This is Writing It, the podcast about academics and writing. I'm Rachel Gordon. Here, we aim to make the process of writing and publishing a bit more transparent and a bit less overwhelming. Through conversations with editors and academics at all stages, from full professors to graduate students, independent scholars, and postdocs, We share stories, lessons, and helpful habits from our writing lives. Today we're speaking with Susan Rabiner, who is the co-founder of the Susan Rabiner Literary Agency, which is a boutique agency dedicated to big idea books. As the agency's website explains, these are the kind of books that Susan published during her career as a senior editor at a number of major New York publishing houses and and as the editorial director of Basic Books, which was then a division of HarperCollins. 
Yet another reason we invited Susan to speak with us today is that she is the co-author of the book Thinking Like Your Editor, How to Write Great Serious Nonfiction and Get It Published, which I think is celebrating its 20th anniversary this fall. It is. Yeah, congratulations. It has had an amazingly long life as a helpful book for authors. I used it and I used it because another academic friend told me about it. We both felt it helped us get our academic book contracts. And I recently spoke with a much more senior colleague who moved from academic to trade press and told me that she also found it very helpful in getting that trade press contract. So maybe you can tell us, Susan, about why you wrote this book and what kind of guidance you were hoping to give writers and academics in particular in this book. 
Glad to do so. I had a sense all the time I was an editor. Let me preface this by saying I really learned the business in university press publishing. And in university press publishing, you didn't in those days rely on agents. You made contacts with the top schools in your field, the top professors at those schools, and they directed their students to you. So when I went into commercial publishing and I suddenly had to deal with agents, I had the sense that neither the agent nor the author really understood what what they had to give me so I could make a good decision. But you work with what you get. When I became an agent, which was because my husband got sick and I just needed to be there for him. 
So it was impossible for me to stay in publishing and in-house editorially. I saw the material that people were giving me to send out. And I understood for the first time the industry hadn't done its job in explaining what are the questions that we need answered to make a good decision about your book. that not only benefits us, but will benefit you? I started figuring out these questions and one by one giving them to individual authors. And then I said, wait a minute, that's what books are about. Let me put this into a book. Let me really talk about what makes a good table of contents. What makes a good proposal? What actually happens in the minds of editors when they see what turns them off, what turns them on? 
What signals are they looking for to move a book to an editorial meeting and or to reject it out of hand at a mailbox. So it's been about 20 years since you wrote the book, and I'm wondering how you would update the advice in the book to reflect any changes in publishing. What kind of alterations might you make to it today? I'd make substantial changes, least on the proposal, most on the table of contents, because the table of contents, I think, is more critical than people ever realize. I would also, because... trends in publishing change. When I first came into publishing, I actually started in commercial publishing. And then when my kid was born, I left and then I came back to university press publishing because I wanted time for my kids. 
At that time, I worked for someone named Sheldon Meyer, who was quite famous in the industry. I was at Oxford University Press. He was the editorial director. Oxford, strangely enough, was the only university press at that time that actually had a dedicated trade division. Trade sounds like a funny word, but in book publishing, trade is another word for bookstores. So it really means those books, it's a financial term. It describes those books that get the highest discount to the bookstores. If you're giving a 30% discount for a monograph, most bookstores will take one copy. If you're giving 42%, let's say, percent discount for what's called an academic monograph or an academic trade book, something that's in between, maybe they'll go up to 40% or 42%. 
If you want a full trade discount, which is an inducement to the bookstore to take multiple copies, you have to classify the book as a trade book and be willing to work with the publishers, willing to work with the bookstores and the booksellers. Now it's not bookstores so much as much as it is Amazon and the Barnes & Noble Group. You have to compete with the trade houses. We were a dedicated trade division. So I really learned about commercial publishing in the university press world. When I started in university press publishing, The commercial houses weren't doing very many books. They weren't doing serious nonfiction books by scholars. Their scholarly books came from journalists. There was an article, I think, in the Chronicle of Higher Education saying that Sheldon Meyer had single-handedly saved history because we did a lot of history and we did it as full trade commercial books. 
This is what your audience probably doesn't want to hear but needs to hear. We are back in that same situation now. If you look at what's being signed up now for a variety of reasons, it's mostly fiction, memoir, self-help. It's very little history. It's very little science. It's very little biography. And if it is biography, it's not necessarily scholarly biography. So if I were doing the book today and authors wanted to move into trade who are scholars, I would... teach them what they need to know about what's called narrative nonfiction. I would put much more emphasis on how to tell a scholarly story as a narrative. There are things I could teach them that would ease the process along considerably, the way I hoped what I had taught them about serious nonfiction eased the process along all these years. 
So I would not only include serious nonfiction, I would include narrative nonfiction, I would do much more on biography, and I would also probably do quite a bit on memoir and even fiction. A lot of authors want to do those things, but if you don't swing more toward narrative now, it's going to be very hard to go into commercial publishing unless your book has a very strong message, still told as a narrative, for the anxieties to of today's society, of today's world. Environmental issues, war, the threat to democracy. A book that goes commercial cannot just be informational. There are too many other sources of information. It has to be explanatory of a problem that people sense. They don't really, they sense something's going on. 
