Photo Credit Wikipedia

In February 1933, a month after Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, an arsonist torched the Reichstag, Germany’s parliament building. The cause was debatable, but it was suspected that Hitler’s people had set the fire themselves so that they could declare a national emergency. The Nazis blamed Communist radicals. Germany’s President von Hindenburg thereupon issued a decree declaring an emergency and suspending all civil liberties in Germany including habeas corpus, freedom of the press, freedom of speech, the right of assembly and other democratic benefits.

Hitler never rescinded the emergency decree. It was a primary contributor to his assumption of absolute rule over Germany.

ANY AGENT WHO HAS LIVED LONG ENOUGH has received a call or email that begins, “I have sad news. . .” or, “I regret to inform you. . .” or, simply, “Are you sitting down?” From bitter experience we know that the next words will announce an author’s death. My wife, when she intercepts such a bulletin, will call out my name in a tone unlike any other she uses to address me, and I know at once she is preparing me for a blow that will leave me sick at heart.

It is virtually impossible for an agent to work with authors for any length of time without forging strong bonds of friendship if not love. Inevitably we are drawn into their personal lives, habits, passions, joys, anxieties, terrors and hangups. Sometimes they will confide intimate secrets in us that they have shared with no one else. Willy-nilly we become their diagnosticians and psychologists, rabbis and confessors. We monitor their physical and mental health, knowing how inextricably entwined these are with the quality of their work.. Sometimes we are their punching bags but we try not to take it personally, because we understand where their pain is coming from. We are their lifelines. We are their partners. We are their family.

And then, one day, they are gone.

They are gone, but their work remains, and now our client is their estate. We have the same fiduciary responsibilities and are obligated to conduct their business with the same zeal and commitment that we did when the author was alive. In many cases the transition is seamless, for we are already a known and trusted factor with the author’s spouse and children. In others the family has not been privy to the author’s business affairs, and we have to introduce ourselves afresh and gain their confidence, for in their eyes we are strangers handling their money, and it is natural for them to be cautious and suspicious. We may also have to deal with lawyers and accountants scrutinizing our actions.

As soon as is appropriate, we will reach out to the partner or next of kin and address a host of practical questions. At the top of the list, of course, is “What happens to the money?” There is a long answer to this short question, but the essence of it is this: unless provisions have been made to the contrary, the late author’s account will be frozen at death while his or her will is being probated, a process that can take many months or even years, during which the survivors can be deprived of vital funds.

“Probate,” as one financial website explains, “is a legal process that administers the distribution of a deceased person’s assets. The process is overseen by a probate court, which has the legal authority to decide matters related to wills and estates.” The court appoints an executor, authenticates the deceased’s will, verifies the assets and debts, and settles distribution of the balance to heirs and beneficiaries. Even if the author died without a will, probate investigation is required.

Let’s linger for a few moments on that phrase “unless provisions have been made to the contrary.” Like the rest of humanity, some authors prepare for their demise and some don’t. Although literary agents are not professional money managers, we have an unwritten mandate to urge clients to think ahead and prepare to meet their maker, even if they are young, for who knows but there isn’t a meteorite or berserk semi with their name on it hurtling in their direction?

At the very least this means writing a will, but there are numerous other estate planning strategies that authors may take advantage of. The key is to arrange your affairs so that your survivors have access to funds outside of the probate process, funds that will sustain them until the court completes its diligence and restores access to your money. Engaging an attorney/financial advisor is strongly advised if not vital. (The Authors Guild offers an excellent guide to estate planning for authors.) Once probate is completed, the survivors usually have to open a new bank account with a new tax ID number.

The second question is “What happens to the books?” Unless an author has expressly designated otherwise in his or her will, their literary estate (copyrights, contracts, royalties etc.) will be part of their residuary estate and passed on to survivors along with their other property and valuables. Here is where the agent comes in.

Most agencies have comprehensive contracts with their clients. Any book or performance contract negotiated by the agency will in all likelihood remain under the agency’s control. In addition, each individual book or performance agreement will have an agency clause reinforcing that control – control that in most cases is irrevocable. The publisher or producer is required to pay royalties to the agency and not directly to the author or author’s estate. The agency’s receipt of those royalties discharges the payer from obligation to the author or estate. As a fiduciary the agency must remit collected funds promptly after deducting commissions, and provide clear statements about the transactions.

A typical agency clause might look like this:

The Author hereby authorizes [Agency name and address] to act as his/her Agent and to collect and receive all sums of money payable to her/him under the terms of this Agreement. The receipt by such agency shall be full and valid discharge of the Publisher’s obligations. Such Agency is fully empowered to act on behalf of the Author in all matters arising out of this Agreement, and is hereby designated as the Author’s Agent upon whom notices regarding this Agreement may be delivered. The designation of said Agent shall survive the incapacity or death of the Author and may be terminated only upon written notice to the Publisher signed jointly by the Author (or her/his heirs, executors, administrators, successors or assignees) and by said Agent. The Author irrevocably and exclusively grants to said Agent the right to negotiate all subsidiary rights to the work not granted herein to the Publisher.

The level of the heirs’ involvement runs the spectrum from active to passive. Some were already intimately involved in the author’s creative and business affairs in the capacity of sounding board, editor, bookkeeper, and/or manager, making the transition smooth and pleasant. Others have little or no familiarity with the author’s works and business, and the agent must educate them about the value of the properties and involve them in decisions. It is to be hoped that the bond between agent and estate will be as firm as the one between agent and the departed author.

****************

If you enjoyed this post, Restack it.

Richard Curtis’s latest book, Digital Inc., Inside the Transformation of Publishing from Print to E-Books, is now on sale.

“In Digital Inc., Richard Curtis has penned the Rosetta Stone for anyone interested in the tectonic shift in book publishing from print to digital. Curtis not only tells a fascinating and extraordinarily well written business story but also shows how the dramatic changes in publishing impact our daily digital lives. I learned more from Digital Inc. than from any other book about the digital revolution.”-Roger Cooper, former Senior VP and Publisher, the Berkley Publishing Group

The Association of American Literary Agents (AALA) is the principal organization of professional literary agents in the United States. Its mission statement, which all of its current roster of 765 members are pledged to uphold, is called the Canon of Ethics. It is a list of principles defining proper fiduciary and ethical conduct, which is summarized in the Canon’s preamble: “Full commitment to honorable and ethical business practices is crucial to our work.” For authors shopping for representation, an agent’s membership in AALA all but guarantees honesty and reputability.

You would think the precepts prescribed by the Canon are as immutable as the Ten Commandments. However, a revision of the code in 2022 and a “comprehensive reevaluation” announced this past week indicate that, from time to time, the organization adjusts its rules in response to changes in the publishing landscape since the Canon was devised by the organization’s founders. (The original organization, the Society of Authors’ Representatives, was founded in 1928, and the more recent one, the Independent Literary Agents Association (ILAA) created in 1977. The two groups merged in 1991 to form the Association of Authors’ Representatives (AAR), the precursor of the current organization.)

The 2022 revision was not radical; it opened up membership so that not just principal agents but their employees (such as foreign rights managers, social media specialists, and even assistants) could belong too. The latest upgrade, however, reflects significant departures from ironclad – or should I say hidebound - policies that have been in effect for decades.

Let’s drill into the changes and understand why they were instituted. I bring some special insights into the issues. I was the first president of ILAA and second president of AAR. I helped to formulate the Canon of Ethics. I also violated it, precipitating my resignation, as I will presently relate.

To help you understand the rationale for revising the Canon, AALA has furnished a helpful abstract. “The Canon,” it explains, “was originally created in the twentieth century,” Indeed, in 1991, when the AAR was founded and the “modern” Canon written, there was no Amazon, no Internet, no cell phones, no web sites, no e-books, no social media, no self-publication apps, no AI.

What has changed? How about everything? AALA’s abstract explains: “We have seen publisher consolidation, the advent of entirely new publishing models, the rise of digital media, social media, mobile technology, the challenges of AI, et. al, as well as the loss of physical retail space and traditional review media. Author/creators increasingly operate across a wide range of platforms, services, and competencies.”

Over the last half decade, the gradual relinquishment of publishers’ responsibilities has shifted numerous burdens - numerous uncompensated burdens - onto the shoulders of agents. It started with publishers shutting their slush piles (unsolicited manuscripts), necessitating agents to take over the job of reviewing and processing thousands of submissions that used to be handled by publishers. In time agents found themselves editing manuscripts, writing jacket copy, building websites and designing social media campaigns. On top of which, authors began pressuring their agents to do more for them or risk losing them to self-publishing.

This unprecedented flood of demands and new responsibilities motivated agents to seek relaxation of AALA rules, especially those concerning additional compensation beyond commissions. The revised Canon now states: “A member or member’s agency may employ staff or specialists to aid clients [and non-clients] in other areas such as marketing, promotion, web design, or other work, for a fee to be mutually agreed.” This right, however, is granted only on the condition that agent-members inform their clients of these additional fees and continue to observe specific legal, ethical and fiduciary protocols. In a conversation with Publishers Weekly, AALA president Regina Brooks said, “The authors have to do the lion’s share of the work, and a lot of clients were asking agents how to do it. We really needed to make sure that, if they were going to be offering up this information for authors, there was a way to charge for it.”

Perhaps the most notable innovation in AALA’s upgrade is the right of agents to also function as publishers: “While the AALA does not encourage its members to act as publishers of their clients’ work because of the inherent conflicts, doing so may be permissible if the member and client fully execute [a consent form prescribed by AALA] or a similar agreement containing all of its substantive provisions.”

My experience as agent/publisher can shed some light on the challenges of being both at the same time.

As some of you may know (the complete story is detailed in Digital Inc.), while still a literary agent I started an e-book publishing company in 1999. Throughout the nineties I had tracked advances in digital technology and, in anticipation, recovered the rights to hundreds of out-of-print books by our agency’s clients. With that trove I launched one of the first e-book publishers in the world. There was one little problem, however: a key provision of the AAR’s Canon of Ethics read: “Members shall not represent both buyer and seller in the same transaction.” Ostensibly, I was in violation of that provision.

However, by building a “Chinese wall” between my agency and my publishing company and keeping the two functions at arm’s length, I made sure our agency was in compliance with the Canon. Unfortunately, the AAR’s ethics committee was uneasy. They saw too many ways the wall could be breached or subverted. Though I was confident that that would not happen (and in the fifteen years of the company’s existence it never did) I did not want to start an embarrassing quarrel with the organization. I tendered my resignation.

For several years I remained the sole claimant of this hybrid business model. But in time I noted that some other agents had begun e-book publishing ventures too, and to my knowledge they had gone unchallenged by AAR. It was clear that the digital revolution had created opportunities that agents had never before enjoyed, such as the ability to publish books that trade publishers had turned down. It made less and less sense for the Association to rigidly prevent members from crossing the line. Last week they yielded to the new reality.

That said, it’s my turn to raise some troubling business and ethical concerns. Starting a publishing company these days is a piece of cake; commercial platforms for print and e-book production are a dime a dozen. But those are tasks that authors can do themselves. If an agent is going to publish their client’s work, they should be able to add value to off-the-shelf uploading of texts. They need to provide services comparable to those offered by legacy houses, such as distribution, marketing, customer service, credit card fulfillment, publicity, promotion and social media support. Is your agent-publisher set up to produce audiobooks? To license foreign, movie or television rights? To pay advances?

Business considerations aside, the very temptations that concerned the Ethics Committee when I created my publishing company are still of concern. One example: Suppose a foreign publisher wishes to license your book: does your agent handle the deal for 15% commission? Or does your agent/publisher handle it for 50% commission?

Though I am no longer a member of the Association, I continue to uphold the admirable tenets of its Canon of Ethics. I fervently hope that any agent venturing to become a publisher will do so too.

********************

If you enjoyed this post, Restack it.

Richard Curtis’s latest book, Digital Inc., Inside the Transformation of Publishing from Print to E-Books, is now on sale.

