the pitch spring 2014 The Newsletter for the Association of Authors' Representatives CONTENTS LETTER FROM and we were the last ones still talking. I THE PRESIDENT felt as if I had had a primer on the last 1. LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT fifty years in this business. Michigan-born Carole always 3. THE RISE OF MASS MARKET e in the American agent thought she would follow her father 4. BIG MOVES: SPOTLIGHT ON Wcommunity have suffered way too many into law, then considered looking for EDITORS' NEW POSITIONS sad losses in the past couple of years. a position on Wall Street, and moved How we miss the genial temperament to New York City after college in the 5. LOIS WALLACE, AN ORIGINAL of Owen Laster, who seemed to know mid-1960s only to find that it appeared 6. NEW FINANCING POSSIBILITIES everyone else at the Four Seasons impossible for a young woman to find FOR THEATRICAL PRODUCTIONS when we met for a group lunch there; a good job on Wall Street. To pay the 6. COMMITTEE REPORT: the gentlemanly warmth of Carl rent, she took a job as a copy editor at INTERNATIONAL Brandt; the droll seriousness of Robert Holt, Rinehart and Winston, and found 7. CONTRIBUTORS Lescher. I figure that Wendy Weil herself copyediting books such as “The and Lois Wallace, the best of friends Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison. Staff 8. WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW IF in life, are avidly discussing books, changes left her head of the copyediting YOU'RE BUILDING A NEW AGENCY WEBSITE fashion, and the latest gossip in the department. From there she went to great beyond. I had been fortunate Dutton, then owned by Jack Macrae’s 10. COMMITTEE REPORT: WEBSITE for many years to have been in a family, where she was managing 11. UP AND COMING EDITORS networking group comprised of these editor. Dutton distributed a number fabulous agents, and there is a great of publishers including the Saturday 18. COMMITTEE REPORT: ROYALTIES void in the loss of their company, their Review Press and the Richard W. Baron collective wisdom, and their stories Publishing Co. (where she met her 19. CRAFT PUBLISHING GOES of the old days. We who loved and future husband). She went on to manage EVERY WHICH WAY respected them so much truly miss the various corporate transitions, mergers, 20. MARK YOUR CALENDARS presence of these classic professionals in and acquisitions through the 1970s. In 21. FROM EGYPT TO e-books: our lives and our businesses. those days, she commented, there was A CONVERSATION WITH AGENT ___________________ widespread use of index cards to manage EXTRAORDINAIRE JEAN business details; in the pre-computer NAGGAR Last month I had a long- era the person who did everything 22. REPORT FROM THE BOOK FAIRS overdue chatty lunch with Carole by hand was a person who learned 23. COMMITTEE REPORT: Baron, now of Knopf/Doubleday. I how things work. Her jobs brought her CONTRACTS know Carole is always good for an a deep understanding of all business eye-opening story, or a revelation aspects of publishing – via what was 23. NEW MEMBERS about why certain business things are probably thousands of index cards. 24. 'OPEN ROAD' DECISION the way they are – how mass market A call came in 1975 from LEAVES OPEN QUESTIONS paperbacks evolved, for example, or Phyllis Grann, who was looking for 25. COMMITTEE REPORT: how a publisher should be taking care a managing editor at Pocket Books. DIGITAL RIGHTS of its authors. This time I begged her Carole and Linda Grey, who had been 26. AAR CANON OF ETHICS to give me the short version of her hired to be an editor, arrived to start life story in publishing, which I knew work on the same day, but Phyllis was 28. BOARD OF DIRECTORS would be colorful and beguiling. We off at a sales conference and there was sat there at the Century Club until the no one there to greet them. (They waiters started clearing up all around us, left together wondering if they really continued on page 2 page 2 the pitch spring 2014 continued from page 1 had jobs and became fast friends.) As administrative editor, Carole learned about contracts and reprints and how to deal with notoriously high-profile publishing executives who ruled through the 70s and 80s. (Ah, no details; I promised not to tell tales or name names….) Then Peter Mayer, who had been announced as the new #1 at Pocket, asked her to run the editorial department. Her response was absolute: she didn’t want the job. She didn’t want to buy books. She didn’t have an opinion about books. She was good at organizing things, not editorial matters. But her husband and book was