Amazon.com, California Thanks You for Potholes

By Andy Ross

From: Ask the Agent

Amazon.com ruined my day today. I was walking around Lake Merritt, as I do every day with my friend, Susan Southwick. I was approached by a dweeby looking guy with a clip board asking me to sign my support for an initiative that would allow Amazon.com to continue evading the collection of California sales tax, as they have done since their inception in 1996. The dweeby guy said that the initiative would lower taxes and create jobs. Instead of walking away, I decided that I would scream at him and proceeded to do so for 10-15 minutes. I accused him of …well, I won't bore you….pretty much everything in the book. I felt really great and energized when I finally told him that I had nothing but contempt for his pathetic, impoverished, morally bankrupt life. I had a few more nuggets to tell him after that, but Susan had become embarrassed by the scene and had started briskly walking away down the path.

Let's back up. Recently California passed a law requiring Amazon to hand over the estimated $83,000,000 in uncollected sales tax revenue for 2011 and to start collecting from California customers going forward. A number of states have decided that it is time to have Amazon do its duty. After all Amazon benefits immeasurably from the maintenance of roads which allows Amazon to deliver their goods to customers. The company profits from the sales tax support of public education that creates consumers of books. And let's not forget that sales tax help pay for police, fire, and emergency services that give us the basis of an orderly society, without which no commerce – no civilization even -- could exist.

When the new California law was passed and signed by the governor, Amazon within hours cut off the thousands of "associates" in California, many of them PTAs and non-profits who direct sales to Amazon and get commissions to fund their good works. In a breathtaking exercise of shameless chutzpah, Amazon claimed that by allowing the world's largest online company to evade sales tax so that they can unfairly compete against local business, the state is harming small businesses and killing jobs in California. Many of the associates who unceremoniously had their commissions from Amazon cut off with 12 hours notice seem to be buying this argument. A classic example of the victim identifying with the executioner.

Which brings us back to the dweeb at Lake Merritt. Not content with pulling the plug on the associates, Amazon has bankrolled a ballot measure with a sort of Orwellian name like "tax fairness initiative". And so the California initiative process, originally created to give power to the people, once again is being manipulated by a big out of state business to harm the people in the state.

Let's engage in a mental exercise. California claims that Amazon owes $83,000,000 for sales tax for 2011 alone. Let's estimate that in the last five years Amazon has evaded conservatively $300,000,000 in sales tax collection. Here is what California could have done with the money.

• Hired 3000 elementary school teachers.
• Hired 2000 police officers
• Funded music programs in 1000 schools
• Fixed 3,000,000 pot holes
• Hired 2000 university professors
• Provided academic scholarships for 7500 students
• Saved the lives of 1,500,000 puppies
• Funded 1000 homeless shelters
• Paid for school lunches for 300,000 needy kids
• Bought 10,000,000 books for schools and libraries (And if those books were bought from local independent book stores, it would create thousands more jobs for people who pay taxes to California. And I might add allow those stores to survive and thrive and offer a richness to local communities that Amazon cannot match.)

Tax fairness, indeed!

Helping small business, indeed!

More jobs in California, indeed!

Amazon Must Collect California Sales Tax

by Andy Ross

On June 29 California Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill into law that requires Amazon.com to collect sales tax on all sales made to California customers. The state stands to collect $200,000,000 owed by Amazon for unpaid back taxes. Amazon countered by cutting off all their California affiliates (people with those nifty click -throughs on their websites that funnel sales to Amazon).

This was a long fight, and it was pretty much carried by the Northern California Booksellers Association. Although paradoxically, they did have some --uh-- bigger allies. Like, for instance, Walmart, and later Barnes and Noble.

California followed some other states in this: notably New York and Illinois. 

I'll try not to bore you too much with legal theory, but here's the somewhat simplified back story. The controlling Supreme Court decision on Internet sales tax collection is a case called Quill v. North Dakota, decided in 1992 before there was such a thing as Internet commerce. The court ruled that under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution states could not require out of state corporations to collect state sales tax. Of course, the devil is always in the details, and the big question is what exactly is an out of state corporation. All tax experts agree that if there is some sort of substantial presence by an out of state corporation in the state, that is enough to trigger the sales tax collection requirement. Sometimes it can be as simple as teachers selling books to students from the Scholastic Book catalogue or even a commissioned sales rep wandering into the state periodically to collect some orders. 

I think this all started with a meeting of Northern California booksellers in 1999. The meeting was attended by Hut Landon, Bill Petrocelli, myself, and George Kiskadden. Also attending was a particularly supercilious lawyer from the California State Tax Board. Bill had done some pretty intense legal research and laid out his theory about "affiliate nexus". It was pretty much the theory that New York, Illinois, North Caralina, and now California have used to justify Amazon's tax collection requirement. The supercilious lawyer responded superciliously that tax policy is extremely complicated and should be left to the tax policy experts. He looked at us, more in sadness than in anger, and told us it was a pity, because he agreed with our sentiments.

