Thursday, February 07, 2008
Monday, February 04, 2008
Jonathan Karp wants to have 12 bestsellers a year
Lynn Neary’s story on NPR profiles Twelve, a Hachette imprint headed by the former editor-in-chief of Random House, Jonathan Karp, who publishes one book a month and devotes serious resources to promoting that one book. It’s an interesting gamble and an interesting interview. Check it out.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Nail this to your monitor
Update: article link added
Rachel Donadio’s essay in next Sunday’s New York Times Book Review, “Waiting for It,” is something every expectant author should read. It lays out the timeline from when your agent calls you with the good news to when you can finally crack open the champagne. Self-publishing authors should read it, too. Because if Simon & Schuster can’t figure out how to publish a book successfully in less than a year and a half, the odds are you can’t either.
Sure, I can produce a book for you in six months or less—starting with your unedited manuscript and ending with printed books. But producing a book is only the tail of the publishing bulldog. If you want to see your book in bookstores, you need to plan for a much longer process.
This timeline doesn’t apply to all books, of course. If you are a speaker with a back-of-the-room book or if you are marketing the book some other way that doesn’t involve bookstores, you can compress the schedule quite a bit. Nonetheless, Donadio’s essay will give you perspective on your odds of success.
Timing isn’t everything, but it’s a major factor in whether your book ever makes you a dime.
Pick up a copy of Sunday’s Times and read the essay. Or click the link above (requires site registration before the cover date; should work without registration afterwards).
Rachel Donadio’s essay in next Sunday’s New York Times Book Review, “Waiting for It,” is something every expectant author should read. It lays out the timeline from when your agent calls you with the good news to when you can finally crack open the champagne. Self-publishing authors should read it, too. Because if Simon & Schuster can’t figure out how to publish a book successfully in less than a year and a half, the odds are you can’t either.
Sure, I can produce a book for you in six months or less—starting with your unedited manuscript and ending with printed books. But producing a book is only the tail of the publishing bulldog. If you want to see your book in bookstores, you need to plan for a much longer process.
This timeline doesn’t apply to all books, of course. If you are a speaker with a back-of-the-room book or if you are marketing the book some other way that doesn’t involve bookstores, you can compress the schedule quite a bit. Nonetheless, Donadio’s essay will give you perspective on your odds of success.
Timing isn’t everything, but it’s a major factor in whether your book ever makes you a dime.
Pick up a copy of Sunday’s Times and read the essay. Or click the link above (requires site registration before the cover date; should work without registration afterwards).
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Full circle
Performance art often expresses a sort of self-detached, ironic, meta-narcissism. What’s new here is that the performance artist is a robot. I’m both fascinated and repulsed, but mostly I wonder that anyone thought this a worthwhile thing to do.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
The Evildoers at Yale Rep
The Evildoers, by David Adjmi, directed by Rebecca Bayla Taichman, is in its world premiere run at Yale Rep. With any luck, this will also mark its world finale run. The principal evil is inflicted on the audience.
As always at Yale Rep, the set is spectacular. And the acting is superb, with a seasoned, top-notch cast. It’s the play itself that sucks—surprisingly, given Adjmi’s credits.
The cast comprises two couples. The husbands were schoolmates, and yet one couple comes across as nearly a generation older than the other, setting up an inescapable sense that the first act is channeling the ghost of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in tone and subtext.
If that description intrigues you, rent the movie (Who’s Afraid…) rather than attend The Evildoers. But if you feel a perverse compulsion to attend, at least have the good sense to leave at the intermission. You do not want to be around for the figurative and literal bloodbath that is the second act. Suffice it to say, I may never order tongue in a deli again.
The program notes provide a clue to where this train ran off the rails. If you read interviews with playwrights, you get the sense that an idea may kick around in the back of their heads for a long time, and perhaps there are a few false starts. But once the writing is well under way, it doesn’t generally take all that long to finish. For this one, though, Adjmi seems to have burned through about a dozen foundation grants and a season at a writing colony, which suggests that perhaps he was struggling a bit, do you think? On top of that, he acknowledges the contribution of nine, count ’em, nine dramaturgs. Normally a production involves one dramaturg or sometimes two. Burning through nine suggests, um, creative differences, perhaps?
In any case, there will not be a quiz later on The Evildoers.
As always at Yale Rep, the set is spectacular. And the acting is superb, with a seasoned, top-notch cast. It’s the play itself that sucks—surprisingly, given Adjmi’s credits.
The cast comprises two couples. The husbands were schoolmates, and yet one couple comes across as nearly a generation older than the other, setting up an inescapable sense that the first act is channeling the ghost of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in tone and subtext.
If that description intrigues you, rent the movie (Who’s Afraid…) rather than attend The Evildoers. But if you feel a perverse compulsion to attend, at least have the good sense to leave at the intermission. You do not want to be around for the figurative and literal bloodbath that is the second act. Suffice it to say, I may never order tongue in a deli again.
The program notes provide a clue to where this train ran off the rails. If you read interviews with playwrights, you get the sense that an idea may kick around in the back of their heads for a long time, and perhaps there are a few false starts. But once the writing is well under way, it doesn’t generally take all that long to finish. For this one, though, Adjmi seems to have burned through about a dozen foundation grants and a season at a writing colony, which suggests that perhaps he was struggling a bit, do you think? On top of that, he acknowledges the contribution of nine, count ’em, nine dramaturgs. Normally a production involves one dramaturg or sometimes two. Burning through nine suggests, um, creative differences, perhaps?
In any case, there will not be a quiz later on The Evildoers.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Real life intervenes
Key phrases for the last four days: dinner for six on three hours’ notice; emergency meeting; water heater; house guests; vacuum cleaner; emergency room; car battery; book cover; phone call from (different, distant) hospital; four chapters due; other book cover; different emergency meeting; missed deadline on book design; letter of recommendation; discovered piracy on MySpace. No connections or commonalities among any of those phrases or events other than their temporal proximity. Too implausible even for a soap opera. Deep cleansing breaths. Back to work, Dick.
Monday, January 14, 2008
This could be your self-published novel
But probably not.
Thanks to Frank Wilson for the link to this article about a self-publishing novelist who struck gold.
And while yours may be the next novel that makes it to the show, wishing won’t make it so. The odds are stacked against all novelists, but especially against self-published novelists. You can improve the odds by not making any mistakes in the way you approach the production and marketing of your book, but no one can guarantee your success. Remember that before you start cutting checks.
Thanks to Frank Wilson for the link to this article about a self-publishing novelist who struck gold.
And while yours may be the next novel that makes it to the show, wishing won’t make it so. The odds are stacked against all novelists, but especially against self-published novelists. You can improve the odds by not making any mistakes in the way you approach the production and marketing of your book, but no one can guarantee your success. Remember that before you start cutting checks.
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