Location: Books & Such Main Office, Santa Rosa, Calif.

The week of writing about crazy-driving scenarios wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t mention that sometimes the good folks at the publishing houses drive us crazy. One of those times is when they become in communicado.

I’ve phoned and emailed about a timely, important issue–well, it’s important to my client and me. And the person at the publishing house–be it an editor, someone in marketing, someone in publicity, or the publisher himself–doesn’t respond. Acknowledgment of receipt of the communications would be appreciated! A time-frame in which a respond will be coming would be deeply appreciated.

When agents get together, one of the items we grumble about is that publishers tend not to deliver bad news to our clients, but ask us to do so. However, they love to deliver good news and rarely think to even include the agent in the conversation. For example, if a client is a finalist for a writing award, the publisher happily phones or emails the client. And then the client informs the agent. While I’m thrilled for the client, I’m not thrilled that my part in the publishing process wasn’t noted.

Then there’s the bad news part of the equation. Just today I had to phone one of my clients, whom we’ll call Carolyn, to tell her that the editor she’s been working with for several years hates Carolyn’s next novel idea. The two of them just returned from a time together in which the editor offered only praise for Carolyn’s writing. So imagine how unprepared my client was to receive a phone call from me in which I have to explain that not only was the idea not liked–the word “hate” was used by the editor. Why did this “go down” this way? Because, as the editor explained to me when she called me with the bad news, she didn’t have the heart to be honest with Carolyn face-to-face.

Agents get to announce: canceled contracts; poor sales figures; a publishing committee turning down a project; a tiny advance/royalty offer; an almost nonexistent marketing budget; a title or cover the author hated that the publisher is moving forward with anyway.

It isn’t that I want to be uninvolved in these “bad news” communications; it’s that some of these items could be more effectively communicated with both the agent and the editor on a conference call with the client. If that were done more often, I think authors would have a better sense of teamwork with the publisher and comprehend more why a decision was made. But I also understand that editors don’t get paid to hand authors Kleenex; it really is the agent’s job to pick up the pieces and come up with a plan of how to move forward. I just think it would be nice to have some balance and let publishers explain certain decisions to both the agent and the author–whether that decision is headline-making great news or heartbreaking hard news.

So there you have it; my week of exposing some of the situations that cause eye-rolling in an agent’s life. I appreciate all the feedback and discussion we’ve had.

For those of you who haven’t commented, what’s surprised you the most in what you’ve read? What insight did you gain?

Location: Los Angeles

If you read my post yesterday, I talked about agents who poach clients from other agents. But another crazy-making scenario is when a client leaves an agent badly.

Every client an agent picks is chosen carefully because it takes a lot of energy to “fold” a client into the agent’s workflow. The agent needs to be thoughtful and purposeful in how to move the writer onto his or her next level. If the writer has a number of published or unpublished manuscripts, the agent needs to become familiar with where the career is to understand how to move it forward.

One of the delights of being an agent is that we get to choose whom we work with. (How often can a person say that!?) So we choose our clients not only based on career potential but also based on whether we enjoy working with that person.

Considering the investment the agent makes in a client, agents don’t take it lightly when one leaves. Choose to leave well. How?As in any relationship, if your agent is disappointing you or not meeting expectations in some way, you should express it. Now, if you thought finding a publisher when you’re a debut writer was going to be easy because now you have an agent, or that your agent had a get-rich scheme, you need to adjust your expectations. Ain’t no agent got the key to those doors.

But if you have concerns that, on reflection, persist, talk to your agent about them. They need to be aired. Maybe you’ve been feeling neglected. Your agent might be able to explain what’s going on that’s keeping him from paying as much attention to you as he’d like to.

For example, I just completed the most complex contract negotiation I’ve ever done, with the publisher I place most of my projects with–therefore many of my clients would be affected by the negotiation. But it took four months of intense work. Was my ability to read proposals and send out manuscripts affected by the time spent in negotiations? Sure. And I’d be happy to explain that to any client who needed to hear it.

But let’s say that I had a client who, rather than talking to me about the perceived snub, just left. Gone. Sent an email after she signed with another agent.

What a sad waste for both of us. That author’s momentum will be lost while the new agent gets onboard. A perfectly good relationship will be gone because the client didn’t talk it over.

Now, that client might decide to leave after we talk, but at least we would have ended our relationship well. It comes down to showing respect for each other and for the relationship, for what each of us has invested in the other.

So if you’re feeling disgruntled with your current agent, pick up the phone and have a heart-to-heart. Either the air will clear, or you’ll both know the relationships isn’t working.