At the same time on the federal level, an unholy alliance of small business people, huge commercial real estate corporations, and big box stores were at work attempting to get federal enabling legislation that would accomplish the same goal. This has never happened. But there was a national debate raging at the time, and Internet-mania was dominating public discourse. I remember being on the same talk shows as Internet gurus who were saying that the Internet was the most important invention since the wheel (I'm not kidding!).

Amazon had 3 or 4 arguments about why they shouldn't be required to collect sales tax. The 2 most cited arguments were: 1)Internet commerce was a frail bird that needed to be protected from the crushing weight of sales taxes and 2) Internet commerce was the economic juggernaut that was driving the "New Economy" and creating jobs and wealth. I liked to point out how puzzled I was about how Internet commerce could at the same time be both a frail bird and an economic juggernaut. I never received a satisfactory answer.

The national alliance of big and small businesses needed a public spokesman who could engender warm and fuzzy feelings. This excluded the vice president of Walmart who was the key figure financing this endeavor. They decided that they needed a colorful small shop keeper and so chose me. I remember they sent me off to Washington to debate Grover Norquist, a truly despicable person and anti-tax nut, at the Federal Society. I had no difficulty dispatching Norquist's shabby arguments by showing that government tax policy should not be picking winners and losers in the marketplace by allowing some favored businesses to sell tax free. It was a perfectly respectable conservative position and it was true and fair. My dirty little secret that I have never admitted until now was that my expenses for that trip were paid for with a check from Walmart. Strange bedfellows, yes?

Anyway, this has been one of those David and Goliath stories. These days in America the David's haven't been having much success. I hope California will take Amazon's $200,000,000 and put it back into the educational system of the state. An educated population is a book buying population. In the long run, it will prove a good investment for Amazon and all of us.

It's nice to know that in this age of economic giantism, sometimes little people are still able to do big things. Thanks Northern California booksellers.

First Lines in Literature

by Andy Ross

I've been thinking a lot about beginnings, first lines in literature. Which ones are satisfying and what makes them so? And others, admired by all, that still just leave me cold. My friend Susan and I walk around Lake Merritt every day and talk about this. Susan is writing a novel, and we are having , uhh, differences of opinion on the subject of first lines. There is a bunch of material on the internet about beginnings. Lists of the 100 best first lines in fiction. Advice to writers about how to construct a first line. Stuff like that.

Since I'm not a creative writer, I can't dispense writing tips with any authority. As a literary agent though, I have to take beginnings seriously. For me the first line is the most important sentence in the book. Editors are very busy people and receive stacks of manuscripts every day. If they get turned off by a clumsy first line, they are likely to cast a cold eye on the rest of the manuscript.

So here are a few of my random thoughts on this subject focusing on some illustrious examples.

"Call me Ishmael." - Moby Dick by Herman Melville

This first line is always at the top of the list. The most famous first line in all of literature. So what's so great about it, anyway? I thought about that today and decided that it was overrated, that it is one of those things that people think is great because everybody else thinks it's great. It's catchy. It's different. But why would it lead me to read the rest of the book? What if I wrote a book that began: "My name's Andy"? I don't think it would make the 100 best list of anything. Why didn't Melville start with something like: "Ishmael's my name. Whales are my game."? Think about it. Tells a whole lot more about the story. It really is a better lead, -- wouldn't you say?

But stay with me on this. Let's dig a little deeper. Here is the second line in Moby Dick ."Some years ago--never mind how long precisely --having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation." Wow! Now that's writing. Here we have a book that does more than tell a story. It has the boldness to tackle THE BIG QUESTION; man's struggle for truth in the face of an indifferent and inscrutable universe. I mean, duh! We are not in "chick lit" territory here. And this second line ---- what would the critics call it? Understatement? Ironic foreshadowing? Because whatever this book is going to be about, you know it isn't going to be about sailing a little to see the watery part of the world. Magnificent!

***

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." -- The Bible by God (or was it King James? Or was it The Gideons?)





This is pretty good as far as beginnings go. I'm trying to think of a better one. The only thing I can come up with as an alternative is: "Call me Yahweh". And that really doesn't work as well. But when we think of the Bible as literature, we really think of the King James Version which, as the learned biblical exegetes will tell you, is a triumph of form over substance. Not an accurate translation at all.

Here is a literal translation of The Book of Genesis from the Young Literal Translation Bible:

"In the beginning of God's preparing the heavens and the earth –the earth hath existed waste and void, and darkness is on the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God fluttering on the face of the waters."

Not exactly something you expect to hear from the deep, rich voice of James Earl Jones. And can you imagine Michelangelo's God in the Sistine Chapel with little yellow and black butterfly wings "fluttering" on the face of the waters? I'll stick with King James, thank you very much.

