Strategy session II: midcareer damage controlseem to have the same unrealistic hopes and dreams for them as
first-time parents can have for their newborns.
A few first novelists even rush to quit their day jobs, especially if
they managed to swing a large advance. It is accepted industry wis-
dom that getting big money up front means that one's publisher will
be forced to work hard to earn it back. Sounds logical, but it ain't
necessarily so. Even with massive support, a certain number of
books are bound to fail. It also happens that publishers blow off
high advances. Believe me, I have seen it happen.
Recipients of large first advances never imagine that disaster will
happen. Indeed, hardly any new authors foresee it. While that is nat-
ural enough, it is also a good idea to take off one's blinkers and look
to the right and left. The roadside is littered with the bodies of once-
promising new careers.
Not long ago I received a call from a friend. A prize-winning short
story writer, his first few novels had landed him on the fast track at
a major mass-market house. He had often bragged that, slotted as
high as he was on his publisher's list, the trip to the best-seller lists
was nearly automatic. His agent, he had boasted, was "psychotic,"
the type of whom publishers live in fear. He had several high five-
figure advances to prove it, too. With all that in his favor he felt that
his success was assured. But then one day he called.
The "ship-in" on his new novel, he told me, was way down.
Mistakes on his publisher's part had hurt him, he felt, although
there was also a glut of novels in his chosen genre. Regardless of
the causes, it was clear that his high advances and big-shot agent
were not enough to protect him from the perish trap. He knew it,
too, and glumly spoke of looking for a job.
Mistakes and groundless optimism are not the only reasons that
authors perish. Publishers have added to this problem by their
addiction to gambling. In the quest for the next Amy Tan, Scott
Turow, Sue Miller, Whitney Otto the Cinderella authors whose
leaps into best-sellerdom seem nearly effortless—they repeatedly
step up to roll the dice in a high-stakes craps game.
I am not talking about the seven- and eight-figure advances paid
to established best-sellers. (They may deserve them.) I am talking