They don't know what it's all about. Your book has to really explain it to them in a way that says, oh my God, this is this This is why we're in this situation today. Few books do that. When you mention swinging more narrative, I hear trying to tell the story in almost a novelistic way. What do you mean by encouraging authors to write more narratively? I don't mean, first of all, a lot of people think putting more anecdotes in is writing it narratively. That's not what I mean. Narrative doesn't have to wrap around characters, right? although it always helps to have characters because ideas come from people. They don't come from the air. Somebody puts his reputation out there and says, we're thinking about the problem this way. 
That's what's creating the problem for us. We have to think about it that way. But it's about what I began to talk about a little bit in the book, that every book has two stories. There's always a second story. The first story is the journalistic story. the story of a war, the story of a march on Washington, the story of a group of kids who got together. It's journalistic. It's a chronological telling of the facts. There always has to be a second story. Story may not be the right word. There is a second message to the book. That message has to shape what aspects of the chronological story get told, get emphasized, and what get left out. You have to have a... something you want to say. 
In the book, I talk about the difference between what you're talking about and what you're saying. The second story defines what you want to say and shapes what you talk about. That kind of shaping process, I'm going to say this, I say this all the time and I'm not sure people understand it, that kind of shaping process can't be done by laying out of the facts, or as I like to put it, the facts can't make the point. The facts can build to the point, but in the end, the author has to make the point. This is especially important when you go into commercial publishing, because to a large degree, when you're writing a book for your colleagues, you're writing a group for a group of people who all have the same knowledge base. 
So you don't have to, you can pile up facts and they get it. They don't need to have it told to them. When you go to the general public, they don't come with that same common base of knowledge. Some people know something, part. Some people know others. Some people know none. They don't want to be guessing. Well, are you really saying X? Or are you saying Y? Are you saying, well, it's part X, part Y? You have to learn how to say, build to a point, and then make the point. If you ask me the single most common editing I do, there are two things when I was an editor and when I was an agent. And in a funny sort of way, I do more editing as an agent than I ever did as an editor. 
One, I take out the parts of the story that aren't being shaped by the second story. And two, I'm constantly adding the last line that makes the point. So if you want to transit to commercial publishing, you've got to define for yourself, why do I want to tell this story? And why is it a must read for a group of readers? And who is that group of readers? Is it a large group? Is it a small group? Are they going to buy into what I say? Are they going to come you know, be questioning it. Can I deal with their questions? You must be audience focused because editors are not the advocates of writers. They are the advocates of readers. They're editing your book to say, what will cause readers not only to buy this book, read it, but recommend it. 
Because remember, there's no, we're not motor companies that can take million dollar ads again and again. Yes, we try to get books reviewed. Yes, we try to put authors on tour occasionally. But the reality is the books get sold because readers you trust recommend them. And if they don't finish the book or they don't get the book, they're not going to recommend the book. In the book, you stress that emphasis on audience. Do you have any strategies for helping an author figure out who her audience or audiences might be? This isn't something that all academics are used to. thinking about when we think about writing for our colleagues. But as you're saying, if we want to move towards trade or a bigger audience, this is something we have to keep in mind. 
I always believe in the concept of core audience. There has to be a group of people who are consistently – I shouldn't say that consistently. There are two types of core audiences. For instance, there are a lot of guys who read military books, and they will read military books. So if you're doing a book that's got a new angle on military books – You're sliding into a core audience. But I'm going to take the case of another book that I did as an editor. It was called The Rape of Nanking. For a lot of reasons, the history editor at the press said, don't do the book. The publicist said, okay, you know, I'll send it to places where there are Chinese communities. The author knew because her community was highly 
highly organized and highly connected, as she kept saying to me a million times, with seven keystrokes, I can reach the 100,000 most influential Chinese in America. And this topic is important to them. And she further proved it to me because she was on a call-in show similar to this, talking about her first book. And there weren't enough call-ins because people weren't that interested. Her first book was a really more of a university press book than a commercial book. And the interviewer, not knowing what else to do, said, are you doing another book? She said, yes, on The Rape of Nat King. The board lit up. They extended the show another two hours. So either what you have to say to yourself is either there is an existing market because I read in that market. 
I see the number of books in a bookstore. Go to the bookstore. Are there hundreds of books on that topic? That tells you there's a big market for it. Or for some reason, you've come across a topic that a community, a particular community is interested in. There have been many, many books on the Black experience that have worked modestly, worked well. Very few worked as well as Michelle Alexander's book, The New Jim Crow. That book sold in humongous numbers. Why? Because she understood the issue of imprisonment of blacks was personal, the way The Rape of Nanking was personal to Iris Chang's community, the work of Michelle Alexander was personal to the black community. Now, in both cases, if you have a core audience, the book has a chance to establish itself. 
But in both cases, as that book starts to establish itself, it pulls in new communities. You didn't have to be black to want to read about the unfair imprisonment of virtually all the men in the community to want to read Michelle Alexander's book. The same thing with Iris told me that when she went to speak, at first, everybody in the audience was Chinese. Then later, there were Japanese kids who came and said, we want to know the truth. Then there were Jewish rabbis who came up to her and said, we should be there and supporting your book. So if you get that core community, you give your book a chance to get established. If you don't see a community or you don't know a community, and you don't see a lot of books, you probably should suspect that this may be a difficult sell. 
