Terry Whalin Gives Book Doctors Some Nice Love
Monday, December 13, 2010
Do You Need Permission?
I work with a number of first-time authors who ask me about whether they need to gather permissions for their work. While I am not a lawyer (the first thing that I remind them), in most cases they do not need to get permission. Now if it is a poem or a song, then it is likely they do need permission because of how those forms are treated in the marketplace. If they are quoting a few sentences from a full-length book and refer to the source, it is unlikely that they need to get permission from the publisher.
Recently I read Arielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry’s new book, The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published, How to Write It, Sell It, and Market It…Successfully! This book is loaded with sound advice on many areas of the publishing process–including permissions. As they write on page 212, “Don’t start getting permissions too soon, because you don’t want to waste your time or money. However, since it often takes a while to track down a pesky permission–and all permissions should be handed in with your finished manuscript–we suggest the following process:
“1. Break your permissions into three piles. Definites, Maybes, Unlikelies. Track down all sourcing and contact information for the Definites as early as possible. Get prices and any necessary forms. This will help you guesstimate total costs and figure out how much you’ll have left over for the Maybes and Unlikelies.”
“2. Don’t pay for a thing until you’re sure what’s going in your book. This way, you won’t wind up spending money on a Definite that turns out to be an Unlikely.”
Then Eckstut and Sterry include a length section about what needs permission. This discussion is tied to the over 30 pages from The Chicago Manual of Style on the topic of fair use (a legal term related to the amount of material you can use from a source without asking permission. Here’s the critical sentences on page 213, “It’s okay for us to quote 122 words from The Chicago Manual because that’s a tiny percentage of its total word count (the book could double as a doorstop). However, if you took 122 words out of a 200-word poem, you must get permission to reprint it–unless, of course, it’s in the public domain. And don’t forget, composers’ and poets’ estates are notorious for going after people who abuse copyright law.”
Also Eckstut and Sterry include a fascinating story called The Pangs of Permissions: Acquiring permissions requires the patience of Job and the persistence of a pit bull. When she began writing A Thousand years over a Hot Stove, a book with more than 100 photographs and illustrations, Laura Schenone was ill-prepared for the amount of work permissions required. Not to mention the pounding her pocketbook took in the process.”
“Laura was presented with an unexpected challenge. Many of the people she was dealing with would sell her rights only for the first printing of her book. ‘My editor told me this would be 7,500 copies,’ she says. ‘When I bought the permissions, I wanted to up this number to 10,000 to 15,000 copies to be sure I was covered. But sometimes the fees as much as doubled.'”
“Laura’s story illustrates the importance of understanding permission costs before signing a deal or developing a project. That said, Laura couldn’t be happier that she wrote her book permissions and all. A Thousand Years over a Hot Stove went on to win a James Beard Award, the Pulitzer Prize of food writing.”
Eckstut and Sterry include a sample permission form in an appendices (page 448). I’ve only shown one little area this book covers many other topics with great depth and valuable insight. I recommend this book, The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published–and in the process of writing this entry, hopefully I’ve shown you a little bit about the permission process.
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The New York Times covers our Book Revue Pitchapalooza!
December 10, 2010
For Would-Be Authors, a Chance at a Happy Ending
By AILEEN JACOBSON
HUNTINGTON, N.Y.
SUZANNE WELLS, a slight woman with a careworn face, looked a little shaky as she walked up to the podium and faced a table where four judges sat. To her left was an audience of more than 200 people, ready to listen to her bid to become a published author.
Glancing at her notes, Ms. Wells launched into a description of her life, which started in affluence and comfort and devolved into heroin addiction and poverty, including an excruciating evening “when I took my children to a housing shelter.”
That was one of the more dramatic moments of “Pitchapalooza!” an event at the Book Revue here during which would-be authors pitched book ideas to a panel of publishing experts. All the presenters got advice from the panelists; the winner was to receive an introduction to an agent.
Though only 25 people were chosen at random to make their pitches, 187 had signed up for the opportunity at the Dec. 2 event, which was part of a cross-country promotional tour by David Henry Sterry and his wife, Arielle Eckstut, the authors of “The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published: How to Write It, Sell It and Market It … Successfully!” The crowd in Huntington was the largest yet, they said.