“In Digital Inc., Richard Curtis has penned the Rosetta Stone for anyone interested in the tectonic shift in book publishing from print to digital. Curtis not only tells a fascinating and extraordinarily well written business story but also shows how the dramatic changes in publishing impact our daily digital lives. I learned more from Digital Inc. than from any other book about the digital revolution.”-Roger Cooper, former Senior VP and Publisher, the Berkley Publishing Group

Roger Donald’s Cheering Squad

*******************

Agents don’t usually conduct auctions in front of an audience, but there’s a first time for everything.

It happened that Heiress, the breakout mainstream novel by my agency’s client, romance novelist Janet Dailey, was scheduled for hardcover publication in January 1987. Although so-called hard-soft deals, in which the publisher acquires both hardcover and mass market paperback rights, were becoming standard in the industry, Dailey’s publisher, Little, Brown, did not own a mass market paperback house to partner with. They were therefore obliged to auction those rights off to the seven or eight paperback publishers that existed at the time.

The closing date for bids was June 12, 1986, which happened to be my son’s fourth birthday. My wife Leslie and I had already planned a party in our apartment for Charlie’s friends and classmates. As a special treat, we hired a magician. Changing the party date was unthinkable, so I stayed home for the occasion and told Roger Donald, Little, Brown’s publisher of adult trade books, to call and report progress on the bidding.

*********************

The party got under way, typically chaotic and boisterous, but when the magician began his performance the kids sat as still as four year olds can sit.

Just as he was tapping his wand on his hat, our phone rang. I rushed into the bedroom to pick it up (this was the pre-cell era). It was Roger. “We have an opening bid,” he said excitedly. “Fawcett.”

“How much?”

“Four hundred thousand!”

At that very moment the magician must have pulled something out of his hat, for the children shrieked: “WOWWWW!!!!”

“What was that?” said Roger. Before I could explain he rang off to take another call. A few minutes later, as the magician was pulling a silk scarf out of my son’s ear, he called back.

“Warner, eight hundred!”

“OOOOOHHHH!!!!” cried the children, as if on cue.

ROGER: “What is going on?”

ME: “Well, you see, today happens to be…”

ROGER: “Oops, there’s my other phone.” He hung up abruptly.

A few minutes later the phone rang, and again I rushed into the bedroom.

ROGER: “Bantam, one million five!”

CHILDREN: “WHOOOOOO!”

ROGER: “What the hell?”

ME: “Can’t talk to you now. The magician. . .”

ROGER: “Magician?”

I rushed back to the party just in time to see Charlie lifting the lid off a platter. The phone rang. I ran into the bedroom and carried the phone to the doorway so I could see the trick. I picked up the receiver. “I closed with Fawcett! One million eight!” Roger shouted deliriously. . . at the very moment that a white dove fluttered up from the platter!

“YAYYYYY!!!!” the children exploded, clapping wildly.

After I finally explained to Roger, he said “I’m going to go to lunch on that story.” And he did, with me as his first guest.

The deal for Heiress was worth about five million in today’s money, and it went on to hit the Number One slot on the New York Times bestseller list.

**************

Special Thanks to Leslie Tonner Curtis for conjuring a forty year old photo album.

*******************

If you enjoyed this post, Restack it.

Richard Curtis’s latest book, Digital Inc., Inside the Transformation of Publishing from Print to E-Books, is now on sale.

“In Digital Inc., Richard Curtis has penned the Rosetta Stone for anyone interested in the tectonic shift in book publishing from print to digital. Curtis not only tells a fascinating and extraordinarily well written business story but also shows how the dramatic changes in publishing impact our daily digital lives. I learned more from Digital Inc. than from any other book about the digital revolution.”-Roger Cooper, former Senior VP and Publisher, the Berkley Publishing Group

Last week I paid tribute to Michael Cader, founder of the invaluable publishing industry trade publication Publishers Lunch. It set me to reminiscing about the countless lunches I have enjoyed and an article I wrote about the phenomenon, “Let’s Have Lunch.” I am reprinting it here for your pleasure or at least for my own self-indulgence.

In republishing some of my articles I’ve been struck by how little has changed since they first saw the light of day. In some cases I’ve scarcely had to change a word. However, I’m afraid that “Let’s Have Lunch.” may not stand the test of time. Aside from changes in manners and mores, the recession of 2008 and the Covid onslaught of 2020 altered the relationships of publishers, agents and authors, and the balance of power is skewed differently than the freewheeling Blockbuster Mentality years of the end of the 20^th century.

Trip down Memory Lane with me and see if it holds up.

When the time comes for me to lay down my sword and armor and cross into the Great Beyond after a lifetime of combat with venal publishers, crooked movie producers, treacherous lawyers, and kvetchy authors, it is my fondest hope that the gods will reward me with perpetual publishing luncheons. What fardels would I bear knowing that such a treat awaited me on the other side!

Some agents and editors feel lunches are tedious obligations at best and duck out of them whenever they can. I find them incredibly exciting, frequently dramatic, and always enlightening: I have never come away from one without having learned something useful. And, if everything comes together perfectly, the occasion can be a transcendental experience both culinarily and literarily, a sublime blend of art, commerce, and hedonism.

Most outsiders (such as authors) have a dim or distorted idea of what is involved in publishing lunches. To them, these affairs are as mysterious as royalty statements and discount schedules. So come perch on the right lobe of my brain, which in agents is the segment devoted to luncheon dates, and observe the process from the ringing of the phone (which automatically makes me salivate) to the final, discreet burp.

First, you should know that it is usually the editor who extends the invitation, selects the restaurant, and pays the check. Exactly why that is, I’m not sure, for it is clear that both parties stand to benefit equally from the occasion. (Mind you, I’m not complaining!)

Because it’s the editor who proposes and disposes, any agent who reverses roles and offers to take an editor to lunch is apt to earn many bonus points on the editor’s scorecard. When I worked for my first boss, literary agent Scott Meredith, he never permitted his staff to allow editors to treat them to lunch, I think because it implied a dependency that tarnished the agency’s image. I thought that was great, and I still do, but few agents can afford a steady diet (pardon the pun) of paying for editors, and if letting editors pick up the tab suggests that we are dependent on them – well, in truth we are.

Editorial calendars tend to be filled for weeks and even months ahead with other lunch dates, editorial meetings, business trips, vacations, conferences, and conventions. So it is by no means unusual for lunch dates to be made far in advance, with the parties exploring dates for fifteen minutes before finding an open one. This practice makes one keenly and often disconcertingly aware of the rapid passage of time. A flip of your calendar, as you and your would-be luncheon partner seek an agreeable date, and you realize that another season has passed, another year. Here it is August, blazingly hot and swelteringly humid, and you are contemplating warm, heavy food, sweaters and furs, and talk of ski trips and Christmas books; in February, as bitter winds whistle past your windowpanes, you set a lunch date for a day when cherry and magnolia blossoms will strew the selfsame streets now carpeted with yard-high snowdrifts. It’s a strange feeling. Red-letter days in the publishing calendar signal another year fled from our lives: “I can’t make it in October, that’s the Frankfurt Book Fair”; “November’s no good, we have sales conference”; “Forget the last week in May – I have to get ready for the BEA convention.” The seasons cycle inexorably and you wax philosophical about the rolling years. Have I achieved anything important? Have I fulfilled my youthful goals? God grant me just one DaVinci Code before He takes me away!

Although your luncheon may be on some absurdly far-off day, the restaurant and precise hour are seldom selected until that very morning. Then, sometime around ten-thirty or eleven, your host or hostess calls you with the traditional phrase, “Are we on for today?” The time and place are then agreed upon. But not always easily. To wit:
“How does Italian sound to you?”
“Had it last night. Mexican?”
“I’m on a diet. There’s a great fish place around the corner from my office.”
“But that’s all the way on the other side of town from me. Well, okay, but can we make it twelve-thirty? I have an author coming up to my office at two.”
“That’s bad for me. I’ll be in a meeting all morning.”
And so it goes.

Sometimes there is more to these negotiations than two busy people trying to find common ground. Nothing serious, just a subtle game of chicken, like waiting till twelve-fifteen before phoning to confirm the lunch date, or jockeying for who is going to come to whose side of town: I am more powerful than you because I made you come to my side of town at an inconvenient hour and eat a cuisine that gives you heartburn.

Occasionally lunch dates are canceled, and canceled at the last minute. The reasons range from “I forgot to mark it in my calendar” to “I have pneumonia.” One morning, after waiting till noon, I phoned an editor to see if we were still on for lunch. “I’m afraid not,” she said. “I was just fired.” I told her I thought that was a very poor excuse for canceling a date and I took her to lunch myself.

As the cancelee of today may be the canceler of tomorrow, we all accept cancellations with a certain degree of equanimity. They can, however, prove frustrating. I can all but guarantee that on the day I don my best suit and most expensive silk tie in anticipation of a Lucullan orgy at a four-star restaurant with an editorial kingpin I’ve been wooing for months, the date will be canceled and I’ll end up glomming a ham and Swiss on rye at my desk – and getting mustard on my tie to boot. Conversely, the days one wears jeans and tee-shirt to the office are inevitably the days one gets an impromptu invitation to Grenouille or Le Cirque.

Your luncheon companions range from the most eminent and powerful editor to the callow rookie who has just been given a title and expense account and told to go meet agents. Some agents, particularly the more prominent ones, disdain invitations from freshman editors. Why waste time with subalterns without clout when you can pick up the phone anytime and get the head of the company? I personally find that attitude shortsighted. New editors are often the most enthusiastic, ambitious, and industrious, best attuned to trends to which the older guard may be oblivious – new music, hot electronic games, rising young film stars, embryonic fads, and so forth. There’s another reason for cultivating young editors: In this turbulent age of musical chairs and sudden upward mobility, the green kid I dine with in March may be a department head in April.

Where you eat is a function of many factors: the age, seniority, and expense account of the editor; location; the amount of time available; dietary considerations; the importance of the host; the importance of the guest; the importance of the business at hand. Obviously, for example, young editors must entertain more modestly than senior ones. Yet many senior editors, having seen the inside of every restaurant in New York City after decades on the luncheon circuit, are just as happy to grab a burger at a coffee shop or munch a sandwich in the park. One of the most memorable lunches I ever had was with the late Robert Gottlieb, then editor in chief of the distinguished house of Alfred Knopf. It consisted of vanilla yogurt, nuts and raisins, and an orange, eaten in his office – eaten, indeed, on the floor of his office, for every horizontal surface including the couch was covered with manuscripts. Gottlieb had courageously taken himself out of the luncheon game, professing it to be too time-consuming, expensive, and fattening. All of which is true, agents and editors remind each other as they study their menus and debate trading off the appetizer for dessert.

When a senior editor is courting an agent in the hopes of capturing a big-name author, you can expect a Drop Dead, Pull Out All the Stops, Take No Prisoners feast, the kind most authors think occurs every day but which in fact happens quite rarely. Such affairs reverberate in memory till the end of time. I remember one laid on for a major client and myself at the Four Seasons. Every course from the quail egg appetizer to the ethereal flan dessert had been prearranged by our publisher-host. Captains and waiters, obviously tipped off to the preeminence of the guests, attended us with obsequies usually reserved for caliphs and maharajahs. Our host had but to nod and the staff was galvanized into action. And, as the presentation of a check would have been a base intrusion of crass mercantilism into so elevated an occasion, it was never brought out. I assume it was simply forwarded to the publisher’s accounting department for review at some later date.

While sumptuous repasts are certainly incomparably exciting, and authors unaccustomed to “the treatment” may well feed off the memories till they’re old and gray, I am far from convinced that they make much difference in influencing authors and agents. Such repasts seem much more appropriate for celebrating the closing of a major deal than for softening up reluctant objects of a publisher’s affections. Which is not to say they should stop trying.