***

"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness". -- Paul Clifford by Edward Bulwer-Lytton.



This famous beginning has really become a kind of joke, a metaphor for bad first lines. Just mention it at a cocktail party of literary snoots, and you will hear uncontrollable guffaws and belly laughs around the room. Honestly, I don't think this is such a bad first line. Maybe a little overwritten with some murky syntax; maybe a little bloated; maybe a little attenuated by the author's sense of the of his own unmerited importance. But otherwise, not bad. It sets up the scene pretty well. The reader really has a sense of where he is. And it gives us a pretty robust foreboding of what will follow. Now let's compare it to this famous first line:

***

"riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from the swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodious vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs."
I bet you can't name that one. It's Finnegans Wake, you moron! I bet you can't tell me what it means. I bet Thomas F**king Pynchon couldn't tell me what it means. Try dropping that first line at the literary cocktail party. No snarky snickers with this one. The room will be silenced by the crushing weight of your gravitas. And you might as well forget about your designs on that sexy assistant editor from Knopf wearing the black dress standing by the sushi platter. Because tonight you'll be going home alone to the solitude of your bedroom, Bub.

***

"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth." -- The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger



Oh yes. This is really sweet. I bet every modern writer has wished they could have thought of this beginning. And I suspect that many of them think of it still when they sit down staring at their blank page ready to begin their novel. By the way, gentle reader, if you know of any beginnings by great modern writers that are clearly derivative of this masterpiece, can you share it with other readers of this blog?

***

"In the second century of the Christian Era, the empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilized portion of mankind. The frontiers of that extensive monarchy were guarded by ancient renown and disciplined valor. The gentle but powerful influence of laws and manners had gradually cemented the union of the provinces. Their peaceful inhabitants enjoyed and abused the advantages of wealth and luxury." -- The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon



This is my favorite. I won't sully Gibbon's gorgeous beginning with an impertinent comment. Gibbon's language is commanding, lofty, elegant, and confident. Worthy of a work of such grandeur. What is even more remarkable is that this level of writing continues over six volumes and 3000 pages. And look at the vocabulary, the syntax, the voice and the cadence. It is the quintessence of perfection. It has the faultless precision of Mozart and the epic splendor of Wagner. I am in awe!

I'm going to leave this now. But I don't want this to be the last line. I would really like you readers to weigh in with your favorite first lines and why you love them.

How I Became a Bookseller

By Andy Ross

I became a bookseller because I had a passion for books. This is not a particularly good reason to make a life career choice. But my decision (if one could call it that) to enter the book business was disorderly. The critical path was filled with loop-de-loops. I've never told this story before, but it goes like this. In 1971 I was a graduate student at the University of Oregon in Eugene. I was on a Ph.D. track studying German cultural and intellectual history. Most of the people with whom I associated outside of the History Department were hippies or some variation thereof. I suppose I was too, although spending one's waking hours reading Kant and Kierkegaard created some real cognitive dissonance in my counter-cultural consciousness and lifestyle. I cut a kind of ridiculous figure with my non-academic friends. But people were more tolerant back then.

I was pretty focused on becoming a scholar and I was pretty good at it too. I had even been admitted to Ph.D. programs at some snooty universities. I was writing a masters thesis on the social thought of Kierkegaard. In my other life outside of the university, there was a lot of talk among my friends about freedom, spontaneity, communal living, feminism, the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, psychedelic drugs, astrology, free love, vegetarianism, gestalt therapy, natural childbirth and that sort of thing. Marxism was very popular too. But the Marxism being bandied about was what we superior intellectuals in the History Department would call "vulgar Marxism", by which we meant people who actually wanted to change the world, not just pontificate about it. Among the vulgar Marxists, there was a lot of waving of Chairman Mao's Little Red Book and some vicious disputes over matters that were of no consequence to anyone other than the vulgar Marxists. Oh, yes. There was a war going on, and Kierkegaard didn't have much to say about that. (One could argue that Kant did, if you could actually understand what he was talking about.)

It also rained a lot in Oregon. And there was a girl. There always is, isn't there? Things weren't going too well with us, as is often the case. One day she walked out on me and joined a free love commune called "Earth's Rising Family." I kept going out there trying to get her back. The communards were pretty nice people. They graciously put me up in the teepee down the hill from the privy while they were up in the farmhouse having orgies (or so I imagined). Kant and Kierkegaard didn't have much say about that either.

Somehow all this led me to the decision to leave academics and start a bookstore. As I said, I had a passion for books. I don't remember much about what kind of thought went into the decision. Not very much at all, I believe. Maybe 5 minutes of thought. Maybe it happened in my sleep. Maybe it happened in the teepee. It was dumb luck, but it probably set me in the right direction for the next 35 years and counting.

