The Publishing Contrarian

What a beautiful place, I thought, as I walked into The Carnegie Club in New York City. Great selection for a quiet meeting to “dis” and “dish” about online publishing, writers, editors, authors, the publishing industry, independent bookstores, Barnes & Noble and Borders. What better source of insider information is there than Ron Hogan, all 6’4” of him? He and his colleague Sarah Weinman crank out the kind of information that has made them the first click in the morning for those who know and those who want to know what’s going on in the publishing industry right now.

From about a half-a-block away I saw Ron waiting politely outside The Carnegie Club. Thank goodness, I thought. It’s always a relief to me not to walk into a bar alone and decide whether to stand self-consciously by the coat check or slip onto a bar stool and hope (particularly at 4:30 in the afternoon) that no one thinks I’m there for a jump on happy hour.

“Funny kind of a smoky smell in here,” I commented to the waiter as he escorted Ron and me to a cozy, quiet corner near the windows overlooking West 56^th Street. “That is because,” the waiter said, “you’re in a cigar bar.”

That’s a “second,” I thought, having wandered into my first cigar bar recently with a cigar smoking friend in Sag Harbor, NY. I actually love the smell of most cigars and my head snaps up at the scent of that cherry tobacco with which men used to fill their pipes before pipe smoking fell out of favor and cigarette smoking was banned almost everywhere—except cigar bars.

So Ron and I hunkered down, with him smoking his cigar and me smoking by proximity, drawing in all the second hand smoke I could get.

Ron and I talked about a lot of things, many of which I plan to blog about. He’s headed for Washington, DC and BEA–BookExpo America—which is billed as “the largest event serving the book market in the world.” I’m thinking about going. I have it on good authority (Ron’s) that press passes are given out liberally to bloggers who blog about books and the publishing industry. I might ride the rails from NYC to DC and spend a few days networking and loading up on free books, though you can only carry and then read so many books. Frank Wilson, The Philadelphia Inquirer’s book review editor and Books Inq. blogger, also asked if I am I going. So, I’m thinking about it. I’m tempted.

We also talked about the Indian princess who has fallen from grace. I still feel so bad that the disgrace of this will haunt Kaavya Viswanathan for the rest of her life. She didn’t think about that when she cadged more than a few lines from Megan McCafferty’s books. Kaavya is much too young to understand the stigma of being caught cheating. She should have a chat with Senator Ted Kennedy about his Harvard experience. (People may not talk about it, but they always remember, and if they forget, believe me, someone will remind them, whether it’s one year or thirty years from today. Look, I just mentioned Senator Kennedy. If you don’t know what I am talking about, it won’t take you long to find someone who does.) And call me just too empathetic, but I can only imagine what her family is going through: Higher than high one minute on the glory brought to the family and then ….

We talked about “real” salaries in publishing and how much people really make given the hours editors, for example, spend working in the office and working at home at night and over the weekend. I have it on good authority (mine) that in the city most senior editors max out at about $75,000 or $6250/month and then fall into the 25-28% tax bracket. (That’ll make you borrow receipts from a friend!) Seventy-five thousand, by the way, is considered a very good salary in publishing. I’m not talking about the publishers and I’m not talking about the “star” editors making a few hundred thousand or several hundred thousand dollars a year. I’m talking about someone who has an adequate track record of successes and has been around for a while, doing creative quitting along the way to squeeze a two- or three-thousand-dollar raise out of the next publishing company. I don’t know any editor who works only a 38 or 40 hour week. My guess is that many editors work a 50-60+ work week. How much are they making when you factor in all those hours? How much do they have to live on? In New York City a one-bedroom apartment is renting for about $2300 - $2500/month. Throw in a garage (outdoor or indoor, side street, not avenue) and you can add $350-$400/month. No wonder editors walk around with the lining of their pockets hanging out and eyes dialated and fixed from exhaustion.

Ron and I talked about driving traffic to websites and blogs. Mediabistro’s Galleycat.com has the publishing industry pacing outside its door at dawn each morning.  Thousands of people drop by each day. I do, too. I’d be interested to know how galleycat.com and publishersweekly.com compare in unique hits each day. (Notice I am saying unique hits, not just hits. There’s a difference: the former being someone entering the blog, the latter being the number of pages viewed by the former.) Of course, it’s none of my business, but that doesn’t usually stop me from asking!

Nice chat with Ron! Two drinks (Ron), two diet cokes (the Wicked Witch of Publishing), two cigars (Ron) and an entire bowl of mixed nuts (the Wicked Witch of Publishing) and we parted at the corner of 56^th and Seventh avenue. Ron headed uptown and I headed for the play Shining City with Oliver Platt on Broadway.