Another thing you just mentioned that you might update is about the table of contents in a book. What would you advise differently about how an author thinks about her table of contents? Table of contents is where you prove you know narrative, which means I said in the book, you can do a table of contents, two to three pages, just say what's in the chapters. I don't do it that way anymore. I I've done submissions that are over 100 pages often, most of the time. And the proposal never really runs more than 20 pages. The writing samples never really run more than 20 pages. Tables of contents can run 40 to 60 pages. What they have to do is show the arc of the story. 
They have to show that you have a sense of a beginning, a middle, an end, of a narrative. And that takes a lot of work and a lot of time. And again, that takes the honing of the story from the second story. What is it you want to say in writing this book? Is this chapter really needed? Is this chapter needed in the beginning? Is it needed in the end? What are the elements that carry the story forward? I would have to do a lot of thinking and a lot of work to rewrite that part, but it's really necessary. On biography, I would use a line that I didn't use in the book, and I'm sorry I didn't use it. It's his life. 
It's your story. Show me how you've got – again, it's that second story. They're the facts of his life as he lived it and would tell it, but it's your story. What are you doing to make it your story? And that second story, it's your story as you were – calling it, is kind of why this all matters, it sounds like. Me, the author, explaining that. A fire occurred in Hawaii. It burned down all of Hawaii. If you're going to retell the story of what the tragedy of Maui, do we really need a factual recitation, perhaps in greater depth than the newspapers gave? That's not a book. Of all the forms of writing going on today, from Substack to blogs to TikTok, The one area that is distinctive is book publishing, because that's the one area where the facts themselves aren't enough. 
What makes a retelling of this fire? The Times actually gave me an angle that I know how I do it. They talked about this morning, they talked about the fact that foreign plants were allowed to come in that set up the perfect conditions. So that sets it up for a bigger story. that Maui is a story about something happening all over the world, that we are facing new conditions. So you wrap it into something larger. Now, often what you wrap it into is psychological, because this is an age in which a lot of readers want psychological sucker. They want to feel good about happiness books are the single biggest category. So sometimes it's a story. It's not a story of It's a story of greed, or it's a story of blindness, or it can be a psychological story. 
There are a lot of different ways to tell a story, but you have to have a sense, why is an event that occurred years ago that can be examined in detail from a Wikipedia entry, why is this a story? What makes it, what do you see in it that people didn't see at the time that nobody else has seen? Which is why... The same topic can be retold again and again. What is the difference between one biography of Theodore Roosevelt, the next biography? It's the difference. It's different times see different things as important. So they tell a different story. Some of our listeners are working on biographies. I imagine that that bigger story for some biographies might be the resonances with contemporary life today. 
What kinds of bigger story or second story do you see successful in biography? This is a tough one because I am a big believer that biography works best when it's psychological. Why did this person, what was there in the psyche of this person that allowed them to do what they did with their lives? A woman came to me with a biography of Marion Moore, the poet. I love this woman and I love the idea because I grew up in Brooklyn. Marion Moore stood out for me. But I didn't get a sense of what the second story was. She had the complete support of the family. She had access to all sorts of documents. And what became clear is, I remember one day I said to her, you know, I was reading all these reviews of the book, of her poetry. 
And they say, they all say the same thing. We love her poetry, but we don't really know what she's saying. And I said, do you know? And she said, you bet I know. And it's all because it's the story of her life. Her poetry is about freedom because she didn't have it in her life. So now you get a sense. The second story shapes the first story. So a book that came in where the author wanted to write 200 words came down to probably 80,000 words and it's a classic in the field. It's a very important biography. Again, it's the same set of rules. Find out, know what you want to say in writing the book and be merciless, much more so than in university press publishing. 
Be merciless in shaping the material to make the story come clear. You don't, you know, force it on the reader. You shape the material so that the reader comes along with you. Going back to what you mentioned about these table of contents needing to be much longer these days, it sounds like. I guess that's because these are table of contents that include that paragraph or two that is explaining what each chapter is all about. They're setting out the journey of this story. A journey doesn't have to be a person journey. It can be the journey of an idea. It can be the journey of an event. But they're taking you through a world where each chapter, to some degree, takes you deeper, deeper into it and then takes you out of it. 
The arc of the story is the biggest issue in publishing today. Is this a success story? Because what narrative is what corresponds causes people to continue to read. There are unanswered questions. There are mysteries that evolve. They lure you in. Look at all these series on TV. So many of them are police procedurals. Why? Because they're easy. Crime has occurred. How do you find who did it? But it's never about the crime. This is a perfect example. The crime is the vehicle for getting to the characters and understanding how people in these situations live their lives. The same is true of writing. The war is a vehicle for understanding man's cruelty to his fellow man. The fights we're experiencing in politics is a vehicle for getting at, you know, why is democracy under assault today? 