At first I talked to the guy who owned the counter-cultural bookstore in Eugene. I had heard that he wanted to sell it. If my mind doesn't fail me, I believe it was called "Koobdooga Books." It means "a good book" backwards. He told me that he conceived of the name on an acid trip. I thought about buying it. But I was tired of the rain and depressed about rushing back and forth to and from the teepee at Earth's Rising Commune. So I moved down to the San Francisco Bay Area.

I found a bookshop for sale in Cotati, a small college town in Sonoma County about 50 miles north of San Francisco. There was a lot of hippies there too, kind of like Eugene but with more sunshine. It was a very modest store with much to be modest about. It was called Eeyore Books. It was started by a couple of local women a few years before. The entire space was 600 square feet, about as big as my living room where I'm writing this. The store wasn't worth much money, because it didn't have many books and did even less business. But I still managed to drive a very bad bargain. It is a flaw that I fortunately overcame before becoming a literary agent. I paid them $15,000. And the store was mine.

I put in some new shelves, ordered up some books and opened for business a week later. It was 1972. On my first day of business I did $32 in sales. It was pretty discouraging. Later I learned that was the same amount of sales that Cody's had done on its first day of business in 1956. The old Cody's shop on the north side of campus was about the same size too. 600 square feet.

The second day I was open, I met my first publisher's sales rep, Maggie Castanon of Random House. Until her retirement some 40 years later, she was always my favorite person in publishing. She was a great sales person, filled with a passion for books and totally without pretension. I always felt good when I was around her. After she retired, she even came to work for Cody's at our Fourth Street store. For booksellers, Random House always held a special place in our hearts. It wasn't the largest publisher back then. That was Doubleday. But Random House had the best titles for a bookstore such as ours. A visit by a Random House rep was an event to be anticipated. This special relationship between Random House and booksellers continues to this day. Doubleday is now an imprint of Random House. And Random House is the largest book publisher in the world.

The second sales rep I met was Joyce Cole who sold books for Avon, a mass market publisher. I think she was Maggie's best friend. Joyce was striking in appearance, sophisticated, and had a kind of charisma that was difficult to define. I had a feeling that there was something interesting inside. But she seemed cool and aloof. I didn't expect that we would ever be friends. I was wrong about that. Joyce and I were married in 1986.

A lot of people say that the quality of books has gone downhill in the last 30 years, that literary values have been replaced by commercial values and that American reading has been seduced by the dark forces of a hegemonic mass media with a fetish for celebrity. Actually most people in the book business don't talk that way, except maybe me, and then only at pretentious literary cocktail parties. Nowadays when I argue the point (and I still do 35 years later), I like to recite the great line from Yeats' poem, "The Second Coming": "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are filled with passionate intensity." And most people agree. (Although there are some who are not familiar with that poem and have to slouch off toward Wikipedia to find the reference).

But looking back on the bestsellers of 1972, it would be hard to characterize that year as a literary golden age.

The ten fiction hardback bestsellers were:

1. Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Richard Bach
2. August 1914, Alexander Solzhenitsyn
3. The Odessa File, Frederick Forsyth
4. The Day of the Jackal, Frederick Forsyth
5. The Word, Irving Wallace
6. The Winds of War, Herman Wouk
7. Captains and Kings, Taylor Caldwell
8. Two From Galilee, Marjorie Holmes
9. My Name is Asher Lev, Chaim Potok
10 Semi-Tough, Dan Jenkins

The nonfiction best sellers were:

1. The Living Bible, Kenneth Taylor
2. I'm O.K., You're O.K., Thomas Harris
3. Open Marriage, Nena and George O'Neill
4. Harry S. Truman, Margaret Truman
5. Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution, Robert Atkins
6. Better Homes and Gardens Menu Cook Book
7. The Peter Prescription, Lawrence Peter
8. A World Beyond, Ruth Montgomery
9. Journey to Ixtlan, Carlos Castaneda
10. Better Homes and Gardens Low-Calorie Desserts

Still, as I look at this list now, I'm struck by the fact that it isn't all that bad, certainly a good balance of fine literary titles along with the usual commercial mediocrities. A number of these books I don't remember selling at all. They probably did much better in the chain stores. Yes, there were chains, even then.

The other big venue for book sales was department stores. They all had book departments. The department store book buyers were towering figures in the book business with immense prestige and influence and were accordingly treated with deference and obsequiousness by the publishers. Those department store book sections are all gone now, replaced with ladies' accessories and cosmetics. I don't think it was any great loss either. The department stores had very conventional taste in books that appealed primarily to blue haired rich old ladies. You'd walk into these departments and you knew that nobody there really had a passion for books.