Authors have a misconception that lunches are the time when deals are made. In my experience most deals are made on the phone; the lunches are devoted more to getting acquainted with editors and their companies. Although I used to feel that some kind of business should be accomplished during lunch or a short time afterward, I’ve come to realize that friendships struck at lunch may not pay off for years. Nevertheless, there is something theatrical about presenting an editor with a manuscript at the luncheon table. I remember one occasion when I brought a bulky manila envelope with me to a restaurant. Throughout lunch, the editor cast intrigued glances at it, and at last, toward dessert, she ran a covetous hand over it. “Is this something for me?”
“Oh Lord, no,” I said with a gulp, realizing I had inadvertently led her on. “These are shirts going back to Bloomingdale’s!”

Another common belief is that publishing lunches are rather boozy affairs. In truth, the dominant beverages for the last ten years or so have been wine, juice and sparkling soda water, and even the hallowed Marys are as apt to be Virgin as Bloody. On occasion, hard liquor is ordered, but sipped in moderation. As for the fabled two-martini lunch, I can truthfully say that in the last decade I can recall only one luncheon companion who ordered martinis, but since he was a confirmed alcoholic, the more he drank the more coherent he became. Because drunkenness is, among other things, a breach of manners (and manners are largely what publishing lunches are all about), editors and agents are extremely careful not to drink too much. I have seldom seen an editor become so much as tipsy at lunch. I wish I could say as much about authors, though in mitigation it must be said that they are usually a little nervous, unaccustomed to banquets on so lavish a scale.

Just what is ordered depends on the circumstances. Almost every editor in town has a diet book on his or her list and is experimenting with its advice. So there has been a distinct trend toward simple, highly nutritious cuisine, even in the elegant watering places where high-rolling publishing potentates hang out – all those places beginning with La and Le and Il. Exotic cuisines are usually avoided unless the editor and agent are old lunching companions and are willing to drop their guards a bit. With them I hit the Mexican, Brazilian, Thai, and Indian joints, drink beer (straight from the bottle) instead of wine, relax protocol and manners, and exchange confidences seldom heard at high table.

Although the agent-guest is encouraged to order anything he wants, if the editor is decidedly junior it is an act of cruelty to order the most expensive items on the menu, but I do know some agents who, if they are mad at a publisher, will take their petty revenge by hitting the company up for a five-course extravaganza with Champagne, brandy, and elaborate desserts.

Not all foods are suitable for business luncheons. Though I adore sloppy items like lobster and ribs, it is usually inappropriate to order them, for there is no way one can be cool and nonchalant while sucking the meat out of a lobster claw or picking a spare rib clean with fingernails and incisors.

Like those in other industries, publishing luncheons have a rhythm and flow that follow Aristotelian dramaturgical principles, from the quiet exposition through the developmental passages and on to the stirring climax. While the talk at the outset is small – the weather, the latest Big Apple catastrophe, your life story, “How I Got into Publishing” – it is seldom unrevealing to one alert for clues to one’s companion’s literary interests, status in the company, industry clout, negotiating skill, and other traits that may prove useful in future intercourse. Above all, there is gossip.

New York trade publishing is a very small town. Although Literary Market Place, the industry’s directory, contains thousands of names, my own short list of key contacts contain no more than three hundred names or so, and anything that happens to one of them is bound to affect my clients’ interests. Promotions, firings, resignations, romances, divorces – all are grist for the agent’s information mill in the perpetual process of assessing who’s got the power, who’s spending money, which way the market’s going, what the next hot trend is.

Thus, in due time talk drifts toward serious business. What good authors and projects is the agent handling? What’s the editor looking for? There is scarcely anything you can say that doesn’t serve as a springboard. The birth of my son inspired luncheon discussions leading to at least three books my agency subsequently developed; let that be a lesson to anyone asking me to produce wallet photos of my family.

Here, then, is what I love best of all about luncheons, for within seconds the conversation can shift from idle chatter to immense profundities, only moments later to shift again to money talk as the parties try to place a dollar value on the ideas under discussion.

Listen:

Agent: Whew! Have you ever seen weather like this?
Editor: This is the third mild winter in a row. Do you think the climate is permanently moderating or something?
Agent: Possibly. This meteorologist I’ve been corresponding with thinks the pollutants in the air are seriously affecting world climate. The planet is overheating. The ice caps are melting.
Editor: Really? This meteorologist – um, is he writing a book perchance?
Agent: Funny you should ask. He’s halfway through one. He’s got great credentials and he’s promotable as hell. Looks a little like Brad Pitt.
Editor: I’d be interested in a book like that.
Agent: Would you be interested one hundred thousand worth?
Editor: Fifty thousand worth, maybe.
Agent: Fifty! The guy’s been on Oprah twice, for crying out loud!

Lunch is over. The editor pantomimes a scribble toward the captain, the time-honored gesture of summoning the check. There is no quarreling. The inviter pays, the invitee says thank you, and that’s usually that.

Goodness, it’s five minutes before three! Got to get back to the office. Loved every minute of it. Let’s do business. Let’s stay in touch. Let’s have lunch again soon!

*******************
Let’s Have Lunch! was originally written for Locus, The Newspaper of the Science Fiction Field. It’s reprinted in How to be Your Own Literary Agent, published by Houghton Mifflin, Copyright © 1983, 1984, 1996, 2003 by Richard Curtis.

Image created by Microsoft Copilot.

********************

If you enjoyed this post, Restack it.

Richard Curtis’s latest book, Digital Inc., Inside the Transformation of Publishing from Print to E-Books, is now on sale.

“In Digital Inc., Richard Curtis has penned the Rosetta Stone for anyone interested in the tectonic shift in book publishing from print to digital. Curtis not only tells a fascinating and extraordinarily well written business story but also shows how the dramatic changes in publishing impact our daily digital lives. I learned more from Digital Inc. than from any other book about the digital revolution.”-Roger Cooper, former Senior VP and Publisher, the Berkley Publishing Group

Advances in digital technology provided an opportunity, in the new century, to streamline publishing industry news, and in 2000 an Internet-savvy book publisher named Michael Cader applied his skills to transform the discourse of a generation of book people. As Christopher West Davis of the New York Times describes, it started when Cader began emailing “a free copy of a breezy, irreverent newsletter called Publishers Lunch to 21,000 agents, editors, publishers, writers, movie scouts, book store owners and librarians.” His goal, he announced, was to become “the electronic equivalent of the old-fashioned publisher’s lunch, a place where all of us can swap completely unsubstantiated but dead-on stories, news, deal information, and insights.”

What started casually (Cader called it a hobby) became more serious, better organized, and profitable, as subscribers paid for news and information that was both cogent and entertaining. In time he teamed up with a web developer to produce Publishers Marketplace, a storehouse containing such content as deals, industry news, book reviews, bestseller lists and analyses, a job board, classified ads, rights offerings and the Publishers Lunch archive. “Arguably,” writes editor and publishing consultant Stephen S. Power, “one of the three most important research tools of my time in publishing, along with Bookscan and Amazon.”

Cader expanded Lunch into what he termed a “deluxe” edition, analyzing industry developments, deals, mergers and acquisitions, personalities, promotional campaigns and even lawsuits. Although some of the same material could be found in Publishers Weekly - the venerable (founded in 1872) flagship of the trade - book people either preferred Cader’s colorful presentations or consumed both publications for a comprehensive understanding of what was happening in the business. In 2024 he announced dramatic AI-driven innovations “powering all kinds of cool searches of our data.”

But it was his innovative formula for reporting book deals that revolutionized industry communications. Until Deal Lunch, few deals were reported unless they involved prominent authors, record-breaking advances, a headline-making story, or all three. Announcements of small, conventional deals for books by unknown or barely known writers and involving modest amounts of money were consigned to press releases by author, agent or publisher, but few escaped the gravitational pull of obscurity.

Deal Lunch offered the opportunity for authors to find a place in the sun and every deal to be writ almost as large as reports of eight-figure blockbusters. However, the privilege came with a condition, and one that sounded like a game-show challenge: the transaction must be described in a single sentence.

To a “civilian” (as we sometimes refer to non-publishing people), this condition may seem easy enough to satisfy, but for a race of articulate if not verbose literati, encapsulating their precious books was agonizing. It meant stuffing the five W’s of journalism – Who, What, When, Where and Why – into one line and doing it alluringly and eloquently. The task of compressing a rhapsody of hundreds of words into a one-liner is as challenging as Saturday’s New York Times crossword puzzle, and publishers and agents whiled away many an hour whittling words, sentences and even paragraphs down to a single sublimely compact utterance. To aid struggling submitters in their homework assignment, Publishers Marketplace created a questionnaire with such fields as Author, Agent, Acquiring editor, Imprint, Territory, Price Range, “Author bio (maximum 150 characters)” and “Book Description (maximum 500 characters)”. Lunch then applies an algorithm to this information and produces a single sentence that might read:

Flyfot Prize-winning author of 1001 Holiday Recipes for Triscuits, Constantine Puptent’s I Married an Emperor Penguin, illustrated by Jonquil Nightsoil-Kickpleat, in which a fraternity pledge stows away on a ship he mistakenly believes is bound for Sumatra but after a hilarious series of contretemps fetches up in Atka Bay in Antarctica with an amorous female Emperor Penguin before he is rescued by a Japanese whaler manned by a troupe of circus acrobats (more hilarious contretemps ensue), pitched in the vein of To Kill A Mockingbird meets Wuthering Heights meets Atlas Shrugged meets Go the Fuck to Sleep, to Nigel Frumster at Lackluster House, in a pre-empt for publication summer 2085, by Simon Bungwart of Smuddle & Earpod Agency (World rights).

This amalgam of log line and elevator pitch appealed to a young, impatient, tech-savvy, hit-the-ground-running cadre of publishing people who were completely at ease sending and receiving information electronically, a generation that took to tweeting and texting as soon as they were old enough to pick up a cell phone. Cader’s formulation became standard procedure for pitching books, inspiring this bit of doggerel I composed in my annual poem for Publishers Weekly:

We learned to format Deals for Lunch,

Our hype compressed to one long munch,

A style devised by Michael Cader

With log-lines longer than a seder.

***************
Poem excerpt courtesy Publishers Weekly. To read my 50-year rhymed history of the modern book business, see Richard Curtis Verses The Publishing Industry,

****************

If you enjoyed this post, Restack it.

Richard Curtis’s latest book, Digital Inc., Inside the Transformation of Publishing from Print to E-Books, is now on sale.

“In Digital Inc., Richard Curtis has penned the Rosetta Stone for anyone interested in the tectonic shift in book publishing from print to digital. Curtis not only tells a fascinating and extraordinarily well written business story but also shows how the dramatic changes in publishing impact our daily digital lives. I learned more from Digital Inc. than from any other book about the digital revolution.”-Roger Cooper, former Senior VP and Publisher, the Berkley Publishing Group

I don’t think of myself as flamboyant; I try to project an air of judicious dignity, which is frequently mistaken for pomposity. Every once in a while, however, I like to step out of that stuffy image and display a bit of theatrical razzmatazz. The perfect opportunity presented itself at the Romance Writers of America convention in Chicago at the end of July, 1999.

Every genre – science fiction writers, western writers, horror, mystery, thriller, fantasy etc. - holds an annual convention where business, education and fun are commingled and the achievements of authors, editors and publishers are honored (agents never). Of all of them, the one hosted by the Romance Writers of America was by far the most glamorous (and clamorous), attracting thousands of established and would-be authors and the cream of editors and agents in the romance field. The weekend was climaxed by an Academy Awards-type trophy dinner followed by a lavish “Death by Chocolate” dessert and dance party sponsored by Harlequin, then the powerhouse of the romance industry.

Our agency boasted an imposing list of writers in the romance field, and I decided to lay on a luncheon for them in an elegant private room high atop Chicago’s Sheraton Towers Hotel.

That morning at breakfast I read an intriguing item in the Chicago newspaper: later that day there was to be a flyover of vintage airplanes on a practice run for the upcoming Chicago Air & Water Show. I noted the expected time and formed a stratagem.