“Who knew how many people on Long Island are looking to write a book?” said Mr. Sterry, of Montclair, N.J., who has written 12 of them. “There were so many different kinds of stories,” said Ms. Eckstut, a literary agent and writer, who said she had signed 97 copies of the book.
Each person who bought one was to receive a free telephone consultation with the authors, whose new book is a substantially revised version of “Putting Your Passion Into Print,” which they published in 2005. Both the number of books sold and the size of the crowd were unusually high for authors who aren’t celebrities, said Julianne Wernersbach, the Book Revue publicist who organized the event.
Each writer making a pitch was limited to one minute — timed and sometimes stopped mid-sentence — followed by comments from the authors and two other panelists, James Levine, founder of the Levine Greenberg Literary Agency, where Ms. Eckstut works, and Mauro DiPreta, associate publisher of It Books, a HarperCollins imprint, who lives in Port Washington.
“You choked me up,” said Ms. Eckstut after hearing the emotion-packed pitch by Ms. Wells, a former Fortune 500 company executive who is now a yoga teacher and mother of three living in the home where she grew up, in Fort Salonga.
Ms. Wells, who won the competition, said later that she had already written much of her memoir, called, “One Wing — The Book.”
On a decidedly lighter note, Amber Jones, a hotel concierge who lives in Flatbush, Brooklyn, delivered her idea for “New York, Phew York,” a scratch-and-sniff book for children, in rhyming couplets: “Smells of bagels and lox and stuffed garbage trucks;/because summer to winter these smells are in flux.”
Ms. Jones’s pitch was a close runner-up, Ms. Eckstut said, as was a proposal by Gerald M. Rosen of Lido Beach, who laid out his story of running a marathon in every state, even though he was 51 when he started training.
Melinda Ehrlich of East Norwich had the room in stitches when she started her presentation with a joke about a Jewish boy who tells his mother he’s going to marry a girl named Running Deer and has changed his own name to Sitting Bull. “I’ve taken on a new name, too,” the mother says. “Sitting Shiva.”
Mr. Levine said her book of humorous vignettes about sitting shiva and attending wakes would be “highly promotable on talk radio,” but cautioned that it might be tricky to get people to buy it as a gift.
T. J. Dassau, 18, of Huntington Station stood at the side of a family friend, Janet Murphy, as she explained that Mr. Dassau, who is autistic, had written a set of illustrated stories for children, “The Epic Adventures of Rampion.” The book, she said, looks at the world from the perspective of a tiny imp. “I love this idea,” said Mr. Sterry, who advised Mr. Dassau to start gathering a following by getting some of the stories published on Web sites and building liaisons with autism-related organizations.
Some would-be authors were gently encouraged to consider self-publishing, but no one got negative feedback. “We try to inspire people,” Mr. Sterry said. “We don’t want to step on people’s dreams — and you don’t know what will sell.”
Click here for article.
Daisy’s Book Journal Gives Love to The Essential Guide
The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published offers authors advice on how to write, sell and market their books successfully.
I really enjoyed this book. The information is offered a in concise and entertaining manner, which not only makes it easy to read, but fun as well. This material could be pedantic and heavy, but it really comes across as interesting and light-hearted in the hands of these authors. Even though I don’t plan to write or publish a book, I found the information fascinating. I’ll never really know how hard authors work, but after going through this book, I have a better idea. They have my upmost respect.
While the book is geared towards helping authors, it contains lots of information regarding the writing and publishing process that others (for example, book lovers) may find interesting. It covers topics such as: submitting the book, self-publishing, working with contracts, touring, selling your book and much, much more. There’s also several appendices with invaluable information for the author, including a list of selected publishers and contact names.
The book was first published in 2005, but this recent edition includes a new chapter on social networking sites and all things online. There’s tons of information for authors as well as others who use those online sites.
Recommended.
For more information about this book or to browse inside, please visit the Workman Publishing website.
Would you like a peek inside? There are a couple of chapters online: Chapter 2 and Chapter 3.