Why now? Why all over the world? I always say every book has a question it wants to ask and an answer it wants to give. The same thing is true of every chapter. What is the question this chapter is raising? And what are the issues it's going to raise to say, you think you know what it is? Let's go a little deeper. We're talking about this kind of large submission package, which I think is what an author submits to an agent, which in a way is the second book proposal. But I think there's also a proposal that comes before the proposal the author uses to approach the agent. Can you tell us a little bit about the difference between those two? The first thing I would say is when you approach an agent, make clear up front who you are. 
If you're an academic, that's a plus. I am a professor of history at such and such a university. Tell me who you are because platform matters greatly. That's the first thing. First of all, if you're a professor of psychology and you want to write a book about quantum, it's over. I need to have basic grounding information. Second of all, you'd be surprised how often... I don't know if it's fiction or nonfiction. Or I get something where it seems to me to be the author has done a great deal of research, but there's made-up dialogue. And then I have to go through this little song and dance and say, nonfiction has nothing made up. Nothing. Once you move into made-up, it's fiction. It's going to be judged by a different group of editors. 
All I want to know, I want to know the basics, the same questions I asked in the book. What... What is the book about generally? This is a book about a town in West Virginia that dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. Then I want to know why you want to write about that town. I want a summary in two to three paragraphs. What is the book about? Why did you want to write about this town? How did you, you know, what led you to it? What is the question that is the heart of the story this book will tell? Lure me in the way Flap Copy lures you in. I want a general sense. Now, you can submit a bad proposal or a proposal that after that goes on and on and doesn't really solve problems. 
But if I have a sense there is a story here, I'm tempted to work with you. If you can't in three paragraphs show me that you understand story, a younger me might have struggled with you. Today, not so much. Story is extremely, the ability to write narrative is, The sine qua non, I hate to say it, of commercial publishing. Now, will it change? Absolutely. So I would say to people who want to make the transition, now may not be the right time. For most projects, even really well done, strong projects, you will have a better experience going to the good university presses and the good editors, and there are plenty of really good editors, than you will in commercial publishing. wait because trends change. 
In two to three years, look, there are serious nonfiction books being bought. There will always be serious nonfiction books being bought. Two houses dominate right now. Wait because the trends will come back. And you walk in with a great biography or good work of history, science, science is a wonderful area because it's factless. Don't go out to the commercial houses now saying, Because you're likely to be disappointed. Give it another two years. Then go out. Or, you know, look, I see every single week what's signed up of those people who announce the sign-ups. It's not a question of 60-40 or 70-30. It's like 85-15. That's how much it's swung. Self-help, business, memoirs. Narrative nonfiction. And a lot of the narrative nonfiction is coming from journalists. 
And when you say 85-15, that's 85... Not serious nonfiction. 85 fiction or including narrative nonfiction. 15% serious nonfiction. And maybe less than that. It's a significant change. Now it's come at a time where for a variety of reasons... all the older editors have either been bought out or left. There's been a massive turnover in the age of the editors and in the backgrounds of the editors to a certain degree. My generation was very much interested in history, science, politics. There's a little bit of, as you well know, as everybody well knows, there's a war on facts going on. People have much more confidence in the psychological story. Show me the person. I don't want to hear facts about the person. Show me the person and I'll make my own judgment. 
There's also a movement from the big picture story to the experiential of the small person, all of which leads toward memoir, personal experience. And a lot of these books are blends. My story combined with the problem. That's not what academics want to write. And they shouldn't write that because there is really a very... I am a big advocate of serious nonfiction. Those are the books that get the facts straight and really spend a lot of time... Those are the books written by people who know what they're talking about. So let's say an academic decides not to go for trade but is interested in this thing that's called the trade division of an academic press. What are they getting in that corner of the publishing world? 
If they're truly getting true trade publication, which is... You have to ask the question directly. Are you offering me true trade, which means full discount to the bookstores? And don't let your editor waffle because the editor may say, I honestly, I can't make that decision until I see the final manuscript. First of all, times could change. So it's a crapshoot. You know, you're not going to get real. Most cases, you're not going to get real guarantees. But if you get real guarantees of at least full discount, Trade discounts, so there's no impediment to the bookstore. That's step one. Look for an editor who knows how to edit. I had a book that came in at about 650 pages. It was not just that it was long, it read long. 
And the concept of reading long is something academics fully understand. In addition, the editor said to me, Montenobo was very blunt about this. They don't want a book over 350 pages unless I can make a really strong case for why. We did take that book and we cut it down to half its size. So are you prepared to take your material? I've had people come to me and I've said to them, I can take a book one half its size. They said, no, no, no. I need this amount of time to tell the story. So don't expect commercial publishing to bend to you. It's not going to. You have to bend to it. If you don't want to and you really have a good reason, don't go there. 
Don't try for that. Stay with a good book. University Press and say, are you going to publish this at the length I'm writing it? So you have to ask that question ahead of time. Then you have to say, understand something else. If you come in with a 600,000 word book, what are they going to price it at? They're going to start $35, $40. How many people are going to pay $35, $40 for your book? You have to start thinking about publishing as a business because it is, even in the University Press world, it's a business. Now the University Press world, I never thought about profits. I was an Oxford University Press editor for close to 15 years. I never once thought about profits. 