Luncheon was served, at the end of which I rose to give a welcoming speech. I kept my eyes peeled out the windows of the suite, however. Sure enough, on the horizon I spied a cluster of gaily colored bi-wing airplanes approaching the city, Stearmans, Nieuports and, I think, Jennies and Sopwith Camels (my plane-spotting skills have deteriorated since The Great War). I concluded my speech: “Friends, I have arranged a special display in your honor. If you’ll be good enough to get up from your seats and go to the windows. . .” They rose and stood by the windows just as the planes floated majestically past the hotel, eliciting rapturous murmurs and delighted applause for their extravagant host. Was there another agent in the world who could conjure such a unique party favor!

*****************

If you enjoyed this post, Restack it.

Richard Curtis’s latest book, Digital Inc., Inside the Transformation of Publishing from Print to E-Books, is now on sale.

“In Digital Inc., Richard Curtis has penned the Rosetta Stone for anyone interested in the tectonic shift in book publishing from print to digital. Curtis not only tells a fascinating and extraordinarily well written business story but also shows how the dramatic changes in publishing impact our daily digital lives. I learned more from Digital Inc. than from any other book about the digital revolution.”-Roger Cooper, former Senior VP and Publisher, the Berkley Publishing Group

By definition, literary agents are dedicated advocates for authors, committed to serving the best interests of their clients. That is all well and good, and it would be great if it were completely true. But if you drill deep into the thought processes of the typical practitioner, you will uncover a tangle of complex and often contradictory calculations, strained loyalties and conflicting impulses.

When addressing any problem, an agent must juggle countless factors. They can be boiled down to three: How will it affect the author? How will it affect the publisher? And, How will it affect the agent? You can ask us how we arrived at a decision, but because our ratiocination is instinctive and often lightning-fast, it’s not easy to articulate the steps we take when we process information. So, let’s slow a typical set of deliberations to a walk. Take this common scenario:

Jack Agent has represented Jane Writer from her very first book, a cozy that Jack talked Linda Editor into buying on the strength of Jack’s faith in Jane’s future. Jack and Linda are tight friends, having graduated from Columbia University’s publishing program together. Linda is now a fast-rising young editor at a small publishing house.

Jack’s faith in his author turned out to be absolutely correct: her novels have gotten better with each new offering; she has built a large and enthusiastic fan base and is on her way to a big career. Best news of all? She has been working on the book of her heart, and from what Jack is able to glean, it promises to be her breakout book. In anticipation of this big event, Jack and Linda toast the success of their shared young protégé. Surely, nothing could come between these devoted colleagues. Or could it?

It happens that Jack’s clients have attracted the attention of Max Publisher, the head of one of the five major houses in the industry. Max takes Jack to a sumptuous lunch at a four-star restaurant. Towards the end of the meal, Max says, “Tell me about Jane Writer.”

“She’s terrific and getting better.”

“Is she happy where she is?”

A burst of adrenaline surges through Jack’s innards, for this innocent question is actually a coded message fraught with significant possibilities. Cautiously, he replies “Quite happy.”

“But she could always be happier, right?”

“Couldn’t we all!” Jack exclaims with deliberate disingenuousness.

Max leans in and mutters the name of Jane’s publisher. “It’s a good house but let’s face it, they’re small, they’re underfinanced, they don’t really know how to blow a book out. If she’s looking for a new home, we could make it worth her while.”

Jack cannot pretend to be uninterested. “She’s very loyal. And she loves her editor. It would take a ton of money to tempt her to move.”

“Tons of money are us,” Max replies with a laugh. “Not just for acquisition but marketing and promotion, the whole nine yards. We offer advantages that her publisher cannot possibly match. Think about it,” he concludes, summoning the check with a scribbling gesture to the waiter.

Think about it? Jack has scarcely stepped out of the restaurant than the wheels in his brain start whirring like a grandfather clock on speed. He walks to the park, plops himself down on a bench and starts to review the innumerable possibilities that his conversation with Max has provoked.

His very first thought is about Linda Editor, and it is a troubled thought. Linda is his dearest friend in the business, sweet-natured and trusting. She has invested years of her life building Jane’s career. The thought of taking Jane away from her is almost unbearably painful. It will break her heart.

Or will it? Linda has been in the business long enough to have witnessed predatory publishers swoop down and carry promising authors away from small houses like hers. Perhaps she knows that that could happen here, too and is resigned to its inevitability.

Jack’s second thought is of Jane Writer. Would not plucking her out of her happy nest traumatize her? Linda has not just been a superb editor but is as close to Jane as a sister, having seen Jane through numerous crises, comforting her through heartaches. Everyone at the publishing company loves Jane and treats her like family. Surely Jane would not abandon this devoted friend.

These ruminations are so disturbing to Jack that he wonders whether he should keep Max’s proposition to himself. After all, it was not a hard offer, just a sounding-out, right? But he readily rejects that option. He is duty-bound to tell his client about it.

And who is to say that Jane would reject Max’s pass out of hand? Doesn’t she, like every other writer, harbor fantasies of fame and fortune? Perhaps deep down she knows that if she’s going to hit the big-time, she will need a major publisher to move her to that yearned-for plateau? Maybe she is thinking she needs a bigger home for that important book she is completing.

Jack reflects on that big book and realizes that if Max wants it, maybe some other big houses might want it too. Suddenly he is thinking of opening bidding up to other publishers - including Linda’s company. A big deal would put him on the map with that elite handful of deal makers who are always getting their bold-faced names in the trade publications. He would attract bigger clients. And the commissions would put his finances into a much higher bracket. He knows that agents are not supposed to put their interests ahead of their client’s but, well, if he made a deal with the major publisher he could afford to buy that house in the Hamptons he and his wife have dreamed about for years.

These and many more alternatives swarm through Jack’s head. He sits for hours on that bench, weighing each factor, rejecting it, revisiting it, massaging it, projecting consequences short-term and long, positive and negative, oscillating between heart and head, ambition and compassion, art and business.

At length he brightens. He knows how he’s going to handle this. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out his cell phone.

*****************

If you enjoyed this post, Restack it.

Richard Curtis’s latest book, Digital Inc., Inside the Transformation of Publishing from Print to E-Books, is now on sale.

“In Digital Inc., Richard Curtis has penned the Rosetta Stone for anyone interested in the tectonic shift in book publishing from print to digital. Curtis not only tells a fascinating and extraordinarily well written business story but also shows how the dramatic changes in publishing impact our daily digital lives. I learned more from Digital Inc. than from any other book about the digital revolution.”-Roger Cooper, former Senior VP and Publisher, the Berkley Publishing Group

I don’t know what salesmanship tools are in the kits of my fellow agents, but some projects call for an unconventional approach. If a traditional text pitch doesn’t work, I discard it and opt for something lively and entertaining. Admittedly these performances are more vaudeville than haute culture but they usually get the job done. From time to time I’ll tell you about them. Here’s one:

I can’t remember who introduced me to Garrett Oliver, Brewmaster and Vice President of Production of the Brooklyn Brewery. He is acclaimed by many experts to be the world’s foremost authority on beer. He reached out to me after returning from a Europe-spanning journey where he had met with brewers and chefs, gathering information and recipes for a book demonstrating how the proper pairing of food and beer can enhance dining. It was to be lavishly illustrated with photographs.

I’m not sure why he selected me to represent him, as my knowledge of beer was limited to a cold bottle of Bud at Super Bowl parties. “That’s all right,” Garrett said, “We’ll expand your palate.”

He invited me to lunch at the Gramercy Tavern on 20^th Street in Manhattan, which boasts one of the most extensive and exotic selections of beers in the city, labels like Kent Falls Buckwheat Grisette, Allagash Tripel, and Evil Twin Yin Imperial Stout. He ordered a different beer for each course of our meal, charmingly expatiating on its color, flavor, aroma, and terroir. Our meal was capped by Framboise, a raspberry-flavored dessert beer – I never knew such a thing existed! – served in a hand-painted flute. It was better than any Champagne I had ever tasted. I became an instant proselyte.

I helped Garrett design an excellent proposal and we submitted it to several publishers. Unfortunately, they all turned it down. They just didn’t get it! Where had we gone wrong?

After analyzing their responses I realized that a printed description could not duplicate what I had experienced at that restaurant. We needed publishers to taste what I had tasted and hear what I had heard. Show, don’t tell, right? I picked up the phone and called Garrett. “How would you like to do a beer-tasting for publishers?”

“I’m game if you are,” he declared.

My first – and, as it turned out, only – call was to Jane Friedman, the flamboyant CEO of HarperCollins (not to be confused, as everyone seems to do, with the publishing influencer and Substack blogger of the same name). Jane was intrigued by our scheme and agreed to host the event in the conference room of her company, where some two dozen executives sat facing Garrett at a podium. His assistants distributed cheeses, chocolates and brownies and poured a variety of beers about whose pedigrees and flavors Garrett rhapsodized from a podium. His presentation was riveting. A really, really good time was had by all with many refills and - in those precincts where enthusiasm seldom exceeds a whisper - raucous toasts.

The next morning Jane bought the book.

The Ecco imprint of HarperCollins published it in 2005 under the title The Brewmaster’s Table. Among many honors, it won the International Association of Culinary Professionals’ Award for Best Cookbook in the Wine, Beer or Spirits category.

*****************

This article is excerpted from my book Digital Inc., Inside the Transformation of Publishing from Print to E-Books, now on sale.

“In Digital Inc., Richard Curtis has penned the Rosetta Stone for anyone interested in the tectonic shift in book publishing from print to digital. Curtis not only tells a fascinating and extraordinarily well written business story but also shows how the dramatic changes in publishing impact our daily digital lives. I learned more from Digital Inc. than from any other book about the digital revolution.”-Roger Cooper, former Senior VP and Publisher, the Berkley Publishing Group

MOST WRITERS DREAM of leaving their day jobs (some have night jobs as well) and launching careers as full-time freelancers. In their eagerness to realize that goal, many quit as soon as they’ve made a few sales. This decision all too frequently turns out to be ill-advised if not catastrophic when authors discover that they did not properly reckon the cost of independence, project the size or flow of earnings, or prepare themselves emotionally. Even authors lucky enough to strike it rich on their first book should use the utmost restraint before quitting their job to become a full-timer. By the time you realize you can’t sell that encore book, you may have raised your lifestyle to an unsupportably high plateau.

The questions of whether and when writers should go full-time are among the most vexing that we have to deal with, and if an agent ever had a notion to play God, here is the opportunity. The responsibility for this decision demands ten times the prudence required to advise authors about the length of their books or the explicitness of their sex scenes. The number of factors is large and their complexity intimidating. It’s the kind of decision that should be reviewed with a great many people to collect as much input as possible.

An excellent idea is to make a list of pluses and minuses, what you stand to gain and what to lose. Often the right choice will jump out at you when you review this list. The secret is to make sure you have enumerated all the factors. Then you must be brutally honest with yourself. You do not want to subject yourself and your family to needless suffering because you erred on the side of wishful thinking.

My first rule of thumb is to determine whether you have enough work lined up under contract to guarantee employment for a minimum of two years; that probably means you have reached a level of skill and reliability your publisher can count on. I seldom permit authors to include “blue-sky” money in their expectations - income that is not absolutely guaranteed, such as royalties, foreign rights sales, movie deals, and the like—unless there is a solid history of such windfalls in their track record. If you’ve never sold British rights to your previous books, if you only hope your next book will earn royalties, if your father-in-law thinks your book is a natural for the movies, toss these items out of the equation, because they are only fodder for self-delusion and disappointment.

I do, however, include in the equation the renewal of current contracts after you have fulfilled them, particularly if you are a genre writer. If you have a successful three-book contract in an ongoing series, I tend to consider it likely you’ll be given another contract at the expiration of this one. If you’re an established mainstream writer with three or four books under your belt and a potful of good ideas for new ones, I’m disposed to take for granted that you’ll land a new contract when you complete your present book. But when in doubt, best to opt for pessimism and Murphy’s Law.

The renewal of contracts means money payable on signature of those agreements, so that when you look down the road for money to be earned after fulfillment of your present commitments, you should be able to count on income from new deals. It is also reasonable to figure that you’ll get more money per book than you’re getting now, because it’s likely the publisher will feel you’re a better writer and there’ll be more of a sales record to justify raises. There is also a tendency among publishers to give raises to their regular writers if for no other reasons than inflation, longevity, loyalty, faith in the future, and humane motivations. You or your agent have to ask for these raises, but there’s a good chance that if you don’t push it too hard, your publisher will give you a little more the next time around.

