclear bombs—was contaminating the environment with plutonium, carbon tetrachloride, and a host of other contaminants.

Later, like many of the kids in my neighborhood, I worked at the plant myself.  Even then I was unaware of how dangerous the plant really was  I eventually learned that there was nearly 14 tons of plutonium  onvsite, much of it unsafely stored.  The day I quit was the day I knew it was time to write the book.

The book isn’t just about Rocky Flats.  It’s also about my family and the secrets that nearly destroyed us.  Two things frightened me as a child: Rocky Flats, and my father’s alcoholism.  Both were forbidden topics.  Full Body Burden turned out to be a book about the destructive power of secrecy at the level of family and government, and the high cost we pay for those secrets as individuals, as families, and as a culture.

 Andy: Can you bring us up to date on the on-going saga of Rocky Flats, things that you didn’t cover in the book?

 Kristen: I mention in the book that production at Rocky Flats halted in 1992, following the FBI raid and grand jury investigation and discontinuation of the W-88 missile program.  A “cleanup” was declared complete in 2005.  But the site has not been cleaned up so much as covered up.  In 1995, when I worked at Rocky Flats, the Department of Energy estimated it would take 70 years and $36 billion to clean up the site—and they weren’t sure they had the technology to do it.  A modified cleanup agreement allowed the company Kaiser-Hill to do the cleanup in less than ten years for roughly one-fifth of the cost.   But after this cleanup,  they left a very high level of plutonium in the top soil levels and removed very little contamination below 6 feet. 1,300 acres of the site are so profoundly contaminated that they can never be open for human use.  The rest of the site—roughly 4,000 acres—is now the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge, slated to open for public hiking and biking.

Andy: Your book was the object of a very intense auction with multiple New York and UK publishers involved. Did you have any idea that the book would attract such a feeding frenzy? How did it feel?

 Kristen: I had no idea what would happen with the manuscript.  I’d lived with this book for more than ten years. I wasn’t sure anyone would be interested in it.  It’s deeply personal, and very controversial. I wasn’t sure a publisher would take a chance on it.

My agent sent the book out to publishers and I expected to wait several weeks at least.  Only a few days had passed when she called.  Stay by the phone, she said.  Several publishers are interested. Things are heating up. “Some of the editors will want to talk to you,” she added.  She decided to auction the book, and set a bidding deadline of 5 p.m. New York time.

What happened that afternoon felt like a little piece of heaven suddenly opened up. I talked to editors in New York who not only had read the book but had read it closely and deeply. And they liked what they read. (“We were just blown away by the book.” “It’s a work of art, and a work of public service.” “I loved the way you deftly wove your own personal story into the Rocky Flats story.” “It’s effortlessly written.” “It opened my eyes to powerful subject matter.” “Beautifully rendered.” “The reader is right there with you, all the way through.”)

Between editor calls, my agent called to discuss each offer with me. We closed the deal at 4:59, New York time, with Crown.  And then she called with congratulations from her cab as she was on her way to the airport, heading off to the London Book Fair to negotiate potential deals with publishers from the UK.

How did it feel?  It was one of the best days of my life.  It still feels like a dream.

 Andy: Let’s talk about writing memoir.  What is remarkable to me is that you have managed to combine 3 different genres  that normally don’t work well together into a totally unified and compelling narrative. The book is family memoir, a work of tough minded investigative journalism and an absolutely gripping narrative work that brings to life the horrors that went on at the plant. Was that your intention? It’s sort of like The Glass Castle meets The Silent Spring meets The Hot Zone.

 Kristen: The story itself is what created the form.  I wanted to put a human face on an inhumane story.  Who wants to read a book about plutonium?  Numbing facts and statistics are part of what’s helped to obscure the Rocky Flats story.  My intention was to tell the story from the perspective of the people whose lives had been impacted by Rocky Flats in one way or another.  I wanted the reader to share my experience of lying across my horse,  Tonka’s back on a hot summer day, listening to the meadowlarks.  I wanted the reader to understand, as fully as any of us can understand, what was going through the minds of Bill Dennison and Stan Skinger when they went into that burning building on the Mother’s Day fire of May 11, 1969, and knew it was likely they weren’t going to get out.

I’m not an activist; I didn’t write the book to be polemical in any way.  I tried to tell a good story, and it’s a true story.  I wanted to stretch the narrative form as much as possible and keep the reader glued to the story.  That’s what I love about creative nonfiction.  The structural possibilities are incredibly exciting, and yet you’re always working within the invisible web of staying true to the facts and the investigation of the facts.

 Andy: I think writing memoir is tough. Everybody thinks their life is a hero’s journey. (And it is), but it’s devilishly hard to have  any perspective about themselves. How can they shape their story into a compelling one that readers will want to read without throwing in all the crap that is only important to the writer?