For more information about the authors and other cool stuff, please visit Eckstut and Sterry’s website.
http://lazydaisy0413.blogspot.com/2010/11/essential-guide-to-getting-your-book.html
The Essential Guide Tour Pitchapalooza, Long Island #17: White Knuckles, Crime & Punishment, and Transcendent Triumph in Long Island
We hope and pray you never get stuck on Northern Blvd. in Long Island during rush hour when you have to be at your bookstore event by 7. It plum wears you out. It took us longer to travel 10 miles in Long Island than it did to get from New Jersey to Great Neck. At 6:48 David was into full-blown white-knuckle mode, and the knots in Arielle neck had migrated into her belly. Naturally, when we finally arrived, there was nowhere to park. But we finally slammed out of the car, and ran the two blocks back to the bookstore.
The second we entered Book Revue, all anxiety melted away. It was packed beyond the gills, ripe and swollen with 250 writers just waiting for us to hear them pitch their books. It was an absolute mob scene. From 12-year-olds to 90-year-olds, pierced to permed, ex-junkie to a man who’s run marathons in every state.
We were again blessed with a fantastic panel: James Levine, founder of the Levine Greenberg Literary Agency, author, golfer, and a man who’s helped dozens and dozens and dozens of writers, thinkers and businessmen become successfully published authors; and one of the great book dudes in the business, Mauro DiPreta, Executive Editor at It Books/HarperCollins, who has shepherd mega-bestsellers like Marley and Me onto the New York Times bestseller list. Oh, and he’s also a children’s book author. Not only are these men spectacularly articulate about the book business, they both have a ribald sense of humor. It was kind of like getting to have Derek Jeter and Tom Brady both on your team.
And then it was ON! A rhyming scratch’n’sniff pitch. A weight loss pitch with a bold new twist. A literary novel that was somehow Portnoy’s Complaint meeting Crime and Punishment. Swami Pajamananda dispensing equal parts spiritual wisdom and comedy. The winner gave a beautiful pitch about plunging from business executive to homeless heroin addict. Arielle had welled up by the end of the pitch. The whole thing was yet another vivid illustration of just how many Americans, from every walk of life imaginable, have books inside them that they desperately want to share with the world. Looking out over that vast sea of aspiring writer faces, our hearts and minds were filled with a real sense of happy accomplishment.
The pitches went by so fast, all of a sudden it was 8:30–time to wrap it up. Only about 20 people got pitch, and an audible groan came up from the crowd when we announced our last pitcher. But we offered up a new deal: anyone who buys a copy of our book gets a free consultation, and this seemed to soothe the savage beast. Julianne, the events coordinator, who was in large part responsible for getting the word out about this event, whisked us upstairs to a signing table. The line to buy the book literally went around two different corners and down a flight of stairs.
We ended up selling 100 books. If you’ve never actually tried to sell a book, that might not seem like much. But this is a niche reference book, on a Thursday night, in the middle of Long Island. It was the closest we’ve come to being Justin Bieber.
Spent and drained, but gratified and ecstatic, we hauled our asses back to Montclair, New Jersey. In half the time it took us to get to Long Island. But we were reminded how the hundreds and hundreds of hours spent writing the book, sending out the e-mails, putting together the website, the often dull, tedious, frankly painful work that’s gone into making and marketing this book, can sometimes, when the stars line up just right, lead to a transcendent triumph that lifts the spirit high, higher, highest.
The Huntington Patch covers our LI Pitchapalooza at Book Revue
Pitchapalooza Comes to Huntington
By Ashley Milligan
More than 100 aspiring authors filled the Book Revue Thursday night, hoping to get the opportunity to pitch their book idea to a panel of people in the publishing industry.
The event, known as Pitchapalooza, is the brainchild of literary agent Arielle Eckstut and author David Henry Sterry. Eckstut and Sterry, who are married, have also co-authored a book together, “The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published.”
While Pitchapalooza has been happening across the country for the past decade, this Thursday marked the first Pitchapalooza event in Huntington. Two guest panelists joined Eckstut and Sterry: James Levine, founder of the Levine Greenberg Literary Agency and Mauro DiPreta, vice president and associate publisher of It Books.
The rules of the event were simple. Audience members were chosen at random from the event’s sign-up sheet. If selected, guests had exactly one minute to pitch their idea to the panel. The four judges then offered feedback to each contestant, ultimately selecting a winner at the end of the two-hour event. The winner would receive an introduction to a literary agent best suited for the genre of their book.
