FINDING THE QUAN
It has been two years since I stepped away from Knopf. They say timing is everything in life, and it was certainly good timing for me. Don’t get me wrong: I loved my job and my company and many of my colleagues, but things had been changing in the wake of Sonny’s death, and I had an inkling of what was still to come. And so, I thought a parting would be beneficial (for both of us).
My attorney at the time, a good friend, said mine was one of those rare instances where the company was happy to see someone stepping away, and the person stepping away was happy to be leaving.
***
You’re a loudmouth.
Yup.
Companies don’t like loudmouths. It’s good you’re getting out. BEAT. But they’re also happy for you.
You think so?
Yes.
I did give ‘em thirty-two years.
And they’re grateful for that time and your contributions. But, you know, things run their course. And this – you and them – had reached an expiration date. Think of it this way: You’re finally free.
***
John was right. I was finally free. And the last two years of freedom have exceeded all my expectations. I work when I want (mostly all the time), with whom I wish to, and where I want. This is a luxury I never imagined possible. If I have a regret, it’s that I waited as long as I did to make the move. But then again, I realize the time I put in allowed me to make the move. A part of me still can’t believe I did it. I mean, I’m running a company. It’s a small company. But it’s my own. And I am once again making contributions, incremental though they may be, to the world of books.
I have come to understand that the most significant contribution I can make to the world of books as a single-person LLC is to have my emails get through to their intended recipients without being detected as Spam (I spend a lot of time on the phone with Go Daddy personnel trying to figure out why my emails are detected as Spam).
***
Is it bias?
Excuse me?
Bias? Could some exchanges have a bias against me?
No.
Because I do spend time on some questionable websites.
What kind of websites?
That’s not the point.
You should be careful about what websites you visit.
***
Technology is my biggest challenge by far, and if I have a regret, it’s that I am no longer able to call Penguin Random House IT hotline (if I were running a big company, I would make IT help a retirement benefit).
Other than my struggles with technology, things have gotten better. Indeed, my relationship with my former company has improved. I collaborate with Knopf on projects without having to attend meetings (nirvana!) I sometimes run into people in the PRH lobby, and they wind up in my Substack as a result. My relationship with the city has also changed: my animus has dissipated. I now realize what had been missing for me all these years: a known arrival and departure date (I blame New Jersey Transit, whose arrivals and departures were always suspect).
***
One of the joys of this new endeavor is reading far beyond the menu I had been grazing on at Knopf. I’m discovering books and writers whose work I had never read before (it’s not that I didn’t read out of parish at Knopf, it’s just that there was so much reading to do in parish). The work itself, which had been deadening in my last years because PRH found a wormhole where they could shoehorn twenty-seven hours of meetings into a seven-hour day, was once again liberating. Most importantly, after two years of running this enterprise, I’ve finally figured out what I want the business to be.
The work is hard. Just as before, you care deeply about the people and their books (and the companies you are working with). You put the time in, you fight for the best outcomes, and still come up short sometimes (a lot of the time). There are books that remain conundrums. You love everything about them. You can quantify why they are good (objectively) and why they should sell (objectively) and then when they don’t, you start to question your compass. But then you remember: it has always been this way. We want the best outcome for every book knowing that the space for best outcomes is finite. And so, we learn to live with disappointment.
A mistake a lot of us make is in describing a book as a failure. Disappointment, yes. Failure, no. A book that has been written and published can never be described as a failure (unless you are an editor).
I had a reporter ask me about outcomes recently. She was (is) working on a piece about agencies adjacent to publishing. Her question: “How do you square the fact that there’s no way to guarantee results?” My response: “We’re transparent about outcomes not being guaranteed and that the effort is a community one (as with all things in publishing). Clients are smart about the business and know outcomes are not certain when they come knocking. I say this on every client call: ‘If you’re looking for miracles, there’s a church down the block.’”
Still, we pray—all of us. Publishing has always required a measure of prayer (and luck).
I have been surprised by some of the books that found their way to me. We think we know audiences, and yet, there are readers out there for every book whose shoulders haven’t been tapped. One example: I loved The Enchanted Hacienda by J.C. Cervantes. I am probably the last reader in the world Park Row would have targeted for this book. It came to me via a query from the author, who was seeking publicity representation for a new work. The Enchanted Hacienda is a novel set in Mexico with a side jaunt to Quebec City. I fell in love with the protagonist and her family and their garden of intoxicating flowers. It reminded me that magic does exist in the world, and it often comes in the form of our connection to others (it turns out I’m a sucker for a love story with potions and for women who cast spells).
