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AOTW: What memorable story about an author can you share with us?
Jane Dystel:
A few years ago, I received a manuscript for a novel from an author who had previously
sent it to another agent. The 800-or-so-page manuscript had been sitting on the other
agent’s floor for almost a year and nobody had read it. An assistant at that agency
suggested to the author that she send her novel to me. The book was quirky and offbeat ---
it was about a Jesuit mission to a distant planet and it was ambitiously literary, a novel
of ideas. We asked the author to cut the manuscript by about a third and do some other
tightening of it before offering her representation. She did this and came back to us
about six months later with a streamlined, much stronger book. I then asked a young intern
in my office to read the manuscript and give me her feedback. She read it in a weekend and
confirmed with her enthusiasm, my feeling that this was not only an accomplished novel,
but also one that would find a large audience. I signed the author, Mary Russell, up and
within a week had sold her first novel, THE SPARROW, for a significant amount of money.
The book received lovely reviews, was named one of the top ten books of the year by
Entertainment Weekly and has sold beautifully since publication. Mary is now working on
her third novel.
Stuart Krichevsky:
Sometime around 1988 a client approached me with a request: Would I read a few short
stories and some newspaper articles by the son of an old friend of his, and see whether I
felt he had any talent? Expecting nothing more than to read some of the work and offer a
few words of polite encouragement, I began to read, and found something quite unexpected.
Here was a young man from a good family (the son of a physicist and a successful artist)
who was irresistibly drawn to men and women who did physical labor, and wrote about their
lives and their work with incredible power and uncommon respect. I had seen other literary
authors write about labor in a condescending way, or who would romanticize the
"simple" life of "honest" work. This writer did neither of those
things. His name was Sebastian Junger, and to support his writing in those early years he
worked as a laborer himself, doing tree work high above the ground with a chain saw, until
one day he slipped and the chain saw opened up the back of his leg. It was this accident
that launched his career.
Now in search of a safer line of work --- making a living as a writer, which has its own
hazards --- Junger decided to write a book about dangerous jobs. There would be a chapter
on tree work, a chapter on fire fighting, a chapter on diving, one on high seas rescue,
etc. We talked about the commercial problems that often accompany collections of assorted
material, and the appeal to readers of a continuous narrative in non-fiction. It was a
throw-away line about a rescue swimmer, who had made a rescue in a 1991 storm that killed
a lot of people that got my attention, and THE PERFECT STORM grew from there. Sebastian
likes to say that none of this would have happened if not for that chainsaw accident.
Amy Berkower:
I'll never forget the day I suggested to Nora Roberts, who had published about half a
dozen books with Silhouette, that she didn't need to submit an entire manuscript to secure
a contract--she could simply write a proposal. A few weeks later, she sent me a proposal
which I promptly sold. After the contract was signed, Nora confessed that she had written
the manuscript before the proposal. She explained that there was no way she could write a
proposal and think through a storyline until the book was actually written. Though I knew
Nora was an intuitive writer, I had no idea the extent to which she depended on her
instinct. Though she's got a great head, she writes mainly from her heart which is one of
the main reasons she's so successful.
Linda Mead:
A colleague of mine, Rob Preskill, had this story to share: I have known several of
the people I work with for years, and it is always very rewarding to help the people that
I like and know. One particular friend and I were at the beach in Carmel with our wives,
he and I were throwing a softball around just as we had done in Chicago, our hometown.
After I suggested a few publishers for his new book, and gave him a few marketing ideas,
he asked me if I would represent him. It was a turning point as I had not represented a
good friend before. Eventually the book made the Amazon top five which only made me think
of that perfect moment on the beach where a mutual trust had changed everything.
Lisa Swayne:
A couple of years ago, I had a client --- a first-time author --- show up for a very
important meeting in shorts, a t-shirt and flip-flops. We were meeting his editor, the
head of publicity and the head of marketing to discuss the launch for his book at an
upscale restaurant in Chelsea. Fortunately, they thought it was funny. Phew.
Loretta Barrett:
I’ve been in publishing for many years, and I’ve worked with so many
interesting people. Many vignettes are jumping into my head, but they would really take
too long to tell. I’ve worked with Betty White and there are many stories that
I’d like to share about her, because she’s such a generous, extraordinary woman,
and I’ve worked with a whole range of people from Ann Douglas to Ray Kurzweil to
George Weigel to Laura Van Wormer, each with their own stories, so I’m afraid I must
pass on this.
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