The marketing game-, how I sell novelsRice, Carl Hiaasen, Dean Koontz, Richard North Patterson, and
Andrew Vachss—fine storytellers all, but not authors one normally
associates with rarified themes and literary prose. Knopf's list today
has a decidedly commercial tang.
There is also the matter of whether a publisher is oriented pri-
marily to paperbacks or hardcover. Without exception, today's
largest houses publish both. But their roots do show. You can see it
in the types of novels they choose and the styles in which they mar-
ket them. Pocket Books goes for a mass-market sort of novel. Viking-
Penguin is a bit more up-market, that is, oriented to novels that
might need good reviews to work.
Sometimes it can be difficult to tell just what sort of publisher
you are dealing with. Big houses today can seem almost schizo-
phrenic. On the one hand, they may tell me that they want some-
thing new, novels that break the mold. When I give them such nov-
els they often turn around and tell me that they have no idea how
to market this excellent but unusual material.
Make up your mind already!
In the end, the choices are finite, and sooner or later I arrive at a
selection of editors and publishers that seem workable for a given
author and his current novel. But before beginning my submissions,
there are yet more factors for me to ponder.
Company politics is one. Did Publisher A's parent company
recently make a major acquisition? If so, a high corporate debt load
might mean advertising and staff cuts down the road.
Editors go in and out of favor with their bosses, too. In addition,
their lists fill up. A great time to submit to an editor (as every agent
well knows) is when that editor is newly arrived at her job. Two years
down the road, however, that same editor will probably have
enough novels "in inventory"—that is, soon to be delivered or wait-
ing to be published—that even the next Gone with the Wind may not
get an offer.
Is it possible for unagented authors to obtain this sort of intelli-
gence about editors and publishers? Certainly. They need only do
what I do: study trade magazines, network with industry profession-
als over lunch, and get on the phone and dig.
Does that sound difficult to do from Indianapolis? If so, there is