Book publishing was different back then too. As I mentioned, the world wasn't really focused on bestsellers the way it is now. At least that was true outside of the big chains. My store still had its counterculture feel. We sold a lot of books, mostly paperbacks, on humanistic psychology, eastern mysticism and other things spiritual. Fritz Perls, Abraham Maslow, Alan Watts, The Urantia Book, and Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism were some of my best sellers in the mid seventies at Eeyore's. I made a lot of money on the I Ching (Princeton University Press edition). And, of course, all things having to do with the ever mysterious, Carlos Castañeda.

Fiction, too, was conditioned by counter-cultural enthusiasms: Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Childhood's End by Arthur Clark, Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein, Siddhartha and Demian by Hermann Hesse, Jonathan Livingston Seagull. There was the usual stuff by self-styled "visionaries" like Future Shock by Alvin Toffler and The Greening of America by Charles Reich. These books have not stood the test of time. There were some other books that, though dated, I still think of with admiration. I wouldn't mind re-reading The Last Whole Earth Catalogue.

But I couldn't give up on my ponderous German philosophy. We also sold the works of Karl Marx, One Dimensional Man by Herbert Marcuse, and anything by and about Friedrich Nietzsche. As you can tell from all these titles, things were different back then. People were interested in understanding life's big questions. What is truth? How do we lead a just life? How do we make a better world? How do we find happiness and contentment.? I don't believe we are asking these questions so much now, but maybe I am just blinded by nostalgia.

Eeyore's was a one person operation. We did grow over the years. By the time I left Cotati, I think it had become a two person operation. I had moved the store to another space. It was about four times as large as the original location. I'm still pretty proud of that store. I think it had a kind of perfection, just right for its time and place.

How to Make the Perfect Pitch

Andy Ross is a literary agent with offices in Oakland, California. Before becoming and agent, he was the owner of Cody's Books in Berkeley. You can read more on Andy's blog, Ask the Agent.


Recently I was invited to be a judge at the Pitchapaloosa event at Book Passage organized by Arielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry to promote their new book, The Essential Guide to getting Your Book Published. (By the way, this is by far the best book for a writer seeking a publisher.) We listened to about 20 people putting themselves out there in front of an audience with only one minute to pitch their book. The writers all deserve medals for courage.

I thought it might be a nice thing to post this blog with some tips about how to make the perfect pitch. Writers, listen up!

Weak: I am willing to go on an 8 city tour (they probably won't send you, and this indicates that you might have unrealistic expectations. They used to let you travel first class and stay at the Ritz Carlton. They're hard up now, so expect to go by Greyhound.)

Strong: I am willing to schedule an 8 city tour at my expense ( Any other ideas that include: "at my expense" are always popular with publishers)

Weak: This would be a great story on Oprah (uh-huh. It's also the oldest story in the book. Similarly unrealistic)

Strong: I am sleeping with Oprah's hairdresser. ( If you are going to pitch media connections, they should be concrete and have reasonable expectations of results. But don't oversell yourself. They are experienced bull shit detectors.)

Weak: I am willing to go to book signings at my local bookstore (They know that anyway. And this won't sell books).

Strong: I have arranged presentations with the staff at Google. Steve Jobs loves my book and has agreed to purchase 5000 copies to give to the key Apple employees at Christmas time. They are also interested in purchasing non-verbatim electronic multi-media rights as an app for the I-pod. (This is too good to be true, so you better get Steve to write a letter to that effect. Publishers love sales outside of bookstores. It is like free money.)

Weak: I will reluctantly agree to be on Fresh Air, schedule permitting. (If you don't have fire in your belly to aggressively flog your product, you will not be well received. )

Weak: This will make a great movie (see Oprah above).

Even weaker: Excuse me. I have to get off the phone. Stephen Spielberg is on the other line. (see above reference to bull shit detectors.)

Strong: Film rights for this product have been optioned to Stephen Spielberg (But don't forget – an option is a long way from a movie)

Very Strong: Film Rights have been sold to Stephen Spielberg. Brad and Angie are signed up. Currently being filmed on location in Montana. (This pitch doesn't happen very often).

Strong: I am the extremely charismatic and controversial governor of Alaska and vice-presidential candidate. (Don't worry that she is inarticulate, has nothing to say, and can't write. Hey, it's all about celebrity).

Strong: I am the extremely charismatic and controversial former governor of Alaska who has quit in ridicule. (Hey, it's all about celebrity).

Weak: My neighbor will host a publication party. (See book signing above)

Strong: My neighbor is Barak Obama, and he will give a publication party at the White House (nuff said)

Weak: My friends loved this book. (Your friends won't tell you the truth).

Strong: My friend, Bill O'Reilly (Rachel Maddow) loved this book. (Connections, connections, connections).

Weak: My mother and spouse loved this book. (Oh, come on!)

Strong: My mother is the former governor of Alaska and she loved this book. My former boyfriend hated this book and will go public and tell tawdry and salacious tales about me. (In this business, there is no such thing as bad publicity.)