literary, a commercial book Press, once owned by her husband, Peter challenged her to do it: why hold was commercial, and never the twain Richard Baron, and sold to Doubleday yourself back?, they both asked. So she would meet – until Garp sold 90,000 where it had been phased out. She said yes, and the rest is history. She did copies in hardcover and went on to sell envisioned a line of books that would some fabulous paperback originals in millions in paperback. continue to feed the trade paperbacks at an era when paperback was largely a After three years, Carole went Dell, and hired Susan Kamil to be the reprint enterprise. She commented that to Crown as editor in chief, edited editor in chief of The Dial Press and to some of the things we say today about “Princess Daisy” by Judith Krantz, and bring it back to life as it exists today – a e-books as a model for original material acquired “The Clan of the Cave Bear” publisher of award nominees/winners are similar to what they used to say by Jean M. Auel. Then in l981 she went and bestselling authors. about paperbacks decades ago – if it is on to Dell as publisher. Here Carole After almost 18 years at not good enough for hardcover, let’s try was in charge of hardcovers (Delacorte), Dell/Delacorte, in the interest of paperback. (Which is of course wrong, trade paperbacks (Dell and Delta reorganization, Carole moved to Dutton but the paperback format might be trade paperback) and the mass market as president, and then to Putnam. right for the right book.) Today, some line, bringing together a lifetime of Always keeping her hand in editing, might say, if it is not good enough for a experience in all formats. She brought working with writers like Maeve Binchy, physical book release, try digital. (Again in Susan Moldow as editor in chief, Judy Blume, Thomas Harris, Nicholas this is wrong, as many new writers are and the two systematically started to Evans, Jean M. Auel, Elmore Leonard, discovered to have “legs” by their own remold the Dell Publishing program: Kurt Vonnegut, Harlan Coben, and digital publishing of their first books.) Delacorte hardcovers went from 100 Danielle Steel, Carole realized that it was Carole loved the mass market titles a year to 40; upmarket reprints time to devote herself to working with culture. It was reaching millions of found a home in the trade paperback authors full-time. She is now happily people who wanted to read. As late lines rather than mass, including books doing that for Knopf. as the 1970s, there was still a healthy that were acquired by the legendary We continued to discuss her business in reprint publishing; her Sam Lawrence; and the category mass range and rise as a publisher. She boss, Peter Mayer, would always insist, market books served as a training remains a hands-on editor with a deep “buy the backlist! buy the author!” camp for bestselling authors. Never and rare knowledge of the business, So when Carole bought “The World forgetting Peter Mayer’s cry, when Dell from contracts to copyediting, from According to Garp” at Pocket for an bought the paperback rights to John format to sell-through. Her formula? impressive sum, she bought the John Grisham’s second novel, “The Firm,” Buy a reasonable number of books. Irving backlist, actively relaunched the she remembered to buy the rights to his Make sure you can do something for backlist as reprint editions, and really first book, “A Time to Kill,” too. One each book. Know who the reader is. paid attention to these paperback of the things Carole is most proud of Will you take a copy to lunch? Can publications. At this time a literary is bringing back the imprint The Dial you make sure everyone you know continued on page 3 page 3 the pitch spring 2014 continued from page 2 reads this book? And the sales and marketing people need to know what is going on for every single book, what the expectations are, and what you can do to help them do their job for each title. I asked what she dislikes about agents, and not unexpectedly this no-nonsense gal said flatly that she doesn’t appreciate submissions that come weighted down with hype and hyperbole, or submissions of manuscripts which a nervous author may still actually be revising. She dislikes vying with the agent to be the reigning editorial voice to the author; “the editor is supposed to edit!” she thunders, in stark contrast to refrains all too often heard in agent gatherings. What has changed the most, in her view? “Publishing has always THE RISE OF MASS MARKET been about content, and the publisher is the broker of getting the writer and the reader together,” she says.