Another important factor to weigh is increased productivity.

At present, because you’re only able to devote an hour or two to your writing in the evenings, and maybe twice that much on the weekends, you are not capable of turning out more than one or two books, say, per year. But if you launch a full-time writing career, you may be able to double or triple your output. There is also, I’ve observed, a tendency for writers to improve the quality of their work after they become full-timers, because they’re exercising their skills to a greater degree, and increasing concentration

And if you do become a better, faster writer, the prospects for steady work and raises in pay from your publishers become even better. The process, in due time, becomes self-perpetuating.

Having painted the future in broad, and slightly rose-tinted, strokes, it’s time to focus on the hard realities of budgeting your money after you make The Big Move. Get out that legal pad and set up two columns, Income and Expenditures. So far, so good. Unfortunately, that’s about the only straightforward thing about setting up a budget, because when you start to analyze each item, you quickly see that simple concepts and definitions are elusive.

When you work for The Man, you most likely receive a regular paycheck from which certain mandatory deductions are withheld. Among these are federal and state income taxes (and sometimes municipal ones as well). Social security contributions are also compulsory. Then there may also be deductions for disability insurance, worker’s compensation, medical insurance, union dues, stock option purchases and pension contributions. Your net take-home income has been 20, 40, even 50 percent or more of your gross salary.

When you become a full-time writer, however, you suddenly find yourself in the position of “taking home” a “paycheck” from which nothing (except commissions, if you have an agent) has been deducted. At first glance that’s great. At second and third glances, you realize that the heavy burden of responsibility for many of those obligations, formerly taken care of by your boss, now rests on your own shoulders. You will have to set aside enough money to pay income taxes, social security, and other taxes such as unincorporated business taxes; medical and/or disability insurance premiums; 401(k) pension contributions; and whatever other “benefits” you wish to continue enjoying as carryovers from your erstwhile job. So, the $50,000 per annum that you project taking home when you go full-time may translate into a good deal less than $25,000 of disposable income after you set aside all the obligations your employer used to pay on your behalf. To your projections of income from your writing, add income from your spouse’s job if any, investment dividends and savings interest, and other sources of revenue such as teaching, lecturing, or consulting income.

And you must not rule out your savings account as a potential source of income. Because delays are more the rule than the exception in the publishing game, it is entirely possible that you will have to tap the principal in your savings account or liquidate a long-term investment in order to tide yourself over between checks. When I collected my first advance as a full-time writer, the on-signing installment for a book, I proudly showed the check to my businessman father. He patted me on the back. “Good job.” Then, after a pause, he said, “When is the next one?”

Because many major expenses are payable quarterly (such as estimated federal taxes), semiannually, or even annually, you might consider opening a savings account for those obligations only. You can then earn a little interest on the money you have set aside to pay those bills. Needless to say, you must never invest that money in speculative ventures. And though CD’s may earn higher interest than ordinary savings accounts, if the CD term is too long, you may not be able to access your money in time to pay your estimated taxes or other scheduled obligations.

When you try to tote up the “expenditures” side of your projections, you once again discover that nothing is as simple as it seemed when your boss took care of things. You will immediately see how costly medical insurance is, particularly when you are no longer participating in a group health care plan. The social security rate for self-employed people is higher than for those in “respectable” jobs (writing has not been respectable for two thousand years).

And then there are those “bennies” and perks you took for granted when you worked for that company. If you had an expense account, you will now have to absorb that portion of the benefit that was formerly spent on yourself, in particular travel and entertainment. No longer can you charge the firm for your spouse’s meal when you take clients or customers to dinner; no longer can you bill your boss for mileage incurred on that side visit to Disneyland during your business trip to Los Angeles. And because current tax law permits you to deduct only a percentage of legitimate entertainment expenses, you’ve also lost that part that your company absorbed in tax on the nondeductible part. Say good-bye to the free use of the postage machine when you mailed off your personal bills; to the telephone from which you called your publisher, your agent, your kid in college, your mother in Florida; to the photocopying machine on which you ran off copies of your manuscript after everyone had gone home; and to the office word processor, computer, coffee maker. Say good-bye to the paid vacation. You want a vacation, you now can take four weeks a year if you want, only you have to pay for them out of your own pocket. Say good-bye to sick days on salary. Say good-bye to the company car and the company jet and the company dining room. Buy your own car and jet and dining room.

I am not saying there aren’t also many hidden benefits to leaving our job for a full-time writing career. But somehow, the savings on carfare or the expensive wardrobe you’re trading in for the freelancer’s uniform of jeans and tee shirts don’t seem to balance the hidden costs. And not everybody fervently believes that getting to see more of their spouse and kids is a benefit.

As one writer quipped, “I want to go back to being an in-house writer; I’m tired of being an outhouse writer.”

The biggest challenge to the newly independent is the large lump-sum payments due with unforgiving regularity throughout the year. Among these, as I’ve said, are quarterly estimated federal income and social security taxes, but there are also state and local taxes and estimates and medical insurance premiums. This is not to mention those other lump sums you have to pay whether you are self-employed or not, such as automobile and home insurance, private school or college tuition, summer camp fees, repair contracts on major appliances, and the like. And these all have a way of going up. Add to them the cost of occasional but inevitable contingencies - washing machines giving up the ghost, automobile engines seizing, wisdom teeth impacting - the kind that always seem to rear their heads hours after your warranties expire and moments after you have told off your boss and served notice of your intention to leave their employ forthwith:

Aside from being fiscally unprepared to deal with these aggravations, you may not be psychologically able to cope with them. This is by far the graver problem, for while you can usually juggle your accounts or hustle up some money to cover short-term deficits, it is much, much harder to find the emotional resources for dealing with that condition of perpetual anxiety about money that is the lot of most freelance people.

The truth is that not everybody is constitutionally cut out to work for him- or herself. There are those who are incapable of preparing a budget or of staying within its rigid boundaries. There are those who cannot handle the loneliness of freelancing and the loss of the social support that comes from working with others (the German romantics described the condition as “Frei aber einsam” - Free, but lonely). There are those who lack self-discipline, those who, after years of punching in and out at a time clock, reporting to a boss or supervisor, adhering to rules and regulations and work orders, are at a loss to structure their own time. There are those who cannot set short- and long-term goals or adhere to them. There are those who cannot live with the distractions of full-time domesticity. There are those who go to pieces at the prospect of drawing on their savings or selling off an investment to cover an unexpected expense. There are those who indulge their newfound freedom by tackling that Great American Novel they’ve always dreamed of, instead of doing the commercial projects that have to be done to keep their finances on a steady course.

Having tried the freelance life for several years in my twenties, I can testify to having flunked most of the above tests. Though I did produce a goodly number of books during that period, and earned a decent living, I found the loneliness and isolation very hard to bear, and the budgeting of money impossible. I had some savings salted away, but having been raised to think that drawing money out of savings is one step short of going to debtors prison, I suffered woefully. Every month, when the time came to pay my bills, I developed all sorts of neurasthenic symptoms ranging from vapors to hysterical pregnancy.

So, be as candid with yourself as you can be when you contemplate making this critical career decision. Ask your partner, your best friend, your family, your accountant, your attorney, your shrink, and your agent to be equally candid. If they vote yes, then all you’ll need is a laptop, a pair of jeans and a few tee shirts, and you’re in business

Oh yes—don’t forget two years’ worth of book contracts!

**************

This article was previously published in Beyond the Bestseller and reprinted in Mastering the Business of Writing. It has been substantially revised and updated and new text has been added. If you enjoyed this post, Restack it.

*******

Richard Curtis’s latest book, Digital Inc., Inside the Transformation of Publishing from Print to E-Books, is now on sale. "In Digital Inc., Richard Curtis has penned the Rosetta Stone for anyone interested in the tectonic shift in book publishing from print to digital. Curtis not only tells a fascinating and extraordinarily well written business story but also shows how the dramatic changes in publishing impact our daily digital lives. I learned more from Digital Inc. than from any other book about the digital revolution."-Roger Cooper, former Senior VP and Publisher, the Berkley Publishing Group

In this wide-ranging conversation, Richard shares why he decided to write what may be the first comprehensive book detailing the publishing industry’s dramatic transition from print to digital. After more than 500 years devoted to ink on paper, publishers suddenly faced a technological and cultural revolution that changed not only books, but also writers, readers, agents, and the entire publishing ecosystem.

Richard reflects on being an early visionary for e-books long before they became reality. He recalls a pivotal moment in 1985 while walking down the street listening to music on his Walkman and imagining a future where people could carry entire books on portable devices. That vision would take another 15 years to become mainstream—but it helped spark a revolution that transformed publishing forever.

The conversation also explores the surprising resurgence of physical books, why children’s books continue to thrive in an analog world, and why readers still form a deep emotional connection with what Richard calls the “book-book.” He discusses how printed books express identity in ways digital formats often cannot, and why e-books can sometimes create a more distracted reading experience.

Ira and Richard also tackle some of today’s biggest publishing issues, including AI-generated writing, the importance of preserving authentic human storytelling, digital piracy, and the challenges facing writers in an increasingly automated world. Richard candidly shares both the regrets and joys he feels about the e-book revolution, while revealing how Digital Inc. is not only a publishing history, but also a deeply personal memoir and business story.

This interview offers a compelling look at creativity, technology, innovation, and the enduring power of books in every format.

A long time ago, in the era of pay telephones, I declared that all you need to become a literary agent is a manuscript and a quarter. Although I launched my firm with a few more resources than that, the fundamental idea was the same: it didn’t take that much wherewithal to set oneself up as a literary agent, and it still doesn’t. However, as soon as we’d made a few sales I recognized that we must turn these casual activities into a business. That meant creating a formal structure; it meant creating policies; it meant creating databases and lists; it meant projecting a host of variables and obstacles and figuring out how to deal with them; it meant thinking logically, a discipline that has defied all my efforts at mastery.

There are four basic categories in every agent’s record-keeping repertoire: 1) Contacts; 2) Submissions; 3) Contracts; and 4) Financial. None of these is a walk in the park.

Take the deceptively simply processing of submissions. First you have to produce a list of potential markets, then identify specific editors. A pitch has to be drafted to which proposals or manuscripts will be attached; links to the author’s website and promotional features must be embedded. A calendar must be created for followups, and a database to keep score of yesses, no’s, maybes, notes (“Editor returning from maternity leave in April”) and comments (“Turned this one down but wants to see next book”). Even nomenclature is challenging: Do you list the author as “John Steinbeck” or “Steinbeck, John”? Is it “The Grapes of Wrath” or “Grapes of Wrath, The”?

Financial functions are even more brain-wracking. Take this example:

Your sub-agent in Moldavenia licensed rights in that country to your client’s novel A Tale of Fourteen Cities for 18,000 Glinkies, the Moldavenian equivalent of $1,000.00 US. Your sub-agent took 10% commission off the gross price, but the Moldavenian government levied a mandatory 15% tax on funds leaving their country. There was a bank charge of $25.00 to transfer funds to your agency. You took 10% commission off the gross price and remitted the balance to your client after recovering $25.00 FedEx charges incurred in a prior transaction.

Okay, hotshot: How much did you pay your client?

At the inception of our operation we could find no templates to help us set up our systems; we had to invent our own. Needless to say, we soon recognized their limitations, or should I say that the limitations came malevolently crashing down on us, causing confusion, delays and snafus. Every time a new element was introduced we had to rejigger our system, sending our bookkeeper into paroxysms of frustration.

But a stroke of good fortune touched us not a moment too soon. Early in the 1990s we got wind of a computer program created expressly for the needs of literary agents. It had been produced by a developer named Peter Grand and was reputed to untangle the very kinds of knots that were driving me and our clerical staff to distraction.

