Lex Luthor's Lair

I don't have the tech savvy of E C Myers, who did this nifty little Acknowledgment Video for his debut novel Fair Coin, recently out from Pyr SF as part of their new YA line and well worth reading -- you can meet Mr. Myers at various events in the coming days as well.

But after a busy and wonderful day of actually finally housewarming my apartment, I thought I should put a few thank you things out into the world...

The biggest thanks in many ways have to go to my clients. Charlaine Harris, Sookie Stackhouse, and the True Blood folk kind of paid for the place, but I think it's a mistake to be too narrow in viewing the JABberwocky family. Because Charlaine wouldn't be a client today if it weren't for the general belief amongst authors in general that we do a good job for all of our clients, or maybe not a client today if back fifteen years ago when Charlaine Harris wasn't Charlaine Harris yet, but Arkham House and Elizabeth Moon and Simon Green were some of the key players making it possible for me to have the money to go to Malice Domestic every year in large part because I wanted to be there for Charlaine (well, and to visit all the wonderful bookstores in the DC area that are now two thirds of them closed). And I'm kind of cautious, so even today the fact that the agency is not just Charlaine Harris but is Brandon Sanderson and Peter Brett, and Elizabeth Moon and Simon Green, and John Hemry/Jack Campbell, and many other people. The agency is a stool with many legs, not just one that would always threaten to wobble me into ruin. I can't name every single client here, but the thanks are to all of them.

And it isn't possible to do what we need to do without having people to help me do it all. Steve Mancino did that for four years. Eddie Schneider will soon surpass Steve as the longest tenured employee at JABberwocky. Jessie Cammack came looking for us, and once Eddie and I found her we weren't going to let her go. Lots of other people who've helped over the years, Joseph and Ronald and Armand and Kat and Brenna and Ethan and Mark and David, among others.

There's Adrian, the broker at Nestseekers who told me the apartment I really really wanted might actually become affordable, because for once in my life the real estate market was dipping as my income was increasing to where I could just find an intersection between the two. But then nobody wants to actually give a mortgage, but Yitz found the guy who would.

When I looked at the raw space, I had a vision of what I might do with the space, and one of the things I'm happiest about today is that the apartment, finally and arduously two and a half years after I purchased it, pretty fully realizes my vision of what it should be and would be and could be and what I wanted it to be. It really is my place, more than anyone else's.

But it doesn't happen that way without some help along the way, some little voices chirping in the ear with advice and suggestions and guidance and how-tos and where-tos. Ronald and Jennifer helped with the painting and recommended the contractor. Elizabeth Moon helped to fill in the idea for the display shelf at the end of the gallery. The guy from Horizon helped find the right shade of window treatment for the bedroom.

When my younger brother got married close to twenty years ago, I was the best man, and one of the groomsman was this tall lanky guy named Mason Rapaport. Mason, it turns out, does woodwork. Really gorgeous woodwork, which now that he's finally actually done something with his website, you can learn about here.

The killer app for this apartment was this very long, very wide, very tall entrance gallery that was going to allow me to bring a little bit of Lex Luthor into my life. The Lex Luthor of Superman: The Movie. So do I thank the director, Richard Donner? Or the production designer Jonn Barry? Or the set director Peter Howitt? Or the art direction crew? Whomever it was in whatever combination who had that gorgeous bookcase in Lex Luthor's lair, where Otis could wheel around Lex, or more pleasantly wheel around the ladder and leave Lex hanging? This entry gallery was going to enable me to have at least a little version of this bookcase complete with ladder that I could call my very own, plenty deep enough to hold three layers of mass markets, two layers of hardcovers, and still leave enough width in the entry gallery to leave room for a wheelchair with lots of space to spare. Look ma, it's my bookcase! It looks even nicer filled with books and with the lights on than it does empty posing for the photo.

Besides being a great thing for a literary agent, it stores so many books, it makes the whole business function better because we don't need to clutter the office with books, we don't need to ship extra books to a client in March because there's no room and then realize in May that we need to order more.

In any event, I knew that Mason needed to do this bookcase, and I didn't think to talk to anyone else.

If you are hanging about the northeast and want any kind of beautiful woodworking or other sorts of cabinetry (the "kitchen" section of Mason's website has a couple other pieces for my apartment) this is the guy to call.

Myke Cole refers to Peter V. Brett as his Professor X.