The next morning when I woke up, I thought: WHAT IS THAT STINK! I sniffed around the apartment, but the stink was everywhere. Actually, it seemed like it was following me. Of course, it was my hair! It reeked of cigar smoke and the pile of clothes thrown on the chair in the corner of the apartment stank, too. No wonder people seated next to me at the play were leaning as far away from me as possible and seemed to have hankies over their noses much of the time. No wonder on the subway ride home people slid a little bit away on the seat.

Next time, Ron, I’m picking the place–a juice bar.

Note from the Wicked Witch of Publishing: Leave your email address if I don’t already have it! I try to send a quick email out when I put up a new posting. Also, the Wicked Witch of Publishing is up to no good! Again! If you are a first-time author with a manuscript languishing in the slush pile, definitely leave your email address so the Wicked Witch can get in touch with you to help you with a new service she is offering in a week or two. (Click on “Email” under “Pages” on the sidebar).

At last, a play on Broadway that is something other than pap for the suburban housewives and their nodding, snoring husbands. Of course, I knew my window of opportunity to get tickets would be about thirty seconds once the rave review came out in The New York Times, but a quick call, a hard negotiation over the tickets ($96.00? I think not!) and, voila, I had my two $46.25 “mezz” e-tickets appear on my computer screen.

I also telephoned my English friend Bridget and suggested she join me. (Her manuscript, What’s Mine is Yours, is sitting on an editor’s desk at a major publishing house.) I thought she might enjoy a respite from being on her knees 24/7 and reciting all those Hail Marys about a potential contract that would change her life forever. I was right. She loved the idea of seeing an Alan Bennett play.

What a crowd! What a scramble to push our way to our seats. I cannot think of a time in recent memory when I have seen a “standing room only” crowd in a theatre in New York City, let alone three rows deep. It’s been years, and back then, the SRO crowd was always seedy looking students, waving discounted tickets, and hoping at intermission to slip unnoticed into an unoccupied seat. Not tonight, believe me, every seat was taken. Indeed, the entire crowd was upscale, refined looking and, how shall I say this, clearly very diverse in its sexual proclivities.

It was a good thing Bridget came with me so she could translate. This play was in English, right? “I’m from the south of England, and I’m having trouble understanding these boys.” Throw a layer of schoolboy French onto the north-of-England-speak for twenty-minutes at the near-beginning of the play, and the Wicked Witch of Publishing couldn’t laugh uproariously in the right places, unlike all those guffawing expats in the audience. 

How small were people in 1917 when The Broadhurst Theatre first raised its curtain? Not only had I landed us in the second-to-last row of the mezzanine, far right, but the seats were better sized for Lilliputians than the well-fed, much taller crowd that was jammed cheek-to-jowl and knee-to-seat. I’m not sure whose pocket I slipped my hand into—mine or his—while seeking a tissue, but I murmured an apology anyhow, and he accepted it.

Intermission? A madhouse! Let’s go! I clambered over my neighbors and headed into the thick of it, only to be stopped mid spiral staircase by an imperious, ferret-faced usher demanding that people get off the staircase. No glass of wine for the Wicked Witch to while away fifteen minutes while cruising for celebrities and potential interviewees for The Publishing Contrarian. As I pressed my back to the wall and inched my way carefully up the staircase, masses of smartly dressed women elbowed and shoved past each other to reach their ultimate goal–the toilet, loo, WC, powder room in the basement. Casting a glance back over the crowd in the main lobby and then down into the orchestra section where many people were still seated, I had but one thought: firetrap.

I loved The History Boys, even if I couldn’t understand every word of the dialogue. I loved it because it wasn’t the usual, superficial, let’s-aim-for-the-lowest-common-denominator-theatre-goer production. I loved it because I was cast back a million years to listening to recitations of Auden, Hardy and Housman. If the boys had mentioned Chaucer, I would have leapt to my feet and recited the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. Yes, the first 18 lines and, yes, in olde English. (Hah! Suddenly, a newfound respect for that decrepid, spinster teacher, Miss Spence!)

