New York, New York

I recently returned from my fifth trip to Manhattan, the publishing Mecca—a trip I always look forward to. Meeting new editors and seeing old friends is something I just plain love. If an editor has made it at a Big-Six House (Harper, S&S, Penguin, Hachette, St. Martins, and Random House), they are book-lovers supreme. But, naturally, there are more houses than just the Big Six, with good editors, too. I was able to meet with many of them on this trip.

In 15 years as an agent, probably less than 10 percent of my sales have been to the general market (I've sold mostly in CBA). For a number of reasons, WordServe is deliberately going to be upping that percentage significantly over the next five years (hopefully 50/50). Why? There are authors with great projects that simply don’t fit in the increasingly narrow niche of CBA, including current WordServe authors: Marcus Brotherton has made five non-CBA sales (Penguin, S&S, Kaplan), Bruce Coston to St. Martins, Beth Lueders to Penguin, Bob Welch to St. Martins, and we have several authors at Guideposts, located just a block from the Empire State Building.

So with several proposals in my briefcase, I hit the subways, taxis and busy streets.

“I read a magazine article once,” an editor told me in one of my first meetings, “that the death of publishing was foretold; that books would soon be a thing of the past.”

“When was that?” I asked.

“They were talking about when movies/talkies started to take root. Then it happened again at the advent of TV. ‘Books will go the way of the Dodo,’ they all commentated. And when audio books came out, the bound book was again thought to be on the way out.”

“And now the e-book,” I said, knowing where she was going.

“Exactly. The truth is a bound book is the perfect product. It’s completely self-contained; packaged well, fits in the hands, affordable…it’s not a product that will ever go away.”

Okay, that was a good start. Looks like there is a bit of job security after all in this crazy publishing world.

I then met with a VP/Publisher at St. Martins. He gave me the lowdown on all of the trends he was seeing, including:

→ E-books are still only 1-2% of sales;
→ Mass market books are going down in sales;
→ Non fiction isn’t quite as strong as it used to be;
→ Marriage and parenting books are a tough sell because people are getting a lot of their content off the internet;
→ Mid-list male thrillers are down;
→ We’re doing more trade papers originals than we used to because the consumer doesn’t have the money for hard cover.
→ Diet and self-help is strong;
→ Current affairs and issue books can do well with the right author;

And the not-so-big news (but I’m sure glad to hear it from a NY pro) was, “TV producers are watching blogs for their stories. The more noise there is on the Internet (so to speak), the more the TV sharks start to circle.” He mentioned this in the same breath as saying “print media jobs (magazines/newspapers) are down by half.”

It’s (nearly) all gone to the Internet: reviews, promotion, ideas, and a lot of the great writing. Video on Amazon and You Tube is also getting noticed.

The upshot of this—and many other discussions—was that if authors are not VERY active themselves on the Internet, there’s a good chance no one will find out about their book.

My Monday consisted of meetings with four editors from Steeple Hill/Harlequin (fiction and non-fiction), Berkley, Penguin, Viking and Scholastic. The last one was very educational, since breaking into the non-CBA children’s market has always been a struggle.

Tuesday was four editors at St. Martins, lunch with the Guideposts publisher and Senior Editor, and a very profitable meeting with two editors from Sterling…a publisher wholly owned by Barnes and Noble. Sharp people doing gorgeous books.

Wednesday rounded out my trip with a breakfast meeting with a young editor from Holt, another two from Fireside and Atria (S&S), two more at Kensington (mostly a quality fiction house), and then I finished with a meeting with new VP Becky Nesbitt at Howard (S&S) who happened to be in NY for sales meetings (my wife, Becky, joining us for drinks).

Overall, a great trip and one I will make again. I was able to present a few current and many more “upcoming proposals” to various editors (including a couple from Rachelle and Caleb). And I was able to sort through my backlist of proposals that have so far not sold to see what they might interested in…and found a couple of projects they wanted to see.

To serve our authors better as the years go on, WordServe will have a broader stroke in the publishing world. And that means knowing more editors and what they’re passionate about acquiring. While most are not very interested in strictly Christian books (“That’s why our company bought/created an imprint”), we’ve got our toe in the general market waters a little deeper. Maybe an ankle next year.

Merry Christmas!

Greg

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