There was no shortage of original and captivating material pitched by contestants. Pitches ranged from funny to serious, fictional to deeply personal and children’s stories to self-help guidebooks. Highlights included Amber Jones’ scratch-and-sniff children’s book about New York City smells, autistic teenager T.J. Dassua’s collection of short stories and Gerald Rosen’s personal account of completing a marathon in each state.
While the panel offered contestants insightful and constructive feedback about each individual pitch, they also gave general pointers for the audience as a whole.
“A nice way to leave a pitch is have it so we don’t know what choice the protagonist is going to make. It keeps people interested,” Eckstut said.
Levine added, “When you make a pitch to the editor, you want to make them feel confident you know where the story is headed.”
The panel also advised hopefuls to give specifics in their pitches, convey the voice of their book within the pitch and use “comp titles,” or reference books similar to theirs, if applicable.
Ultimately, the panel selected Suzanne Wells of Kings Park as the winner of Pitchapalooza. Wells, a yoga, zumba and pilates instructor, as well as freelance writer, so convincingly pitched her personal account of overcoming addiction, divorce and poverty that she left Eckstut in tears.
“I’m totally intrigued,” Eckstut said after Wells finished her pitch.
Wells now has the opportunity to meet with a literary agent to discuss her memoir, tentatively titled “One Wing-The Book.”
Click here for article.
Author Enablers Names Our Book as One of the 10 Best Books for Writers
From Author Enablers, Kathi Kamen Goldmark and Sam Barry…
“We have a time-honored tradition of providing our readers with gift book suggestions from noted authors. This year, we’ve decided to put in our own two cents with a list of the very best books—some new and some classics—for the writer in your life, even if that writer is you.
The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published: How to Write It, Sell It, and Market It . . . Successfully by Arielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry is an updated version of Putting Your Passion into Print, a book we’ve recommended before. Eckstut and Sterry leave no stone unturned in this comprehensive look at the current landscape of publishing.”
For the rest of the list, go to Book Page.
The Writer Magazine Names The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published One of Its Top 10 for 2010
From The Writer Magazine…
We at The Writer work hard all year round to bring you reviews of great writing books that provide “advice and inspiration for today’s writer.” Among the 30 or so books we’ve featured in 2010 have been practical manuals to help improve your writing skills (The Weekend Novelist Rewrites the Novel: A Step-by-Step Guide to Perfecting Your Work), books to refresh your grammar (The Glamour of Grammar: A Guide to the Magic and Mystery of Practical English), books filled with insightful interviews from successful writers (Tales From the Script: 50 Hollywood Screenwriters Share Their Stories), and books that inspire by revealing important truths about the challenges of the writing life (Raymond Carver: A Writer’s Life).
While we seek to be your trusted source for suggestions about new writing books, we can’t possibly cover this massive landscape in the limited space we have (numerous writing books are published each year). As the Bible says in Ecclesiastes 12:12, “of making many books there is no end,” but our time (and editorial space) is limited. So we make choices as best we can, knowing full well we can’t cast our net over all the freshly spawned writing books that constantly wash upon our shores.
To help widen our net, we’ve pulled together a list of 10 outstanding writing books, the ones that almost got away. Whether you’re reading for your own pleasure, seeking to enhance your writing skills by incorporating the advice of experienced practitioners, looking for inspiration to get you through the rough patches, or simply searching for great, writer-friendly gifts for the holidays, this crop of terrific books should feed your appetite.
The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published by Arielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry. Workman Publishing, 480 pages. Paper, $14.95.
Written by two veteran publishing insiders (Eckstut is a literary agent, Sterry a book doctor), this real-world guidebook demystifies the entire publishing process, showing you how to create an effective book proposal, comprehend the legal complexities of a book contract, develop the publicity skills you’ll need to succeed, and, if necessary, self-publish. There’s lengthy advice on using the Web to market your book, and even help with producing a video book trailer. The authors include interviews with hundreds of publishing insiders and writers. This valuable how-to also offers sample book proposals, query letters and more.
To read the rest of The Writer Magazine’s Favorite books of 2010, click here.