 Kristen: It’s so hard to leave things out!  Many, many pages ended up on the cutting room floor—entire scenes that may eventually turn into essays or stories or maybe another book or two. Or not.

I had to write my way through all of it—every thought, every scene, every wrong turn–to find the real story thread.  Then I lopped and cropped and snipped until each scene, each paragraph, each sentence moved the story forward or illuminated a character in some way.

Andy: I also think that it is really easy to fall into narcissism. I tell memoirists that they have to look outside themselves. The story can’t just be about dysfunctional families.  Comments?

 Kristen:  Andy, I don’t entirely agree with you there. All our great stories are about dysfunction.  Every family has its secrets.   Each person has his or her secrets.  I think good storytelling, in fiction or creative nonfiction, is about drama and conflict, repression and desire, things hoped for and things lost.  Memoir is at the core of good storytelling.  Writing from an authentic first-person point of view is emotionally powerful and yet incredibly challenging.

I think the memoirist has to ask some hard questions each step of the way.  What is it about my story that makes it relevant to others?  What hard truths have I learned about myself, and why should anyone care?  You can’t worry about making yourself look good on the page or slip into any kind of bravado or self-pity.  You can’t fall into stereotypes or clichés.

 

Mary Mackey Talks About E-book Publishing

Mary Mackey is the author of six collections of poetry and thirteen novels, including New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle bestsellers. Her books have been translated into twelve foreign languages and over a million and a half have been sold in hard copy. This spring, nine of her novels and her latest collection of poetry Sugar Zone were simultaneously re-released as Kindle e-books.  By the end of the summer they will be available on Nook, Kobo, iPad, and Android. We are going to talk to Mary today about how she got these books back into print and what her experience has been.

Andy: Nine of your novels and Sugar Zone, your most recent collection of poetry, were recently published as e-books.  How did this happen?

Mary: The short version is that my agent Barbara Lowenstein first negotiated two deals: one with Amazon.com, which publishes Kindle books, and another with Vook, which publishes e-books in the Epub format on all other platforms. She could only do this because she had retained my electronic rights when the books were originally sold to traditional publishing houses. The moral of this story is that every writer needs a great agent to draw up contracts and make deals with publishers.

Andy: How did you get your books into Kindle and other e-book formats? Did you do it yourself?

Mary: No, thank heavens, I didn’t have to. Barbara’s assistants worked with me for several months to get the files ready, and then Amazon did the actual conversion. I had to proofread everything to catch errors and make sure nothing was left out.

Andy: Were most of these books out of print before they were published as e-books?

Mary: Yes, it was a kind of resurrection. Even A Grand Passion, my novel about ballet which made The New York Times bestseller list had been hard to get. But the strangest experience was having my first novel Immersion available again after being out of print for 38 years. Shameless Hussy Press had published about 1000 copies, but very few were still available and those were so expensive I could rarely afford to buy one for myself. Then, bang. Immersion came out as an e-book, and suddenly people who would never have stumbled on it in a bookstore were buying it.

Andy: How are the books selling?

Mary: Very well. They’ve only been available for a short time, but every month at least a third more units have been sold than in the previous month. The first month Amazon sold over 700 copies. This approaches bestseller status for newly released e-books if you don’t count blockbusters like Fifty Shades of Grey.

Andy: I understand that when most authors publish e-books, they only sell a few copies. To what do you attribute your success?  How are people finding your books among the more than a million books available on Kindle and the ten million in other e-book formats?

Mary: We think there are several factors. First, I’m a writer with a well-established readership. I already have a reputation—fans, readers who have enjoyed my work in the past and are interested in anything new I might write. Some of my novels, like A Grand Passion or The Year The Horses Came have a cult following Second, I’m a current writer. I’ve had two novels and a collection of poetry published in the last five years. If people have read The Widow’s War (Berkley Books, 2009), they might search for me by name and find my other books all priced at $2.99, and think: “Why not take a chance? I liked her other books, and if for some reason I don’t like this one, it costs me less than a small Frappuccino at Starbucks.” I mention the price because it’s the third factor and vitally important. To sell a lot of e-books you need to set a price low enough that everyone can afford them.

Andy: How can authors who don’t already have an established literary reputation help readers find their e-books?

Mary: The algorithm that Amazon uses to decide which books to recommend to readers is a secret, but certain things seem to help. For example, my books are highly rated. They’ve been given a lot of stars by people who liked them and been reviewed numerous times, mostly quite favorably. In addition, readers have tagged each novel with words they associate with it. For example, A Grand Passion is tagged with the words “ballet,” “bestseller,” “dance,” “historical fiction,” “Russia,” “romance,” “passion,” etc. Getting good reader tags is important because they guide other readers to your books. Anyone publishing on Kindle should also establish and maintain an Amazon Central Author Page. I say this with guilt because I need to find time to update mine. Other things that help are getting both your name and information about your work out there on the web, getting reviewed, establishing an author presence on Facebook, using Twitter, blogging, and so forth.