Myke first introduced me to the idea of getting nicer furniture when we upgraded my old apartment with some nicer stuff several years ago, we trekked out to Long Island and went furniture shopping, and my sofa and dining room set and recliner were all selected that day. And because I'm that kind of a guy, I treated Myke to a delightful picnic lunch of MREs to thank him for his time and support.

I enjoy MREs a lot more than Myke, kind of like I love to visit and mow somebody's lawn, because I do that once every two years and it's a delightful special treat.

Myke gave lots of good suggestions on the right color scheme.

He accompanied me on shopping trips to buy furniture and ceiling fans and other things to fill out the apartment.

He rented the van that moved the boxes of books from the office and then helped along with Eddie and Jessie to move and shelve those dozens of boxes of books.

If there is something hanging on a nail in the apartment, Myke banged in the nail and hung it, and he didn't almost die hanging the movie posters above the TV but it wasn't because I didn't try really really hard to get that to happen.

For the party Myke was my scullery maid and galley slave for the day, and if regulations allowed him to wear a cover indoors I'm sure he would have worn at least six different hats over the course of the day.

Even though Myke resisted my specific instructions to use the Swiffer duster instead of the Swiffer sweeper to dust the moldings, I must give him an extra special and very heartfelt thank you for all of these efforts. Which go above and beyond any rational definition of "what friends are for" or "sucking up to your agent" or any other reason or excuse or justification or whatever else you call it that one might give for somebody to do all of these things.

The brownies for the party came from the Sage General Store. Which is around the corner, and which makes some of the best brownies you can find in New York City. You can find them on the Food Network, not that everyone isn't these days. I ordered way too many brownies. However, they don't make their wonderful german chocolate brownies any more because not too many people wanted to buy those as badly as I. But since I was ordering a full tray, I was able to get some of them, and maybe the leftovers will last for a bit.

The cookies came from Nita's European Bakery in Sunnyside a few blocks from the office, which totally deserves its largely favorable notices on Yelp. I've been in Sunnyside for many years, it's only recently that I've started to habituate Nita's, as I have come to appreciate how their Italian cookies are just head and shoulders almost every other little bakery cookie that I have ever come across.

The prospect of getting yummy things from Sage or Nita's should encourage you to venture across the East River into Queens.

One of my guests said especially how much he liked the scroll that John Moore was kind enough to give, and which sat in its tube for too long before finding the right proper place to hang.

The party was nice because so many people came, childhood friend, college roomie, people from the synagogue, neighbors, clients, editors, publishers, family, from the Scrabble club. Not an abundance of people from any one place, but a wonderful mix of people from all the different parts of me all in one room for the afternoon. Thank you for stopping by!

If I ever get more tech savvy, maybe I can come up with a video that can attempt to list everyone.

The Agent as Publisher

In the evolving world of publishing, the roles of the author, agent and publisher are all having to evolve.

What should our role as agents be?

There's one school of thought I know I don't agree with, which says that an agent should never be a publisher. One statement of that position from a British agent can be found here, and in the US one prominent agent who's expressed his firm opposition to melding the roles is Robert Gottlieb, the head of the prestigious Trident Media Group. That's some of what he discusses in this guest blog post on the Publishers Weekly site.

My VP, Eddie Schneider, reacted very strongly to a news article in Publishers Lunch Daily this week (also the source for the above link) about a literary agency that wants to go into e-book packaging. I thought I'd invite him to guest on my blog, and italicized are his comments below:

I'm sure many of you involved in book publishing in some fashion (agent, editor, aspiring author) heard the news Monday that Dystel & Goderich (DGLM) have decided to become an e-book packager.

Here's their announcement: link

This bothers me enough that I decided to do my first ever guest post on Brillig to comment.

I think the decision to help an author self-publish a book, after failing to place it with a real publisher, is rooted in hubris. Yes, we agents hopefully have good taste, and there are client projects we all feel should have sold but didn't, but to turn around and put them out into the marketplace anyway, shows disrespect toward the editors who should be among our closest colleagues, takes up time and energy best spent elsewhere, and detaches us from reality, which can't be good.

It's really disappointing to see such a high-profile agency go this route. DGLM seems to have the support of their clients, if the comments on their site are any indication. They also seem to be trying to do their best to be forthright about everything.While it's possible that an agency, especially a larger one, could successfully keep these concerns separate (and good luck keeping it that way), it is a conflict of interest for most.

I'm not a member of the AAR, but if I were, I would move to make an active effort to kick out any member agency who serves as first publisher to their clients' books.