Weak: I'll set up a blog and a website (whoopee!)

Very Weak: I have a blog that gets 50,000 hits a day and will promote my new biography of Ludwig Wittgenstein. My blog is called GO.NASCAR.com.

Strong: I have a blog that gets 50,000 hits a day and will promote my new biography of Ludwig Wittgenstein. My blog is called LudwigRocks.com. (All blogs are not equal. All successful blogs are not equal).

Weak: Your readers are going to love this book. It is like Petrarch meets Robespierre. (Although publishers are infatuated with pitch lines premised on dubious and glib equivalencies, the pitch must be based on subjects that are readily recognized – usually in the Safeway checkout line).

Strong: Your readers are going to love this book. It is like the Bronte sisters meet the Olson Twins. (Now that's a pitch!)

Publisher Rejection Letters From Plato to Hitler

Andy Ross is a literary agent. Prior to starting his agency, he was owner of Cody's Books in Berkeley for 30 years.

When I became a literary agent three years ago, I simply wasn't ready for the flood of publisher rejection letters flowing into my office in response to my submissions. It felt a little like my social life in high school. I can only imagine the shame and humiliation that my clients must experience from these letters. Four years of work on a novel reduced to a single line, a formula really: "I just didn't fall in love with it." Or: "We all felt it didn't quite have the right narrative arc." I decided to engage in a mental exercise of employing the standard rejection templates as they might have been used for some of the great (or notorious) classics of Western Civilization.



Plato's Republic


Andy,


Thank you so much for submitting The Republic by Plato. Certainly this book has much to commend it. It asks some serious questions and it doesn't get bogged down in "jargon" like some of the philosophy books we see coming over the transom. That said, I am going to have to pass on this book. I'm not sure that the author has anything really new to say about the themes he discusses. The Good, the True, the Beautiful, and the Just have been written about ad nauseum since the time of the ancient Greeks. There is really no new way to slice and dice this material. And although Mr. Plato seems quite adept at dialogue, I question how he would hold up in the face of tough questioning by the likes of Bill O'Reilly.



The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann


Andy,


I don't quite know what to make of this book. Six hundred pages of narrative about people in a tuberculosis sanitarium on top of a mountain -- and for twenty years? Really! I'm afraid that modern American readers need a little more action and excitement in their lives. They don't want to come home and read about the over-ripe decadence of Central European culture in the early twentieth century. I certainly don't mean to sound snarky, but in my humble opinion (and I have been known to be wrong before), Herr Mann is nothing but a gas bag.



Oedipus Rex by Sophocles


Andy,


Thank you for your submission of Mr. Sophocles' drama, Oedipus Rex. Sophocles is an exceptional dramatist with many fine works to his credit that have been both critical and commercial successes. And we feel privileged that you gave us the chance to consider this work. That said, I'm afraid we are not going to publish this book. Although I am a personal admirer of Mr. Sophocles, I feel that Oedipus is a minor work and, quite frankly, a little derivative. Particularly of some of the works of Freud. The implicit theme, the idea that "from wisdom comes suffering," has become a little hackneyed and a little frayed at the edges, as it were. I think that after seeing James Cameron's Avatar, there really isn't much left to say on this subject. But we would be delighted to look at anything newer and fresher that Mr. Sophocles might create in the future.



Ulysses by James Joyce


Andy,


I'm sorry. I just don't get it.








Macbeth by William Shakespeare



Andy,


Thank you for sending us Macbeth by William Shakespeare. Mr. Shakespeare certainly brings a fresh voice to the modern theatre and has a commendable mastery of plot and character. That said, I am not going to make an offer on this book. I think that Mr. Shakespeare has a certain inelegance of style and his language skills could use some refining. I also noticed a number of careless misspellings in this work. The extensive "scholarly" footnoting with its endless references to "folios" and "quartos" was annoying and distracting.


I feel compelled to say, and I hope neither you nor your client take offense at this, that some of his "speeches" are just plain pretentious and not suited to the more casual sensibilities of our upscale readers. For instance: Macbeth says: "It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." Don't you think this could be stated more clearly and succinctly? How about: "Life is pretty confusing. Sometimes I just want to shake my head and cry." Furthermore, I could not help but note an obvious unattributed locution from William Faulkner. Your author should try to be more careful.


War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

Andy,


Thank you for your submission of Count Tolstoy's War and Peace. I found it to be a very well researched and polished novel. And I can certainly see how it would appeal to the same readers who enjoy the works of Herman Wouk and Leon Uris. But I am afraid that I won't be making an offer. As you know, our imprint is always looking for quality genre fiction. And certainly War and Peace falls squarely within the conventions of the historical novel. But, just between you and me, this manuscript just isn't ready for prime time. For starters, it is a real door-stopper. 1500 pages plus change! I think the author needs to face the facts that he could do with some judicious freelance editing. Our readers lead busy lives and are looking for a more, shall I say, intimate reading experience. If the author could cut the plot by, say, 900 pages; if, for example, he could take out the sub-plot of the Napoleonic invasion of Russia, we would be happy to review this submission again.


Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain




Andy,


I am a big fan of Mr. Twain's work. In fact, his novel, Huckleberry Finn, was one of the best books I read last season. So I approached your submission with considerable excitement. I'm sorry to say that I was not thrilled with Tom Sawyer. Compared to Mr. Twain's other works, I felt that this was merely a bagatelle and perhaps a little (shall we say) jejune. Still I sent it around for some more reads and I took it to the editorial meeting. The sales director pointed out that all of Twain's novels since Huckleberry Finn have shown steadily declining sales numbers. He felt, and the committee agreed, that it was unlikely that the chains would take a position on this book. But I encourage you to show us any new projects the author might develop in the future.


Mein Kampf by Adolph Hitler

Andy,

I have to tell you that this one came pretty close. Personally, I loved this book. I took it to the editorial board. We almost had consensus. But the committee reluctantly decided to pass. There was much to admire in this book. We were impressed by the author's passion, his strong sense of purpose, and his robust voice. Some of us were moved to tears by the Youtube clips from the Nürnberg Parteitag rallys. Herr Hitler's platform is most impressive, indeed. One of the editors said, only half jokingly, that it was too bad we couldn't bottle Herr Hitler's charisma and give it to some of our more pedestrian authors. And our marketing director was inspired by the book proposal that offered so many innovative marketing strategies. The concept of summarily executing any citizen who didn't purchase this book was refreshing and indicates that your client is a very savvy marketer.



At the end of the day though, there was no agreement on how we could position this book in the marketplace. Some of us wanted to treat it as a kind of how-to book for people who were seeking to improve their public speaking and, at the same time, pick up some useful tips for world conquest. Others felt that the ideas were just a little too "weighty" for a trade house like ours. After some brain storming about possible merchandise spin-offs, we decided that we were the wrong home for this remarkable book.


We wish Herr Hitler the best of luck in his career as a writer and as a public figure and expect to see great things from him in the future.



If you want to read more about my opinions and experiences, visit my blog

Could You Survive Paradise?

By Dick Jordan

Forget it. You aren’t going to this place in the sun: Ujae, Republic of the Marshall Islands.

Why plunk down $1,600-plus for a twenty-hour trip to the middle of the Pacific Ocean when you can get to Hawaii “on the cheap” thanks to a United Airlines air-fare sale? And that huge wad of cash is only going to get you as far as Majuro, the capital city.

The local airline may no longer fly from Majuro to Ujae even on a Maybe-Tomorrow-Maybe-Next-Week “schedule.” The supply boat visits Ujae only three or four times a year, but finding out when it is going to sail is problematic.

Even if you did manage to get to Ujae, you could get stuck there for weeks or months before being able to hitch a ride off-island. And on Ujae you won’t find any resorts, Internet service, or other “creature comforts” that American tourists demand.

But you can vicariously visit this tiny atoll: Read Peter Rudiak-Gould’s book, Surviving Paradise: One Year on a Disappearing Island.

A naïve Rudiak-Gould headed off to this speck of land set among thousands of square miles of ocean with a noble purpose: Spend a year teaching little children of the Third World to read, write, and speak English. After being reviled and nearly driven mad by his impish charges, he turned out to be the student, learning to speak Marshallese, learning how to spearfish in the lagoon, and learning about Kindness, Generosity, and Communalism in a society where getting along with the neighbors is an essential “survival skill.”

At the end of those twelve months, Peter was considered a “local” by the locals. He realized that his mind had become attuned to life on Ujae, but that his heart was still firmly anchored in Western civilization. So here was his dilemma: Stay in “paradise” or return to America? He could have tarried at least another year in this Not-Quite-Eden. What did he do? You will have to read the book to find out.

You can buy “Surviving Paradise” from Book Passage. We have this wonderful piece of armchair-travel literature thanks to Andy Ross, former owner of the late, great Cody’s Books in Berkeley, California, and now a literary agent for writers like Peter Rudiak-Gould. Ross has been on the faculty at the annual Book Passage Travel, Food, & Photography Conference; he taught the class “Finding and Working with an Agent” on January 8, 2011 at Book Passage’s Corte Madera store.

(From time to time travel writer Dick Jordan posts book reviews under the “Armchair Travel” section of his blog, Tales Told From The Road. His last post to the Book(ed) Passage blog was “The Anti-Bucket List.” 

When he isn’t traveling, you can usually find him hanging out with other members of Left Coast Writers at the Book Passage Corte Madera store on the evening of the first Monday of each month.)

