BOOK PUBLISHINGHow to Get Paid
Writer
THE PRACTICAL71 POETS & WRITERS^L
IKE countless young writers before him, John
Cusick moved to New York City, in 2007, to
pursue his dream of literary stardom. Having
worked for a university press in college, Cusick
looked for a job in publishing, but the best he could find
to start out was a part-time gig as a personal assistant and
dog-walker for literary agent Scott Treimel.
“My first duties were right out of The Devil Wears Prada,”
says Cusick. “I was the guy walking down the street with
this huge dog on a leash and laundry over one arm and the
phone to my ear.”
Playing Anne Hathaway to Treimel’s Meryl Streep didn’t
pay especially well either. While living in a bedbug-infested
apartment in Brooklyn, Cusick earned about $350 a week
from various part-time jobs. “I had this great plan, which
was that if I bought two hot dogs for lunch from the local
vendor, that was four dollars for food that day,” he recalls.
But Cusick quickly graduated from walking Treimel’s
dog and fetching his dry-cleaning to helping the agent
with foreign rights and book contracts, and within a couple
of years, Cusick had begun taking on clients of his own.
Meanwhile Treimel helped Cusick launch his writing
career, persuading him to switch from literary fiction to
young adult fiction and selling his first novel, Girl Parts.
It was published by Candlewick Press in 2010. Cusick has
since written two more novels—his latest, Dimension Why,
is due out from HarperCollins next year—and now works
as an agent at Folio Literary Management.
Cusick’s rise from dog-walker living on frankfurters to
published novelist and literary agent may sound like a Cin-
derella story, but in many ways it’s par for the course for
writers working in book publishing, a field in which every-
one must endure a low-paying apprenticeship period, usually
in New York, one of the most expensive cities on the planet.
“If you really just want to be a writer, there are easier
ways to support yourself while you’re trying to write your
first novel,” says Caroline Zancan, a senior editor at Henry
Holt and the author of the novel Local Girls (Riverhead,
2015). “There are jobs that are strictly nine-to-five where
you don’t need to use your creative capital, and they prob-
eva buszaably pay better than publishing.”
MICHAEL BOURNE is a
contributing editor of Poet &
Writers Magazine.The Fourth in a Yearlong Series