The Observer had a piece about whether within the career life on an editor, is there a book proposal waiting to be acquired. The article itself seems to nay, quite bluntly in fact.
ICM agent Binky Urban does not believe it would be possible to write much of a novel about modern book publishing. “What is there to say?” she said by phone Monday. “It’s such an internal, sort of cerebral job. ‘And then I edited …’? I don’t quite get how that would work, to tell the truth.”
According to Ms. Urban, there might be a few people in the business (she suggested former head of Knopf Bob Gottlieb and Grove publisher Morgan Entrekin—hint, hint) who could write pretty good memoirs in the tradition of longtime Simon & Schuster editor in chief Michael Korda’s beloved Another Life. But in general, she said confidently, the world at large is not so curious about the book business these days. And those books that take it as their main subject—whether they’re novels or memoirs or works of history—never really do that well with readers, even if they do tend to catch the attention of the publishing community.
“They’re fascinating to all of us because we’re all narcissistic,” Ms. Urban said. “But I don’t know if they would be to anyone outside this area code.”
Now maybe -it is only- because I’m in this business, that I disagree, but I think there would be a good story out of a project like this. Almost every editor out there could probably fill a tome or two with their experiences. During their lives they will have worked on many different creative projects, seeing these novels grow into the finished piece most readers are familiar with. That’s a nexperience only the author and a scant few others can claim. And where as an author may work on a dozen or so books in their lifetime, an editor will have had a lot more than that pass through their hands in just a few short years. Being an editor means working with people, a variety of creative talents. Some charming, some…more eccentric than the norm we’ll say. (And some who can be just downright rotten.) Every editor has a ton of these stories; most of them are an absolute riot when told over a glass at Happy Hour. So why not? It could be a good book. (Proprietary issues aside. I’m sure Legal would have a heart attack over a book like this.)
Whether or not the public at large is going to buy it, well that’s a risk any book is going to take. Memoir can be trickier; I’ll admit that because with out celebrity appeal, it becomes a much harder sell. There is a place in that market for celebrity works, sensationalism, and -sometimes- just plain old good writing. I imagine a memoir airing out the dirty laundry of a writer as famous as Stephen King, to throw out a hypothetical example, would naturally interest readers. An author with that sort of fame has fans who are more than just interested in his books. They want to know about him, or about his process. Which is in part why his book on writing is so widely read and well thought of. (Except by one Darcy Fitzgerald -hiss-) Then then you have a real problem; the legal issues involved in that would be too great a risk. There is an understood confidentiality agreement in this business. In-fighting happens as financial and emotional stakes are high in any project. An editor will probably end up seeing the author at their worst some days; and sometimes it works the other way around. Some skeletons just need to stay in the closet.
But an editor who is also a writer–and there are a number of them who are, lurking about–could write a respectful, passionate account of what it’s like to be in this industry. Every editor likes to acquire books. I hear it described as “quite the thrill” all the time by friends, professors, and speakers in this particular line of publishing. There is a whole emotional process that they go through during the hunt, while they find and decide on these pieces. Most editors truly love what they do, and it’s something to listen to them speak about those early days of the projects that have meant the most to them during their careers.
I do agree with the Observer’s observation that the modern age of Publishing has grown more corporate and strict when compared to bygone years. I don’t think that’s necessarily bad. It had to change to keep up with the pace of modern life, the reader, and the changing business structure of book retail. It’s lost some of the romance of it all, but when one door closes, another opens. Remarkable stories and successes have come out of self-published authors, now that technology has made this fast and affordable–a lot of crap too but that is a rant for another day.
There are, however, enough editors working in the business that were around for both the “golden years’ of publishing when houses still published from the slush and then the transition into the digital age of the industry. I would expect a book like this to touch on those changes and provide a deeper understanding to those that just don’t get it.
Interestingly enough, while people don’t seem interested in actively finding out about publishing unless they are an author who is shopping around a novel at the momment, most people I’ve talked with have their own basic idea of what it is. And they are almost always wrong. The world of publishing is either overly romanticized or turned into this bleak, unfeeling corporate battleground. The reality of it remains a mystery to everyone outside the industry. People may not go for a memoir about publishing, but there really isn’t anything else like it. So who knows. Maybe.
I argue that it’s worth a shot.
/End of Line
~ Darcy
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