Introductiontours, and other hoopla that are essential to making a big splash.
The system seems horribly unfair. The brutal truth is that authors
whose work does not quickly find a sizable audience can be, and
often are, rushed to the exit doors.
In fact, while I have no empirical evidence to point to, I believe
that fully 50 percent of the authors whose first novels have been
published since 1990 have not made it beyond their second, third,
or fourth book. I know this, in part, because I get calls from them
every week. These novelists thought they had writing careers; per-
haps they even gave up other careers only to discover that they have
been mishandled, lied to, abandoned, ignored, or even worse.
Their litany of woes is by now numbingly familiar: low advances,
lousy covers, editors who left, publicity people who did not care,
advertising that came too late (if at all), orders unfilled, opportuni-
ties lost, books out of print before the next one appeared. Their
voices are desperate, their attitude cynical. They ask for assistance,
but often they are beyond help.
Sound horrible? It is, but the fact is, too, that plenty of writers do
make it beyond their second, third, and fourth books. Hundreds do
make a living, and scores do make it to the big time. It is not all luck,
either. What makes the difference in these cases is that such
authors have found, by accident or by design, methods to overcome
the thousand and one obstacles that publishing inevitably throws
in one's way.
If this book is about nothing else, it is about the practical, day-
to-day solutions, methods, and techniques that I use to make my
clients' careers happen. This book is the fruit of seventeen years on
the job, of thousands of battles fought in the trenches. It is about
marketing, contracts, hidden traps, strategies that work, ways writ-
ers go wrong—in short, everything I can think of that you might
need to make your career a success.
So who am I to be handing out this advice? I am an independent
New York literary agent, and have been for sixteen years. (My first
year in this line of work was spent at a large and well-known
"super-agency.") You will find me listed in many of the better pub-
lishing directories. You will find my offices on New York's Fifty-sev-
enth Street, right around the corner from that short but imposing
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