Lynne W. Scanlon

I hadn’t even intended to go to any of the movies being shown at the 14^th Hamptons International Film Festival. Like a lot of the people who own homes out here, when the Friday night cars stream into town and the Jitney and Luxury Liner buses disgorge the weekenders from the city, we head for deep water. (Oh, wait, I forgot, I had just gotten out here myself on Thursday from the city. That’s right, I was disgorged too, just a bit earlier than the others!) Eleven thousand additional people were expected in East Hampton for the festival! Dive, Dive!

My neighbor, Katy, had miraculously cadged two free tickets to the film 1:1 from a friend who had been doing volunteer work at the festival. Katy invited me, and after last week’s posting with its subsequent vitriolic, finger pointing, name calling (You’re a racist! No, you’re a racist!), email slug-fest around the blogosphere, I needed to sit in a dark theater and regain my sanity. So Katy and I fought for a parking space in town, and joined cinephiles who had trekked in from all over the United States and maybe even the world. The very honest Katy bought a gigantic, butter-soaked bag of popcorn while the opportunistic Wicked Witch dropped down on all fours and sneaked past the overpriced concession with her large diet-coke and stash of oatmeal cookies purchased down the street.   
 
1:1 started and within minutes I had caught the film festival bug—and caught it bad. I knew I would try to snag a press pass in the morning. And, yes, I hoped that some of these films originated as literary fiction or nonfiction books or memoirs so that I could tie the movies I saw to my publishing blog and keep one step ahead of the “tend to your knitting” crowd. (You know who you are!)
 
How to Grift a Press Pass to an international  film festival: Up at dawn I knew the challenge would be to convince someone (it would turn out to be the very handsome D’Arcy Drollinger from Springer Associates in New York City) that I was, indeed, worthy of a press pass. How was I going to pull this off, simple blogger that I am?  Here’s how I did it:   Read the rest of this entry »

“Greetings, my name is [--] and I’m the director of [--], you are slated to do a book signing with us…. I want to know if you are a black/African American person.”

The above is an email message posted by author Millenia Black on her blog Millenia Black—Taking Care of Business. Click on the link above and scroll down to March 13th to see the entire posting.

This blunt email message sent Black into paroxisms of indignation. She felt her race was nobody’s business when it came to book promotion and she was incensed that the director of the bookstore would even dare ask such a question. So insulted was Black that she canceled her appearance and left the director in the lurch, forced to locate an alternative author to make an appearance. And 25 out of 26 commentors joined the rage-in:

“The frickin’ nerve of some people! I’d make sure this idiot looks like the dumb shit he is.” – Lynn Ray Harris

“I think I would call the store and ask to speak to the manager. I would try to get the person who did that FIRED!!!” —Anonymous

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I loved making money while I slept. Every time someone bought one of my nonfiction books, I was probably sleeping or reading on the beach on Block Island, Rhode Island or in East Hampton, New York, or lounging somewhere with a margarita in my hand, humming “Girl from Ipanema.” (“Tall and tan and young and lovely….”

I once went to Yankee Stadium (seating capacity 56,937), looked at all those people, and thought: “Whoa, look at that sea of faces. If each one of them would just buy a single copy of my book I’d make some good money.” And, in fact, several hundred thousand people over the years would indeed buy my books, but I never made great money, certainly not the kind of money I had envisioned when my books started to sell well. But that was then and this is now and I’m not writing books to make money anymore because I have learned that book royalties are just too hard to earn in quantity—even when I’m sleeping, tanning or carousing—and there are too many tricks in book publishing contracts designed to make certain that my share of the profits ends up the smallest share.

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Raise your hands!

Is your anger and resentment so all-consuming that you can talk about nothing to friend and family other than how awful your ex is being toward you, how mistreated and marginalized you were at work, or how loathsome and certifiable your neighbor is? Are you cornering virtual strangers in the supermarket and subjecting them to your indignant tirade, when all they wanted was help getting a can of peas off the top shelf? When you saw Charlie Shanian, Tori Spelling’s ex-husband last week on “The Dr. Keith Ablow Show,” did you scream: BOOK ME!

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It took me just a jacket-read at Book Hampton to understand why Kim Edward’s book, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, became a creeping, then raging bestseller through word of mouth. In fact, even had it been the most poorly written book in the history of publishing, I know it still would have ignited a brushfire in sales.
 
Given the usual routine whereby publishers blast 300 author review copies (ARCs) into outer space, hoping against hope that they’ll somehow land on an interested reviewer’s desk, writers need to write with clever marketing ploys in mind and editors need to capitalize on the ancillary (meaning other than a good plot) elements that authors can weave into a book to make readers eager to buy. Sure, everybody hopes the book is good, but sales don’t have to be completely plot-driven for a book to be successful in monetary, if not literary, terms.  
 