Grand had a Harvard degree in psychology and social relations. He describes himself as “an experienced database, web, and mobile application developer who builds both stand-alone and highly integrated enterprise-wide systems in multiple industries.” He had created programs not just for publishing but marketing and public relations as well. Intriguingly, we learned that he had started out in life as a magician.

We reached out to him.

Although he had never worked as an agent, he had been engaged by several agencies to address problems that, if not unique to our breed of business enterprise, were insoluble by off-the-shelf file-organizing software. Grand programmed his original system in Foxpro, a database language invented in the 1980s. The original version looked like the navigation screen on the bridge of a 1950s sci-fi space ship. Primitive-looking though it seemed, however, it offered a powerful framework for continuous integration of cutting-edge web technologies and databases. We loved it because it was flexible and had unlimited capacity. (Records we entered 35 years ago are still instantly accessible.)

We signed on, and in time other agencies did too, enabling Grand to expand and refine his “expert system” so that it can streamline and centralize record-processing and handle any and every challenge that an agent is likely to encounter. Grand describes it as “a powerful framework for continuous integration of cutting-edge web technologies with virtual servers, remote databases, and recent advances in AI to streamline and centralize every process from submission tracking to payment processing, author income, accounting and tax calculations, and rights licensing.”

His demonstration turned out to be life-changing for us, reducing complexities to routine keystrokes, enhancing our efficiency, and rescuing the sanity of our poor suffering bookkeeper. “My system encodes the wisdom of the entire community of literary agents,” he told me. We discovered he truly was a magician. (His secret: “I carefully listen to client needs.”)

Since we adopted his system, many other companies have released agency record-keeping systems employing the latest advances in technology. I can’t speak for them, but hopefully they have conjured every solution as thoroughly as that wizard, Peter Grand. I am happy to pay a long overdue thanks to him.

***********

If you enjoyed this post, Restack it.

Richard Curtis’s latest book, Digital Inc., Inside the Transformation of Publishing from Print to E-Books, now on sale.

I recently posted a cautionary blog warning about AI-generated flattering email pitches that scammers were using to seduce authors into buying non-existent products and services. These accolades, which could elevate a hack pulpster to Nobel Prize stature, can be produced in less than ten second. To demonstrate, I asked AI to review one of my own books (from my hack pulpster period). In moments, out came the following paean: “Curtis demonstrates a singular gift for finding extraordinary magic in the mundane, populating his world with characters so vibrantly etched they feel like old friends by the final page. It is a brilliant, feel-good triumph that reaffirms Curtis’s status as a writer of immense heart and unparalleled comedic timing—truly, the work of a storyteller at the absolute top of his game.”

After my vanity deflated to normal size, it occurred to me that it may be just as easy for AI to generate attacks as it is to generate tributes. To test my thesis I asked Gemini to assail some fairly unassailable classics. It took the app just a few moments to produce the following reviews:

GREAT EXPECTATIONS by Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations is a bloated, sentimental slog that epitomizes the very worst of Victorian self-indulgence, trading in tiresome caricatures and a plot so reliant on absurd coincidence it insults the reader’s intelligence. Dickens himself was little more than a literary populist who mistook “length” for “depth,” padding his prose with repetitive, rhythmic fluff to satisfy the demands of his word-count-driven serializations. The novel’s protagonist, Pip, is a spineless vacuum of a character whose undeserved upward mobility is only surpassed in irritation by the author’s own penchant for melodrama and saccharine moralizing. Ultimately, the book stands as a monument to Dickens’s inability to edit his own ego, leaving us with a wearying, over-engineered “classic” that manages to be both structurally messy and emotionally manipulative.

****

HAMLET by William Shakespeare

If you’re looking for a tight plot, relatable characters, or a climax that doesn’t involve a pile of corpses and a “whoopsie” poisoning, look elsewhere. …The only reason we still talk about William Shakespeare is because of a 400-year-long case of Stockholm Syndrome in the English departments of the world. Let’s be real—Shakespeare was the guy at the party who wouldn’t stop talking and thought he was deeper than he actually was. He never used one word when fifteen would do, usually including three words he just made up because he couldn’t find a rhyme. His “genius” is mostly just ambiguity masquerading as profundity. If you have to write a 500-page thesis to explain what a guy meant in a three-hour play, he didn’t write it well; he just wrote it poorly.

***

WAR AND PEACE by Leo Tolstoy

War and Peace isn’t a “literary achievement”; it’s a 1,200-page hostage situation. Leo Tolstoy didn’t just write a book; he curated a relentless, ego-driven slog that demands a medal for anyone who actually reaches the final period without developing a permanent eye twitch. If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to read a grocery list written by a man who thinks every head of cabbage has a deep, spiritual destiny, this is the book for you. It’s called War and Peace, but it should be titled Boredom and Interminable Philosophy. Just as you get interested in a battle, Tolstoy yanks you out to lecture you for forty pages on his “Great Man” theory of history. It’s the literary equivalent of a jump-scare, but instead of a ghost, it’s an elderly Russian man yelling about Napoleon.

***

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE by Jane Austen

A Tedious Marathon of Tea and Trinkets. If you suffer from chronic insomnia, Jane Austen has written the perfect cure. Pride and Prejudice is less a “timeless classic” and more a 400-page exercise in eavesdropping on the most vapid people in 19th-century England… The entire narrative engine is fueled by a single, exhausting question: Who is going to marry whom? Austen manages to make the high stakes of survival and social standing feel like watching paint dry in a damp basement.

The “heroine,” Elizabeth Bennet, is touted as a witty, independent woman. In reality, she’s a judgmental busybody whose “prejudice” is just a fancy word for being wrong about everyone she meets. Then there is Mr. Darcy, the brooding romantic lead who has the personality of a wet brick. His “pride” is essentially just being a snob with a massive bank account—which, apparently, is all it takes for Elizabeth to forgive him for being an insufferable bore.

***

THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby is a shallow, over-stylized bore, a tedious chronicle of vapid, wealthy sociopaths whose boring, destructive hedonism inspires neither sympathy nor interest. Fitzgerald’s writing feels less like profound literature and more like drunken, insecure whining, attempting to cloak a glaring lack of genuine emotional substance in overwritten, purple prose that serves only to highlight the wretched carelessness of its amoral characters. It is a painfully narcissistic, deeply pretentious “classic” that, much like its desperate author, mistakes flashy cynicism for insight and loud parties for a personality.

***

THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY by Henry James

Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady often feels like a grueling exercise in patience, buried under hundreds of pages of dense, over-analytical prose. While framed as a masterpiece of psychological realism, the narrative frequently stagnates, following Isabel Archer—a protagonist whose supposed intelligence is constantly undermined by her own frustratingly naive and self-important choices. James’s tendency to obsess over every minute internal thought results in a narrative pace that is glacial at best, making the central tragedy feel less like a profound exploration of betrayal and more like a predictable consequence of a character’s own vanity. For those seeking momentum or emotional resonance, this novel can be a stuffy and pretentious slog through the social minutiae of people who are difficult to find sympathetic. Henry James is the undisputed titan of tedious intellectual evasion, a writer who uses thirty words when one would do, creating shimmering, suffocating webs of prose that hide the absolute lack of dramatic substance beneath. Reading his novels is a nauseating chore, a “horrible” experience that feels like drowning in polite teacup drivel while watching characters you cannot bring yourself to care about engage in subterranean, melodramatic non-events. He is essentially a gilded bore, whose relentless, circuitous sentences are merely loud breathing—the sound of a craftsman trying to make agonizingly long, pretentious nothingness pass for profound art.

********

How about me, AI? Certainly AI could not find fault with this model of probity and rectitude - or could it?

RICHARD CURTIS

“Richard Curtis has often been viewed as a divisive figure, with his reputation as a vocal advocate for authors arguably overshadowed by a penchant for self-promotion and confrontational, old-school tactics that some editors found tiresome rather than intimidating. While presenting himself as a champion against publisher exploitation, his critics might argue his, at times, public airing of industry dirty laundry was more about bolstering his own brand as a “revolutionary” agent than offering practical, modern solutions for his clients. Furthermore, his blunt, sometimes condescending tone in advising writers—often emphasizing his own superior patience or clout—can come across as patronizing, portraying a ‘mother knows best’ mentality that clashes with the collaborative nature of modern author-agent relationships, as noted in his own musings on client management.”

Ouch.

****************

If you enjoyed this post, Restack it.

Richard Curtis’s latest book, Digital Inc., Inside the Transformation of Publishing from Print to E-Books, now on sale.

Some businesses discourage employees from accepting gifts, because the practice suggests undue and even corrupt influence. In the publishing business, however, exchanging gifts is a more relaxed custom and seldom suggests anything other than good will or gratitude.

The commonest forms of gifts are, of course, books. Books are not just what editors do, books are what editors are. They represent their good taste and pride and their investment of time, care and love. Seldom will editors invite an agent to lunch or drinks without bestowing a just-published or soon-to-be published book or an early look at a highly touted volume, the underlying message being “Do you have anything as good as this?”

Over the course of my career, however, I have received some gifts that were far off the beaten path. The late and great western saga novelist Terry C. Johnston presented me with a vicious-looking Indian jawbone war club, I forget which tribe. (See the photo above, complete with the ass’s teeth and a baseball-sized rock tied to the bottom.) My audio narrator client Mil Nicholson gave me a shillelagh (also pictured above.) I keep both near the door of my office to defend myself from berserk authors. Luckily, I have not provoked any to that level of outrage.

I have received many gifts from writers soliciting representation ranging from balloons to baked goods. The most elaborate of the latter was a manuscript accompanied by a chocolate cake shaped like an open book, with title and author on the right side and “represented by Richard Curtis” on the left. Regrettably, the writer’s literary skills were inferior to her culinary ones.

One day a messenger delivered a large box to my agency in which an eighteen inch high chocolate elephant (with white-chocolate tusks) was lovingly packed. The accompanying note from HarperCollins editor Larry Ashmead thanked me for selling him a marvelous book called Modoc: The True Story of the Greatest Elephant That Ever Lived. My staff crowded around my desk to behold this wonder. “When do we get to eat it?” someone asked. “Not until it’s damaged,” I said, embracing it protectively. Whereupon my irrepressible associate Laura Tucker left the room, returned with a hammer, and shattered the beast with a stroke, spraying my staff with chocolate shrapnel. “It’s damaged,” she said insouciantly, popping an elephantine haunch into her mouth as everyone else pounced upon the poor beast’s carcass.

The outcome of another present was much happier. It happens that a publisher had expressed interest in a manuscript by a young author named Sonja Massie. In one of my books I had written that the fastest way for authors to gain access to agents is to tell them there is an offer on the table. Sonja prefaced her approach to me with a luscious box of homemade bonbons filled with exotic flavored liqueurs. They were irresistible, and the offer she had was a legitimate one from a legitimate publisher. I made the deal on her behalf, the first of 73 over a long and successful career.

A gift I gave in earnest to an author turned inadvertently into a joke, and then into a misfortune that almost cost me his representation.

He had just moved into a snug studio apartment in a brownstone. He’d been searching for months for a place with a wood-burning fireplace to fulfill his fantasies of attracting girls to cuddle up before a crackling fire, and at last he had found the ideal flat. The fireplace inspired the perfect gift: a cord of firewood. However, being a city boy I didn’t know how much wood a cord was. I called a supplier (yes, you can buy firewood in Manhattan), but when I told him the dimensions of the apartment he told me a cord was way too much. I reduced the order to a quarter of a cord.

I called the author and told him to be home at 1 PM to receive his “housewarming” gift (I congratulated myself for the perfect pun). A few minutes after one he called me, gushing with appreciation: they had just brought in a bundle of wood. I accepted his thanks and hung up. But five minutes later he called back, not so gushy this time. “Uh, they’ve just brought in five more bundles. That’s three years of fires on my two year lease.”

Ten minutes late he called me again, half hysterical. He was up to eight bundles! “Tell them to stop! There’s no more room in my apartment! My landlady is yelling at me! She won’t let me stack it in the hallway.” But more was to come, a total of one dozen. I called the firewood company and learned to my dismay that a quarter of a cord measured eight feet by four - 32 cubic feet, enough to warm female companions for at least a decade! By the time they delivered the last bundle he was almost in tears.