Andy Ross Writes About Anne Lamott (and Albert Camus) on Writing

by Andy Ross

A few months ago I finally got around to reading Anne Lamott's remarkable book about the process of writing, Bird By Bird. What a revelation!. I don't know why I have never read it before. It was written in 1995. I must have sold 5000 copies at Cody's over the years. I know a lot of writers who have said that this book changed their life.

I suppose the reason I never read it is that I just didn't think very deeply about the process of writing during my 35 years in retail. I read a lot and knew a lot about what was going on in the book business. But by the time a book arrived at the store, the writing was over and the selling was about to begin.

So now I'm an agent at the other end of the publishing food chain. I'm not exactly the midwife to the book; more like the Lamaze teacher. I see a lot of "shitty first drafts." That is Anne Lamott's luminous term of art. More on that later. Now a lot of my work has to do with the process of writing.

Anyway, back to Anne Lamott. Bird By Bird. It is at times hysterically funny, wise, tough-minded but always encouraging. She is secure enough as a writer to share with you her own experiences of her all-too-human insecurities about life in general and writing in particular.

Look at her 3rd chapter entitled: "Shitty First Drafts." When I see these by writers in the course of my work (which is all the time), I want to give up on the author. Sometimes I want to give up on being an agent. Lamott says that these "shitty first drafts" are an inherent part of the writing process, even a necessary part, even an admirable part. It allows the writer to get the material, shitty though it may be, onto the page. And the work of the accomplished author is finding the one sentence in the two shitty pages sitting in front of her that she will want to remember and use.

Lamott had a wonderful chapter on writing dialogue. I read it at about three o'clock in the morning and emailed my client immediately about some changes that needed to be made in her book proposal. You can't just write down a conversation between two people. You have to make sure that the voices of the characters are differentiated in the dialogue. You can't just use dialogue to further the plot. It also has to deepen the character. Otherwise it becomes flat and confusing. But this makes writing dialogue devilishly hard.

One of the most amusing, but spot-on, chapters is about thoughts that get in the way of your writing. She calls it tuning into radio station KFKD, or K-Fucked. She says: "station KFKD will play in your head twenty-four hours a day, nonstop, in stereo. Out of the right speaker…will come the endless stream of self-aggrandizement…Out of the left speaker will be the rap songs of self-loathing." (God, I'm feeling that right now, just writing this blog).

She also has a lot to say about getting published. This was especially poignant for me, since my job is actually to get my clients published. Lamott said something very wise. She said: "Writing can give you what having a baby can give you: it can get you to start paying attention, can help you soften, can wake you up. But publishing won't do any of those things…."

I think about this in my own work as an agent. I go to a lot of writers' conferences. I talk to a lot of writers at these. They send me their book proposals and writing samples. Then we have a meeting about it that lasts for 15-30 minutes. I also participate in a lot of agents' panels. And I have started giving some workshops on writing book proposals, most of them here at Book Passage. (Don't tell anyone, but I will let you in on a dirty little secret . Three years ago, when I was still a bookseller, I didn't know what a book proposal was).

I found a couple of clients at these conferences. One of them just got a publishing contract. But mostly I talk to people who are not going to get published. A lot of them have written personal memoirs, a genre much out of fashion with publishers right now. They call them "me-moirs". 'Nuff said.

The writers at the conferences have poured their hearts and souls into these projects. And I have no doubt that they have learned so much about themselves and the world in the process. Anne Lamott tells these writers that this is the real value of writing. Publication is overrated.
Frequently I get graded by the participants after I give a workshop or presentation. Although I try to be realistic and emphasize the dismal reality of getting published, I take a lot of criticism for being unnecessarily discouraging to writers. After reading Anne Lamott, I think I would have to accept this criticism as valid.

When you really think about it, everyone's life is a hero's journey. Every memoir of a life is an epic. And paradoxically every person's life is larger than life. But this is quite different from the mundane and commercial considerations that publishers consider in their decision to acquire a book.

What I have started telling writers, what I would like them to hear from me, and what Anne Lamott has said so much better than I ever could, is that writing is an incredibly courageous undertaking. It is like a journey that begins in the dark without any real knowledge of where it is destined to end. Or to use another metaphor of a race. Sometimes you will cross the finish line, receive the silver jug and go off into the sunset. But more often you will slip on a banana peel and break your leg 20 yards before the end of the race. But what an adventure it has been!

Which brings us to Camus. Camus wrote his masterpiece, The Myth of Sisyphus. in 1942. A lot of you probably read it in your freshman humanities course. Camus always took on the big themes, in this case, the meaning of life. Sisyphus is condemned by the gods for all eternity to roll a boulder up a mountain, whence it will then roll down of its own weight. For Camus this was a metaphor of human life, a ceaseless striving in a universe without meaning.

It strikes me that this is also a metaphor for the work of the writer. For Camus, Sisyphus's effort is heroic and filled with grandeur. In the final, unforgettable lines of his book, Camus says: "Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy."