Brian writes in with this question:
What I’d like to ask you is if you have any reading suggestions for finding out about the ins and outs of book and magazine publishing. It’s one of those topics that is absolutely flooded up to the nose with books claiming to answer all your questions. I would love some help from a trusted name. I’m trying to get a foot in the door in NYC but it is, as I’m sure you know, quite the challenge.
For this question we got responses from a pair of The Millions’ published writers, Emily St. John Mandel and Sonya Chung.
Emily: The most practical guide in my possession is probably Publicize Your Book! by Jacqueline Deval. At first glance this might not seem like the most intuitive fit for this topic, but the book provides a great deal of information about how publishing houses actually work from a marketing perspective, from the faintly chilling opening line (“The reality of book publishing is that there are too few resources to support every book”) onward. I happen to be published by a press that provides excellent marketing support to its authors, but this is by no means a given; I have friends, published by other presses, whose books have languished and died in the absence of a publicity budget. In the best-case scenario, authors need to play a substantial role in marketing their work, and in the worst-case scenario, they need to do absolutely everything themselves. Either way, Deval’s book is invaluable.
There was a brief period last year when it seemed like half the people I follow on Twitter were reading Rona Jaffe’s The Best of Everything. I follow a lot of booksellers on Twitter, which is deadly, because I end up spending a small fortune on books; someone will recommend a book, then someone else will read it and recommend it too, and then all of a sudden everyone’s talking about it and I have to go buy it to see what all the fuss is about. Usually this happens with new releases, but The Best of Everything was published in 1958.
This is a portrait of a lost world—the book follows five young employees of a Manhattan publishing house in an era of typing pools and three-martini lunches. It’s a novel, but one rooted in fact: the author spent four years rising through the ranks of a New York publishing house herself, and before writing the book she interviewed fifty young women to see if their experiences matched her own. The book’s account of what it took for a young woman to go from the typing pool to an editorial position in that era is not for the faint of heart. A friend who read this book told me that working in publishing hasn’t changed very much; I hope very fervently that she’s wrong.
Sonya: In the olden days, we’d all go out and buy the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP) Literary Press and Magazine Directory. Organized by state, with each entry detailing submissions policies and a sampling of the authors featured, it was considered the “Bible” of literary submission; we’d all pore over it and make our lists, noting deadlines in our daily planners, imagining that if we just did our due diligence we’d be published writers for sure. (In fact, I did publish my first stories and essays via lists I made from the LPMD.) CLMP still publishes the Directory annually, and it boasts new features such as tips from editors, profiles of publishers, and inclusion of “leading webzines.” I don’t hear young writers talking about this Directory as much as they used to – a print directory? how quaint! – but if you’re looking for a print resource, this might be The One.
Poets & Writers is an indispensable clearinghouse for all things writerly, publishing and otherwise. Their website features user-friendly, searchable literary-magazine and small-press databases, grants/awards deadlines, and contests. I’ve found their Agents & Editors series – where a roundtable of agents and/or editors talk book biz “unplugged,” or an individual agent or editor is interviewed – especially illuminating.
When I had a book length manuscript and was ready to start the agent search, I found agentquery.com and publishersmarketplace.com both very helpful. I knew nothing about finding an agent; agentquery walks you through the basics of seeking an agent and FAQs of what to expect. Both sites have searchable databases with profiles on many agents (a quick look reveals that publishersmarketplace.com has more up-to-date profiles). The best strategy for agent-seeking is to make a list of your favorite writers, then go to a library or big-box bookstore, pull those writers’ books off the shelves and flip to the acknowledgments page; usually the writer will thank/name her agent there. Take your list of agents to one of these online databases, find their submissions guidelines, and follow them to a tee.
Finally, invest some time online. Literary blogs lead you to other literary blogs, which also inevitably lead you to online lit mags that will interest you and be good potential publishers of your work (many of the major lit bloggers list extensive links which include their favorite lit mags). It is a truism, for good reason, that the best places to submit your work are sites/publications that you read regularly and admire. Editors can sense, I think, that intangible quality of “good fit” when you’ve actually been reading their publication over time.
With so many online venues these days, the possibilities for publication have increased exponentially. Writing students sometimes ask me if I think online pubs are “less prestigious” than print pubs, to which I say, hogwash: The Millions, Narrative Magazine, Five Chapters, on and on. But, as Stephen Elliott puts it: “It’s easy to get published; it’s just hard to get paid.”
Good luck!
Thans for the question Brian! Millions readers, feel free to chime in with your advice in the comments!
[Image credit: Jim Kuhn]
If you have your heart set on Murakami, I recommend you start with Norwegian Wood, the bittersweet love story that propelled him to superstardom. It lacks the fantastic elements of much of Murakami’s more popular work, but it contains perhaps the best depiction of modern Japanese life that Murakami has ever written.
If you really want to learn more about what it means to be Japanese, you might consider picking up a copy of Kokoro, by Natsume Soseki. Kokoro is a, perhaps the, great modern Japanese novel (at least most Japanese would tell you that) in much the same way that The Great Gatsby Is a great American novel. Kokoro trades Gatsby’s wit and panache for a solemn melancholy that I, frankly, find off-putting, but it’s unquestionably one of the most “important” Japanese novels, and a great introduction to the soul of modern Japan.
On the non-fiction front, I highly recommend Ian Buruma’s Inventing Japan, which provides an excellent, entertaining encapsulation of Japan’s modern history. At a mere 174 pages, you can read it on the plane ride over, and still have time for two terrible movies. For a bleaker take on modern history, you might consider Alex Kerr’s Dogs and Demons, a dystopic look at Japanese bureaucracy and the country’s appalling environmental legacy. It can be a bit of a downer, but it provides an insightful behind-the-scenes look at what makes the country run.
I would also recommend anything by Nobel Prize winner Kenzaburo Oe, particularly “Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids” and “Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness.”
Thanks a lot Ben! Any recommendations on historical fiction? I’m usually a sucker for those. Kokoro sounds intriguing, too.
But can’t Murakami’s obsession with the West be seen as the crux of post-war Japan? The US occupation force-fed consumerism to the Japanese and I have always read Murakami as the standard bearer of that incredibly complex legacy. If the anxiety and conflict present in Yukio Mishima novels wrestle with how to cope with the loss of certain cultural traditions, the way Murakami’s characters embrace Western tastes speaks to how Japan has changed during the intervening years. Yes, Murakami’s characters love American music and films but their crises of self, as I see it, reflect many aspects of contemporary Japan, especially among the young urban set.
The Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima is a wonderful historical fiction based on the true story of a monk who sets fire to a Kyoto temple.
The Housekeeper and the Professor (novel) and The Diving Pool (3 novellas) by Yoko Ogawa. I had to wait months to get the novel from my library despite there being 8 copies and a short book–really special book.
I’m going to have to agree with Buzz; you can learn a lot about Japan from Murakami. I’ve both lived there, and lived with Japanese friends in America and Murakami was a way towards mutual understanding for sure.
I’d second his recommendation of Mishima, though I’d maybe give a heartier recommendation to The Sound of the Waves
I’d also recommend (and I’ve mentioned it here before) The Road to Sata by Alan Booth. It’s a travel book by a Brit who lived in Japan for most all of his adult life and he really gets at all different aspects of Japanese culture.
And why not read the first Nobel prize winner, Kawabata. Snow Country or The Old Capitol is a good place to start with him.
Kawabata is good… but maybe The Master of Go? Semi-sort-of-non-fiction-fiction about a single Go match which took place just before WWII, stressing both the differing styles and the physical and mental vulnerabilities of the players.
Jun’ichirō Tanizaki, perhaps? The Makioka Sisters is wonderful (and is sort of historical fiction in that it deals with Japan’s changing culture post-westernisation through the differing actions and reactions of the sisters), but you might get a lot from his essay In Praise of Shadows, which is short and deals illuminatingly and concisely with the differences between western and traditional Japanese aesthetics.
I strongly recommend Ryūnosuke Akutagawa’s short stories, particularly ‘In A Grove’ and ‘Spinning Gears’.
If you wanted to look at something older, you could take a crack at The Tale of Genji, the sweeping and psychologically fascinating eleventh-century novel by Murasaki Shikibu. That’s rather a long read, though, so maybe instead try the Penguin selections from the Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon, which is a sort of diary, a collection of her funny and insightful remarks on the characters and quirks of the Heian court of which she was part.
I was actually in this exact situation a few months ago–visiting Japan for the first time, never having read any Japanese literature, and polling my friends as to which books I should bring. I decided to read “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” for my first experience with Murakami, because the back cover described it “as an attempt to stuff all of modern Japan into one book,” or something like that. While I agree that for long stretches of the book the characters don’t seem “Japanese” (they could be the alienated inhabitants of any large city), some of the best writing in this novel is an attempt to reckon with Japan’s militaristic legacy and the atrocities of WWII. I recommend it and am looking forward to trying more Murakami soon.
I was interested in also reading something by a female author, and a friend suggested Banana Yoshimoto–unfortunately, I cannot recommend her. I tried her novella “N.P.” and it was terrible–flat writing in a bad translation.
And to supplement things with a foreigner’s perspective on some aspects of Japanese culture, I enjoyed “Fear and Trembling” by Amélie Nothomb, a young Belgian woman’s memoir/novella of working at a big Japanese corporation.
And another friend suggested reading the Pillow Book in conjunction with the “Hagakure” or samurai tales, to get an idea of what life was like for aristocratic men and women in feudal Japan.
Marissa, before you dismiss the Banana altogether pls try KITCHEN. NP I agree is fairly weak. It’s been years at this point, but I remember KITCHEN, particularly the last novella, as being fairly transcendent. I feel a lot of affection for that book.