It seemed like a good gift at the time!

*****************

If you enjoyed this post, Restack it.

Richard Curtis’s latest book, Digital Inc., Inside the Transformation of Publishing from Print to E-Books, now on sale.

Every year, starting around April, publishers and literary agencies are swamped with emails and phone calls from college grads and undergrads seeking summer jobs, internships or full-time employment.

Perhaps I’m sentimentalizing but it does feel more challenging for applicants today than in the past, and it turns out that statistics support this contention. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that book publishing jobs declined from 91,100 in 1997 to 54,822 in 2023.

One reason is that over the last three decades, digital technology has streamlined many manual and mechanical processes. As I point out in my book Digital Inc., “Just about everyone in the book industry has upgraded to a higher technological mindset, from editors (using track-change software to edit scripts, for example) to contract managers (DocuSign) to bookkeepers (QuickBooks) to marketers, publicists, social media specialists all the way down to mail clerks.”

Another reason it’s harder to land a temp job or internship is the hardening of rules concerning unpaid and underpaid employment. In August 2024, New York State enacted the “Freelance Isn’t Free Act” making it harder for employers to use free or sub-minimum wage employees, and that includes publishers and agents. Cheap contract labor was not just exploitative but was also way for employers to avoid paying taxes, Social Security and other benefits for persons doing the work of full-time employees – generically described as The Gig Economy. Now that publishers can’t evade those obligations, their criteria for hiring – even summer interns – have become far more stringent than before.

Many big publishers advertise excellent summer internship programs. Typical is Simon & Schuster:

The Simon & Schuster Spring 2026 Publishing Internship Program offers students an immersive, behind-the-scenes introduction to the world of book publishing. Interns will be assigned to a specific department such as Editorial, Marketing, Publicity, Sales, or Production, where they’ll gain hands-on exposure to the full publishing process. Guided by a dedicated mentor, interns will experience the day-to-day responsibilities of an entry-level assistant, participate in departmental and company-wide meetings, and contribute meaningfully to ongoing projects.

No prior publishing experience is required; however, a genuine passion for books and storytelling is essential.

This is a paid, 8-week program, running full-time (40 hours/week) beginning in June 2026.

Eligibility Requirements:

· Must be able to commit to working 40 hours each week

· Must be a full-time undergraduate or graduate student

· Must submit a resume and cover letter; please indicate your department(s) of interest in your cover letter

Compensation is usually hourly and varies from publisher to publisher but is competitive with many other industries. Macmillan for instance offers $17 per hour (I was tempted to apply).

Despite hostility in certain governmental quarters to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, the summer offerings promoted by publishers proudly stress DEI and similar programs like We Need Diverse Books. A very attractive feature of WNDB is that it offers supplemental $3,000 grants to eligible interns (at least as of this writing) Another is that WNDB accepts remote internships. Macmillan posts: “We particularly encourage applications from groups traditionally underrepresented in publishing, including but not limited to BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, veterans, and people with disabilities.”

Because jobs with Big Five publishers (Simon & Schuster, Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Macmillan and Hachette) are highly desirable, the odds of landing one can be discouraging. The obvious strategy for job-seekers, then, is to cast their net wide, applying to small presses and literary agencies and even non-trade book publishers, almost all of which are listed online or in numerous directories.

A less obvious, but in my opinion far more successful, strategy is to seek and accept any job, however distant from your dream position it may be. The majority of trade book applications are for glam editorial jobs, but those are obviously the most competitive and hardest to land. However, there are two important things you need to know about trade publishing. First is that it is an extremely fluid and upwardly mobile industry. Whatever position you start out in, in time you will learn of openings in departments closer to your heart’s desire. The second is that if you want to be an editor you will have to gain experience in such far-flung disciplines as finance, marketing, sales and publicity. Penguin Random House’s offerings cover the spectrum of positions:

· Editorial

· Managing Editorial

· Sales

· Finance

· Production Editorial

· Marketing

· Subsidiary Rights

· Graphic Design

· Production

· Legal

· Information Technology

· Publicity

· Operations

Wishing you good luck. When your boss tells you to take some agents to lunch, you’ll know where to find me.

*****************

If you enjoyed this post, Restack it.

Richard Curtis’s latest book, Digital Inc., Inside the Transformation of Publishing from Print to E-Books, now on sale.

SUDDEN AND INEXPLICABLE manifestations of the Almighty in the affairs of ordinary people have been extensively chronicled by students of the occult. Such events have been known to occur, unexpectedly and unbidden, any time, any place. But I am willing to lay 40 to 1 that, of all the varieties of religious experiences, there is no account of a spiritual epiphany that took place at Book Expo America. Until mine.

It came about this way. Owing to the fact that my wife and business partner, Leslie Tonner Curtis, was unable to accompany me to Expo one year, it befell me to pick up advance reading copies that I thought she might be interested in. She gave me a list of those previewed in the book fair’s news bulletins, but as for those not listed I was charged with hazarding a guess as to which ones she might like to read.

This mission was fraught with intense anxiety, for Leslie is a most discerning reader and I did not want to disappoint her. As I have only lived with her for forty-four years, her selection criteria for books remain relatively opaque to me. I take no comfort in the fact that her selection criteria for shoes and handbags are equally bewildering.

Nevertheless, as I sauntered up and down the aisles, examining galley after galley and dropping them into several shopping bags I had brought with me for the occasion, I was optimistic that I had anticipated her preferences. I phoned her and read the titles to her. SCORE! She proclaimed every selection exactly to her liking and praised me lavishly. I looked forward to an extra tot of rum and a double portion of Entenmann’s crumb cake when I returned home with my prizes.

The prospect of schlepping two weighty shopping bags for the duration of my attendance at the Expo and risking the wrath of the malevolent god Hernia was not a happy one. I solved the problem by depositing them in the Javits baggage check area. The bags were white and bore distinctive grocery chain markings. Relieved of my burdens, I returned to the convention floor to work the room for several more carefree hours.

At the end of the day I returned to claim my bags and – Oh no! Oh no! Oh no! - they were not there! A frantic search and a flurry of phone calls to supervisors were of no avail. One of the clerks vaguely recalled a visitor claiming a number of white bags. Mine had obviously been accidentally mingled with theirs!

The likelihood of losing those ARCs was so utterly disheartening that I could not bring myself to call home. Desolate, I left the convention center gazing in vain at every parcel carried by departing attendees, and trudged out of Javits wondering how I could admit this mortifying loss to my life partner.

I directed my feet downtown in the direction of a cocktail party, feeling as far from festive as a guest at a funeral. When lo! On the corner of 35^th Street stood a middle aged couple waiting for a car. At their feet were seven or eight shopping bags filled with galleys. White shopping bags. And there, nestled among them, with distinctive grocery chain icons. . .

“Excuse me, I believe those are my bags,” I blurted. They looked at me as if I had criminal intent – this is New York City after all - but it was clear from my pathetic cow-eyes that this was no ruse. I recited the identifying symbols on my bags. “Oh my!” groaned the lady, examining them. “Yours must have been parked beside our own.” She happily relinquished them, whereupon I said to them what I now, reader, say to you.

“This is a miracle.”

If you agree that the odds against my recovering those books were impossibly, infinitely high, then you will surely concur with my conclusion that this could not possibly be an accident or coincidence but rather an intervention by a higher power. For which reason I am determined to sacrifice an unblemished bullock as a thanksgiving offering for my deliverance.

Since then I have carried that claim check in my wallet, a talisman of the mysterious ways that the Creator works

There are two morals to this tale. The first is, Happy is the man who gladdeneth the heart of his beloved.

The second? Well, you know what the second is.

*****************

This article was originally posted on my blog Publishing in the 21st Century

****************

If you enjoyed this post, Restack it.

Richard Curtis’s latest book, Digital Inc., Inside the Transformation of Publishing from Print to E-Books, now on sale.

From time to time I am reminded how heavily authors depend on their agents not just for business help but for psychological, emotional and even spiritual sustenance. Sometimes their need becomes urgent, and on a few occasions it is a matter of life and death. This is one such story, and it ended badly. I have borne the burden of sorrow ever since. But, as you will see, my own distress was nothing compared to the fate of a book, its author, and – I say this without hyperbole – the nation.

In 1999 it was becoming clear to me and most observers of the political scene that George W. Bush was on his way to becoming the Republican nominee for President of the United States in the 2000 election. I decided that a campaign biography might sell a lot of copies and set out to find a writer for it.

I hasten to state that this was not a political statement; it was strictly a business opportunity. Campaign biographies are seldom in-depth studies of the candidate’s life and philosophy. They are, rather, hagiographies occupying the purple end of the prose spectrum, a form of souvenir like slogan pins and banners. Thus, the writer I looked for did not need to be an accomplished historian with deep academic credentials or a dyed-in-the-wool partisan Republican. He or she just had to be a fast and competent professional craftsperson.

After sorting through my agency’s client list I found my writer. Jim Hatfield had written biographies of actors like Patrick Stewart and Ewan McGregor plus some unauthorized guides to media franchises like Star Wars and The X-Files. Though there obviously was nothing in his credentials to guarantee he could successfully tackle the larger undertaking, he was a good researcher, a facile writer and a dependable deliverer. He was anxious to move to a higher plateau, and when I pitched the idea to him he responded with a surprisingly detailed and compelling presentation. I went to St. Martin’s Press, and they snapped it up.

Several months later he turned the manuscript of Fortunate Son in, and I was bowled over. It was compelling, entertaining, sensitive, thoroughly detailed and as impeccably researched as a Ph.D. dissertation. Hatfield’s contention was that Bush’s successful career was not due to his own achievement but rather the result of his family’s wealth and connections. In the words of Greg Palast, author of a brilliant introduction to a subsequent edition, Bush was “born with a silver oil well in his mouth.”

There was one provocative and potentially sensational revelation in the book: Hatfield suggested that Bush as a youth had been arrested for cocaine possession, and that a judge who was friendly with the Bush family had purged the record. The author cited several anonymous sources supporting this contention, but unfortunately – fatally, as it turned out – they could not be verified.

Though some would shrug at the boys-will-be-boys nature of this incident, Bush’s political supporters took a dimmer view: The allegation could threaten the candidate’s election chances.

These dark assertions didn’t dampen St. Martins’ enthusiasm, nor did it raise the kinds of red flags that make editors, fact checkers or house counsels hit the brakes. It certainly didn’t negatively impact the public’s hunger for juicy details about this emerging hero. In view of this groundswell of approbation, the publisher went all-in. Instead of a quickie paperback, St. Martins decided to issue the book in hardcover with a respectable first printing of 10,000 copies. The following weeks were like an agent’s fever dream. The editor phoned me daily with updates on the first printing. It rose to 20,000, 30,000, 40,000 and ultimately 70,000 copies before publication. Then-Governor Bush (and his father, former President George Bush) expressed outrage and denied Hatfield’s claim, but that was to be expected and only served to stimulate interest in the book, which was now soaring toward the greatest success of any I had ever handled..

It happens that the week of the book’s release I had planned a trip to Amazon in Seattle. My business there accomplished, I made a routine phone call from the airport to my office to see if any matter required my attention. My associate Laura Tucker picked up the phone. “Where the hell are you?”

“You know where I am. Is something the matter?”

“Something the matter? You haven’t heard?”

“Heard what?” I felt a charge of fear in my gut.

“How about the shit has hit the fan!”

“What shit? What fan?”

“Just get the hell home, okay? We’re under siege from every reporter in the city!”

She gave me a thumbnail description of what was going on, but her explanation was so bizarre I couldn’t make sense of it. My stomach churned violently on the flight to New York. I called Laura at home as soon I stepped off the plane, and this is the tale she told me: The Dallas Morning News had published an article that day reporting that Hatfield had been convicted of hiring a hit man in 1987 to plant a bomb in his boss’s car, and Hatfield had served five years in prison. It was bizarre indeed. It was also, apparently, true.

As a result, St. Martin’s had knee-jerk recalled all 70,000 copies and literally consigned them to the oven (“. . .furnace fodder,” in the words of the publisher’s president). I pleaded with them, arguing that the book was factually sound, begging them to rely on the approval rendered by their fact checkers and legal counsel. But to no avail. They justified their action by stating that if the author was not credible, the book was not credible either. “St. Martin’s executives did not take issue specifically with the disclosures,” the New York Times explained, “. . .but instead said they no longer considered the author reliable.” I didn’t buy it: it was clear to me that they were under pressure from heavy hitters in the Bush camp.

I spent the next week dueling with the cadre of reporters harassing us. “How could you not know about this guy?” they kept asking. The answer of course was that, with few exceptions (and this was not one), no agent I know of performs formal background checks on their clients. I tried to find work for Jim but every door was closed.

On July 20, 2001, UPI reported that he had been found dead in a hotel room, an apparent suicide. He left behind his wife and child.

Bush of course won the nomination and the election. A courageous small press, Soft Skull, took over publication of the book.

Could Fortunate Son have stopped Bush’s momentum? I keep wondering about that alternative time track. As the Times pointed out, “Reader responses on the web show Americans outraged at this title’s suppression: some saying that this book has changed their vote, while others don’t accept that a meticulous, fact-checking biographer should be ‘baby seal-clubbed’ with allegations about his past.” Palast, in his introduction to the Soft Skull edition, bitterly concludes, “There is a special place in hell for publishers who run from their authors like craven dogs, who don’t mind sensationalism that sells. . . . until the game gets rough.”

The game got rough all right, rough enough to cost a writer his life.

*****************

If you enjoyed this post, Restack it.

Richard Curtis’s latest book, Digital Inc., Inside the Transformation of Publishing from Print to E-Books, now on sale.

In these columns I’ve profiled a number of publishing executive types and can proudly state that, except for occasional but readily healed squabbles, I have always enjoyed cordial relations with them. I wish I could say the same for my association with royalty managers but I’m afraid that for some time the appearance of my name on a callback memo was not cause for jubilation. I hasten to admit it was all my own fault, for I made a colossal pest of myself.

The reason was my incessant challenges to royalty accounting practices that left me baffled and frustrated. It was bad enough that they were utterly illogical, but in some cases I suspected they were fraudulent. I pushed hard for answers, and though I was warned not to bite the hand that fed my authors, I couldn’t rest until my inquiries were addressed. I’m proud to say that as a result of relentless prodding by me and my agent colleagues, almost all of the issues have been resolved. Statements today are far more transparent and comprehensible, and my relationships with royalty managers more congenial. That’s “far more transparent” with an asterisk, as we shall see.

The fundamental problem stemmed from the fact that print books are sold to stores on a consignment basis; that is, they are returnable for full or nearly full credit. This uncommon commercial practice goes back to the early and more civilized days of bookselling, when shop owners were more prudent about the books they ordered from publishers, and customers more discerning about their purchases, so that returns were modest. By the time I came into the business, however, return percentages had begun to climb, and by the end of the twentieth century they were out of control, in some cases as high as fifty or sixty percent thanks to the blockbuster mentality and the addictive overbuying habits of chain and big box stores.

What has this got to do with royalty accounting? Well, everything! The returnability of books posed a huge headache for publishers because some of the money they collected from stores had to be refunded when those stores returned unsold copies. Therefore, publishers held back royalties from authors until returns were finalized – years (and years and years) after publication.

You can easily grasp the potential for mischief in this system; publishers could withhold (the official term was “reserve”) a lot of royalties and withhold them for a long time if they were so inclined. Many of them were so inclined, and a few larcenously so. Authors and agents received royalty statements that in effect said “We sold this many copies and here is your money.” No mention of the calculations they used to arrive at the number. I likened the process to trying to telling you your batting average without telling you the number of at-bats or hits. Many publishers gave up trying to explain the inexplicable; if you didn’t know how many copies of a book were going to be returned, how could you know how much money it was safe to release to the author?

It took me a long time to figure out that that author royalties are not based on copies sold, but rather copies not returned. When we had a better understanding of how it worked, I and my fellow agents demanded more transparency. Thanks to this pressure, publishers began to explain to authors the formulas they used to release or withhold royalties. Most important, their formulas stipulated a final release date for all withheld royalties.

Perhaps you can now understand why my persona was not exactly grata in royalty departments. The good news is that the process is less stressful, and the players on both sides of the table less stressed. Release schedules for royalties are now expressly stated. Furthermore, because e-books are usually not returnable, publishers don’t withhold royalties on them at all. Unfortunately - and here’s that asterisk - print books are still sold on consignment, requiring royalty managers to don their green eye shades and perform calculations that could be performed by a schoolchild with pencil and paper if that odious practice were abandoned.

*****************

If you enjoyed this post, Restack it.

Richard Curtis’s latest book, Digital Inc., Inside the Transformation of Publishing from Print to E-Books, now on sale.

You have every reason to believe literary agents are relatively sedentary and ruminative individuals, and to imagine them seated serenely at their desk shmoozing on the phone with an editor, in an armchair poring studiously over a manuscript, or in the banquette of an elegant restaurant whispering seductive nothings to an author who is thinking of leaving her agent. You would be correct 98% of the time. As for the other two percent, it’s unlikely you will hear about their extracurricular adventures, as they are too modest or embarrassed to publicize them. But if you press them – by which I mean feed them - for there is scarcely anything an agent won’t do for a free meal - you may learn that they have been involved in some shockingly silly, foolhardy or heroic escapades. From time to time I will tell you about mine, which are much closer to the silly and foolhardy than the heroic.

You may recall a couple of stories (See here and here) I related in this column about Joey the Hit Man, the self-styled assassin who wrote several books about life in the mob. I’ve been asked how I happened to end up representing him.

It all began when he called my office out of the blue. My secretary buzzed me and told me “Joey is on the phone. He said you’ll want to talk to him.”

“Joey who?”

“Just Joey,” she said.

I told her to tell him I was busy but she buzzed me back. “He won’t take no for an answer. He sounds kind of . . . ominous.”

I picked up the phone and yes, he sounded quite ominous. His voice was dark, his sentences clipped as if snipped by a shears. He said he was a member of “a certain organization” and wanted to tell the inside story of the highly publicized shooting of mob boss Joseph Colombo and the subsequent turf war between the Joseph Colombo and Joey Gallo factions of the Mafia. (Was everyone in the syndicate named Joe, Joey or Joseph?) I threw caution to the winds and invited him up to my office. He was squat and muscular, not quite the “Mister Five by Five” of song fame. He projected compressed danger, yet there was a glint of humor – gallows humor? – in his eye. In spite of everything, I liked him.

I decided it was best to be honest, even if it meant incurring the wrath of a man who did not seem to have any qualms about liquidating people. I told him I didn’t think Colombo was a good idea, because by the time the book was written and published two years later, the affair would be old news. But as I listened to him, an idea formed in my mind. “You know, Joey, not too many people know what it’s like to be a Mafia killer. If you’re willing to talk about it and are not afraid you will be. . .” All I could think of was “bumped off” or “rubbed out,” revealing a mindset pathetically mired in 1940’s crime movies. “Taken down,” Joey said helpfully.

I spent an anxious week stressing over getting involved with this man but concluded that the book was more important than my worthless carcass. So, I introduced Joey to freelance writer Dave Fisher. They wrote a first-rate presentation that I submitted to several publishers. Almost all were afraid to touch the project. But one, Playboy Press, an enterprise started by Hugh Hefner of bunny fame (it eventually became an imprint of Penguin Random House), invited Joey, Dave and me to their offices. We took our seats in front of a desk behind which sat three executives with their arms folded in skepticism. “Let me be frank,” said the editor in chief, “we’ve researched you but found nothing to corroborate your claims.”

“You’re damn right you found nothing,” Joey said. “That’s why I’m still breathing.”

“How can we be certain you are who you say you are?” our interlocutor asked.

“Let me show you something,” he said. He thrust his hand inside his jacket. Our hosts instinctively pushed their chairs back. He produced a brass object the size of a deck of playing cards, with two sockets into which he inserted a pair of tubes. “These,” he explained, are barrels for shotgun shells. “This gadget is for close range action,” he explained, drawing our attention to two small triggers. “Not very effective at distance, but close-up. . .”

He began expatiating on how he plies his trade. As he spoke he gestured with his improvised shotgun, casually waving and pointing it at the editors who bobbed, weaved, ducked and flinched in a tableau of abject terror, which Dave and I would have found hilarious had Joey not aimed his weapon at us too.

“We’ll take your word for it,” said the editor-in-chief, and the next day we worked out the terms of a contract.

Was Joey who he said he was? Watch this interview by the late NBC talk show host Tom Snyder and make up your mind. If you’re skeptical, observe Snyder’s face when Joey responds to his question, “What would you do to me if I were to walk over and lift that mask off your face?”

*****************

If you enjoyed this post, Restack it.

Richard Curtis’s latest book, Digital Inc., Inside the Transformation of Publishing from Print to E-Books, now on sale.

Almost every movie contract has a provision for television rights; and almost every television contract has a provision for movie rights. Why?

One reason is that producers themselves may not be absolutely certain which format best serves the property until they start developing the script or pitching it to studios. They may, for instance, read the movie screenplay and conclude it would make a better pilot for a television series. And vice-versa.

A second reason is that no matter which format is first released, sooner or later the other one (or ones) may come into play. A hit movie might generate sequels, which generate a television series, which generates series spinoffs, which generate video games. It’s even possible for a television series to generate a theatrical movie, as counterintuitive as that may sound.

Most important of all, for defensive reasons producers pack their contracts with every possible format and contingency, for if they overlook one, a rival might seize on the omission and claim those rights.

Your producer may have had a theatrical motion picture in mind when they approached you. But it is not uncommon that, in the course of developing the project, he or she realizes it would make a better television series than a theatrical film. However, the price structure for television is quite different from the one for movies. Do you have to negotiate a completely new deal? No, because you will have anticipated that contingency at the time of your original negotiation. There will be language in your contract stipulating that if the producer makes a theatrical motion picture, you will be entitled to X terms, but if they make a television series instead, you will be entitled to Y.

While the payment structure for movie deals has relatively few moving parts, television payment structures are stuffed with as many what-ifs as the imaginations of entertainment lawyers and studio vice-presidents can conjure. Nevertheless, we can boil them down to a handful of essential provisions.

The terms for TV options are similar to those of movie deals – 18 months renewable for another 12 or 18 months, and prices on the average in the low to high five figures. But the purchase prices for TV rights are expressed completely differently from those for movies. Whereas a motion picture’s price is generally based on the budget, a TV series purchase price is based on such factors as format (mini-series, weekly dramatic or comedy series, etc.), the significance of the studio (majors, mini-majors, streaming platforms etc.), and length of episodes (half hour, hour, 90 minutes etc.). And though the initial purchase price for a television series is almost invariably lower than that for a movie - generally from low five figures to low six - the difference is made up by payment of per-episode royalties. The royalty depends on the length of each episode, but it seldom exceeds mid-four figures. There are residual royalties for reruns, too – usually up to five.

You may ask for a profit participation for a television series but, as I have pointed out, given studio accounting practices, your odds of seeing a penny of profit are about the same as discovering a bag of diamonds in your medicine cabinet.

On the other hand, the chances of your being signed as a consultant are a little better for television series than for a movie, for the simple reason that authors have a better grasp of the breadth and complexity of their series than screenwriters, and the producers may genuinely solicit the author for insights into character development and story continuity. Some consultancy stints are one-time only, others can be a fee for every episode. If your book or book series is a commercial hit, you or agent or lawyer (at this point you will certainly have an agent or lawyer) might well be able to land you Executive Producer credit, and you can start looking for that villa in Beverly Hills.

************************

If you enjoyed this post, Restack it.

Richard Curtis’s latest book, Digital Inc., Inside the Transformation of Publishing from Print to E-Books, now on sale.