But I also came at a time where I didn't, you know, first of all, university press editors don't spend a lot of money. You know, it's a very different world. But if you want full trade, has this editor ever had from a university press? What's the discount? How many pages am I going to be allowed to have? What are some of the other books you've done that have broken out? Are you going to really edit me? Because most books need editing because you find a great story. It's peripheral to your book, but it's such a good story you want it in. No, that goes out. There's other parts you just want to round things out. No, if you want successful commercial publication, you have to be relentlessly willing to cut. 
And that's very hard for a lot of academics. because the last thing they want to be accused of is cherry picking. So, you know, the little side issues that have to be dealt with have to go into footnotes. There's a whole, you talk to your agent and you talk to your editor. They all know this. Don't go into this process excited that somebody wants your book. Ask questions. You wouldn't go into a marriage just because somebody wanted you, you would ask questions. This is a marriage of a sort. This is very much going to affect your life. especially if you don't have tenure. To step back a moment about approaching the agent. We've heard from some people we've interviewed that being introduced by a friend who's worked with that agent can be very helpful. 
Is that the best way? Is a cold call email to an agent? Is that something that works? What do you recommend for our listeners? I think I always say to people, go to a bookstore. Look for books with similar audience appeal to what you're doing. Only look at books published within, I would say, the past five to seven years. I would stretch it probably to 10 because COVID has made a crazy situation. No more than five to seven, maybe a little more than that. Look in the back of the book. Who was the agent who represented that book? See what the author wrote. Thank my agent is very nice. This agent made all the difference in the world. Another story. Write to those agents. 
You want to find somebody. All an agent has in life is their own reputation. The editors are blitzed with projects. I'll be very honest. When I was editorial director at Basic, we had cubbyholes where you picked up your mail. I literally went to the cubbyhole and I went through all the submissions. And if it came from a weak agent, it went right to my secretary's cubbyhole because I didn't have the time for it. You know, you... You prioritize the agents who are strong. If you're reading books all public, look at your own library. Look at the books on your bookshelves. Who is the agent for those books? Write to that agent. The job is not to get an agent. The job is to get the right agent. 
The agent who has credibility with the editors on your kind of book. Credibility matters a great deal. Everybody's short of time. Everybody The industry is compressing. There are fewer assistants. People, you have to do your job and you don't throw it on the agent to do your job. You read all the books about writing. You check out the right agents. It's a little bit of a military battle. Would you go to battle without preparation? Would you jump from an airplane without checking the parachute? This is a critical decision in your career. Go about it strategically. What you mentioned about working with a good agent, not just any agent, seems important. I know people will look online at the agencies and see what books these agents have represented, which authors, as a way to try to find out, you know, who are the best agents. 
Once you're working with someone, how do you know or are there ways to know if they are doing all they can for you? Because I'm wondering, someone might end up with an agent who's got maybe much more celebrity authors than oneself. And how do you know if you're getting the attention that you feel you should? There are some agents who are very talented. They can work across the boards. They can do a celebrity book today and a serious book tomorrow. I'm not that talented. This is a little bit, you pay some money and it takes your chances. You talk to the person, you see the kinds of changes they want to make. Do they make sense to you? If they don't make sense to you, why would you do them? 
This is your book with your name on it. If you don't like them, if you don't trust them, sometimes it's just a little bit of touch and feel. There's no hard and fast rule. But I would certainly want an agent who has a reputation working with scholars doing serious nonfiction. I want to get to some of the questions that listeners have asked. One is about earning an advance. And I wonder if you could explain what it means to earn your advance. And attached to that, the questioner wanted to know, is it ever better to accept a smaller advance because it's then easier to make back the money on it? The first thing I would say is... Even though every agent says, don't take the largest advance, go with the right editor in the right house, every author takes the largest advance. 
Once in the entire 25 years this agency has existed, did one of the clients of one of the agents not take the largest advance? Advance, first of all, let's say you get a $100,000 advance. It's going to be paid out in either three segments individually. $33,000 on signing, $33,000 on delivery and acceptance of the manuscript, $33,000 on hardcover publication. Or generally more often, it's four payments. Quarter on signing, quarter on delivery, quarter on hardcover, quarter on paper. Most books do not earn out their advance. If you get a $30,000 advance, somehow or other, you never get past $20,000. If you get a $300,000 advance, it's rare you get past $200,000. Don't think about that because... A publisher doesn't, this is what people have to understand. 
A publisher doesn't have to make money. You cannot earn out your advance and the publisher can make money on the book. It's not something you should be focused on at all. It's not an indication. It's also not an indication. Everybody thinks the bigger the advance, the more the publisher will pay attention to the book. That's just not so. Sure, if they have more money out, they want the book to work. But if that book comes in and they're not seeing action or they don't believe it's working, they'll turn on a dime to a tiny little book that nobody believes in, you know, what they call a sleeper and work on that. What I would say is you're an author and you're a scholar. 
Focus on what you can control and what you understand. Focus extremely carefully on the first chapter, your introduction. Follow the rules in my book because I believe in them. I've had book after book. If you explain why you wrote this book in that first chapter and you don't argue the merits of the book, but what is the payoff for reading this book? If you make that clear to a would-be buyer and they can see how that payoff relates to their life, they're going to buy your book. And if you execute it properly, they're going to read your book. focus on what you can control there's a there's a lot in this business that's, look, anybody who was published during covid got hurt. The Barnes and noble or Amazon, one of them released the fact that the vast majority, I think they said 98 of the hardcover books released during covert did not cost 3 000 copies in sales. 
