“…this crappy market may actually end up producing better books. Because hybrids, bastards, and half-breeds tend to be heartier than those delicate offspring that result from too much careful inbreeding.”

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I know we’ve been linking to a lot of Rumpus contributor Steve Almond lately, but the guy’s on a truth-to-power roll. Also, he’s awesome.

This time, it’s in the form of an email exchange between him and the agent Mark Reiter, who asked him to contribute for free to a compilation the agent’s getting $50,ooo for putting together.

(via Cheryl Strayed)

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This is very cool. Check out The Underground Library, a community in which “books are given out to Members of the Library, who are asked to SIGN their name by the Due Date and PASS the book to someone who they think will like it..” (via)

Hemingway, Churchill fail computerized essay grading system. (via)

“Eschscholtzias” reads like a railway accident of its own – a fatal collision between Latin and German.” On “fossil poetry.” (via)

HTMLGiant’s got a great video on Raymond Carver.

“Who needs an agent? You do.”

“(J.G. Ballard) didn’t believe that human actions were rational or easily fathomable, and it was probably this, more than any view of history or aesthetic theory, that led him away from what he regarded as the staleness and artificiality of contemporary literature.” (via)

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by Joshua Mohr

Lately people have been asking me why I decided to publish my novel, Some Things that Meant the World to Me, with a small press. Instinctively, my gut wants to lie, stammer some kind of self-justification: “Well, uh, I felt that a boutique house (note that I didn’t say “small press”) would give me more attention (i.e. answer my emails) and nurture the book in a way true to my artistic vision (i.e. not perform fellatio on the marketing department)

in a manner a larger house might not be willing to do (e.g. my book dies on the vine while they hype their latest cookbook or tell-all memoir by a fallen debutante who smoked crystal meth and wrecked her Bentley but lived to tell the tale…).”

When people ask me about my “decision,” I want to say something that makes me sound too enlightened to peddle my subversive and cerebral material to the fatcats who run the major publishing houses. But I’m not that enlightened person at all. I am the very guy who tried desperately to peddle his subversive (Really?) and cerebral (Didn’t you go to a state college?) material to the fatcats. They shunned me, not vice versa.

I finished my first novel and got a swanky agent in New York. She did her very best to sell the book (I have no idea if she did her very best, though I assume so), but the fatcats told her, “This book is too grim. It’s not viable in the market place.” They weren’t looking for cerebral and subversive—they were looking for the Next Bestselling Voice!, someone like Jonathan Safran Foer. (I’m sure he’s a nice guy.)

This is by no means a criticism of authors who have published with major houses. I’m not insinuating that they’ve sacrificed their integrity. Far from it—some of my favorite books have had the stamp of the fatcat. This is an indictment of the major publishing houses’ attempts to superimpose templates of success onto literary fiction, judging the marketability of next year’s titles on the successes and failures of last year’s.

As my novel made its way around Manhattan, more than one editor said she liked the book, but had to “pitch it to the marketing people.” These pitches never seemed to go my way. Eighteen houses shot the book down. The swanky Manhattan agent basically fired me: “Why don’t you write a second book and we’ll try again?” she said.

I was back in square one, except now square one had the stink of failure. And I had no idea what to do.

Good times (not good times)…

I got a new agent, and she sent the book to Two Dollar Radio, an independent publishing house that saw promise and merit in the story I was trying to tell. They are the subversive and cerebral ones, the brave souls who publish literary fiction and only literary fiction. There are no cookbooks or debutante tell-alls on their list. It’s literature for the love of language and story, rather than commercial viability.

My experience finding a publisher was horrible and gut-wrenching. (Whiskey helped.) It was also incredibly confusing because I didn’t know whose opinion to trust. I began referring to it as my “faithful grope in the dark.” I knew I needed a publisher. I knew an agent acted as a liaison between writer and publisher. What I didn’t know was what editors were looking for. Only later did it occur to me that maybe agents and editors are faithfully groping themselves.

I talked with an agent and an editor to hear whether my suspicion was right: Is the whole shebang run on hunches, “informed” inferences, projections based on ambiguous past experiences?

“How do you know what will sell?” I asked one prominent agent.

“You find a book you believe in, make an educated guess, and hope for the best.”

I tried to sound calm, professional, but I think my voice cracked: “Hope for the best?”

“There are too many variables to predict with any kind of accuracy,” she said. “There are editors, acquisition boards, marketing and sales teams, the art department, then the buyers. And that isn’t even factoring in trends or positive reviews or competition. Anyone who thinks they have an answer is lying.”

I then spoke with a former editor at several major publishing houses and asked how she knew what would sell.

“It’s a crapshoot,” she said. Her tone wasn’t smug or ambivalent; the calm way she conveyed this sentiment made it feel honest.

Turns out, chance is a brutal part of the publishing trade. Good books sometimes vanish without a trace, and obvious, dumbed-down books with clever marketing tricks often become successful. It’s a savage reality of the business, one writers need to be aware of.

What I heard from these publishing insiders confirms my suspicion that writers and agents and editors are all faithfully groping in the dark. There’s no such thing as a template of success. It’s impossible. There are too many stodgy people in publishing who look to replicate past successes rather than find new and unexpected ones, to capitalize on trends rather than create them. There’s an almost singular reliance on authors who have already sold well, shoving their new work down consumers’ throats regardless of its quality. What’s left for first-time or mid-list writers with better books but no reputation?

Again, I asked the swanky agent and editor.

“There’s a diaspora of emerging writers to the smaller houses,” the agent said. “The money just isn’t there for unknowns in the current market. There are exceptions, of course. But overall…”

My ulcer tapped-dance as I phoned the editor.