A New York City crowd doesn’t waste much time on clapping. Even at the opera, where curtain calls keep going on and on ad nauseam and standing ovations are de rigueur, the crowd is hightailing it from the first bow. We’re just that way! I loved it. Let’s get outta here! At the conclusion of The History Boys, a few people gave a standing ovation, but the majority of us just clapped really enthusiastically and then skedaddled for the local parking lots, limos and subways. (Perhaps the more polite Brits stayed on a bit longer or followed the cast to Angus McIndoe, the Broadway hangout mentioned in The New York Times.) Denizen of the subway that I am, I peeled off from the high-end crowd and hopped the Broadway Local. I headed downtown, clutching my Playbill and recalling memorized verses from Kipling and Donne, and great lines from Shakespeare.

I’m heartened and, yet, disheartened by the results of my survey: I did cast a slightly “different” net for my survey: I included Web friends, personal friends, strangers appearing in group emails I received from friends, and fellow-volunteers at New England English Springer Spaniel Rescue. Referrals from other blogs trickled in for a look-see, and comment, as well. (Thank you to everyone who stopped by! My “visitor counter” was whirring madly again!) Here’s my armchair analysis of my straw pole:

1. What books are you and your family actively reading? We read, and read a lot. Well, YOU read a lot. It’s clear I’ve got to put my foot through the TV, stop blogging obsessively, or go on a long vacation to an isolated, electricity-free beach to match the ferocious pace of reading that seems to be going on. However, I think we have a dirty little secret about what we are reading and we don’t want to fess up. What I should have asked for question #1 was: What highbrow and lowbrow books are you reading? I, too, committed a sin of, shall we say, title omission. Yes, I do have The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri ready to read, but I also have Marley & Me by John Grogan in my stack, too. (I’m hanging my head. Yes, I guess, I’m a literary snob and the occasional, but very closeted, trash reader.) When Frazer Dobson doubled back after seeing my comment asking why none of the best-sellers were on anyone’s list, he, too, admitted to, gasp, reading Stephen King! So I am going to chalk up all of those responses to: Legamus – we read, indeed we do, and leave it at that.
2. Were any of these books from online, self-publishing companies such as iuniverse or lulu? Discouraging news here. No. No. No. No. No. So many No’s. Frazer Dobson’s comment in the previous post should be read carefully by all self-published authors. Frazer is a bookseller. He finds self-published books generally poorly written and poorly edited, if edited at all. And are we really surprised that the general reading public (not the rabid blogging, Web surfing survey takers here) looks blank when I mention iuniverse or lulu? It takes a lot of marketing to reach outside the Internet and drag people in. A company’s reach is only as far as its marketing arm can throw the ball. They have to be throwing the ball and not just satisfied with making money off of desperate, unpublished or unpublishable  (sorry!) authors. The Casual Count: 22 no/3 yes.
3. Were any of your books free, online books in PDF format? No. No. No. No. No.  So many more no’s. So rarely had anyone read an online book, and then not complained about how uncomfortable it was to be facing the computer screen, it became clear that these folks would much rather have been reading in bed, pajama tops covered in chocolate chip cookie crumbs, and a nice glass of warm milk on the beside table. And the question I might have included was: Did you read these online books to the end? I just finished reading A Half Life of One online, and I tell you it was torture to sit on my swivel chair, pitching forward and backward, resting my elbows on the desk or half-sliding off the chair for the hours it took to read that book–good (and horrifying!) though it was. The Casual Count: 22 No/4 yes. 
4. Did any of your books come from seeing author websites? This count looks a little better, but when you look closer, you see that, again, it’s the literary blogging community checking out each other’s Web sites, introducing themselves to each other; in short, marketing themselves to each other, and not reaching the general buying public at all. I’ve heard a lot about Val Landi and the success he has with A Woman from Cairo on his Web site. (Val and I are trying to get together in NYC.) Val Landi recommends an independent Web site for all authors. He wants authors to refinance their houses, sell their first-born, and do whatever it takes to have a presence on the web. Is he taking into account that authors may not have his Harvard MBA background, or his resources, or his commercial drive, or his ability to work with Web designers? The Casual Count: 22 No/7 yes.
5. Were any of these books purchased directly from Random House, Simon & Schuster, William Morrow, Knopf or Rodale’s online bookstore?  Nusquam, nihilum, nihil. No. Publishing executives howl with laughter about the ridiculousness of lowly authors self-publishing and making feeble attempts to promote their own books into something other than oblivion through personal Web sites, iuniverse or lulu. (Scoff, scoff.) But look! Publishing companies now have their very own vanity Web sites and are making feeble attempts to promote “their own” books into something other than oblivion through their own in-house, online bookstores. In some ways I find humor and not a little irony in this: Big, beautiful Web sites are launched without fanfare, maintained at great cost, and run by people obviously incapable of figuring out how to market the Web page to the buying public. Dare I point out that there are good and even GREAT books on these million dollar Web sites, and no one is buying from them? (With a million dollars, I can think of a million ways to reach the buying public and drag them to a publishing company’s Web site instead of letting them go to Barnesandnoble.com or Amazon.) The truth is, publishing companies don’t really care about their online sites. Authors’ online Web sites are a measure of desperation and determination. Publishing industry vanity Web sites are the sweet “arm candy” of self-satisfied, powerful, older, rich guys on 345’ yachts pulling up to dock at Little Palm Island: irrelevant, but pretty, and good for the ego.