Another book I loved was Freda Epum’s Gloomy Girl Variety Show. It’s a unique amalgam of essay and memoir about identity and the meaning of home, with powerful takes on illness and depression. In a world where we are all searching for something, Epum is searching for belonging. It’s dark and frank and, intermittently, very funny. Epum has wonderful observations on our obsession with makeovers, the ideal home, HGTV, and America. Some of her sentences made me laugh: “It’s like when you’re on Wikipedia and you somehow end up at the Bible after searching for Matthew McConaughey.” Gloomy Girl is being published by Feminist Press in 2025.
I didn’t wind up working with Cervantes or Epum, but I was grateful to have been introduced to their work, and doubt either of their books would have found me if not for the business I am running.
***
So, about the business and where it is going, I love the long-term project work. I’m less interested in short-term single-title project work and more interested in long-term collaborations with writers and companies. The best example of that would be my work with Robert Caro. Bob and I have been working together for thirty-five years. We can finish each other’s sentences. 2024 is the 50th anniversary of The Power Broker – an exciting and monumental milestone. Last year, we sold 25,000 copies of The Power Broker in the run-up to the anniversary. On Monday, reprints totaling 50,000 copies are landing (!!)
Most exciting of all, the podcast 99% Invisible is dedicating a year of programming to The Power Broker. The hosts, Roman Mars and Elliott Kalan, are great admirers of the book, and if you haven’t listened to their first episode, you should. It’s that good. Bob spoke with the hosts earlier this week, and he was smiling the whole time (that episode will drop on January 19th).
When an author is happy, you are happy. When an author is unhappy, you are miserable. We all deserve more happiness. And compensation. And sex (I’m sorry for these asides).
Another aside: I can’t imagine being young in this world. It’s bad enough being old. And yes, I know things have been periodically grim and intermittently horrific throughout history, but arriving at a moment when people are suggesting colonizing other planets as a solution to our ills, well, that is a bridge too far for me. I mean, how will we sell books on Mars? Who is going to work out the logistics of shipping? And how would you ever get Mitch Kaplan to leave Miami?
Speaking of booksellers, I must give a shout-out to my friend Johnny Evans at Lemuria. Johnny and I have known each other for thirty years. He is one of the most gifted book whisperers I know. When he loves a book, he’ll rally a community of readers behind it. And not just a book – he’ll elevate an author's entire backlist. I sent Johnny an email some months ago about Elizabeth Crook’s novel, The Madstone, urging him to read it. A few weeks passed, and then he wrote back saying he “loved it” and that he was going to “see what he could do with it.” He closed his email with this signature: “Your bookslinger n jxn.” As it turns out, he did a lot.
***
Back to the past, and as bad as things have been, for most of that time, smartphones did not exist. Smartphones make everything worse. This is known, and still (you’re probably reading this on your smartphone).
Garth Risk Hallberg does not have a smartphone. He walks around the world with a notepad, pencil, and trade paperback, looking for payphones. I am convinced he is an augmented being from the past, yet his novels have the zip and zing of the zeitgeist! They sing. There’s a lesson in Hallberg’s way of life for all of us. PS: His new novel, The Second Coming, knocked me out. It’s a deeply personal work, a book about familial estrangement and trauma, as well as a compelling portrait of a teenage daughter who may be lost to the world and a father struggling to find his way back. If you have ever been blindsided by addiction or depression or loneliness, or experienced the kind of pain that comes with being unable to help a loved one, or simply found yourself trying to punch your way out of the darkness that is this world, well, this book is for you. It's a big novel – rich, textured, full of love (and hope!) Hallberg is once again painting on a Dickensian canvas, and I have to say, it feels lived. And yeah, there’s music, too (Garth should be a fucking DJ). Ping me if you want a copy.
***
That’s not to say there will not be any single title work. There will always be a book I love and want to help elevate in the world. That’s the complexion of my current client roster – books I love (Lea Carpenter’s Ilium, Roxana Robinson’s Leaving, Elizabeth Birkelund’s A Northern Light in Provence, C. Michelle Lindley’s The Nude, and Sarah Hoover’s The Motherload). It’s just that there won’t be as many of them on a forward basis.
***
If I could do this work without accepting money from clients, I would. It would simplify everything.
***
Bob and I spend a lot of time talking about the New York Knicks. He’s a fan. He loves the Knicks and the New York football Giants. He loves watching the games and the players, but especially the coach of the Knicks, Tom Thibodeau, and how he manages the game from the bench (of course, he would be watching the coach).
I was in New York on client business recently and, walking past the Garden, thought watching a Knicks game with Bob would be fun. I like that client work brings me to New York with some frequency. I never loved New York the way, say, Peter Gethers loves New York (that has mostly to do with his appetite), but I could have fun there, and when I was young, I did. Lots of it. Now my time there is spent mostly in meetings.