Andy: Is there anything else an emerging author can do?

Mary: Yes, be patient. Don’t publish your work as an e-book until it’s polished. Readers enjoy good writing. They like to read books by authors who care about craft and structure and who can create crisp, fast-moving plots and interesting characters.  If you’re self-publishing and can afford it, hire an editor. Great editors are like great agents. They’re invaluable. If your book is really good, sooner or later the word will get out.

Mary Bisbee-Beek, Freelance Book Publicist

Today we are speaking with independent book publicist Mary Bisbee-Beek. Mary has worked in publishing as a staff person with various literary presses as well as the University of Michigan Press, and Literary Ventures Fund. As an independent publicist, she works with publishers of all sizes and with individual authors.     I know a few of Mary’s clients and they rave about her. If you need an independent publicist (and we all know how  publishers never do enough for us!), contact Mary at:  mbisbee.beek@gmail.com

Andy: Mary, every author I speak with complains about how little their publisher did to promote their book. This is true of authors whose books were positioned deep in the midlist as well as those with lead titles and high six figure advances.  This makes no sense. After a publisher has gone to all the trouble and expense of publishing a book, why are they just letting them hang?

Mary: This is a perplexing question, Andy. …. Some larger publishers really do seem to take a back seat approach to marketing and publicity or they spend their marketing budget on advance reading copies and a few well placed advertisements. But by and large I believe that most publishers do feel that they are doing the best that they can. One of the conundrums of publicity is that one can always do more.  It takes a lot of work before a book is actually published — but it can’t stop on the pub date nor even six weeks after the pub date. It is a rare book that will carry on it’s own momentum. It requires diligence, nudging, and the perfect storm of activity both from the author and the publicist. And, of course, a little bit of luck.

Andy: You are an independent book publicist. Could you tell us a little bit about what you do and the types of books you work with?

Mary: I prefer working on literary fiction, creative non-fiction, and cerebral yet readable non-fiction books.  I like coming into a book in the planning stage, so if there is a staff publicist working on the book, it’s a good idea to enter the conversation at the same time as this person so that we can figure out who is doing what.  Once the book is published and the author is actively doing readings and events I become more active and more hands on. This is generally the time that the staff publicist needs to move on to other books in the list or to a new list, but I can help to keep the conversation alive on the book beyond the six or eight week mark.

Andy: How does an author know whether she needs her own book publicist or whether she should just rely on the publisher? When should she start thinking about hiring one?

Mary: Once the book is in the design phase or out of copy editing an author should have a frank discussion with their publisher to determine what the publisher is asking of the author. Perhaps this has already occurred and the publisher has been clear on what they can and cannot do – if a publisher says we can publish your book but we can’t market it or we only do limited marketing,  then the author should start shopping for a publicist right away.

Andy: And what do you do that a publishers publicity department won’t do?

Mary: I am able to start with sending out advance reading copies to the industry media, the selected trade media, bloggers, helping the author to set up a Facebook page, to get started on Twitter and to consult on the layout and content of a webpage.  I will set up events. I do all of the media follow-up and I will shout out the book to booksellers when I can.

Andy: Describe a typical marketing plan that you would devise for a client.

Mary: Oddly, this is a tough question, Andy. There is hardly ever a typical scenario and it would depend on whether it is the first book by the author and whether it is  fiction or non-fiction.  I would encourage anyone who is shopping for a  a publicist to talk to me about what might be  appropriate for their book; their timeline; their budget; and whether or not they have the time to travel to spread the word on their book.

Let’s consider the following thumbnail sketch of a  marketing plan.  After reading the book, I would devise a list of most appropriate reviewers; if there were an advertising budget, I would  suggest  the best potential venues…. I am mostly not in favor of paid ads but sometimes they  make good sense. I would add special market possibilities (sales outside the book business), depending on what hooks the book’s story line presents; and then I would come up with a geographically savvy and budget conscious approach for the author. After mailing the advance readers copies,  I would do timely follow-up and start to work on a one-to-one basis with media and bloggers for author interviews. As we got closer to pub date I would start outreach to radio producers and television. I would be reaching out to libraries around the country for ALL COMMUNITY READING programs and I also work closely with reading groups for readings and potential author participation. Depending on the time of year, there are Book Festivals  that can be approached for reading and panel inclusion participation, so this can also be added to the list of possibilities.

Andy: How hard is it getting media attention these days?

