Luck and Timing

Jim Knipfel has an excellent piece on the practical aspects of getting your book published in this week's New York Press. As he's found out several times by being too late or too early, it's all about timing. And timing changes at warp speed. Last year my agent wanted me to write something chick-litty. What he got a couple weeks back is a memoir, which would've been great about six months ago (as chick lit is allegedly gasping its last breathes, though I don't think so), but now memoirs are rapidly falling from favor thanks to James Frey and his ilk. Here's hoping the recent spate of amazing memoirs by women—Janice Erlbaum, Jeanette Walls and Lisa Carver—will play in my favor and help him sell the book. Not that mine will be as good as theirs, I'm just saying. . . .

Comments

[Reading Rainbow Ivan]

What guarantees a writer's success?
Puppy murder!
Especially cute pupppies...like puggles...Heh-heh-heh...

[rose]

oh the self deprecation ain't working, judes. you have the pen of a genius, a hilarious scribe.
and if only there were a practical guide.
maybe one has to be a 17 year old future Harvard student who likes to cut and paste?

[Jules]

Seems like all a successful female writer needs is a really hot jacket photo. How else to explain the welter of crap at the bookstore?

It boggles the mind that that Harvard undergrad who plagiarized her first novel signed a two-book deal for something like $700,000 when she was still in high school, and Judes has to sweat getting published at all.

It's her birthright, damnit! Give the girl the money, already! Eesh.