The head of random house during the trial, there was a trial When Random House wanted to buy Simon & Schuster, there was a trial to determine whether it was a monopolistic purchase. And the head of Random House talked about the fact that the vast majority of books don't perform, don't earn out their advance. You'd be stunned how many good books don't work. Don't get into that. There are a million factors that affect when a book works and when it doesn't, and you don't have control over that. But you have control over... more than even picking your advance or picking your publisher, is get understanding narrative and shaping the book to tell a story. I can't stress that enough. That's all that matters. Everything else will fall into place if you can do that. 
That's good to hear, not to worry about that advance issue. Related to it, someone was wondering, does your ability to earn out the advance or any other sales issues, how do those factor into getting the second book contract? Very, very important. That's the other reason for staying with the university press until you have the right commercial book. If you have a book that doesn't work in the university press world, but gets good reviews, rock solid good reviews, you're fine. If you do a book, you just sneak through. One publisher bids, you get $25,000. And the Book doesn't get reviewed. It doesn't sell anywhere. It's over. Look, in a rare case, if you come in with a second book idea that's just terrific and terrifically executed, yeah, somebody may take a chance. 
But for most people, it's over. Don't go to commercial publishing until you're ready. I would say don't go to commercial publishing unless there's real enthusiasm for the book because then you have a chance of making it work. Also, if you establish your reputation... with your earlier books and you learn writing in your earlier books, you start off the process of commercial publication way ahead. Don't rush life. Don't rush your writing. Just... You'll know when you're... I don't have to tell you an editor doesn't have to tell you. I shouldn't say that. One of my authors came to... I had done a book with him. It was a modest book, but he wrote beautifully. And he said, for my next book... I'm going to take it to a university press. 
It's academic. I said, can I please see it? And he sent it to me. And it was the story of Indian slavery in America, what he called the other slavery. I said, Andres, this is a huge book. Now it was very serious and very academic, but the first book was brilliantly written. The review, even though it hadn't sold in large numbers, the review said, oh my God, this guy can write. I knew because when I read the manuscript, I had a phone call. And when I came back, I looked at everybody. I looked at my kids and I said, who turned off the TV? And they said, what are you talking about? I was reading his manuscript. That's how vivid it was. So the second book, even though it had small numbers, had great reviews, had everything in place. 
The second book, The Other Slavery, went on to be a finalist for the National Book Award, which is the biggest prize in the industry. Plus it won, I don't remember if it was the Bancroft or one of the others, it won enormous prizes. And it's a classic in the field. So you may not be able to judge the commerciality of your own book, but you know when you've done something you're really proud of. That's the book you want to take to commercial publishing. If you feel you've made, you're saying something that's really important, that people can benefit from hearing, even if they don't know, that's the book to try with an agent. And that's what you have to tell me up front. I have been a scholar of this field for 30 years. 
I never challenged one of the key premises of my field. Until one day I came across an article in a journal that quoted saying such and such. And I said, wait a minute. And then tell me your journey. If you can lure me in with your journey, I'll take you on the journey of publishing and get you where you need to be. My job is not to get you a commercial contract. I always felt my job... One editor once said to me, there was a movie about an agent who was making fake, I can't remember the name of it, but she was also writing fake author letters and selling them. And she eventually got caught. But one of the editors in talking to me said, did you think that was a fair depiction of an agent? 
And I said, it was Jerry Howard, who's a major editor. I said, Jerry, I'm more of an editor now as an agent than I even was as an editor or as an editorial director. I'm just doing a different type of editing. When you're an editor, you do what I call execution editing. You have the proposal, you have the table of contents. You just have to see that the author has executed what they offered you. When you're an agent, you're doing what's called conceptual editing. What makes this a story? What parts of it are a story? What parts aren't a story? When I see someone who has, they've gone on their journey. They've discovered something of real importance, even though the world doesn't know it's of real importance. 
I'll do the work to take them on the journey of how to do the book. Do your job. Your job is to, don't, commercial publishing is not what everybody thinks it is. This wonderful experience where you're going to become famous. It's excruciatingly hard. For most people, it's not satisfying. Don't make it something it's not. The satisfaction has to come out of your work, the pride you have in your own work. Do your best work. Thank you. Another question we received was about using agents for university press book contracts. Most of us probably don't use an agent to get our university book contract, but some people do. Why might an academic think about that? And what is she getting out of that experience? An agent can help because, look, when I was an editor, I had to protect the company. 
So I didn't give you the greatest terms. I can go – when I have to deal with the university press, I very rarely – in 25 years I've been an agent, maybe I sold two or three books to a university press. I sold one this year, and I sold one two years ago, and I sold one about five years ago, and that's it. But an agent is always valuable. They can look at the – first of all, they look at the contract. They say, wait a minute, these are very low terms for X, Y, and Z. It's mostly the – they're not going to convince a university press to move a book from – academic to, you know, to trade. They're good for the contract. 