If you feel like entering the confessional and revealing your secret passion for trash books, feel free to list them (anonymously if you must!) in the comments section below.

Thanks to everyone for dropping by over the past few days! Here’s some more limp-along Latin: Come back soon…Redeo nunc!

===============

How to Get on the Wicked Witch of Publishing (TM) Email List: Send an email if you want to be notified when a new posting goes live. Just go to the top of the right-hand sidebar, click on “EMAIL,” and fire away. Your email address will be stored.

Target: Blog-trotters, Internet passersby, New England English Springer Spaniel Rescue, my entire address book, all those people from whom I receive massive group emails that contain dumb or funny jokes, photos, chain-link emails, or another Dr. Phil survey (I scored 48, thank you, on the latest one)–and every single name within the group email, whether I know who these people are or not.

Objective: Well, we read, therefore we should be surveyed, but I, for one, never have been, nor have I ever heard of anyone I know being surveyed about his or her book buying habits. Let’s cast our own net and see if we can draw some independent conclusions ourselves about the state of online publishing and where we should be putting our efforts and our money. 

Could I ask you to take the survey and write your answers in the comment section below? Comments, by the way, don’t get posted until after I read them so I can delete the weird and the spam. 

Setting the Survey Scene: There is a huge storm and outage in your area and the neighborhood goes dark about 4 p.m. Nothing connects you to the outside world: no Internet, no phones (land or cell), no satellite, no nothin’. (Where are the old kerosene lamps you thought you’d never use again? In the basement along with the board games, but it’s DARK down there.) You dig deep in the back of the utility drawer and find an old battery powered radio from which you hear that it will be several days before you will be reconnected to the outside world again in any way. O Pioneers! You allow the water from upstairs pipes to drain into the pots in the kitchen. You open and quickly close the refrigerator. (Survival: it’s all coming back to you now.) Thank goodness you have those scented candles in the bathroom and some long white candles in the drawer in the dining room; you’re going to need them. You gather your family. They are in despair, frantically pointing the TV-remote toward the TV and pressing and repressing the “Power On” button and plugging and unplugging the computer, trying to reset it. Yes, the worst has come to pass. The family will have to READ by candlelight or spend the evening sitting in a dark room, making spooky faces at each other by holding the precious flashlight under their chins or casting shadow birds and rabbits with long ears on the wall with hands and fingers until the batteries die.

1. What books are you and your family actively reading that you can grab? By that I mean eagerly reading, not idly thumbing through hoping it will make you drowsy so you don’t have to sneak another shot of whiskey or drop an Ambien to reach REM sleep.
2. Were any of these books from online, self-publishing companies such as the much maligned (by traditional publishers and your friendly bookstore) iuniverse or lulu? Are you even aware of these websites as sites to buy books? Now that you’ve looked, what do you think? Would you buy a book from them if the author was someone other than a self-published friend?
3. Were any of your books free, online books in PDF format or had you planned to read them online, and are out of luck, on this dark and stormy night?
4. Did any of your books come from seeing author websites similar to A Woman from Cairo—very sophisticated, The Kill–trailer caused my dog to stroke out, or The Alphabet of Manliness—eek, eek, brace yourself? Do websites that sell books find you or do you find them? (I’m not talking about the big guys—Barnes and Noble, Borders or Amazon. I mean authors who are attempting to attract you to their websites.)
5. Did any of these books arrive at your now-darkened and chilly house because you purchased, say, directly from Random House, Simon & Schuster, William Morrow, Knopf or Rodale’s online bookstore? Have you ever purchased a book directly from the publisher’s website?

Wait! I think I see a light on down the road! Wow! A reprieve! The refrigerator is humming. Computer lights are flashing. The cell phone just beeped. Quick, try the light switches. Someone flush the toilet!

End of survey. Reminder: stock up on batteries, candles and…books.

Note from the Wicked Witch of Publishing: I’m taking the survey, too. See my answers in the first comment box!  

What a morning: up at 5:20 a.m., pawing through my closet trying to find my black suit, holding black stockings up to the light to see if they are run-free, donning my black trench coat and grabbing my black attaché case and black umbrella to head like a homing pigeon for The Harvard Club on 44th Street in New York City.

I was invited to a Breakfast Business Meeting sponsored by The Harvard Business School (or The B-School, to you!) with “Media Guru” Steve Murphy, President and CEO, Rodale, Inc., and “change agent,” as he was billed.

The Harvard Club is, well, The Harvard Club. Lots of large portraits on the walls. Lots of club chairs scattered about. Lots of dark wood. Cavernous rooms. Bow ties. My late mother once said to me that men who went to Harvard always managed to drop Harvard into the conversation within a minute or two of meeting you. It is absolutely true!

But I digress.

Quite a few people were from out of town, which surprised me given the nightmare of crossing a bridge or entering a tunnel into Manhattan between 6 a.m. and 8:30 a.m. The lucky Wicked Witch, however, could stumble over, bleary-eyed, from her apartment to The Harvard Club, and she did just that, spurred on by the thought of a free feed, networking and fodder for the blog.

Once there, I checked my coat (or else!), lowered my screechy voice to a library-like whisper, and ascended to the third floor meeting room. Coatless and name-tagged, I took the opportunity to load my plate with pound cake, fill a coffee cup with decaf and reconnoiter. (Where were the bacon and eggs, grits, bangers—for you UKers—or pancakes? I was so disappointed…and hungry.)

To my left Meredith Corporation and a handsome “conflict mediator.” To my right a job hunter. At the next table all suited up and a little closer to the speaker, The Wall Street Journal and Beneficial Capital Corporation.

At the start we (about 40 of us) were admonished that we could take notes, but that answers to questions we asked would be off the record. Uh-oh!

We were also told that if we asked a question, we should say our names and identify the company for which we worked. In this town, you are where you work. Uh-oh! Uh-oh!

Believe it or not, I can be discreet, so I’m not going to give you the details of Steve Murphy’s comments, not that it was a tell-all, by any means. Actually, he was quite disarmingly charming and seemed guardedly candid. I think it is okay to say that early on in his chat with us, he got applause when he announced he had been a literature major, but not at Harvard. There was also some talk about “silos,” having nothing to do with where you store, say, corn, but everything to do with “silos” of corporate culture. (Huh? B-School patois, no doubt.)

Q&A Time! Those publishing types who are members of the “heads down” crowd, kept their heads, well, down. (All the better to huff and puff later.) The Wall Street Journal gave his name, said where he worked and asked a question that went way over my head. The man from Beneficial said his name and company and held forth about magazine publishing and books, and mentioned…the Internet. Ah hah! Now was my chance. I raised my hand. Pick me. Pick me! Steve Murphy did. Uh-oh!

“Lynne Scanlon, Blogger, The Publishing Contrarian,” I announced. Heads swiveled. (Infiltraitor!) I also quickly threw in my B&N credentials and, just in case that wasn’t enough for the Wall Street Journal guy, I let them know that I was also an author—unlike most of them, I’ll bet!—with St. Martin’s Press, HarperCollins, Berkley Books. You can’t drop this info with a thud often enough into a conversation when you are dealing with self-important publishing execs of which, of course, I am one. Pecking order is everything.

Since the Internet had been mentioned, I had no choice but to reveal to the now-rapt audience that I had immersed myself in the literary blogosphere for months. I felt strongly, I said, that bloggers like Michael Allen of Grumpy Old Bookman (one of the top 10 literary blogs—peck, peck) who only self-published, and Bill Liversidge of Pundy House, with his online novel and his April 3th posting called “More Thoughts on Becoming a Publisher,” might, just might, portend a seismic shift in the publishing plates undergirding the industry.

For good measure, when I bounded up to Steve Murphy and elbowed all the other sycophants out of the way, I pressed The Publishing Contrarian business card into his outstretched hand. I had a quick personal chat with my new friend “Steve” (!) and told him I had jotted down on my card the name of a book written by Rigel Crockett that Rodale had published last year, Fair Wind and Plenty of It. Rigel is one of my commenters. I said to Steve: This is a very good book. You need to look at it again!

The only comment I feel comfortable reporting, given the admonition not to blab, was Steve’s final comment to me. I don’t want to read more into it than I should, but I think it was pithy and memorable: “Thank you for coming up to say ‘hi’.”

How did I do?