***
On my last visit, I had some free time between meetings and wandered over to the Regency Hotel. It just happened; my feet took me there without thinking, and upon arrival, I sat at the bar and ordered a cup of mint tea. I remembered that they made their mint tea with fresh mint leaves, and, you know, just being there, sitting at the bar, acknowledging my adjacent companions, working ladies, as it were, well, it all felt familiar (I had been away from the city for a while and wasn’t sure that kind of work existed in the physical world anymore. It does, and at an hourly more expensive than I remembered. I did remember that some of these women were easy at conversation).
***
Isn’t there an app for this kind of work?
There are.
But you’re not on them.
No.
Why is that?
My clients are gentlemen who value their privacy.
Ah. Men you would meet at a swank hotel.
Yes.
What do you like about it?
The money and the freedom.
What don’t you like about it?
The assumptions people make about me.
You’re working for yourself?
At this, she smiled. I have someone who vets clients very carefully. BEAT. A woman can’t be too careful.
It sounds like my business.
What business is that?
Public Relations. I have my own company. I can’t be too careful, either.
You must be very successful.
Not as successful as you think.
Uh-huh. BEAT. Where are you staying?
Not here.
It wasn’t that kind of question.
It sounded like that kind of question.
I’m not working today.
Oh. BEAT. I stay in New Jersey when I’m here on business. Cheaper for clients.
I bet clients like you.
I bet clients like you.
At this, she laughed.
***
Later, after she left, I asked the bartender about her.
***
She a regular?
Has been for a long time. She lives around the corner.
Really?
Is that surprising?
No. It’s just that I had a good friend who lived around the corner. And we used to come here for drinks. I don’t recall seeing her before.
Well, she is the kind of woman gents tend to remember.
***
The Regency is around the corner from Sonny’s old flat, and we would often go there and have a pop before or after an event. They had a bottle of Famous Grouse set aside for Sonny. He would sit, they would pour, no questions asked. The Regency was also, for a time, the hotel of the power breakfast set. This was back in the era of the media patriarchy. Men in Brioni suits and Lanvin ties and Church’s wingtips. Michael Crichton used to stay there. This was before he elevated himself to the Four Seasons on 57th, a property that went under during the pandemic. The Regency is a tony but subdued hotel, and not overwhelming in a way I found the Four Seasons to be.
Michael and I had interesting conversations at the Regency. We would sit at the bar, and he would tell me how much he hated doing publicity just as he was about to embark on his book tour. I was there to remind him how important the work was. He would say it didn’t matter. I would push back and say it did.
***
It sells books, Michael.
You know that empirically?
It’s obvious.
It’s not obvious to me. BEAT. I would be interested in seeing a quantitative analysis of publicity and book sales.
I’ll get to work on that.
You should. It would make your job easier with me.
Nothing would make my job easier with you.
Fair point.
***
Several years later, at a company retreat, I suggested Random House would benefit from aggregating the kind of data Michael had been alluding to. The execs in the room agreed. So, we got to work building a tool that measured the impact of earned media. This was back in the day when earned media still had an impact.
Random House always had the best tools. And the men and women who built them were excited to collaborate with you when you went to them with an idea.
***
Michael did the requisite work. He wasn’t happy to be doing it, but he always showed up. His best conversations were with Charlie Rose. He liked Charlie. They had a Harvard-Duke bromance. I think he would’ve enjoyed defending Charlie in the wake of his being smoochy with thirty-seven women.
Most authors liked Charlie. Most authors miss Charlie. They remember him like they remember Twitter. It was good until it went bad. But maybe there were signs it was going bad all along.
***
I remember having a conversation/negotiation with Michael about his doing an interview with Vanity Fair. This was when Vanity Fair was fat with ads and editorial and landed in your inbox with a thunk. This was when Graydon would dole out twenty-five grand for serial after Wayne (Lawson) whispered in his ear about a forthcoming book. This was in advance of the publication of Disclosure. Michael was brilliant but obdurate. He didn’t like Vanity Fair or the prism of the world it presented, and he was still a little chafed at the critical reception to Rising Sun. I reminded him that Disclosure presented another potential level of chafing altogether.
***
You’ve written a novel about sexual harassment where a woman is the aggressor.
And?
It’s not going to land well. It’s going to piss people off.
I like to piss people off. BEAT. So why do Vanity Fair?
Everyone who’s anyone in Hollywood reads it.
I don’t read it.
My point exactly.
Fair enough.
BEAT.
We want a woman to write the piece.
Why?
I have concerns about a profile featuring two guys talking about sexual harassment.
Who do we have in mind?
Zoe Heller.
Zoe?
Yes.
Life.
What?
Zoe is life. In Greek. BEAT. What do I need to know about her?
She’s tough but fair.
Fair is good.