The Essential Guide Tour Miami #16: Versailles, cheesecake popsicles, and Sexo Para Dummies
The reports of the death of the book have been slightly exaggerated. Paraphrasing Mark Twain, we can tell you most assuredly that the book is alive and well, if the Miami International Book Festival is any indication. Hundreds of authors from Carl Hiaason to Patti Smith to Montclair New Jersey’s own Ian Fraser held court for tens of thousands of book lovers. Also on the scene were former president George Bush, Oprah-disser then Oprah-kisser Jonathan Franzen, and Clifford the Big Read Dog.
We arrived in Miami from Seattle on Saturday, and headed out to the old-school Cuban restaurant Versailles, where Jews and Cubans find a common ground: inexpensive and tasty food. Arielle’s grandmother took her there when she was a child, so this was a special familial ancestral residence for her as she dove into her black beans and yellow rice cooked in gobs of chicken fat. Yum!
On Sunday downtown Miami was buzzing with books, authors and those who love them. It was startling and inspiring to see all the different kinds of writers and books in their booths, from the highest brow to the lowest.
Out of the blue we ran into our compadre Roxanna Elden, who took our class in Miami and rocked our Pitchapalooza that was at one of our ATF bookstores, Books & Books, 5 years ago. Ever since the first time she pitched us, we knew there was a book there, long before she’d found an agent, written her book and got it published. All of which she did, step-by-step, yard by yard, mile by mile. It took her a couple of years and many rejections, but her book See Me After Class was published in June, 2, 2009, (David’s birthday) by Kaplan Publishing. It always makes our hearts happy when we see Roxanna not only because she’s such a funny, grateful, gracious, and exuberant person, but also because we have a sense of pride that we helped guide her from talented amateur to professionally published author. We’re very excited to report she’s working on a new book, a novel. Can’t wait to read it.
Our Miami event was our only non-Pitchapalooza, and we were sharing a panel with Betsy Lerner, author/editor/agent/quarter-century-veteran-of-the-publishing-wars. She has a new book out, or rather a new edition of what has become a publishing classic, The Forest for the Trees: An Editors Advice to Writers. It’s a must read for writers: veteran, neophyte or anything in between.
Five minutes before the event there were only 25 audience members, and no Betsy. Then suddenly the audience poured in like prospectors at the Gold Rush. In an instant there were 100 people. And there was Betsy. Right on time. There was no moderator, so it was interesting sharing a stage with someone else, just freeform talking about anything we wanted to talk about. It was a little like playing jazz with someone you never met before, and someone you played with for 10 years at gigs all over the country. Luckily, Betsy is a virtuoso, she had such smart stuff to say. For example, if you are querying an agent, don’t tell the agent that you two are soulmates. Don’t send a love letter. When the agent sells your book, then you can send flowers and candy and be best buddies. And don’t say you’re the next Eat, Pray, Love or Harry Potter. You are almost certainly not. Just makes you seem like an amateur. Think carefully about what your goal is as a writer. How do you define success? And for goodness sake, don’t rely on your husband/wife/mother/father for literary/publishing advice. Unless of course you’re married to Arielle Eckstut or Betsy Lerner. We focused on our 4 Principles of Successful Publishing: Research, Network, Write, Persevere.
We only had 50 minutes, so between the three of us, there wasn’t actually all that much time to talk before we opened up the room to a Q&A. At the end of the event, we tried a technique David used on his Art of the Memoir tour. We offered a free consultation to anyone who bought a book. At the signing table they lined up by the score. We must’ve sold 50 books. That may not sound like a lot. Until you’ve tried to sell a book. We’ve had events attended by 100 people and sold 4 books. People don’t understand that authors are generally not paid to do events. Authors do events to connect with their audience, to celebrate their publication, but they are there primarily to sell books. And despite having written the book on the subject, we have found this part of our job to be continuously challenging.
Afterwards we ran into our Hoboken homey, Caroline Leavitt, one of the nicest and most talented authors we know.
Her new book, Pictures of You, is already in its second printing and won’t even be published until January. We each bought each others’ books at the fair and Arielle started reading Pictures of You on the plane home. She got through 125 pages in 3 hours (and she’s a slow reader) because it was so crazily compelling. She finished it two days later—even though we came home to piles and piles of stuff to do after having been away for a month. She just had to finish it. For all those literary fiction lovers out there, you are in for such a treat. Pictures of You is Arielle’s favorite book of the year. It’s delectable!!!
