Who Decides What We Read?

I've been in something of a frustration mode lately. I was recently fortunate enough to meet with a literary agent to discuss a book project I had been working on since the summer. At that meeting, we discussed the fact that a family member already had a book contract to write a biography of his long ago relative. "I don't think the market can support two books about X," the agent told me.

After having spent two seemingly futile days in archives in Washington, I was tired and vulnerable, and I caved without much of a struggle. My response was something along the lines of saying that I felt relieved.

The agent and I kicked around a few other potential book ideas, and I left his office with the promise to send him a proposal for one of them.

A few weeks after that meeting, I e-mailed a friend about what happened. Her response was interesting. She works in a library dedicated to people who have lived in the White House, and she observed how many multiple books there are in the library on the same subject. How, she wondered, could this agent determine that two books could not be written about the same person?

How indeed? Just who does determines what we read?

Because I still see myself as a struggling writer (my definition of no longer struggling is when my writing earns enough to cover the research trips and pay my bills), I am sensitive to books that get published and reviewed. In the last few years, I have spotted a very disturbing trend. Authors who know editors of influential and widely circulated, and widely respected, publications will have their work reviewed - everywhere! A good example is the latest work by Joan Didion, whom I hate to give any additional press to, because she has had more than enough. I've read about her in Vanity Fair. She was on the cover of New York Magazine. The New Yorker reviewed her book, as did the New York Times, the Washington Post, and goodness knows who else.

I am sorry for Ms. Didion's pain. I fully understand the need to emote and work through hurt and grief, and I definitely know that writing offers that outlet better than other media. But do I have to be inundated with the details of her life story and her daily habits? Isn't there a limit to the exposure?

It is difficult to break into the clique that arbitrates what we will have available to read. Only by getting beyond the more obvious suggestions of reading options and digging deeper into the great variety of what is published through university presses, small independent publishing firms, and the mid-list books of trade publishers that get little attention can we move beyond the books that are hyped and thrown at us.

Through one of my Twitter feeds, I happened upon an interesting article in the New York Daily News: "The Most Overrated Books of 2011." This blogpost says it all, and more succinctly than I just have, too. (http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/node/126739)

The Business of Writing

Last Sunday, March 14, I had a small quote in the "Personality Parade" column of Parade magazine. (See http://www.parade.com/celebrity/personality-parade/2010/03/jacqueline-kennedy-onassis.html.) For one day, I made the top 20 U.S. history bestseller list on amazon.com. During that Sunday, I was in the top 4,000 books sold, according to their rankings.On Monday, I was off the bestseller list and I had dropped to 42,000, and now.... Well, we won't go into that, but let's just say you can add a few more zeroes to my place on the sales charts.

There are a lot of books being written, and in spite of the proliferation of the written word - albeit in shortened form, such as texts and tweets (and blog posts) - book reading, in general, is down. Book publishing is not a profitable enterprise. Even the major publishing houses count on blockbusters to pay the bills for all of the other mid-list and less-than-mid-list books they publish. Every author who has a book published is expeced actively to promote his or her work.

This past week, I had the great honor to be on an author panel at the Virginia Festival of the Book. It is an opportunity afforded to only a small number of authors, and I consider myself extremely fortunate to be a part of that select group. This was also the first time that I attended the event as an author - and a different perspective generates a different response to one's experiences.

Not only did I pay attention to what had motivated authors to pick their topics and what was involved in their research, but I especially noted that every single one of us is trying to sell our respective books. We are first selling ourselves, the writer as human being, and in that newly established rapport we seek to sell the prospective reader on the merits of reading our particular book. In the vast collection of potential reading material, we strive to convince a reader that ours is one of the books that merits attention.

Several years ago, I had the opportunity to serve as a consultant to a very artistic and business-savvy potter. I marveled at how he successfully operated out of both sides of his brain - the artistic side that created one-of-a-kind wares, and the business side - that understood what it took to sell those wares. I find myself, the MBA who writes history as a hobby, now in that same category - the writer who must also be business-savvy. If I'm going to do the work to research and write a book, then I want people to read what I have written. And if I want people to read what I have written, then I need to find every means possible to let them know about the book - and about me.

That, in short, is the business side of writing.