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You and I owe Frederick G. Kilgour a big THANK YOU. Because of this recently deceased librarian’s pioneering work, just a few days ago we became able to go directly to www.worldcat.org and locate the library closest to home or office that has any given book, CD or video we would like to checkout, download or view directly, even if the closest copy is 1000 miles away––or even a continent away. It’s that simple! All we have to do is type in the name of the book, CD or video AND our ZIP code. The library network we tap into links 55,000 institutions in 110 countries!

It works. I tried it! I typed in the title of one of my old, out-of-print books. Worldcat reported one copy in a library about 20 miles from where I am right now. There were no copies in my local branch of the library. Interestingly, there were copies in other languages in other countries. Yes, it’s the magic of computers once again! The intra-state library database has gone global. 

Let’s Go Worldcatting!

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What a great idea to have Novel Night at the library in East Hampton, New York. An estimated 250 author groupies showed up at the cocktail party held on a lush grassy patch of lawn behind the library and approximately 375 deeper-pocketed benefactors/patrons/sponsors headed over to “one of 22 lovely East Hampton private homes” for dinner later that night where authors would hold court.

Of course, it is very busy in The Hamptons this time of year and I was torn about which of five big events to attend. Former President Bill Clinton and Junior Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton were in town for two very pricey fundraisers. I thought about going, but I just couldn’t see how I could force down $1000 worth of scrambled eggs at breakfast and knock back $2000 worth of margaritas at the cocktail hour, and still be able make it to my event of choice, Novel Night, at 6:30 pm—where all those local authors were corralled and captive under the big tent.

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If you are sitting holed up in a dark corner working on the magnum opus that will rock the literary word and catapult you into the stratosphere of book publishing, but are lamenting your pitiful inability to get a literary agent or editor to appreciate your genius, and you think there is nothing wrong with your query letter, synopsis and sample chapter, then shelve The Writer Magazine, shut down your computer and step out into the sunshine and start networking your way to a literary agent or editor. 

Meet One New Person A Week

One of the biggest mistakes I made when working as a young director of sales and then a group publisher of developmental product at A/S/M Corporation (former publishers of AdWeek magazine) was that I spent too much time on the actual business of publishing and not enough time on the business of lunch. “Lunch” should be a 24/7 event. Lunch means getting out, being seen and elbowing your way around the publishing industry whenever and wherever you can: front door, side door, back door.

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The hiring of George L. Jones amazes me. What a smart move to bring in someone with such an action-packed, diverse background. Unless he’s been blowing his entire paycheck on clothes at Saks Fifth Avenue every Saturday, I know he didn’t take the job just for the money. (According to Salary.com, his total package last year alone from Saks Department Store Group was, gasp, $2,286,695!) So he’s accepted the challenge of trying to turn Borders Group around. Is it possible he is not afraid of new ideas that involve the pain of doing things d.i.f.f.e.r.e.n.t.l.y? I’m thinking he might just be riding into Borders and Walden Books on a white horse, six-guns holstered right now, but capable of making a lot of people “start dancin’.”

He’s from Arkansas, which for a girl from Connecticut, is impossible to find on the map (yet another state somewhere on the other side of the Delaware), but he has made his friends and enemies as President of Worldwide Licensing and Retail for Warner Bros. and by overseeing Warner Bros. Worldwide Publishing, Kids WB Music, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, WB Sports and Warner Bros. Studio Stores. He was also Executive VP-Store Operations and Sr. VP-Merchandising at Target.

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There was a slightly different cast of characters in the multiplex Chelsea Cinema in New York City this weekend when I plopped down in a leg-stretching aisle seat to see The Devil Wears Prada. Usually the seats are 95% empty at the 11:30 a.m. show, but yesterday there was a clutch of girly men and the fashion-conscious and moi all sharing the theater with my early bird buddies—the snoring, wind-breaking, mumbling senior citizens escaping the stifling heat of their unair-conditioned, rent controlled apartments. I, too, just love the blast of icy air that blows my hair straight back when I wrench open the doors to the entrance of the movie theater. Nothing I like better than seeing my breath in the frosty air of a movie theatre and having ice particles form on the tips of my eyelashes in July. Pass the coke, popcorn and forbidden candy bars!

The Devil Wears Prada was the first novel written by 26-year-old Lauren Weisberger. Whew! What a stir that book and now the movie have caused. The movie is such a hoot because it caricatures Anna Wintour, Editor-in-Chief of Vogue. Miranda Priestly, the character Meryl Streep plays, is so awful, she’s wonderful. Weisberger’s brief (though it may have seemed quite LONG at the time!) employment as an “insider” fetching lattes for Wintour (sometime from 1999 to 2000) gave Weisberger a one-way, do-not-pass-go, ticket to a literary agent and book contract with Doubleday. So quickly did Weisberger pound out The Devil Wears Prada that Doubleday got it edited, printed and distributed to bookstores in 2003. You’ve just got to know Weisberger wrote in a fury and probably an indignant rage from the moment her “clacker”-self hit the pavement, either ceremoniously or unceremoniously. (Was she fired or marginalized until she quit? I don’t know.)

What does Weisberger’s experience placing a book tell you about how to get published quickly and smoothly?

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