That's basically, they're also, they have a reputation, so they get somebody to read it. I don't think you really, I've never, I don't encourage people to use an agent for university press publishing because I don't think maximizing your situation is what you should be doing with the university press. This is not a financial arrangement. This is a career move that's very important. Don't, don't Focus on the... I always say, find the press that has the strong... The university press that has the strongest reputation in your area, that's most likely to be at the academic conferences to send out mailings for paperback. That's the press you go to. And you... Or an editor has a reputation. And there are university press editors who edit. 
Not much because you may... As a university press editor, you're strongly encouraged to rely on reviews and let the academics do the editing. But again... keep your eyes on what's the prize for you. Your reputation as a scholar is most important. Another question we have was about publishing pieces in the popular press as a way to get an agent's attention. Maybe an agent might come to you if they read your piece and find it interesting. Also, I suppose to be able to mention that in the cover letter to an agent. I've already published an op-ed on this in the New York Times or some other non-academic popular space like that, that can take a lot of effort and time. Do you think it pays off or is in fact helpful? 
What's really much more helpful is not something that the authors want to hear, but it's the truth. Setting up a blog or, you know, having followers on social media is, especially for the new generation, means a great deal because you've you have a pre-built in audience. For instance, if you have a sub stack column that, that people are paying to, to, to read, it's social for the younger generation. I had an agent who worked with us and he would, the first thing he would do is he would look at how many followers you had. Those of us who were older had no idea how to even find followers or that it even existed. Yes, sure. If you can get an article in Vanity Fair or the New Yorker or, 
But that's pie in the sky. The number of people that's going to happen for is minuscule. And even then, if you're not an established – it's great. If you can make it happen, sure. Make it happen. Tell your agent. The way in today is social media. That's helpful to hear. I'm sure many academic listeners already have those. But a lot of them don't. A lot of people aren't even on social media. But somebody who has a real following in social media and says – It's not the greatest scholar in commercial publishing who's likely to get the book. It's the person who has 500,000 followers on social media. That may be uncomfortable to hear. That's not how I worked. But you got to play today. 
Yeah. Related to that, in the proposal that you send an agent or eventually to an editor, is it helpful then to mention your contacts or your social media presence as a way that you're going to be able to sell this book or promote it or publicize? People spend a lot of time and a lot of agents. I was on a panel discussion at Cornell, had a panel discussion with a bunch of us. And it shocked the other agents that I said, I don't even do a media presence in any of my proposals unless there's something. I had an author who had a regular column in one of the major magazines, was profiled. She had everything going for her. And Everybody turned down the proposal because I didn't do my job. 
I had to stop. And with all that benefit, she didn't do her job in terms of the book because she didn't know. And I didn't know enough about the field. I had to stop my work, rethink the whole thing. And of course, then I sold it and I sold it for a lot of money. So you can have all those things. And if the submission package is wrong, people aren't going to buy it. But if you say, you know, I'm going to hire a freelance publicist, I'm going All the things you're going to do don't mean anything. They mean nothing to the editors. If you say I have 500,000 followers on Facebook, that means something to the editors. If you say, not I'm going to try to get an excerpt in the New Yorker or somewhere else, but I have been guaranteed, as a matter of fact, the negotiations can begin, or you attach a letter from the editor of a major paper saying, we've got to buy the excerpt right now. 
All that means nothing to the editors because times could change. That editor could get fired and there goes your contact. It has to be substantive or leave it all out. It means nothing. If you're a typical academic, you're not going to have access to the major magazines. You're just going to have your reputation. Now, what I would like to see, for instance, is let's say you did a previous book with Harvard University Press. I'd like to see the blurbs. I'd like to see where it was reviewed. I'd like to see what the reviewers said. What's most important to me is what is your reputation within academia? Because if it's that's important to me, if it's if people say this person has already changed the field or this, you know, if your reputation is very strong within academia, that's the thing that's critical to my being able to say this is one of the leading scholars in a field that is getting hotter and hotter. 
Relatedly, I'm wondering if you can tell us what catches your eye in a cover letter to you as an agent from a prospective author? Someone who tells me what I need to know. Why are they writing this book? To say what? And why do they think? Five questions. Why are they the person to write it? Why is now the time to publish it? For whom is it going to be a must read? And how does it... Today, people are very much focused on their own lives. First of all, they don't know if this new way of virtual working is going to survive and is good for them. They don't know if our democracy is going to survive. They don't know if they can pay their bills. 
They don't know if the planet's going to survive, if tomorrow they're going to be. So they're not, in a sense, this whole, and there's this whole war on facts and authority. Look what they did to Tony Fauci, you know. There's all this other stuff going on. You have to make a case for why this book is going to break through the data smog. What are you going to say and how are you going to say it in a way that the New York Times has to review it? They're just not going to ignore it. It's this magical world. Everybody says to me, why did the New York Times review this book and not that book? Because they thought their readers would find it a must read. 