***
Michael agreed to the interview. When I asked him how it went, he said Zoe led with a declarative and not a question.
“What was the declarative?” I asked.
“So, you like blondes.”
“How did you respond?”
“I said, ‘Three of my four wives have been blonde. Make of that what you will.’”
“That’s a good answer.”
“It’s a fact.”
“Can’t argue with facts.”
“We’ll see how it plays.” BEAT. “Life.”
In all my years of work as a comms guy, this is the best response to a statement from a reporter I’ve ever heard and one of the best ledes in a profile I’ve ever read. And, you know, the piece played fine. I think Michael was happy with how it turned out and her portrait of his aloofness in the kingdom of me-dom; more than that, he liked being in Vanity Fair. Because it represented an ending to him, it suggested he need not do more.
***
Michael liked Sonny. He enjoyed spending time in his company. Neither was particularly loquacious, and there would often be long gaps in their conversations, time which Michael would spend perusing Sonny’s bookshelves. My favorite moments were when the two of them were smoking in Sonny’s library. Michael was not a smoker, but Sonny had a way of charming authors with his Silk Cuts. Michael would have a cigarette dangling from his mouth and a novel from Sonny’s bookshelf in his hand, and Sonny would be watching him. He was also the only author who could reach all the shelves in Sonny’s flat.
***
A story has no beginning or end.
Did you ever meet him?
No. He left England just as I was getting started.
It’s one of my favorites.
Mine too.
***
The early Crichton was a more interesting author and person and subject and writer. His Knopf years were great. His Harper years, not so much. The data supports this. People still read Jurassic Park, The Lost World, Sphere, and The Andromeda Strain. I always liked Travels.
The later Crichton was tired and reticent and enjoyed spending time away from people and in somewhat hiding from the world. I’m approaching the age Michael was when he died, and I feel pretty much the same way.
As for this Crichton volcano novel, I am certain he would not have approved of it. It’s no different from AI-generating iterations of his work. Critics may not have liked much of Crichton’s work, but it was always his.
I remember getting into a tiff with a reporter about a review they had written about Michael’s novel Jurassic Park. The reviewer wasn’t a critic; he was a sports reporter, and I got into his grill about that, challenging his authority as the former when his day job was the latter. It wasn’t one of my finer moments, disparaging a sports reporter on the record, saying he had no business writing a review of a significant work by a novelist. But it’s how I ran back then, and Sonny didn’t seem to mind.
***
Sonny liked it when I got into trouble with the press or the corporate brass. He had his middle finger to the world, so we were kindred spirits in that sense. In the early days of the internet, I had a Tumblr featuring two guys, Doug and Paul, talking about the business. It wasn’t cleverly disguised – people knew who Paul was, and pretty soon, they knew who Doug was, too. One day, the President of Harper, Michael Morrison, called Sonny, demanding a cease and desist.
***
Do you know what that prick is doing?
Bogie?
Yes.
Tell me.
He’s publishing company secrets on his fucking Tumblr.
I read his Tumblr. BEAT. It doesn’t strike me as secretive.
Well, one of my employees is a recurring character, and if he doesn’t stop, we will take legal action.
Michael. Possibly this is a conversation you should be having with your employee.
You don’t give a shit what he posts, do you?
He doesn’t seem to be breaking the law, if that’s what you’re getting at.
It’s not a good look for you, Sonny.
Execs here have said the same thing to me, Michael. BEAT. I’ll talk to Bogie about it. But, you know, he’s his own man.
***
Sonny did talk to me about it.
***
Bogie.
Yeah.
Your Tumblr.
What about it?
It seems to be upsetting some people over at Harper.
Morrison?
He called.
What’d he say?
He said they were going to sue you.
Can they sue me?
I don’t think so. BEAT. But as the company has already settled one claim against you, maybe you want to change the name of one of your protagonists.
Sounds good. BEAT. You want me to stop?
No. BEAT. I enjoy reading them. Just be careful.
***
The claim was unrelated to my Tumblr. It was instead for a car accident I got into when I was on the road with Donna Tartt for The Secret History. She wasn’t in the car; I was. This was after having slept in the vehicle, and when I woke up and realized I was late for her pickup, I sped to her hotel and, en route, rear-ended a van that was stopped at a red light. The next thing I remember was waking up in the hospital with Donna standing over my bed. “Bogie,” she said, “you are the worst escort in the history of publishing.”
She wasn’t wrong.
Until next time,
Kill Your Darlings
Happy new year, Paul. I finally listened to The Power Broker on audible last year - it was absolutely worth all 66 hours. Made me feel warm and fuzzy about our crazy industry, despite all of its current problems...
Famous Grouse? Ugh. Anyhow, good to read this and you remind me that you were going to be in touch about meeting in the new year. Wishing you a good one.