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Jeff's Life
Archive
Jeff Stimpson, 39, has been a working journalist for 15 years. He lives in New York with his wife Jill and sons Alex, 3, and Edwin, four months. He maintains a site of essays, Jeff's Life, at:
JEFF'S LIFE
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Monthly Column... |
Acceptance
by
Jeff Stimpson
"This isn't a dream. This is really happening!" - Mia Farrow, Rosemary's Baby.
Here is the day I've dreamed of since junior high English class, since the moment I first typed "This is the story of Alexander Lee Stimpson" while trying to keep my hope up in June of 1998.
"Thanks for sending the rest of the ms, which we've managed to read and show in part to one or two people on our staff." This sentence opens a UPS-delivered letter from a publishing house that requested the full-manuscript of Alex a couple of weeks ago. Long and the short: there's a hole in their schedule, and they can publish it this fall.
Hole in the schedule? "Managed to read?!"
Among the first tasks: tinkering with and signing the contract; digging up some photos and writing a few promo paragraphs for their catalog; and one other thing:
"Before you send your disk," the publisher writes, "please eliminate duplications, repetitions. Take a good look at the organization and get the ms the way you like it best."
I get a contract, what Rick (not his real name), an old publishing friend of Jill's, assures me is probably a "minefield" representative of a long line of documents honed by generations of publishers to fuck authors. Rick's a nice guy. He was in this business for years, and has retired. He has a summer home. He doesn't have to talk to me. But he does, for 45 minutes, right up until he has to get dressed to go out to dinner. I also search the Web for stuff on standard book contracts. "Never sign a boilerplate contract," warns one primer. Never give them this, never give them that. Do the math on the royalties: You're probably getting gypped.
"The point of the whole thing is," says Rick, "you're not in a very strong bargaining position. You want the book published. And this is stuff you won't have to go through for your next 32 books."
No, I'm not. Yes, I do. "I'm thinking about just saying no, and putting it all in an e-book," I say to Jill. she nods.
"Oh, I think I should sign the thing and roll the dice and publish the book," I say to Jill a few minutes later. She nods. She looks at the publisher's Web site and sees that they've brought back a lot of titles Jill loved when she was younger.
"They sound kind," she says. Jill isn't wrong about this sort of thing too often.
I don't think fucking authors is what these people are about, especially after I call them. The guy sounds honest. He uses a lot of phrases Rick used. "This is a bad business," the publisher says. "All I can say is that if we make money, you make money." I bring up a small royalty (as Rick said, "I always think it's better if a little money changes hands").
Replies the publisher: "It's not our policy, but we're not adverse to it, if you'd feel better that way."
Jill takes the wheel for the first edit. "You're going to have to do more writing and re-writing," she announces on my phone, after reading the first few chapters. She's about to board the subway to go dishes shopping, but passersby who don't know that just hear a somebody who must be a Somebody barking editorial commands into a cell phone. "It reads too much like essays just strung together," Jill Somebody tells me.
I was thinking that too when I was, well, stringing them together.
Jill also starts contributing graphics ideas. She comes up with the idea of putting Alex's first footprints - each one an inch and a half long - on the first page of the book; on the last page will be his latest footprints, from an art project done last week. The publisher's art person loves the idea. The art person also mentions that we'll have to do photos in 8- or 16-page spreads, so we'll need some 30 pictures to sort through. plus a good photo for the cover as soon as possible.
"I never thought our family snapshots would be looked at by strangers one day as they thumbed through a book," Jill says. Funny: I always did.
I sign the contract, stipulating that I'll contact all web sites to remove my essays, and that the publisher must pay me $300 in advance of royalties. I still assume they won't pay. I still assume they'll just let the book drop.
A few days later, my copy of the contract arrives, along with an author questionnaire for marketing purposes, and a check for $300. I deposit it, assuming it will bounce.
Copyright 2003 Jeff Stimpson, all rights reserved
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