You have to know what you're doing. I get... letters all the time, and they give me a book report on what the book is about. That's not what I want. I don't want a quick summary of the book. I want you to tell me why this book has to be meaningful for you. I found writing Thinking Like Your Editor excruciatingly difficult because I thought I'd go out and interview the editors and see what they said, you know, aggregate. The editors all said the same thing to me. I don't know what I do. Just give me the manuscript. So I had to start thinking myself, what did I do? Why did I make this change? Why did I do that? What happens? I finally had to close the agency for over a month and a half to write one of the chapters because I really needed to concentrate. 
But whether or not the book worked, I knew at that point I had given them the best of my ability. I had given them something that I believed was valuable. I could defend it. I understood every weakness in it. And sometimes, and I remember when I first became an agent, I said to the editors, don't bother sending me a reject letter, you know, explaining why you didn't want the book. I can tell you better than you could possibly tell me every fault with this thing because I have gone over it 1 million times. So just say I'm in, I'm not in. That's all I care about. I want authors who give me material that says, this book is, I know why this book is important. 
I know maybe I'm wrong in the size of the market, but I know why it's important to some group. I will listen because even if it's important to a very small group, if it's important, that matters. If it's significant, don't try to do my job. Don't try to do the publishing job. Don't try to game the system. That's not in your interest. For many people, this book is part and parcel of a career. That's what you should be focused on. What is the reputation you want to leave this world about the work you did? Great. Another question is about diversity and inclusion. These are values that have been really important in academia recently. I wonder if you see this reflected in the publishing world, either among editors and what projects they're taking on or agents. 
This is a complicated question. There definitely was a need in publishing for more diversity in terms of bringing in people with different world experiences. I remember Simon and Schuster, John Carp at Simon and Schuster talked about the fact that a junior person, he may have even been a secretary, came to an editor. Publishing has a great tradition, even as an assistant. This assistant came to the editorial meeting with a book. The tradition in publishing is anybody can bring up a book to an editorial meeting, which is a wonderful tradition. As a matter of fact, the more you show initiative, the more likely you are to be promoted. About some figure in black popular culture that nobody else in the company knew about. They didn't know the name. 
They didn't know anything. The book sold 150,000 copies and the gentleman was promoted. And now he's certainly a senior editor and possibly more. So there, there is a need to bring in people who are other than, you know, from elite colleges, from a certain world and a certain worldview. That's not to say that you have to be part of that world to, to publish outside your own experiences. I did a book called Gay New York. I'm not gay. It's not my world. I didn't even know about the rape of Nanking. My husband knew about it, but I didn't. I didn't know about Indian slavery. You don't have to be part of a diverse yourself to publish diverse books. The other thing is you can bring in all the diverse people you want and all the diverse books you want. 
There has to be an audience for them. Otherwise, it's It's the wrong thing to do to the person and it's the wrong thing to do to the company. So the problem needs to be solved. It's not going to be solved quickly or easily. In time, publishing will figure it out. The other thing you need to know is I remember having lunch with a Black editor and she said, I don't want to just see Black books. I'm not here as the representative of Black America. I want to do every book that everybody else sees. And I had difficulty convincing the agents to send me non-Black books. So as I say, there are different aspects of the problem that need to be solved. Do we need to hear new voices? 
Absolutely. Do we need to hear new perspectives? Absolutely. Getting there is not a question of setting up a committee and bringing in more people. It's certainly an issue of salary because New York is extremely expensive to live in. That has to change. And at the point where you're looking, who are you going to hire? There has to be, take a chance. That's what I would say. You have to take more of a chance. But sure, everybody wants, everybody understands the world is changing. We need to hear from every community in America. Very true. I'm wondering if you have anything else that you want to tell us, Susan, any other advice that you think would be helpful? I'm a dinosaur. You have to understand that. 
My generation is out. There's a new young generation. So look at what's being published. The best way to understand whether or not University Publishing, interestingly, I'm not going to tell you who it was, but I had a conversation this morning with an editor at University Press, a friend, and he said, we're actually moving into trade more than people realize. When I was at Oxford, Oxford was the only company, only University Press I knew that had a trade division. We were sort of seen as almost illegitimate because we didn't have to send stuff out for review. I remember once something came in and I went to Sheldon and I said, I don't know who this woman is. It was Gerda Lerner. I don't know who this woman is, but these essays are really interesting. 
He said, great, let's sign them up. You know, that's how we did it. The university presses are sensing there's a real opening for them to become more commercial. They have to get smarter at it. They have to learn how to cut their books. They have to learn how to shape their books, title their books. But there's a real opening for them. And I think that's where the creative work is going to come in in future years. I think the commercial world is now much more psychologically focused and much more, it's not looking for these distant tones. It just isn't. Things will change. What I would say to everybody right now is go with the people who want you and who are looking to make their reputations on you because then you have a team. 
That editor wants to prove he or she can do a commercial book. You want to prove that your book is more than just for a bunch of academics. Go where you're wanted. Don't have this dream that commercial publishing is the be all end all. Having said that, as I say, I'm at the tail end of my career. I don't, even though the editors are still calling me for books and I still believe anything I worked on will be sold. You have to play today and I'm not today. Well, thank you very much for taking time to talk to us today. This was very helpful. Thank you for having me. We all really appreciate it. Our pleasure. Take care. Thanks for listening to Writing It, the podcast about academics and writing sponsored by the Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Florida. 
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