Mary: It depends.  If we adhere to the schedules that reviewers and feature writers need , then we have a fair chance of receiving attention.  These days, there are more books for a reviewer to consider, for fewer pages of review space – so a publicist has to be savvy about the rules and deadlines.

Andy: What is the most effective media for book promotion?

Mary: I think  radio.  There is magic in the words, “I heard about it on NPR.”  Certain blogs carry enormous weight but I am also smitten with book review pages in major metropolitan newspapers; and glossy magazines, of course. And I’m very partial to PENNIE’S PICKS.  Pennie  Clark  Ianniciello is the book buyer for Costco and she shouts out an interesting title every month or so. That sticker on a book carries a lot of weight, as does Oprah’s Book Club…. I think everyone is happy that’s back.

Andy: What about Internet marketing? Do you do that as well? Describe it for us.

Mary: I work with a number of bloggers who have solid sites that are exclusively shouting out books and they are powerful.. But this is not an either –  or situation, you need the full power of traditional and newer media in all forms to create a strong platform for your book.

Andy: And here is the $64,000 question. How much can an author expect to pay for your services? Can you give us a ballpark estimate and tell us what it buys?

Mary: I try to work with an author’s  budget and I believe I charge fairly for my services. Generally I ask for a six-month minimum agreement and my fees range from $1,000 to $1500 per month depending on how full-scale a program is needed or wanted. This is a personal discussion with each client, of course. This buys an active place on the desk, in all or as many pertinent media conversations as I have in a day, week, month and as many of situations as described above, from making lists, sending books, follow-up, to setting up events, conferencing on websites, etc.

Andy: Mary, thank you so much. Almost every author I have worked with complains that his publisher didn’t do enough for him. Sounds like authors have some options out there.

Mary:  Yes. Absolutely. Thanks for talking with me, Andy!

Eunuchs at an Orgy: Authors’ on Literary Critics

“Critics are like Eunuchs at an Orgy.” – origins unknown

 Writers don’t take kindly to criticism.  After all why should they be different from any of us?  For me there is something exquisite about reading author responses to reviews. The anger and the pettiness seem to inspire  masterful wit and style (at best) or  (even better) clownish buffoonery unworthy of  figures of  great cultural gravitas.

 For those who are connoisseurs of the literary contretemps, I recommend reading the letters in The New York Review of Books. You will uncover a universe of expressions that will serve you well in your own modest efforts at literary feuding.  Here are just a few treasures [along with my own deconstructions of their meaning]:

 

•          “outrageously inaccurate”  [a hair splitting difference of opinion on a subject that no one else understands  or cares about]
•           “rhetoric” [the writing style of the reviewer in question, usually as opposed to the reasoned arguments of the writer]
•          “petrified academicism” [a favorite of mine, a characterization usually made by a petrified academic writer  about   a petrified academic reviewer]
•          “crude” [the reviewer's method of analysis, as opposed to the "subtle dialectics" of the writer]
•          “mendacity” [a pompous way of saying that the reviewer is a liar, but with the implication that the flaw is deeply imbedded in his character.]
•         “clique” [friends of the reviewer who have publicly defended the review]
•        “heartwarming to hear” [Sarcasm. Usually said when the writer takes out of context a short phrase by the reviewer to make the reviewer seem foolish]
•          “the reviewer surely knows…” [said when the writer patronizingly points out a particularly egregious mistake of the reviewer indicating that the reviewer knows very little about what he is reviewing]
•          “shocking” [a very common and overused  characterization about things rarely shocking,  that always calls to mind the Claude Raines character in Casablanca]
•          “unholy alliance” [people who usually disagree about most things but are united in their revulsion of the author's writing]

 

I love this stuff!  Here are a few more of my favorites:

“I have your review in front of me and soon it will be behind me” – George Bernard Shaw

 Possibly the greatest put down ever of a reviewer (critical of Shaw’s play, no doubt). Magnificent double entendre. Unforgettable understatement.

 “What you said hurt me very much. I cried all the way to the bank.” – Liberace

 Another classic that has become a cliché. Probably more honest than Shaw about the mental state of  the aggrieved artist.

Liberace was pretty blunt. But leave it to the inimitable Ayelet Waldman to bring out the universal humanity in a writer’s outrage at an unfair review of Michael Chabon’s [Ayelet's husband] book:

 “To the fucking MORON Amazon reviewers giving Awesome Man 1 star [because] ‘It would be good for, like, a 2 year old’  – IT WAS WRITTEN FOR LITTLE KIDS”

 Getting back to The New York Review of Books, I find it puzzling why writers would ever respond to these reviews, given the fact that the NYR always gives the reviewer the final word. And the reviewer  almost always answers  with a tone of bored world-weary superiority at the overwrought, and implied, unbecoming comments of the writer.

 So I too  will give the reviewer the final word:

 ”Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good. ” – Samuel Johnson