Do you recognize those words—the last line of a poem? They were cited recently by a poet who came to speak to a gathering of reporters. (Because the event was off the record, I will leave his identity a mystery.)

The poet registered, physically, with a jolt. He looked barely different from the homeless men who, now that spring flirts with us, commandeer the steel benches in Central Square. His face was purplish red, as were his hands, where large bruises bloom. His thinning gray hair, grown four or five inches, scythed in every direction: an exuberant J on the right side of his head, a backward J on the left, preposterous spikes on top. His ankles were thick beneath cream-colored socks; the ties of his black cross-training shoes barely reined in the swollen mounds of his feet.

His pronouncements were as fierce and unruly as his hair: The paramount thing in a poem is the way it sounds, or rather the way it engages the parts of the mouth—tongue, roof, lips. The unfortunate use of “the barn dies” in one of his own poems, because that’s a dead metaphor—a barn can “rot” and it can “fall down” but it can’t “die.” His having no truck with contemporary poets; as one ages, he said (and he is truly aged), one can’t comprehend poets 50 years younger. Instead he reads—he relishes—poets from the seventeeth century. (But he does look forward to Louise Glück’s next book.)

And he devours Thomas Hardy. “The novels are good, but the poems are GREAT,” he says, allowing that last adjective to come out as a growl.

To Hardy we owe the haunting title of this post, the closing lines of “During the Wind and Rain,” with its internal half-rhymes (name and rain), its unruly pentameter, its concentration of hard consonants rolling like stones along the tongue.

In a world that often seems to reward the tamed, the socially gracious, the kempt, the professional, this poet was a reminder of a sensibility that carves deeper meanings.

I’m celebrating spring (which has arrived ahead of schedule, with balmy temperatures and birds chirping) by taking another literature class at Harvard with my favorite book critic. (The identity of class and critic will remain hidden for now.)

I recently cracked a very famous novel and was confounded by this first sentence, which seems to break every rule in my book—and in every other book on writing:

“Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.”

I ask you, why did the writer launch his novel this way? Please submit your answers in the Comments, below. In fact, let’s make it a contest! The first person to 1) correctly name the writer and the work of literature from which this passage comes, and 2) explain how and why the passage contradicts the rules of good writing as they are taught today, and then 3) suggest why the author chose to write in such a style, will receive a free, signed copy of Sin and Syntax.

Bonne chance!

A Boston literary doyenne dispenses advice

1. If you have more than one idea or book you are working on, pick ONE of them to lead off with, and don’t mention the others for a while. (The woods are full of amateurs who have drawers full of unpublished manuscripts.).

2. In a bookstore, browse through lots of other books in a similar category, books you admire and think are in the same style as yours.

3. Look in those books’ acknowledgments sections to see if the authors thank their agent; thereby you will accumulate a list of agents who handle this kind of material.

4. Research these agents online to get their addresses, names, and submission criteria. If a website is good, you can also get a feel more broadly for the kind of work the agency represents.

5. You can then send a highly professional, crisp query to any number of your selected agents at once. However, don’t make it look like a blanket submission. Tailor each query letter to the specific agent; mention if possible other work you admire that the agent represents. If you know one of the agent’s authors personally, get a personal reference. Be sure your query letter gives background on you personally and why you are a credible expert on the subject addressed. Publishers think of nothing but “platform” these days — authors who teach in the field at a reputable institution, who run workshops nationally on the subject, who have a popular blog on the subject, who have already published material on the subject in national media and thus have a pre-existing audience.

6. To bypass some extra steps, you can attach to your query an outline or short prospectus of your proposed work, together with a short sample of the actual prose. (A sample is important, since summaries often don’t make a work sound attractive.)

7. Keep in mind that an agent is running a business and looking for commercially promising projects. Agents will not be interested in helping you develop your ideas, or helping you select good ideas to develop, until you have already proved you can be a solid breadwinner for them. You’d do best to arrive with a very clear, professionally presented package. Good agents are overwhelmed with prospects (we get more than 30 submissions a day) and in many cases they don’t even have time to answer a query unless it is irresistible.