Not to mention that agents can make adjustments. If you have a concern, once you’ve expressed it, the relationship might not end at all but get righted. Which makes both of you happy.

Location: Books & Such Main Office, Santa Rosa, Calif.

Lest you think, based on my posts so far this week, that only writers drives agents crazy, let me hasten to say that agents drive agents crazy!

A perennial problem among agents is a practice called “poaching.” Ew, sounds unpleasant, doesn’t it? “Poaching” occurs when an agent knows an author is represented by another agent and attempts to “steal” that client away.

Now, all agents know we don’t own our clients, and author-agent relationships don’t always work out the way we think they will. So there’s a certain amount of changing “dance” partners that naturally occurs. The agent might decide the client isn’t fitting into the agency well or isn’t producing salable manuscripts or barrages the agent with emails or some other crazy-making behavior. The author might not sense the agent believes in the writer’s work, is paying enough attention to the writer, or is found to be lacking in ethics. Whatever the reason, the relationship falls into the “irreconcilable differences” category.

But poachers (or bottomfeeders, as one agent describes them) are a whole different kettle of fish. A poacher sets his or her sights on an author and approaches the writer by saying, “I read your last book and thought  it was brilliant…just brilliant.” Or “You know, I’ve been watching what your agent is doing with your career, and I have to say, he just isn’t serving you well. I’d like to talk to you about what I could do for you.” Or “How much of an advance did your agent negotiate for you on your last contract?…Really? You’re worth so much more.” Or “You know, I have significant contacts in the film industry, and I have to say, your books are naturals.”

Here’s the thing: Most authors are inherently insecure; it seems to go with the creative mind. They need to hear how much someone believes in them; that their writing is appreciated; that their labors are worth serious money. So it doesn’t take a brainy agent to know the points of vulnerability most authors have. The poacher’s bait probably varies little, as he or she moves along, snatching up vulnerable authors with the same hook and line.

What’s wrong with that? Simply that the author probably was being served well by the current agent and won’t benefit from making the change. As a matter of fact, editors and other agents know which agents poach. Trust me, they aren’t the most respected in the biz. As a matter of fact, editors work with those agents only because the editors want the projects badly enough.

Now, do you want to be represented by someone with a bad reputation? What happens when that agent needs to work out a sticky situation for you? If the agent even shows up to deal with the problem, the publisher won’t be eager to work with that person. What happens when that agent negotiates your next contract? The publisher just won’t be in the mood to make the changes requested.

Poachers, when confronted by other agents, often describe their behavior as “just business.’ Perhaps to them it is; but to the rest of us, it’s distasteful and unethical.

Bottomline: Don’t be snagged by agents who are swimming down in the muck. Be discerning and ask around about an agent’s reputation.

Location: Books & Such Main Office, Santa Rosa, Calif.

Connected with my post from yesterday, when I wrote about writers who try to glean free advice from agents, are writers who are in a pickle with their agent or publisher and need help to straighten out the mess. Often they’ll cast about for either a new agent or a new publisher and call a potential agent to discuss the issues that have left them floundering, unsure of how to deal with the situation.

Inherent in the discussion that author has with the potential new agent is the  understanding that the agent who offers time and insight should be the agent you would choose to represent you when you’re available to make that decision.After all, this is the person who is making a significant investment of time and energy. (Unless you determine you don’t agree with the advice the agent gave, of course.)

But it’s crazy-making when you’re the one who helped the author out of a troubled relationship and then the author chooses another agent, one who offered no help.

In a related situation, an agent feels betrayed when he or she offers feedback to an author on a manuscript that boosts the writing to the publishable level–and the writer chooses another agent. Hello, who brought you to this dance?

Sometimes an agent turns down your manuscript because it isn’t ready, or because you haven’t found your writing voice. That doesn’t mean that person never wants to hear from you again. Yet writers often don’t go back to agents who have seen past material to ask  if they’d like to take a look at something new. If your initial piece was close but not quite ready, the agent, who already is familiar with you and your writing, might well say he or she would be glad to take a look at a new manuscript.

Writers who don’t understand it cost an agent to give feedback

What’s the point of commonality in each of these crazy-making scenarios? The writer isn’t considering what it cost the agent to provide guidance, to give insight, and to respond to a manuscript or a situation.

Agents receive nothing in return for these investments, and on one hand, we understand that’s the way the system is set up. Yet sometimes it seems writers aren’t aware that what the agent gave cost the agent something. Every phone call, every proposal reviewed, every manuscript read takes the agent away from current clients–writers who are making money for themselves and for the agent.

Publishing relationships are like any relationship: Show respect for the other person’s talents, time and knowledge, just as you want to be treated in the same way.

In what ways could agents show more respect to writers?

How could writers show more respect to agents?

Location: Books & Such Main Office, Santa Rosa, Calif.

Every job has its drawbacks. You know, the stuff you’d just as soon not have to deal with but put up with for the inherent rewards in what you do. When I was an editor, proofreading was the do-I-have-to-do-this element of the job for me.

Agenting has plenty of rewards: working with clients for decades and seeing the long-term payoff for lots of dreaming and doing the hard stuff everyday; introducing a writer to the reading world; celebrating with clients when they hit the best-seller list or receive a notable award;  reading lots of great books before anyone else sees them; and developing strong relationships with publishing colleagues (editors, other agents, marketing and publicity folks, the publishers themselves).

Okay, that’s the good news. Now for the bad. Agenting has its share of crazy-making scenarios. To give you a glimpse into our world, I’m going to disclose a few of those circumstances this week.

Unagented people who ask for free advice.

Some authors hold out and refuse to sign with an agent, even though the writer has been in the biz for years–or even decades. They believe they’re doing just fine, thank you very much. That is, until they encounter a sticky publishing situation. Without anyone to turn to and to help figure out how to respond to the delicate circumstance that could radically affect the writer’s career, these careerists turn to an agenting buddy to bum off of him or her free advice.

Novice writers also turn to agents for free advice. Agents can encounter these individuals at writers conferences, neighborhood parties, weddings, church…pretty much anywhere people gather. Once individuals find out you’re an agent, they reveal that, wow, they’re writers and need some advice. I’ve been assailed in airport shuttles, restaurants and even elevators.

In this sense agents are like doctors: We aren’t comfortable being asked for free career advice any more than a physician is. Often the writer’s circumstance is complex and requires careful examination, diagnosis and treatment–in other words, some serious time and thought needs to be invested to figure out the next best move for that person.

Bottomline: Don’t assume agents are eager to dispense free advice. Respect that it took decades for them to know how to handle a variety of tricky publishing scenarios.

Now, lest that sound as though you should approach agents with fear and trembling, when have you received some good, free advice from an agent? What made that time appropriate?

Location:   Books & Such Nashville Office

Weather:    High 80s

In the wide-ranging sweep of topics this week, I think I’ve pushed myself and you readers to explore the subconscious for writing motivation. Certainly I want us to look at nationalities, racial groups, and languages other than our own to examine what’s being written outside our comfort zone–not as a steady diet  but on occasion to get a feel for something new. After all, something new is what the market seems to seek a lot of the time.

In light of that, here are some questions for us to discuss:

1. Who is your favorite non-native-American author? Why?

2. What genres do you feel American authors write better than any other nationality?

3. What genres do you associate with other nationalities?

4. Have any of you had experience having your work translated? How did that go?

5. If you could promote your writing in one non-US country, what would it be and why?

6. Do U.S. children in general understand other cultures better or worse than children of 20 years ago?

Location:  Books & Such Nashville Office

Weather:   Low 90s

Looking at the American Library Association’s lists of awards and prizes over the years, I see several authors and books from other cultures. The Mildred L. Bachelder Award for best work of translation is probably the best known of these. Begun in 1966 and named in honor of a children’s librarian whose work had international influence, the award is intended to promote communication between the peoples of the world. In 2003 author Cornelia Funke won that award for The Thief Lord, originally published in German. Funke has written several best-sellers since then and is now part of a promotional tour in the US along with several other juvenile authors.

In 2009 the Bachelder Award went to Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit by Nahoko Uehashi, originally published in Japanese. Even though it was published in the U.S. by Arthur A. Levine of Scholastic, the same imprint that brought us Harry Potter from Britain, the book has not appealed to readers in the same way as Funke’s. It has also been outsold by a Bachelder honor book that same year, Tiger Moon by Antonia Michaelis, originally published in German.

I may be making too much of this, but I feel several things are at play here: The American taste for intrigue and mystery rather than for spiritual symbolism. There may also be some underlying feeling of more ethnic identity with Germanic culture than with Asian. Or it could be something more obvious–page count, helpful glossary in the back, etc.

Within the realm of Christian publishing for children and youth, I feel we have too few books about children from other cultures, and I wonder why. Are we too preoccupied with the moral development of our own kids that we focus on the culture in which they are growing up? Why aren’t we publishing and promoting stories about our children learning, giving, and receiving with children from other countries? Eager to hear your answers.