It was tremendously gratifying/satisfying to end the first half of our tour with a great success. Riding high, we decided to cheat ourselves and go for it decadent brunch at the Ritz-Carlton in South Beach. It’s a pastel happy fantastical melting pot of Cuban ex-pat immigrants, flashy trashy fashion pioneers and victims, touristas, bikers, muscleheads and plastic surgery lovers. The brunch at the Ritz-Carlton has a very Fall of Rome feel to it. The people who work there don’t just serve, they seem like they’re happy to serve. Dining poolside was divine. California hand rolls, pancakes with fresh berry compote, roast beast, crab legs extraordinaire, and cheesecake popsicles. Yes, cheesecake popsicles.
David had a fascinating confrontation with a surgically enhanced 50-something. The server brought out two raspberry chocolate treats on a tray and presented them to David, Surgically Enhanced and her daughter. Surgically Enhanced grabbed both of them. Her daughter, clearly embarrassed, said, “Mom, maybe he wants one.” He being Me. Who said, “Yes, actually I would like one of them.” Surgically Enhanced just shrugged, took both chocolate raspberry treats and slouched away, clearly succumbing to one of the type 7 Deadly sins: Gluttony. Speaking of gluttony, stuffed and bloated we waddled out onto the beach. The ocean breeze was a gentle tonic, and we basked in the sun, sea and sand.
Finally, we wanted to give a shout out to the face, brains and heart of the Miami International Book Festival: Mitchell Kaplan. He’s is that rarest of birds: a brilliant businessman who also makes everyone he touches feel special. He had some fascinating things to say about the present and future of publishing. Amidst all the deathknell doomsaying about the book business, he said he can’t operate from a place of panic or doom. He just keeps doing what he does: loving and selling books. And keeps evolving, changing with the times, which are always a’changing. He was one of the first people to realize that a bookstore could transcend bookstoredom. So he brought in a great chef to Books & Books, and now people go there just to dine. The bookstore also has a beautiful courtyard where people can sit and read and write and talk in the sun. He’s brought in the greatest writers in the world not only to read, but into the bookstore to hang. So you never know who you might be sitting next to as you eat your quiche. Margaret Atwood, Neil Gaiman, Salman Rushdie. Mitchell said he was starting to shift the fundamental way he does business. He thinks the agency model that Apple and others are using has great potential for independent booksellers as well (we’ll be exploring this more in another post).
We’d like to close by thanking all the booksellers, book buyers, writers, panelists, babysitters, our amazing Workman team, who has made all this travel possible. We’ll leave you with a few lasting images from the festival.
The Essential Guide Tour Pitchapalooza #14, Seattle: Mexican Prisons, Sea-Salted Pate & Losing Your Innocence to Jimmy Carter
A cruel wind blew up our metaphoric skirts and chilled our gizzards with a damp shivery wetness as we stepped into Seattle. “Dad, it’s too cold!” Olive declared. We bundled and trundled into a taxi and cranked up the heat in our hotel, just off the blustery bay from Pike’s Place Market, where fish go to be turned into flying dead acrobats by monger/jugglers.
We decided to have a late lunch/early dinner, and wandered the market looking for something hot and excellent to eat. “Dad, it smells funny!” Olive declared. After a 10 minute walk that took about six weeks, with our extremities numbing and our bellies rumbling, we settled into a bistro called Pichet.
We struck pay dirt. Exquisite french fries. Creamy sea-salted pate. And the piece de resistance: French onion soup that was so transcendent when you close your eyes you could actually hear Edith Piaf singing like a little sparrow with a quivering voice and a broken heart. Sated, we went back to our room, tried to answer the 47,841 e-mails in our inboxes, while telling, re-telling, and re-re-telling Olive’s favorite new story: The Boy Who Cried Wolf.
Then it was off to Third Place Books. We were a little leery because it was deep in the depths of the burbs. But we had a spectacular panel that had tweeted and Facebooked about the event, so a few dozen writers showed up armed and fully-loaded with their pitches. On of these panelists was Kurtis Lowe, the head honcho at Traveler’s Group West, a leading book repping firm. He is Workman’s West Coast rep as well as a writer’s best friend. Not only is he wildly knowledgeable and articulate, he just loves books and authors. He bought us tea, he promoted our book, he even found this a boo-yeah babysitter for Olive. He also brought in the other panelist Johnny Evison, author of All About Lulu and the forthcoming West of Here. Johnny is that rare bird: a great artist who’s also an extraordinary businessman. He understands the complexity of promoting, spinning, and the marketplace, and knows how to succinctly articulate complex ideas. Plus he’s funny as hell.