8. Remember, the gods favor the persistent.

—by Jill Kneerim

{Jill Kneerim is the co-founder of Kneerim & Williams, a literary agency in Boston, New York, and Washington, D.C. Since she is not actively looking for new clients, Kneerim put together this list to help prospective authors find agents who are.}

Notes from a day with agents and editors

Last Friday I hosted a gathering of two editors, four agents, and about 30 midcareer writers at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard. The session set out to demystify book publishing and was intended to help journalists understand what role books might play in our careers.

The speakers came from small and large agencies, and small and large publishers, in Boston and New York. The journalists, at Harvard for a year of study and reflection, are considering what part books play in those careers, especially as newspapers shrink, staff jobs disappear, unpaid bloggers proliferate, and book publishing is buffeted by forces as disparate as Apple, Barnes & Noble, and the recession.

Here’s a random sampling of ideas that surfaced:

Editors and agents (at least these ones!) love working with journalists, because they are able to write on deadline and because their areas of knowledge and insight are so diverse.  But, as Helene Atwan of Beacon Press pointed out, journalists need to unlearn the art of the short paragraph and even the gift of quick study. Books, in other words, are a place to go deep, write richly, take the time to be thoughtful, and see the complexities in subjects.

Editors and agents think simultaneously about the quality of the idea and the existence of a market for it. This is why in developing a book proposals it’s important to research and write about the competition—the existence of other successful books in an area shows that people will be willing to plop down $25 for a book on the subject. As Wendy Strothman explained, if she’s going to spend months with an author developing a worthy idea, she wants to make sure that there will be a payoff in eventual sales.

Agent Jill Kneerim described helping authors take an angle that are too narrow and too focused (on, say, a particular event in 1915) and broadening it to encompass a larger sweep of history (a particular country in 1915, for example). This allows the author to tell a more epic story and enlarges the market for the book.

The panelists expressed mixed views on Twitter. (Is it really worth an author’s time? Does it enable one to develop and express strong and interesting ideas?). Agent David Patterson reminded the crowd that an intense focus on writing the book should trump online omnipresence. But all agreed that Web sites are now de rigueur for authors. Laurie Liss pointed out that it’s important for writers to have a place where people can find their work if they do a Google search.

Editor and publicity guru Lissa Warren noted that when a proposal comes before an editorial board, she and others are looking for a reason to say “no.” If an author doesn’t have a platform—i.e. a built-in audience that has already been developed through a career of covering a certain subject, a Web site, or a Twitter following—it may be hard to have faith that word on the book may get out.

Want to learn more? Read Jill Kneerim’s memo on “How to Find an Agent.” Check out Wendy Strothman’s “Suggestions for Writing a Non-Fiction Proposal.” San Francisco agent Ted Weinstein teaches a “Book Proposal Bootcamp,” offering a free audio version of the workshop on his Web site.

Another helpful resource for proposals is Michael Larsen’s book on the subject. Finally, my own primer on advances and royalties is in the Sin and Syntax Salon.

If you have found other useful resources for writers dreaming of publishing a book, please add them in the Comments, below.

A writer/editor on the reality of royalties

If you’re thinking about writing books, it’s helpful to know some of the basics about how much money to expect, how advances work, and when—if ever—you’ll collect royalties. There’s much confusion out there, especially since all we generally read in the press is that Sarah Palin got $5 million for her book, Barack Obama $500,000 for his.

I did some quick research, added to it what I know from my own experiences both as an author and editor, and then ran this summary by a few agents and editors to make sure it’s sound.

For starters, forget that $5 million advance. Most first-time book authors are lucky to get $50,000. (And at a small house or academic press, $5,000.) Any advance that is six figures is considered strong. In these tentative times, you have to be a pretty big celebrity—or an author who’s already got a track record of producing bestsellers—to earn in the sevens.

What’s more, that advance doesn’t all come at the front-end, and it’s shared with an agent. Read on….

Advances

An advance is actually an “advance against royalties”: A publisher gives you money when you sign a contract to produce a book, but you have to earn that money back through book sales before you start earning additional money from royalties.

Suppose your book will be published in hardcover and will sell for $20. If your royalty is 10 percent you will get $2 per copy sold. If you get a $10,000 advance, you will need to sell 5,000 copies before the book “earns out” and you start to receive additional royalties.

The amount of the advance is based on how many books a publisher thinks it can sell. Classically, an advance reflected a book’s earning potential in the first year, less costs to the publisher (for designing the cover, paying for paper, printing, binding, shipping—not to mention marketing and publicity). This isn’t always true any more.

Advances are almost never paid out all at once. Traditionally, half of the agreed upon amount was paid on signing the contract, with the other half due once the revised manuscript was delivered and accepted by the editor. In recent years, publishers have often been dividing payments into thirds, payable one-third on signature of the contract, one-third on delivery and acceptance of the manuscript and one-third on publication. More and more payments are being divided into even smaller chunks, perhaps with a portion of the advance payable upon publication of the paperback edition (!), for instance.

Royalties

Authors agree to accept as payment for writing and delivering a book either a percentage (royalties) of the profits from the book’s eventual sales, or else a straight flat fee (work for hire).

Under a standard book publishing contract, authors earn a royalty on each book sold. Hardback royalties on the published price (list price) of trade books usually range from 10 to 15 percent. On trade paperbacks it is usually 7.5.

An “escalator” means that the royalty rate rises after an agreed sales threshold has been reached; for example, the royalty might be 10 percent for the first 5,000 copies, 12.5 percent up for the next 5,000 copies, and 15 percent thereafter. Royalties for special sales—books sold at special prices—may be lower, e-book royalties higher.

Some publishers may offer lower royalties by basing them on the “published price” rather than the “price received”—i.e., a percentage of the publisher’s receipts from booksellers, which is usually much lower.

Work for hire

In certain cases a publisher may approach you to write a particular book or part of a text on a payment-only basis or as a work for hire. In these cases you will not receive royalties and you may not even hold the copyright.

Different publishing houses, different books, different advances

Most of the books we see in bookstores and on bestseller lists come from what we call ‘trade’, or general, publishing. But there is also academic publishing, professional publishing, and educational publishing.

Manuscripts may be printed in hardcover, trade paper, or mass-market editions. And then there are e-books. Whether a book is published as one or the other is determined by other books on the market, review potential, the concept and intended audience, and the quality of the writing. Sometimes paperback rights are sold separately–even to another publisher.

In academic, educational, and professional publishing, advances are small to paltry, and royalty rates tend to be lower than those for general trade titles; the payoff may be in robust sales for a built-in audience. In trade publishing, advances to authors are standard, but not the huge advances that attract headlines, especially for first-time authors.

Titles with color illustrations integrated throughout may have lower royalties because of the higher production costs.

The fine print

Almost all traditional publishers issue royalty statements every six months. This means that almost all authors are paid only twice a year and then only if their advances have earned out and there are royalties owed to them. Further, even if their advances have earned out, authors still never know how much money, if any, they will receive during any given pay period. This is because, usually, until receipt of the royalty statements, they never know how many books they have actually sold, or what reserve against returns is being held by the publisher for that pay period.

Reserves against returns: Unlike most merchandise, creative works like books and CDs are sold on a returnable basis. That means that if a retail bookstore orders 100 copies of an author’s book and doesn’t sell any of them, then the bookstore can return all 100 copies to the publisher, for credit—which the publisher charges back against the author’s royalties, as well. (Mass-market paperback books have only their covers stripped and returned, while the books themselves are required to be destroyed. Sales of these stripped books are illegal.)

In order to avoid overpaying the author, the publisher will withhold a percentage of the author’s royalties against returns. These returns tend to be higher at the outset, as reserves usually taper off during a book’s life. If, for instance, unsold books are being returned to the publisher at a rate of 50 percent—meaning that out of 100,000 books shipped to retail bookstores and wholesalers (who also stock outlets such as supermarkets), 50,000 books have already been returned unsold—then the publisher may withhold 50 percent of the author’s royalties, as a reserve against returns. (The amount of the reserve is determined by the publisher.)

Subsidiary rights: The licensing a book for foreign markets, magazines, movies, etc.) will increase an author’s income for it. However, there is no guarantee that a book will ever produce any sub-rights income.

Royalties are paid only on the sales of new books. Under current copyright law, authors earn no royalties whatsoever from the sales of used books, no matter how many times the used books are resold.

Sources:

Interviews with various editors and agents

http://www.publishing-services.co.uk/faqs_royal.php

http://www.writersservices.com/res/ri_adv_royalties.htm

http://www.brandewyne.com/writingtips/authorspaid.html

http://ezinearticles.com/?Book-Advances,-Royalty-Checks,-And-Making-A-Living-As-A-Writer&id=812872