Location: Books & Such Nashville Office

Weather:  Hot

Down at my second home, aka the nearest bookstore, I was looking for a few books I’d seen recommended recently. They were books for adults but with children in major roles. I’m always fascinated by how authors treat children in books for adults, and I think their number is increasing. I’ve previously mentioned Homer Hickam’s Rocket Boys and Tony Earley’s Jim the Boy, but there’s a new batch on the shelves.

Prolific bestselling author Jodi Picoult’s new book House Rules was released in March. It features a mother struggling with her son’s Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism. Unfortunately the incidence of Asperger’s is increasing. Even so,  not every author of Picoult’s stature would choose to create a novel about such a subject.

Mystery writer John Hart’s newest book is The Last Child, also published in March. I haven’t read this one, but the reviews frighten me a bit. In fact, I have trouble reading or seeing any story in which children are victims or stranded without help.

Last November Liza Campbell’s A Charmed Life: Growing Up in MacBeth’s Castle was published. Campbell spent part of her childhood in the famous castle, and she writes about it well along with allusions to the Macbeth of Shakespeare vintage. Most of all, I loved this because it reminded me of a client’s manuscript about an American family that wound up staying in a strange castle.

Have I mentioned The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery in an earlier blog? It was published in French in 2006 and in English in 2008. I’m in the middle of it now. The interplay between Renee the concierge and Paloma the 12-year-old is both funny and heartbreaking with lots of sidelights and a strong French flavor.

It requires a certain level of skill–or some very vivid memory of how children act and talk as they develop–to create a child character in an adult novel. They can easily take center stage, and then you have a children’s book with adult characters.

What books have you read that included children characters who were portrayed well? (No fair listing To Kill a Mockingbird.)

Location: Books & Such Nashville Office

Weather: Sunny and 92

In an online authors’ group, I’ve been reading a recent discussion about whether an author of one race can write effectively about characters of another.  Can a Caucasian write an authentic story about a Chinese character and vice versa? Can an African American write an authentic story about a Caucasian and vice versa? The basic question seems to be about the extent to which race dictates unique experience.

As I said above, this is an authors’ group, and their comments reflect their experiences in submitting their writing—mostly YA novels—to editors. Some of them had been declined on the basis of writing across racial lines, while others with similar casts of characters had not. One writer mentioned a comment by Julius Lester (author of 43 books, a Newbery Honor award, and National Book Award finalist) in which he was giving the stamp of approval for cross-racial writing.  A look at the racial makeup of this year’s Newbery Award winner and finalists suggests there is a measure of truth in that, although for years it was understood that Caucasians did not write stories about African American protagonists.

Lester, writing on his blog following the recent shooting of 8 people in a Connecticut plant by an African American, was obviously wrestling with the event and motives of the gunman. He concluded: “The essential element in human interactions is to feel in the hearts of others as an echo of our own heart, its yearnings and aspirations, its sorrows and its pains. If such does not happen often enough, we lose touch with the reality of ourselves and thus, the reality of others.”

I think certain basic emotions, needs and desires are common to humans regardless of race, but the extent to which a writer can plumb the experience of a character from another race is dependent on many factors. Do you agree, and if so, what factors do you think are important? What books do you recall where a writer crossed racial lines successfully?

Location: Books & Such Nashville office

Africa has been popping up in one way or another during the past year for me. Last fall, I heard the organizer of the centennial for native Tennessean James Agee, who wrote the screenplay for The African Queen, speak. I was startled to realize how many great changes had taken place on that continent in the 60 years since Agee had not only written that story for film (starring Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn), but also Let Us Now Praise Famous Men and A Death in the Family, for which he won the Pulitzer after his sudden death in 1955.

In January Desmond Tutu’s daughter Naomi, in full South African garb, spoke at a local university here in Tennessee. I didn’t get to hear her, but this quote indicates she has the same spirit as her father: “It doesn’t matter what the prime minister of South Africa thinks of me. It only matters what I think of them, and I think of them as my brothers and sisters.”

In June, at The International Christian Retail Show, I heard Christy Award keynote speaker, Lisa Samson, talk about her life-changing trip to Africa with her daughter to combat the AIDS crisis. The trip and its impact are fully described in her new book, Love Mercy: A Mother & Daughter’s Journey from the American Dream to the Kingdom of God.  Perhaps the most valuable parts of the book are the Appendix covering “Social Justice in Scripture” and the Acknowledgments, which includes a collection of African children’s pictures—most of them happy.

I know several of you are writing books, both fiction and nonfiction, about Africa. It’s a very large continent with many different stories—as Alexander McCall Smith has shown. It’s also considered the birth place of human beings. Tell us about books based in Africa you’ve enjoyed reading, or about what you’ve written on Africa.