Good luck to everyone at DGLM. Many of you have been doing this for much longer, and with greater financial success, than I have. Maybe the rest of us will be shown the error of our ways.

If anyone reads this post, and thinks I'm the one in error (or agrees...), feel free to comment via rock with note attached, or in the comments section.

Eddie

I don't disagree with Eddie on this. There are times I've rolled about in my own mind on this question. There's a book we absolutely love, we can't find a publisher, we're sure they're all wrong... And yet I haven't actually gone ahead and flipped that switch and said "darnit, nobody else wants to publish this fine book we're going to go do it ourselves."

And yet we at JABberwocky are in fact e-book publishers, with a growing list of authors and titles. Albeit all reverted backlist titles first published by major publishers and now back in the author's hands, some of the books in fact published, reverted, resold, published again, and then back a second time. We're trying to occupy some kind of middle ground that may or may not actually exist between being full-fledged publishers of electronic books and saying we can't and shan't be publishers at all. I dealt with some of our thinking on the whole e-book program in this blog post when we had our first e-book go live.

Is there a distinction, or is it a distinction without a difference, to object as Eddie and I do, to an agent who "serves as first publisher to their clients' books"??? I see in my mind a very real difference between what we are doing, what Robert Gottlieb says we should/shouldn't do, and what Dystel and Goderich have decided to do. But even if I'm right to see that different today, will it still exist tomorrow?

As Eddie says, let us know what you think. I'm not sure the rock with attached note is such a good idea, but otherwise...

BEA 2009, Pt. 1

BEA, or Book Expo America, is the big trade show for trade publishing in the United States, and was held in New York City a couple weeks ago.  I'll do some posts over the next several days either about or inspired by the event.  Here are some photos I took (or in some cases, mis-took, because they're blurrier than we would want; I guess I'm not a professional photographer).

The first comes from inside the Javits Center, where a nice Sookie Stackhouse display was at the front entrance to the Penguin booth.  Very nice views of the current DEAD AND GONE hardcover and the True Blood Season 2 tie-in edition cover for LIVING DEAD IN DALLAS.  I am very fond of both.  And then there was the big, bold, beautiful True Blood billboard on W. 39th St. at the intake into the Lincoln Tunnel, and isn't that a nice way to start and finish the day heading to and from the Javits Center each day.

The next very blurry picture was taken at the Prometheus Books booth.  The wonderful Pyr SF line edited by Lou Anders is part of the Prometheus empire, and they had a big poster up for GEOSYNCHRON, the concluding novel in the Jump 225 trilogy by David Louis Edelman.  Prometheus was also giving out copies of the new premium-size mass market edition of CROSSOVER by Joel Shepherd, so the JABberwocky list was well-represented in this corner.

  

At the Severn House booth, it was nice to see the forthcoming historical mystery ANGEL OF THE GLADE by Scott Mackay on their display shelf.    And there on the right, I'll also mention Marcia Talley's new book, because Marcia Talley is a wonderful person whom I've known by way of Charlaine Harris for many many years.  It always brings a smile to my face when I see Marcia, and it brings a smile to my face to see her book at BEA as well.

Finally, this was a very special BEA because it's the first time in all my years in the business that I had an author officially at BEA, with an official signing in the official signing area and on a panel and totally getting the full royal BEA treatment.  So we have a picture of Brandon Sanderson participating in a panel with 

Jonathan Tropper for authors of books that had been mentioned in the Editor's Buzz panel the day before, and then we have a picture of Brandon doing his official signing of copies of new novel WARBREAKER while his editor Moshe Feder is standing up in order to take a picture of Brandon's very long signing line. Brandon also had an ALA autographing and did an interview for BookSpotCentral.  He and I met up with the people at Macmillan Audio and recorded some video that will be used to promote the audio release of The Gathering Storm.  We discussed possible comic book adaptations of Brandon's work with a couple of comic book publishers.  

I should have taken pictures at the JABberwocky dinner, where Brandon joined myself, my JABberwocky associate Eddie Schneider (celebrating his first anni on the JABberwocky team, Peter V. Brett, the publisher of Recorded Books, our man in China, our summer interns, and World's Biggest Bookstore bookseller Jessica Strider and her husband at Rachel's.  A good time was had by all.  It was my first time going to Rachel's, and I will happily go there again.  It's convenient to the theater district and the food generally received high marks.