In the summer of 1994, I lost my publisher, Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, as the sales figures for Reed’s Beach, my latest novel, sucked. … My editor had already bought the next two books after Reed’s Beach, a story collection and a memoir, but then took maternity leave. While she was gone, the publisher left, a new one brought in. This new publisher took one look at my sales figures and handed back to my editor the books, who then handed them back to my agent. Then my agent called to tell me the news. …
I was still working on a new novel, one whose future it had seemed was assured. …
Things happened: six months later my agent sold the memoir—called Fathers, Sons, and Brothers, about my being any or all three at any given moment—to another publisher, Orchard, a children’s book publisher that was expanding to include adult books as well. They paid for it, printed galleys, sent out catalogs with the book in it. Only then to cancel the adult line six months before the book was to come out. And meanwhile the layer of dust on the story collection grew thicker.
… I cannot tell you the number of times I moaned to my wife that I wanted to quit writing, that I could see myself just being a teacher of English and mowing the lawn on weekends, began even to long for that life. …
And so the work went on, the novel slowly, slowly taking a shape, while elsewhere the business of writing took its own twists and turns: a friend of mine … published his collection of stories with a small but elegant press in North Carolina, John F. Blair; [my friend] suggested I send them my story collection, which I did, and which they then took, publishing it in the summer of 1996. But it was a matter of resignation that sent me to that press: New York was no longer interested in my work, as the memoir, once again on the block, continued to be sent around, being turned down time and again. Perhaps the most telling rejection of that book, and the one that hurt the most, came from the vice president of a major literary publishing house (I won’t say who), whose entire editorial board voted to buy the book. In her letter to me clarifying why they did not buy it, the vice president explained that when she brought the manuscript to the marketing director for his take on the book, he said, “This is one of the most beautifully written books I can remember reading, but the essays are about such normal people, I have no idea how we would market this.”
Marketing.
I moaned louder of my desire to do yardwork.
Transcribed by me from pages 28–32 of my paperback and first edition copy of Before We Get Started: A Practical Memoir of the Writer’s Life, © 2005, Ballantine Books.
Tweet: Marketing is as important now as the good writing.
Tweet: Patience is a virtue in the book biz, even for experienced authors.
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