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June 12, 2007
Learning my lesson
Years ago, in an embarrassingly public bit of personal failure, I stumbled into the recognition that I am no journalist. Broke my writerly nose that way. Trying to blog BEA, I rediscovered it—this time perhaps more publicly, but certainly with less actually pain. I’ll not try it again.
But here is the one out-of-the-booth moment that I wish I had tried to report on: At the close of the Editor’s Buzz panel that so troubled me, a fellow in the back had an assertive question. He said that in the past it seemed to him that a novel was always published on the bases of the writing itself and the value of the work as a whole. Now, he said, if the buzz pitches were any indication, a novel seems to be published and promoted based on height of the author’s “platform” and the headline context of the plot. Is that really the case? he asked, almost incredulous.
After having made my entire pitch on the assertion that Pamela Thompson’s Every Past Thing is one of the most emotionally realistic and beautifully turned novels I’ve ever edited—and authentically historical to boot—I like to think he wasn’t asking me.
But that really has become the question, hasn’t it?
I got home from New York on Monday, slightly beat up. On Friday, I flew to San Jose for “Chapter 2” of Book Group Expo. I spent Saturday and Sunday working a booth there. To my left were the autographing tables; to my right the wine-tasting area—far better and more enlightening digs than we’d had the previous weekend.
At BGE, authors jointly participate in “Salons” that are gathered about single subjects, like “Tales of Ruin and Renewal, Even Triumph!” and “The Things We Do for Love” and “The Secrets that Haunt Us.” No “platforms” there. The people who attend BGE are, ostensibly, members of book groups. They may or may not be that. But certainly they are all real live northern California consumers of novels and memoirs. That’s why we go there each year.
All, I should say, except for that one fellow who told me he was no reader and was just waiting for the first opportunity to drag his wife out of there and, by the way, could I advise him on how to get published the book he planned to write.
Everyone else I spoke with seemed truly enamored of what we’re doing as an independent publisher of fiction and memoir. It’s always refreshing to talk with actual buyers of narrative, to see in their eyes just how eager they are, not to find the most relevant or best-platformed book, but to have that unique experience of reading a novel that carries them away or that drills into them, surprises them.
In my head, holding that Editor’s Buzz panel over against the experience of Book Group Expo made for a re-education or at least a deep-tissue reminder that what matters to the sales force isn’t always what delivers.
Fred
Posted 6/10/07
Posted in: Publishers Blog, | Keywords: publishers blog
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