As usual we heard some first-rate pitches. A woman who was imprisoned in Mexico in the 70s and helped change prisoner exchange laws. A writer who told her heart-touching story of an American who relocates to Frankfurt after World War II for love. A memoir pitch about a woman who goes to Washington DC as a teenage intern in the late 70s, and loses her innocence to the Carter administration. A marathon coach who’s lived through shocking tragedy and now transforms women’s lives. But the winner, Courtney Happ, gave an airtight tour-de-force pitch for her multiple point of view YA novel about navigating love and hormones, called Spinning Voices. It was really a great night, and Third Place was first rate. We left the burbs of Seattle invigorated, refreshed, with hope for the future of books.
the essential guide tour Pitchapalooza #13: coming home to Portland, autumn leaves, and packing ’em in at Powell’s
Portland, Oregon is one of our favorite cities in the world. In the name of full disclosure, David not only went to, but graduated from Reed College in Portland, and parts of his family has lived there on and off for a couple of decades. So it was a homecoming of sorts.
We landed in Portland on Tuesday or Wednesday afternoon. Frankly, we can’t remember which. Exhaustion was beginning to set in.
But as we deplaned, we witnessed a true miracle. Rain was not falling from the concrete Northwest sky. Our increasingly beloved travel agent put us in a gorgeous hotel right on the river, and the leaves were putting on a fireworks display of wild autumnal explosions.
Immediately we were struck by that unique combination of biking/hiking/outdoorsivity mixed with the attitude of chillaxation which makes Portland Portland. Plus the hotel had free, warm, fresh-out-of-the-oven chocolate chip cookies that made you feel all warm and happy and cozy. David’s sister Liz came down and we all had a lovely dinner, as she regaled us with hysterical stories of insanity from her gradeschool teaching. Then it was off to our gig, with Liz in charge of Olive while we were doing our thang. Olive is at that phase where almost everywhere we go, she looks around in bedazzled wonderment and exclaims joyously, “Wow, this is BEAUTIFUL!” Although it might seem counterintuitive to recommend taking a three-year-old with you on a book tour, I highly recommend it. She has already, at this point, become the go-to person when it came to keeping it real.
Powell’s Bookstore on Burnside may well be our favorite book emporium in the galaxy. David’s been going there since he was in undergraduate in the 1970s, soon after Michael Powell had the outrageous, outlandish, much-ridiculed idea of selling NEW books side-by-side with USED books. Gasp! What started as a cockeyed dream and a small room full of books, has become over the decades a mecca, shrine and heaven for books and those who love them, as well as an intellectual center in a city full of writers, artists, and musicians. This was David’s third event at Powells, and it’s always a transcendent thrill to be presenting his book in the very place he dreamed of being a writer when he was a bent and folded 18-year-old.
We were blessed with a truly top drawer all-star panel. Michael Schaub of Bookslut, Alison Hallett of the Portland Mercury, and Lee Montgomery, book guru of the venerable and influential Tin House (Sadly, Lee arrived after we took this photo).
They were assembled by one of our ATF* booksellers (and an excellent writer in his own right) Kevin Sampsell. To illustrate what a book mensch Kevin is, he proposed to his wife in front of 200 of his closest friends at the book release party for his memoir, right there at Powell’s.
As Olive was whisked away by David’s sisters Liz and Kate (who had joined us at the bookstores), to have her own book adventure, we were overwhelmed with gratification when 100 people showed up to pitch. Standing Room Only.
There was an apocalyptic kid’s book. A rhyming Christmas kid’s picture book. A cancer survivor looking to help sick kids book. An intelligence of Turtles book. A 15-year-old with a YA book about a pop star trying to find true love. But the winner was a young adult graphic novel about low riders in outer space. Full of beautiful poetry and wild action. The panel rocked HARD. The hour went by and about 10 minutes. Olive had a mad blast with her aunties. Portland, as usual, was everything we expected, and more.
*All-Time-Favorite for those of you without texting vocabulary