She said independent houses might be better for first-time or mid-list authors, because in a smaller catalog their book will get more attention. Indie houses may have better guerilla marketing strategies for 21^st century technologies. Maybe most importantly, the sales projections at smaller houses are more modest, and a book won’t be considered a failure if it sells 6,000 copies.

“Will this be good for literature?” the editor asked. “It’s too soon to tell.”

Joshua Mohr - the Faithful Groper

Fair enough. It probably is too soon. But for me, this information is all I need to solidify a couple things, make a couple decisions. One, since they’ve corroborated that the publishing business is run on chance, I need only concern myself with one thing: the quality of my writing. That isn’t chance at all. I can’t control marketing trends or debutantes, but I can control the amount of energy I put into my revision process. I can take my time and make sure to write the best book I can.

Two, I’ve decided to publish my second novel, From a Fragile Galaxy, with Two Dollar Radio as well, next year. Assuming the “crapshoot” model is true, I see no reason to leave. I don’t want to be a free agent out to make as much money as I can, I want to publish my books somewhere that editors, not marketing people, make the decisions. 2DR has proven itself interested in my aesthetic. They’ve built me a website and booked a reading tour. They’re receptive to my ideas. They—not to sound sentimental—care. Books aren’t just commodities to them. Books are art.

At least I know that when my editors think a section of my writing needs tinkering, it isn’t because the marketers deem it “too grim.” I know that the problem is with me, the words I’ve chosen, the scenes I’ve constructed—and that’s a freedom every writer should enjoy, the freedom of knowing that their editor is more concerned with publishing the best possible novel than selling the most books. If you happen to sell a lot of books, that’s wonderful. We all want an audience. But for me the audience is only worth having if they’re reading the book I intended to write.

**

Joshua Mohr’s first novel, Some Things that Meant the World to Me, comes out next week.

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The future of book reviewing is online.

I say this not as a cheerleader for all things hi-tech (hell, I don’t even own an iPod), nor as some prophet of the post-physical book, but because the model of book reviewing we’re used to – delivered by the priestly class of critics; limited by paper, ink, column inches; determined by the latest microtrend and by who an author’s agent had lunch with – is clearly history.

Even before the meltdown in the publishing industry, book reviewing was in trouble, with major newspapers downsizing or eliminating their reviews, even as the number of books published every year continued to climb. Just this month, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution changed its “Arts & Books” section to “Arts & Leisure,” Maud Newton reports that book reviews are in trouble at alternative weeklies, and the Washington Post’s Book World lost its editor and may fold. [Jan. 28 update: Book World is folding.] Fewer and fewer books are getting reviewed, even in venerated outlets like the New York Times Book Review or Book World, while review editors focus on books with the greatest sales potential and authors with “platform,” i.e. high visibility for reasons other than literary talent. Publishers, needing to make good on bloated investments in veteran authors and Next Big Things, devote little effort to getting reviews for lower-profile authors. As a result, reviewers have increasingly converged on the same handful of titles, and book reviews have become homogenous and predictable, an echo chamber in which mediocre but heavily promoted books stand a better chance than obscure works of great originality.

Needless to say, this model doesn’t serve authors, readers, or literary culture very well. And now it seems to be in its last throes.

The past few years have seen some positives, like the success of social networking sites like Library Thing and Goodreads, as well as book coverage in newer publications like The Believer. People still read, and they still want to talk about books – how will the dwindling supply of coverage keep up with this demand?

Enter Rumpus Books.

At The Rumpus, we believe that a healthy literary culture is one which embraces writing of all kinds, by authors of all stripes – young and old, established and emerging, traditional and experimental, writing from the margins or from (or about) the heart of mainstream culture, published by “major” houses or by smaller presses. We don’t believe a book is “dead” two weeks after publication, and we’ll often review books out for a year or longer. We believe an author’s reputation, or previous sales, are irrelevant to a fair assessment of his or her work, and should play no role in the decision to review it. On the subject of decisions, we believe in making as few of them as possible: In the new world of reviews, the more the better, to reflect the immense range of writing and reading in America.

We believe the best people to write about books are people who love books. Most of our reviews, therefore, will be by working writers, and largely determined by what they, themselves, decide to read, rather than vice versa. In this way, we hope to incite a big, messy, unpredictable conversation about what’s new, exciting, and consequential in contemporary literature.

At Rumpus Books you’ll find reviews, sure, and lots of ‘em. You’ll also find interviews with writers, some you’ve heard of and some you haven’t – and not just when they have a new book to publicize. You’ll find our blog – The Blurb – in which we discuss the state of our writing culture, our literary community, and the writer’s life. In the coming months, we’ll add other features, like a “bookroll” for easy access to our archives, and reviews of Lost Classics. We’ll have the Unreview (stay tuned!), and video clips of readings. We’d love to hear your suggestions and comments – just drop us a line at books@therumpus.net.

To authors, we say: Send us your book or your galleys. We make no promises about how, or if, it will be reviewed, except that it will have nothing to do with who you are or whether anyone else has reviewed it.

To editors, publicists, and agents: We’re eager to hear about your new books, and we hope to review many of them. But we don’t care how big an advance you gave an author, or who blurbed them, or whether Oprah has expressed interest. Send us your catalogues, or drop us a line.

And to readers and lovers of literature: This is for you, and for all of us who want to save book culture from the doldrums of downsizing. We still read, all of us, and despite what we’ve been hearing the reservoir of new writing is deeper and more diverse than it’s ever been. We hope to bring a great deal of it to your attention.

Rumpus Books is open for business.

Andrew Altschul
Books Editor

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