Behind every creative work is a story.
That’s one of the reasons I love to attend artists’ talks or book signings, because I learn the inspiration behind the work.
Some people think art should speak for itself, but I relish the context. The underlying story often increases my enjoyment of the art.
With that sentiment in mind, I have a novel coming out this week called The Pitch Queen. Here’s a short description:
An ambitious literary agent who is determined to be the biggest seller of debut novels leaves New York to sell her late mother’s Georgia beach cottage and forges a possible romantic friendship with an idealist antiquarian bookseller who is unaware of her careless attitude toward her authors.
Here’s story behind it:
Inspiration Behind The Pitch Queen
Writers are dreamers.
We dream up stories and sometimes when we finish them, we submit them to our dream agents who we hope will get us a dream deal. If we’re really dreaming big, we might imagine a six or even a seven-figure book deal.
That was once my pipe dream, and I used to study major and significant deals (more than $250,000) listed in Publishers Marketplace, wondering what they all had in common.
I limited my research to debut authors and finally noticed something surprising. Out of approximately three-hundred deals, I only recognized about a dozen names.
I researched about half of those authors and found something even more surprising:
Only a few had written a follow-up novel. If they wrote a sophomore novel, it was often years after their debuts.
In other words, authors who received big, splashy deals often disappeared into literary oblivion.
Why? Digging some more, I concluded many fell off the writing map because their debut novel didn’t meet sales expectations.
If you’re paid $500,000 or more for your debut, and that debut sells only 15,000 copies or less, you’re probably not going to get another book deal or if you do, the advance will be paltry.
A recent Esquire article describes what happens to most debut writers:
“[It’s} a ‘one strike and you’re out’ mentality, with some authors getting dropped by their agents if their debut doesn’t sell well. With second novels… those writers are starting at square one but worse, because… they have the burden of a bad sales track.”
Bottom line? When a book fails, the author pays the biggest price.
If editors continually back losing books, they might get fired, but certainly not after one goof.
The publisher might take a bit of a bath, but the failed novel will barely make a blip on their bottom line. Even if a book tanks, they make decent money on good pre-orders and selling sub rights.
As for the agent? She or he will continue to thrive as if nothing happened.
Literary agents can make an author’s wildest dreams come true with an amazing deal, but what happens when that dream ends the author’s career?
I studied dozens of high-ticket, flashy debut novels and many of them have very low ratings from readers. It happens often enough that one wonders if the books were sold on hype fumes alone.
What goes on in agents’ heads when they shop a manuscript with a great pitch but a weak execution? Do they hope the editor will fix it? Or that there will be enough pre-orders to make it a bestseller before it hits the bookshelves? Or do they try not to think about it too much?
It’s a ticklish and morally complex situation, one I was eager to explore through my main character Claire, a rising literary agent.
I also wanted to examine the writer/literary agent relationship. When it comes to the balance of power, it’s very much weighted against the writer.
Full disclosure: I’ve had five literary agents over the course of my career, all with different business styles.
Obviously, I bring my own prejudices to the table but, in writing this novel, I had to let go of those.
That’s so important because the most interesting novels are arguments, and all sides must be presented fairly. Every character should be the hero in their own story.
But as a regular reader of this newsletter, you can probably guess some of the takeaways and thematic issues underlying the novel.
To give you a hint, here’s what a mentor character says to a writer in the book:
“Don’t wait to be chosen. Pick yourself first. When you know your own worth, others can’t help but recognize it. Instead of being the beggar at the table, you’ll sit at the head.”
P.S. What are you working on now? What was the spark that drove you? Share your story.
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